Densho Digital Archive - George Iseri Interview (denshovh-igeorge

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AC: Speaking of tough times, you said that you were, your father had a general store --

GI: Yes.

AC: -- general merchandise. And during the depression, he'd go out and make his rounds, take orders and fill the orders. Can you tell me a little bit about those days and what kinds of hardships that you experienced or you watched other people experience?

GI: Well, you know, some of the things I remember and I remember quite clearly, you take like a box of lettuce, I don't remember exactly, but I think they got as low as about ten cents a crate of lettuce before they decided well, it just wasn't worth harvesting, so they wouldn't even harvest it. But the history was that kind of no prices on lettuce, where they could make a living. It might have gone up to a couple of dollars a crate which was terrific, but about that time, the slime and things would ruin the lettuce. Then in California, the produce was quite easily obtained and things like that, so they just had an awful time with lettuce. Peas was the same way. Peas however in later years, they had the canneries that would buy peas, so you could make a little bit of living. Blackberries, things like that, it was just barely enough to get by. And I remember the Depression was so bad that one lady who's still living, her name is Sophie, maiden name was Sophie Portnum, Portman. And later years, she and her husband ran a hardware store in Vashon Island which I tried to find the other day when I was there, but I couldn't find it. But she was a high school student and there was blackberries growing along the road, but the dandelion, the, I don't know what you call it, the floss or whatever were flying around and would get on these blackberries along the road and all, but she used to go pick those and maybe have a flat of twelve cups. They wouldn't have, they might have been pints, but I would guess maybe half pints it took up. She'd bring them down to my dad because we had a contract to sell our blackberries, and she'd get maybe two bits for the whole flat. But when she'd bring those, the floss or whatever you call it from the dandelions got in there, and my dad used to have a hard time getting the canneries to take them because they said, "No, you got too much junk in there." You can't do anything with them. But he did the best he can to help this family out and give them two bits or four bits a whole flat, you know.

Our tough times, a five cent hamburger, boy, that was a real treat. My older brothers used to take us uptown to buy us a five cent hamburger. By golly, that was just really great. We really looked forward to it. We'd go to the movies, twelve cents or ten cents to go to the movies. I remember going to the movies, and it was just some, some kid told us about the nuts and bolts on the seats, and boy, those sure are handy to have so taught us how to get the nuts and bolts and take them off the seats, almost fall apart, but we had a whole bunch of nuts and bolts, you know. But at the high school, you used to go to get a Coke and an orange bar, a pastry, five cents for the pastry and five cents for the Coke. It was just, today, unbelievable to think of how much that penny or nickel meant to us. There were penny Babe Ruth bars, penny Butterfingers, penny Milky Ways, and those are pennies, and a lot of kids couldn't afford to have those. And that reminds me of a story. The fellow's still living in Nampa. His name is A.B. Ellis. He's a little older than I am. He retired from the paint manufacturing business. He started a factory in Boise and turned it over to his son. But anyway, he came to visit me one time here about twenty-five years ago, and he introduced himself. And I didn't remember him specifically, but I remember all the kids. We had a nursing home, I mean an orphan home in our community. It was called the Jeff Orphan Home. Jeff was a name of an American Indian who accumulated some money, and that money had somehow built this Jeff's Home, and there was, oh, twenty to thirty kids there. It was about 1930, no, 1926 I think it was, something like that because when they came, they had so many kids come to school that they elevated us one grade those of us that qualified, elevated us one grade so to make room for the kids not because we were smart. But there's a lot of kids that didn't get elevated too because a lot of kids were having trouble because they were in homes that still spoke Japanese, and they come to first grade and they had to learn English which they didn't know. I was fortunate because I had, my oldest brother was thirteen years older than I. My dad spoke English, and so I was lucky to be able to do okay in grade school. And anyway, he mentioned, now telling you this story. He says, George, says, and he wanted to meet my mother, and he really thanked my mother. He said, "You know, I remember when I was a little kid and I was at the orphan home, we'd walk by your store and going to school every day, and Mrs. Iseri, you would give us a little penny candy bar or you would give us this and that." And he said, "I really appreciate that." He just remembered it so clearly. Like I said, that man is a retired paint manufacturer, and he's now in his old age. He's older than I am by a year or two. But that kind of goes back. I don't remember where we were at, what question I was trying to, filling in there for, but that's another sidelight story. I can tell you another about the store. My mother, she told this story all her life because every once in a while, we'd hear about it especially if we see a member of the Miyoshi family that were our neighbors, and the kids used to, we were real close friends. They used to go out by our store. And one time, she says that Jimmy, he was the same age I was, came by, and my mother said that she saw he had one brown socks and one black socks, and my mother felt sorry for him, so she remembered putting on a pair of socks that matched for him. But little things like that that, she mentioned few things significant but kind of give you an idea of what kind of people my mother was. Well, there's lots of other things that I can understand we have, at our age, we have enough to tell for hours and hours, and I'll not. [Laughs]

AC: Please do.

GI: I'll tell you an experience I had. The other day, I was, where was I? Anyway, I saw some cans about like that, little cans like that. There was a convenient store I think in, I said, "What's in that round package there?" I said, "Is that 'Snoot'?" And I said, "I bet you don't know what 'Snoot' is." No, he says, "I don't." He went down like that. Oh, you mean "snuff"? And that was a great item in our grocery store that we sold, Copenhagen snuff. And these guys that would eat it, just open the can up and dip into it, put it under their tongue then spit it out, and they would spit and keep chewing away. Then maybe after a while, they'd put some more in. And I said, "Is that good?" "Oh, that's really good." And so now one day, I'd try it. So when I was alone in the store, I opened up a can of snuff and put a chunk in my mouth, and oh, that tasted terrible, so I ran out to the front of the store. I spit it all out, and I turned the water on, took a drink of water. Hell, I was drunker than a lard. I'll never forget that. That was a first experience with anything like that, alcohol or anything like that. That would knock you over practically. And then I realized that these people that used it were, become so accustomed to it, so there was no problem. But we used to sell a lot of that Copenhagen snuff.

I'm trying to think of a lot of the other things. But one thing I'm thankful for is that I learned that I can talk among people who never heard of such words, among the Issei would know, but the Japanese stuff like we used to have kampyo and we used to have ika and we used to have tsurume. We have somen. We have of course udon we all know, takuan, umeboshi, tsukudani, all this kind. I learned all that as a kid working with my dad, you know. And so that's how me in visiting Japan like going into some of the stores or department stores and talking with people, lots of words come back to me in recognize conversation because I know what they were. And so there's lots of things like that that I learned as a kid that I'm so thankful for that I even forgot about knowing those words. Food of course, we learned to eat Japanese food all our lives. And even today, once or twice a day, we always have chawan and chopsticks, and that's something that I'm glad that we still do. About almost twenty years ago now, we took three older grandchildren to Japan, and they're hapas, and they don't show too much Japanese in their features. But as we traveled through Japan, those little kids would eat with chopsticks and chawan and even eat natto, and the people in Japan would just get such a kick out of seeing them. hakujin kids, they figured doing things like that, so we were able to pass those things on to our kids. And we still today, our grandchildren and great grandchildren have learned to use chopsticks and chawan because of that. I've got this Japanese style eight tatami room here that I was kind of watched the, oversee the building of one friend of mine, Yone Kariya, built it for me. That has helped me teach other people what it is. You know, they can't imagine sleeping and eating and entertaining on the same area, and you put your bed away every night, things like that.