6

8/22/72 -5-
Tape 12-2
M/M John Kascak interviewed by Denis Mercier
123
MK: ...onions...
JK: ...tomatoes...
MK: ...cucumbers...
JK: ---onion...
MK: Oh, about what we plant down here.
DM: Just about the same as you have out in the back.
JK: The same as I plant here, yeh.
MK: Dad, did we plant potatoes up there?
JK: Oh, sure we planted potatoes.
DM: Just about everybody did, from what I understand.
MK: Oh years ago they did.
JK: That was, that was the first thing went in, the potatoes, you know.
DM: When do you put the potatoes in? Early spring? After the frost?
JK: Well, around the middle of, I generally put mine in in the middle of May
all the time. I make sure that I have them in about that time. Take me
a day or two, maybe. Like, this year, it took me three days to get them
in! Ha ha!
DM: You got a lot of potatoes, though.
JK: Well, you got too many potatoes, but...I can't work any more like I used to
DM: Well, you have more time, and you can take your time now.
JK: Yeah...
DM: If I have to, you know, when I get older, I want to have a place like this
where I can, you know, I don't have to worry about bills, I've got my own
home, I can grow my own garden. I can just do whatever I want. That's
the way I'd like to live.
JK: Heh heh heh!
DM: No, I mean it. You people are very lucky, to be like this. I wouldn't
trade this kind of living for anything. I really like it.
MK: Hmm. You know, up in the other house we had, you know what we had,
a cellar, a little cellar, and we had a trap door to go down into it. Not
no steps like this.
DM: This is, under the house? You're talking about?
MK: It was, ah, was it really there, or did the people...
JK: Oh, the people done that for themselves. The company didn't do that. That
was only a two by four.
MK: It was small. Well, you did some repair to it. You put shelves in for
me, and you put a little door on there...
JK: Well, it was just a hole there, and I closed it off. I put boards around
it, so the rats and things couldn't come in to it, because you had every-
thing in there.
MK: We used to put our canned things down there, the po--no, we didn't even
have our potatoes there. We kept them down at his sister's, down what
she had a bigger cellar, you know? So that's the way. We'd go down and
we'd get a bucket of potatoes up, and then when you needed potatoes you'd
go down and bring some more up!
DM: Boy, that's not bad at all.
MK: Ha ha!
DM: Did you use to store them down there in sand?
MK: We'd store them down there. But the canned things, see there was just
like a hole there, but, I think you put a floor in there like. I think
you put some shelves. You made a little...
JK: Well, I had it boarded off. When we came here, there was nothing, just
a hole. there was no sides on it or anything.
MK: And he fixed it, and he made shelves, and there's where we put...then,