1937 (11 years old)
That was the year we moved to Wadsworth, Nevada, about 30 miles
east of Reno. My Uncle Dave Duffy, my Aunt Bertha, and my cousins,
Merle, Chet, and Dave all lived there. We stayed with Uncle Dave for
about 3 months. Then dad got a job managing a ranch at Fort Churchill
called the Toll Ranch. It was called the Toll Ranch because it was an
old Overland Stage station and you had to pay a toll to cross the river
on their ferry and later on, a bridge.
We had twelve hundred acres and about twelve ranch hands. Mom did
all the cooking. We had a guy named Scotty working for us and he had
several ailments. Imagined or real, we never knew. Anyway, Roy and I
used to catch rattle snakes. We sold the skins for a dollar a piece. A
very good price back then. Scotty always said the rattlesnake oil was
good for his aches and pains. He drank the oil and ate the meat. It
wasn't long before Roy and I were eating the meat right along with him.
It really was very tasty. I still like it now. Whenever I can get it,
that is. One time Scotty asked my mom to borrow a frying pan. She hit
the roof. Told him he would never use one of her frying pans to cook a
damned snake. Most of the men working at the ranch were Italians or
Basque, so they all ate old style French bread. The only place that
made it was a bakery in Reno. They shipped it out every week on the
train. The train came by about a quarter of a mile from our house and
the trainmen just threw the bread out on the ground in burlap sacks, or
gunny sacks as we called them. Roy and I took turns going down to the
crossing and carrying sacks of bread back to the house. We all
developed a fondness for French bread and I still have it to this day.
It was during this time at the Toll Ranch that I finally started to
grow up. At least, I thought so. One day we were all out at the horse
corrals picking the horses for the next day's work. Roy hit one of the
horses on the rear with a board and dad thought I did it. Of course, it
meant a spanking, as dad would not stand for any abuse to the animals.
Anyway he made for me and I ran. I remember him leaning on the corral
fence as I was running across the alfalfa field. He said, "Just
remember Raymond, I'll be here when you get back." That was all I
needed, and of course you can guess what happened to me. It's a lesson
I never, ever forgot. Face your problems now. Don't run away, because
they will still be there when you get back.
Roy, Bernie and I really enjoyed the time we lived at the ranch, as
I said before. The house was an old Overland Stage station. It had two
stories. A public room (living room), kitchen, dining room, and three
bedrooms downstairs and six rooms upstairs. No bathrooms. A bath house
outside next to the pump house. The pump house pumped water with a
windmill, or a big old single cylinder gas engine. I wish you could
have heard it run. It made the funniest noises. I really can't
describe it. Wish I could. We also had a lot of irrigation ditches to
water our alfalfa fields. As the summer wore on and the alfalfa got
ripe, we shut off the water in the ditches. When we did, it left a lot
of fish high and dry in the little pools in the ditches. We would
collect all the edible fish for mom and the trash fish, (carp and
suckers) we shot to put them out of their misery. At least as many as
we could. We never seemed to have enough shells or enough time to do
them all.
Almost all of the ranch was used to grow alfalfa. This in turn
became hay for sale to other ranches in that part of the state. We did
all the work with horses and horse drawn equipment. First, we mowed the
alfalfa and let it dry for about three days, then we raked it into rows
with a hay rake. Then it was put into piles called shocks, all by hand
with a pitchfork. After that dried for about four more days, me or Roy
would drive a wagon down between the rows of shocks and the men would
pile it on the wagon. It was fairly cool under the shocks and all the
animals would crawl under them to get cool. There were rabbits,
pheasants, quails, and quite a few rattle snakes. Somebody would pick
up a shock with his fork and all kinds of things would fall out before
it got to the wagon. No one was ever bitten except old Scotty. He was
bitten on the shoulder by a pretty big snake. Since it was pretty close
to his heart, we had to take him to the hospital in Youngtown. He was
pretty sick for about a week. Anyway, once the wagon was loaded we
drove to an area where the hay was put in great big stacks. To make the
big stacks, they had a big tall pole anchored in the ground. Then about
half way up this pole, there was another one attached to the first one
in a slightly more than horizontal position. This was called a gin
pole. There was a pulley at the top of the vertical pole and another on
the end of the gin pole. A cable ran through the pulleys. We drove up
under the end of the gin pole and hooked the cable to a device like a
big net that was laid on the wagon bed before we started loading. As
soon as this device called "a Diamond Fork" was hooked up, a team of
horses tied to the other end of the cable would raise the hay up almost
as high as it would go and another horse would pull it sideways and
swing it over the hay stack. Finally, the guy doing the lifting would
raise all the way up and a thing called a "trip", hooked to the pulley
on the gin pole, released. The hay fell to the top of the stack. Then
the process was repeated all over again. We had 900 acres of hay, so we
usually ended up with about 80 haystacks. One hell of a summer's work.
Of course my brother and I didn't think it was work. We never got paid
either. We still had some money from our snake skins.
There was a ranch across the road and the wife of the rancher had a
shed fixed up and sold some grocery items. The big thing I remember was
the candy and gum. We could get Baby Ruth, Milky Ways, and Three
Musketeers for a nickel and the gum was also a nickel. My favorite was
one called Black Jack. A licorice flavored gum. I'd put a whole
package in my mouth at one time and chew it all day long.
I remember the same summer, dad found some honey bees in one end of
our house. One morning he and a couple of the ranch hands got some old
rags and tied them around some sticks and started burning them. When
they were burning good they rolled them on the ground until the fire
went out but they were still smoking real good. Then they held the
smoking rags up to the hole where the bees were crawling into the house.
The smoke made the bees sleepy so they wouldn't sting too much. Then
they started taking the siding off. They took off a square of siding
about 10 feet wide and 10 feet high. In between the studs were pounds
and pounds of honeycomb, the stuff the honey comes from. We used pans
and kettles and wash tubs and everything we had to put all the honey in.
After we had all the honey, the men nailed the siding back again. The
bees went back to work and we melted the comb to extract the honey. We
had honey for the next several years after we moved back to Reno. What
a great summer.
Of course everything wasn't always great. My dad had some sort of
arthritis or rheumatism. A disease that effects the joints. I had seen
it cause him such terrible pain that sometimes in the night he would go
outside and cry, because it hurt so bad and he thought we couldn't hear
him. Down the road a ways, was a little place called Wabuska. They had
some natural hot springs and dad would go there quite often to soak in
the hot water, because it gave him a great deal of relief from the pain.
I always felt so helpless during those times, because I couldn't help
him.
That brings to mind a time when I must have been about four or
five. I had these terrible ear aches. During the night I would cry. He
would get up and come and get me. Then he would sit in a big easy chair
with me laying on his chest. He would light a cigarette and sit and
blow the smoke in my ear. After a couple of cigarettes the pain would
stop and I would go to sleep. I never really knew what stopped the
pain. The warm breath probably. I'm not too sure about the cigarette
smoke. I really did think that is what it was for the longest time.
Where was I? Oh yeah. The Wabuska hot springs. Even after we moved to
Reno again, he would still go to Wabuska. Even though we were only five
or six miles from Reno hot springs. He said the water was different. I
know this story is supposed to be about me, but I have to tell you about
my mom and dad. They were such great people and I loved them so much.
I hope I can, in this journal someplace, show how much they loved us and
how much they went without so we could have something.
I have always eaten like a pig and eaten everything in sight.
Often times after supper my dad would say he didn't want any dessert so
I could have a second helping. The older I get the more I think about
that. I know giving someone your pie doesn't seem like much, but it
means a whole lot to me. He liked dessert just like we all did. I
could go on and on about my parents, but I guess I better get on with my
story.
There was a place called Fort Churchill about a mile and a half
from the ranch. We used to go up there and dig around for valuable
stuff the soldiers may have lost. The fort was built to house cavalry
and infantry and to protect travelers traveling across Northern Nevada
during the period between 1843 and 1864 when Nevada became a state. I
understand that most of it has been restored. I sure did do a lot of
dreaming there.
I know we went to school while we were on the ranch, but I am
confused as to where and the sequence it falls into this story. I
remember one school year at Wadsworth where Uncle Dave and Aunt Bertha
lived, but not much detail, except that I didn't like it. We also went
one school year to the school at Dayton. It was much better. Right on
the river and covered by huge cottonwood trees.
I guess it was near the end of that year when we moved back to
Reno. We moved to a house at 1032 West 2nd Street. Dad went to work at
a place called Sierra Sign Service. They made and installed neon signs
around Northern Nevada. Bernie and I started school at McKinley Park.
It was right on the Truckee River. I was there recently (1987) and it
is still there, but isn't in use any more. I can't remember what grade
I was in. We only finished the school year we had started in Dayton.
I do remember we had to take turns chopping kindling wood for our
wood cook stove. Yeah we were back to burning wood again. The wood was
put in the cellar to keep it dry. I was cutting kindling one day and not
really liking work very well; I was being careless. I was holding the
wood down with my foot and chopping away when the axe glanced, went thru
my shoe and cut off the ball of my foot. You know? That round part
next to your big toe. Boy, the blood spurted clear to the ceiling. I
yelled and mom came running. When she saw me she started to scream and
say, "Oh my God, you're going to bleed to death." She finally called
sister Garnet, who lived a few blocks away. She cam tearing over and
they were already to take me to the hospital when dad came home. He
just shook his head and wrapped it with cloth and put an ice bag on it
and that was that.
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