George Frey, Oral History

George Frey, Oral History

Churchill County Museum

April 3, 1991

Copyright Churchill County Museum Association

Microsoft Word Document

English

Interview with George Frey

This is Marian Hennen LaVoy of the Churchill County Museum Oral History Project interviewing George W. Frey at his home 9777 Pioneer Way, Fallon, Nevada. The date is April 3, 1991.

LaVOY:Good morning, George.

FREY: Good morning, Marian.

LaVOY:Can you tell me where you were born?

FREY:I was born in Fallon, Nevada, in December 7, 1917.

LaVOY:You are from quite a prominent family on both sides. Could you give me a history of your grandparents?

FREY:My grandfather Frey, Joseph Frey, and a brother, Lawrence Frey, arrived at Genoa, Utah Territory, in 1854. Shortly after this time Brigham Young was recalling his disciples back to Salt Lake City. It is reported by one of my uncles that the two young Frey brothers followed them back to Salt Lake City and secured title to the Genoa and Washoe Valley properties. In 1859, my grandfather at the age of twenty-four moved to Genoa and on to Washoe Valley. In 1861, claimed as his bride, Louise Shaffer, of Sacramento. They set up housekeeping, farming and ranching near Franktown, Washoe Valley. The people of the newly opened mines of Virginia City were supplied with grapefruit and vegetables and beef. There they raised a family of three girls and seven boys of whom my father, Joseph Frey, Jr., was number seven. The family then moved to the Mayberry Ranch near Reno during the late seventies [1870's]. As such, the Freys have become well endowed with the Nevada roots.

LaVOY:Now you mentioned the Mayberry Ranch. Is that the area now that Mayberry Road goes through in Reno?

FREY:Yes.

LaVOY:That entire area was the Mayberry Ranch?

FREY:It was 640 acres there where the Reno High School is and all that area back through there.

LaVOY:It came as far as the Reno High School?

FREY:That's what I'm told, I haven't researched the property lines or anything of this nature.

LaVOY:Then that would include the Schiapacassi Ranch and all of that area that is now built up into homes?

FREY:It would.

LaVOY:Very interesting. All right, then continue on, George.

FREY:Having been guaranteed by the newly created Bureau of Reclamation sufficient water to raise any crops adaptable to the area, George's father, Joseph Frey, with his new bride, Ethel Peckham, homesteaded on the Newlands Project in 1910.

LaVOY:All right, now just a minute, George. You mentioned that your father married Ethel Peckham. When were they married?

FREY:They were married in--I haven't the date--1910, before they came to Fallon.

LaVOY:Now, the Peckham family is an old, old family, too, in the Reno area. Can you tell me something a little bit about the Peckham family?

FREY:Well, my grandfather, George Peckham, came as a child from Massachusetts with his mother and a sister, and they came across the Isthmus of Panama and by boat to San Francisco and they stayed in San Francisco. My mother worked as a waitress and a servant in San Francisco for four years and then they migrated to Galena Creek from there. And in 1860 they came to Galena Creek.

LaVOY:That long ago? And Peckham Lane is named after the family?

FREY:Yes.

LaVOY:Well, you certainly are from an old, old family, George. Now you got to the point where you said that your father and your mother were married. Now where did they meet?

FREY:Well, they met in Reno. The two ranches were only about a mile apart as the crow flies. I'm sure they met at different gatherings and family functions. That's the way it all began.

LaVOY:About how old were they when they married, do you recall?

FREY:I think Dad was about thirty and Mother was about twenty eight.

LaVOY:And then they decided to come to Fallon?

FREY:Yes.

LaVOY:All right now, when they came to Fallon, where did they live?

FREY:They moved to the Stillwater District. There they lived and homesteaded in the Stillwater District.

LaVOY:About what would that be now, what road, do you know offhand?

FREY:It would be the north end of "Portagee" [Portuguese] Lane on the furthest ranch on the left on North "Portagee" Lane.

LaVOY:What type of a home did they have, do you know?

FREY:Well, the first home was just adobe building--a one-room deal that they'd put up. The water there wasn't of the quality that was needed for a homesite and they were able to go further north and they found some good water and they built a house in this area.

LaVOY:And that was still in the Stillwater District?

FREY:Yes.

LaVOY:Now, did your father have to dig his own well himself?

FREY:Oh, yes, sure. They had an artesian well dug at a later date. I don't know just when that was done.

LaVOY:What were some of the crops that he raised out there?

FREY:Mainly alfalfa fed to livestock, and he had a pretty good bunch of short-horned cattle that they'd brought from Reno.

LaVOY:Did he have any problems with raising his crops with the water level coming up and ruining the crops?

FREY:Well, not to my knowledge. I know there's some deep drains that have been dug in that area and there was a big marsh area right near the second homesite and I can recall as a boy the hogs would go into the tules. The tules would grow in the summertime when the water was high and when the irrigation season ended the marsh area would recede and the tules would fall down. The ground would dry, and the hogs would go in there and make tule tunnels. And us kids always used to play in the tule tunnels.

LaVOY:You mean the tunnels were big enough for you to go through or did you just put little toys through them?

FREY:Oh, no, we could crawl through them. The tules'd break down, oh maybe leave a foot--two feet, and then the tops'd all overlap.

LaVOY:Oh, I see. So the hogs didn't go in underground, they just went through the tule stems. Oh, that's interesting!

FREY:Yes. They ate the tule tubers, of course, when they didn't have anything else better.

LaVOY:I understand that a lot of the pioneers ate those tule tubers.

FREY:Well, I've heard that said. The Freeman Ranch on the east there, why, they had a lot of wild hogs that lived on tule tubers. It was a kind of a sport for people to go hunting hogs in that area.

LaVOY:Now, were they actually wild hogs or were they feral hogs that had gotten away from people?

FREY:Well, I think it was feral hogs that had gotten away and made a home in the tules.

LaVOY:And they actually hunted them?

FREY:Yeah.

LaVOY:With guns or . . . ?

FREY:Well, I presume. Yeah.

LaVOY:Oh, well. All right, we'll continue on. Now how long did they stay on the property in Stillwater?

FREY:Well, they carved out their existence there by clearing the brush and leveling the land, but little did they know that their sons and their grandsons would still be arguing with the BOR [Bureau of Reclamation] and the multitude of Indian-related water problems at a cost of over three and a half million at this moment in time.

LaVOY:Amazing.

FREY:To this couple, Joe and Charlie and George (myself), were born and making a family of three boys.

LaVOY:Now when was Joe born?

FREY:Joe was born December 15, 1911, and Charlie was born February 26, 1913.

LaVOY:And then when were you born, George?

FREY:I was born December 7, 1917, in the old hospital that's still standing in Fallon, I understand.

LaVOY:Oh, now which one is that?

FREY:It's where Mary Foster is [40 North Nevada] over in back of the Arco Station there on Nevada Street, I believe it is.

LaVOY:Oh. All right, well now, your parents lived in the Stillwater District. Now, did you start school in that District?

FREY:Yes, I went to the third grade in the Stillwater School.

LaVOY:Now, tell me something about that school. What was the school like?

FREY:Oh, I thought it was great.

LaVOY:Was it a one-room school?

FREY:No, it was a two-room school--the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades had one room--the big kids--and those of us just starting had the first, second, third and fourth grades.

LaVOY:Who was your teacher, do you remember?

FREY:I don't remember my teacher, I'm sorry.

LaVOY:Tell me something about the schoolroom. What type of desks did you have in it?

FREY:Well, they were pretty much the little desks that had the top and then you had a cubby hole underneath and you put your things in. They were hardwood and, I thought, very nice desks. The seats were comfortable.

LaVOY:Do you remember any of your friends from that school?

FREY:Oh, yes, definitely.

LaVOY:Who were some of them?

FREY:Tommy Williams, an Indian boy that lived right near us on Portuguese Lane. We played together and we had a lot of fun together. We'd catch mud hens and kill mud hens and roll 'em in mud and throw 'em in a fire--brush fire--a little greasewood fire, and then we'd have mud hen dinner, but I don't think I ate too much. (laughing)

LaVOY:In other words, the mud hens were all caked with mud and you put them in the fire and then when they were done, the feathers and everything came off.

FREY:Yes, just broke the feathers off and tore off a leg and had mud hen.

LaVOY:Oh, my goodness. (laughing) And who were some of your other friends?

FREY:Oh, Lavinus Baldwin. He's passed away. Tommy is still alive, incidentally, over in Schurz. He's on the Schurz Reservation in the livestock business and we confer and talk ever'time he comes to the sale or we meet there.

LaVOY:Do you have anymore mud hen dinners?

FREY:No, we haven't talked about the mud hens recently. (laughing)

LaVOY:Well, who were some of the others then that were friends?

FREY:Oh, Lavinus Baldwin and his family lived there in the Stillwater District, of course, and there were some of the deBragas and the Osgoods and I think Hammie Kent was already out. There was a number of the Weishaupts that were there--Donald and Marvin--I think Marvin started about the time that I got away, about the time we moved out of the Stillwater District.

LaVOY:Well, now, when did you move out of the District?

FREY:Well, we had a rather difficult time after my mother passed away. She passed away when I was about three weeks old. Dad finally lost the property in the foreclosure in about 1924 and we moved to the Kolstrup Place in the Stillwater District. It was an old abandoned house and the roof was leaking, but it was a place to get to. Dad worked for the Charlie Kents down in the Stillwater District there for two or three years and then we moved from there. It was an old leaky house, incidentally, with no bathrooms, no running water, or anything of that nature. We moved to another abandoned house over in the Wildes District.

LaVOY:Before you get to the Wildes District, something I want to go back to--your mother died right after you were born?

FREY:Yes.

LaVOY:Now, this must have been a terrible shock to your father?

FREY:Yes, it was, to the whole family.

LaVOY:And left the two little boys and yourself. Did your father raise you himself as a baby, or did he have someone come in and take care of you?

FREY:The first two or three years there was some people came in and helped Dad. The father helped on the ranch and the wife. She wasn't, you know, a nurse.

LaVOY:Do you remember what her name was?

FREY:Deardorf, Ethel Deardorf.

LaVOY:So they came in and took care of you as a little tiny baby?

FREY:Yeah, right.

LaVOY:Your mother actually died as a result of your birth?

FREY:Yes.

LaVOY:That's certainly too bad.

FREY:A blood clot, I'm told. I never did press this question with Dad or anything, but Willie Triguero volunteered the information one day that it was heartbreaking to him to see Dad put on the back of an old pickup truck that was just made out of a cut-off sedan, they set the bed on the truck and put my mother in the bed and they headed for Hazen trying to get Reno, but I guess they stopped in Fallon. But she passed away before they could get help.

LaVOY:And where is she buried, George?

FREY:In Reno.

LaVOY:In the family plot?

FREY:In the family plot.

LaVOY:The Peckham family plot?

FREY:Right.

LaVOY:I'm certainly sorry. That is indeed very, very tragic and was very, very upsetting, I know, to your entire family. Well, after she passed away, it sort of seems like your dad really lost, heart.

FREY:Right. Go on here to say the heartbreak of losing his wife and, subsequently, the Stillwater homestead in 1920's had to take what was left of his material, together with his three sons on a well-greased wagon in search of employment from other farmers and new opportunities in agriculture in the Newlands Project. It had to take its toll.

LaVOY:Well, I imagine that it certainly did. Then you moved to the Wildes District.

FREY:Yes.

LaVOY:And that was your next home? Now, where did you live in the Wildes District?

FREY:It was about a mile south of where Wildes Road leaves Harrigan Road. Testolin Road and then the first place on the right, it was a little building set back in some old locusts grove there. It's still standing there today.

LaVOY:Now, did you go to school there?

FREY:Yes, that was where I started going to the Consolidated B District Schools and the bus came by and I started school at West End and my first teacher was Adah Gerjets who was an art teacher and the fourth-grade teacher was Burton. [Lucy Grimes] Burton was her last name and she had been a good friend of my mother in Stillwater and knew the family.

LaVOY:You felt you had found a friend?

FREY:Yes.

LaVOY:Who were your friends in the Wildes School?

FREY:Well, it wasn't the Wildes School. It was at the old West End School in the Consolidated B District.

LaVOY:Well, George, who were some of your friends in that school?

FREY:Oh, there was Virginia Harriman. She's the only one that I can think that is alive today. There were Jim Gibbs from over in the Wildes District, I think George Pomeroy was probably around, Mario Peraldo. Well, kinda catching me flatfooted on this one. (laughing)

LaVOY:Well, that's all right, I'm just finding out who your old friends were. How long did you live in the Wildes District?

FREY:Oh, a very short time, probably a year.

LaVOY:And what did your father do? Did he farm in that District?

FREY:No, he worked for the neighbors and different people around him in the area. He had a little band of sheep and we kinda took care of those. There was some grassy, marshy areas and we took care of the sheep and that was about it. I can remember my first endeavor as being an entrepreneur, I guess, I got packages of needles and sold them around to the neighborhood women, got watches or something of this nature, personal property, so to speak. (laughing)

LaVOY:Did you get these things from ads that were in magazines?

FREY:Yes, that's where they came from. There'd always be a hook though, you know, you gotta watch and you gotta get the needles all sold and all this and that. But, it was fun, I enjoyed goin' around and visiting with the neighbors and they were always gracious. I guess I felt a little bit humble, you know, about it as far as that part of it was concerned.

LaVOY:But you probably got cookies, too, that your dad didn't have time to bake. (laughing) All right then, after you moved out of the Wildes District, where did you go?

FREY:Well, we went down to the Harmon District and to what was known as the Glasscock Place. It was right across the road from the Harmon ditchhouse on the Stillwater Road. You cross the canal and the ditchhouse is on the left and the Glasscock Place was on the right. This, too, was another rundown, kinda of a dumpy place, but it was a home, a place to be and there was some grazing in the area there for the sheep and we put that together. One of my chores was a summertime deal, as I recall. We'd walk about a mile and some neighbors had a nice cucumber patch and they always invited us to come and get a bucket of cucumbers. We had cucumbers and all those good things to eat.

LaVOY:Did you go to school at the Harmon School?

FREY:No, no, that was just a kinda of a summer stint, I would suspect, and we wound up moving back up to the Hall Place which is on Gummow Drive.

LaVOY:Now what district is that?

FREY:That'd be Old River, I guess, it is today in the voting precinct anyway. There we went on to Con B School and it just lays right along the railroad track there between York Lane and the railroad track.

LaVOY:That's where your house was?

FREY:Yes, the Hall Place house was in the corner of what still stands there today.

LaVOY:Now, did you catch a bus to come into school?

FREY:Yes.

LaVOY:Do you remember who the bus driver was?

FREY:No, can't remember that.

LaVOY:Do you remember anything about the teachers and friends that you had at the school at that point in time?

FREY:Oh, there was George Piazza and Anna Piazza and they were neighbors to us at that point. I'm trying to think of some of the others--time just takes them away. (laughing)

LaVOY:Certainly does. Now how long did you live in that district?

FREY:I think we were there about two years and we had that place leased and we put up hay. It was a kind of share-cropping deal. Things weren't that great with the lease and Dad worked for the Yorks, the Jim Yorks and the Aherns and those people in that area. In 1928, he had an opportunity to buy a place in the Soda Lake District and we moved there to the Soda Lake District. This is directly north of Soda Lake and a little bit west, I would say, west of where the Workmans have their property at this point in time.

LaVOY:Now, were they getting salt out of Soda Lake at that time?

FREY:No. There was evidence of the old pipelines and one of the basins where they spread the water. It had since accumulated water from the irrigation system. It was no longer in use. The pipeline was still evident, though. You could see the rusted-out pipes.

LaVOY:Could you still see the old building that is now completely submerged?

FREY:No, I never did see the buildings, only heard of them.

LaVOY:Now what did your father raise on that little place?

FREY:Well, we tried raising alfalfa and potatoes. Dad would haul manure over there all one winter onto about ten acres of ground and pitched it on and pitched it off. I can remember the teams pulling the loads through the sand. It was very sandy and it just made the teams get down and dig to pull the loads and then Dad'd shovel it off and then he'd go back and get another load in the afternoon and get it spread maybe by tonight.

LaVOY:That was to get the humus down into the sand.

FREY:Into the soil, and we planted potatoes in the spring and everything was looking good. The potatoes came up and then about that time, why, the wind starts to blow and the sand cut the potato vines and when we got through with the potato deal, why there was about enough potatoes to cover the seed.

LaVOY:Oh, my goodness.

FREY:(laughing) And the alfalfa was nearly as bad. When the verticillum wilt was first coming into the Valley, why the sandy soils were the ones that were the first to be affected. They've since gotten new strains of alfalfa that will tolerate some of these wilt conditions, but they kind of hit the area, the Depression hit the area, and things kinda really went to pot there. By this time, Charlie had gotten out of high school--this was about 1929 or 1930, and he went to work over here for the Harrimans. They had a good rapport and we got knowledge that the Bank of Italy was looking for people to sharecrop some of the land that they had to repossess. So one of the properties was the Hiatt Ranch. It was up here just the first place above Lahontan on the south side of the river. Through the blessings of everyone, Charlie got ahold of Mr. Hubbard, who was in charge of all of the Bank of Italy property that had been repossessed and asked about securing a lease on the property, a sharecrop deal. Lo and behold, why things seemed to gel and one of the provisions of the deal was that Dad and myself and Dad's equipment and horses, the few cows we had, the sheep and goats and everything, would be thrown into the deal and we'd move onto the property and go from there. That's really where we got our first break as far I was concerned, in agriculture, to have good river bottom soil and sufficient water supply to get the job done. But it was still a little bit depressing from the standpoint that the water was short during those years.

LaVOY:We were in a state of drought, just as we are now, I believe.

FREY:Yes, in the early 1930's.

LaVOY:Now, you didn't mention your brother, Joe. Did he decide not to do ranching?

FREY:Joe took off, decided that he did not want to have any part of the ranching.

LaVOY:I can see why with all the problems that you have had.

FREY:(laughing) Yeah, there was no question about it. He was probably on the right track as far as that was concerned. He had an opportunity to go into Reno and go to work for the county yards up there as a mechanic and he went into that.

LaVOY:So it was basically, you, your father, and Charlie that were left for the ranching?

FREY:We were the ones that had the persistence and the stubborness or whatever it took to get the job done to put a ranch together.

LaVOY:Now, was there a house on the Hiatt Place?

FREY:Yes, there was a house there, but, again, no running water or anything. The roof was leaking, but once we did get the lease secured and get moved in, the Bank allowed expenditure for the new roof and we put that on and at least, we had a dry home for awhile.

LaVOY:Didn't I read in one of your memoirs that you had actually had to live in a cave some place for a short time?

FREY:That was here.

LaVOY:All right, then, I'm ahead of myself.

FREY:Yes.

LaVOY:All right, well, we'll continue on with the Hiatt Place.

FREY:We were there through the, well, I think we moved there in 1932, 1933, 1934, and 1935, and during this time, Mr. Harriman and Charlie had gotten together and Charlie was able to secure the purchase of the--I think it was fifty-five acres right here in this area where we're sitting here now.

LaVOY:On Pioneer Drive.

FREY:On Pioneer Way. And through this, why we continued to do the work up on the sharecropping deal on the Hiatt Place and we dug a dugout here and came down here in the winter months and leveled land and grubbed the brush and prepared this for a homeplace.

LaVOY:Where was the dugout?

FREY:It was right out here in back where that ore car is--that's about where the door of it sat. It was merely dug out with a team and we'd plow and then pull in on the loose dirt that was piled along for the walls on the sides. We drug cottonwood trees, big trees, probably fifteen inches in diameter, two of them up, one on each side. Then we put cross timbers across those--again, cottonwood logs--and then thatched them with willows, placed straw on top of that and then some dirt on top of that and that made the roof to the dugout. And the front of the dugout was made of cottonwood logs that had been split and forming a big framework basket and we put straw in that and then set the door underneath in back of that, creating a very warm place in the coldest of winter. This was our home. We moved in a stove and a little cabinet and our beds and sat in the back end and it wasn't long before that we found we had company in the way of little packrats that come in and we called them trade rats. Dad would get some prunes or we'd get some dried prunes and the first thing we'd know well, the dried prunes'd be disappearing, but in their place why there would be a horse biscuit. (laughing) A little bit unsanitary, but we kinda got a kick out of it and it was something to laugh and joke about. It was nothing though to be sleeping and then to have those damn packrats runnin' through the brush up above us and knock the little leaves or dried leaves or something down on us and we'd just pull the covers up and go on about our sleep. (laughter)

LaVOY:Now how long did you live in that little dugout?

FREY:Well, that was just a temporary winter deal. I stayed out of school one semester here and I'd stayed out of school one semester at the Hiatt Place to help get things going up there. I was trying to think of the date. It was probably 1934 was the first winter that we stayed in the dugout.

LaVOY:For the entire winter.

FREY:Yes.

LaVOY:Where did you cook?

FREY:In the dugout. We had a stove and a chimney going through the deal and we just sat a big drum around it so we wouldn't catch the straw on fire or anything, and that's where the cooking was done. We had something that you don't see anymore today, what we called a utensil, a caloric. It was like an ice chest, only in reverse. You put a big round-shaped rock that was specially made and you heated it on the stove with your pot of beans or a stew or whatever you wanted in the morning while you were getting breakfast. Then you put the rock in this chest and put the lid on it and the pot sat on the rock which contained the heat. You came back at lunch and you had a hot meal. It was all cooked and ready to eat.

LaVOY:Well, you three bachelors certainly took care of yourselves, didn't you?

FREY:Yes. Most of the time this happened, Dad stayed at the Hiatt Place and took care of things, the chores and everything that had to be done there because there was no livestock here or anything at that point in time. Where the orchard is out here was all brush and we broke the brush off a little spot out in back and put in the horse corral and that stayed there for three or four years. Then in about 1936 or 1937, we tore down some of the old property that we abandoned in Soda Lake in the old house over there and moved over here and built a cabin out in front of the dugout.

LaVOY:What did you use to move it?

FREY:We just teamed them horses . . .

LaVOY:On a wagon?

FREY:On a wagon, yes. I'm probably getting ahead of myself a little bit here. The river bridge was one of the major construction items. During the time of the dugout why we forded the river with horses and we had a log across here that we could ford the river, bring hay across for the horses and we left a car that we had over on the other side of the river.

LaVOY:What type of a car, George?

FREY:I was trying to think, it was just a little old sports car that Charlie had picked up somewhere real cheap and it stayed over there. When we got ready to go somewhere, we went over and jumped in it, took off to town or whatever and that was about the way that went. To acquire the river bridge Charlie went to the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District because the old Lincoln Highway bridge at the Truckee Canal crossing had been abandoned. The State had put in a new bridge and we went up there one Christmas vacation and we loaded that bridge on to wagons, tore it all down and drug the timbers out and loaded them on wagons and moved it down here and set up a Gin pole in the river and put down . . .

LaVOY:You set up a what?

FREY:A Gin pole. First we had to put down piling. We put down nine piling, three in the river made out of old hot water heaters that we'd gotten ahold of and knocked the ends out of them and used those for forms and took a sand pump and drove them down until they were on firm ground. Then we filled them with concrete and set the cross timbers for the base of the bridge on those and from there, we set up the Gin pole and started to lay the other timbers in place and I would drive the team. I think we had one other person helping Charlie to place the timbers in position and that was the way it all went together.

LaVOY:Do you remember who it was that was helping Charlie?

FREY:I think it probably could have been Dad, but I'm not that certain. I think Charlie probably has it down. He was great for keeping a diary and he might have it in his diary.

LaVOY:The bridge that is across the river now, you built it from scratch, taking the timbers from an old bridge?

FREY:Right. It's an abandoned bridge and we had to saw off a couple of feet of the ends of the main stringers that went across. They were eight by eighteen inches, timbers that were really very heavy. Of course, we loaded them all with the teams and the Gin pole setup to lift them and put them in position on the wagon.

LaVOY:What summer was it that you brought the lumber over and started a little house?

FREY:Well, it'd have to be after we put the bridge in. I think the bridge went in about 1934 and then shortly after that we started with the house and the first water came across the flume that was put just east of the bridge in 1936. The CC's [Civilian Conservation Corps] and the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District put in the flume and we had to dig the ditch from the canal to the flume. They put the flume in and then we took off from there and put this first field in here right by our house. It was comprised of about twenty acres and that was the beginning of the farming enterprise on this end.

LaVOY:Now, was that twenty acres of alfalfa that you put in?

FREY:Yes.

LaVOY:Who bought the crop of alfalfa from you or do you recall?

FREY:Well, we were able to get ahold of some cows. We had a credit line at the bank and bought some cows and we fed that to the cows.

LaVOY:Was this credit line from the Bank of Italy or from another bank at this time?

FREY:It was another bank at that time.

LaVOY:How many cows did you initially run?

FREY:Oh, I think we only had twenty-five or thirty, just had them for a short time, just to fatten them and to get them ready for sale. They went as slaughter cows.

LaVOY:Now, where did you sell them?

FREY:I think Milt Taylor wound up buying some of them. And Moffat, he worked for Moffat, Bill [William H.] Moffat.

LaVOY:Now they were cattle buyers that came into the area buying cattle in the fall.

FREY:Right. Milt Taylor was a permanent resident here, as far as Moffat's operation was concerned. Bill Moffat had a packing plant in Manteca, California, and shortly after the first few years, why, they brought cattle, steers here, they were unloaded in Hazen and we would drive them over here from Hazen and then feed them during the winter months.

LaVOY:Did you have corrals to keep them in or just turn them loose in the fields?

FREY:No, we made corrals and put them in corrals.

LaVOY:Where did you get the wood for the corrals?

FREY:Well, it was lumber we had to buy. We scrounged around and used every piece, a lot of the corrals, we used poles and for mangers we used lumber. A lot of them were cottonwood poles and barbed wire and that was about it.

LaVOY:Basically, you were in the feed lot business then for awhile.

FREY:Right.

LaVOY:For Moffat.

FREY:For Moffats, yes.

LaVOY:Now, were you attending school at this time? I know you had said you had dropped out for two semesters, then did you return to school?

FREY:Yes. Well, I had graduated from high school in 1937.

LaVOY:All right now, with your high school years, it must have been very hard for you to go to school and do all the hard work that you had to do here.

FREY:I wasn't the best student in the world (laughing), but I had a lot of interesting things going on and, I don't know, I got through school, made it all right.

LaVOY:Who were some of your friends in high school?

FREY:Oh, again Mario Peraldo, and George Pomeroy, the Weishaupts, the Trigueros, Raymond Bass, Bud Harriman,Jacobsens.

LaVOY:Did you play football in school?

FREY:In my senior year I did.

LaVOY:Who was your coach?

FREY:My coach was Robinson was his last name and I can't think of the first name.

LaVOY:What position did you play?

FREY:I was fullback.

LaVOY:Did you have a winning team?

FREY:Well, we won some and we lost some. (laughing)

LaVOY:Was that the only sport that you were involved in in high school?

FREY:Yes, pretty much. We used to play basketball at noon time, but we lived so far at this point in time well, I was still at the Hiatt Place in the fall months anyway. And, I drove the school bus.

LaVOY:Oh, you were another one of the school bus drivers?

FREY:Another school bus driver. But during the football season, why I had to hire a replacement.

LaVOY:What did you pay him, do you remember?

FREY:Well, he got half of my wages. (laughing) Thirty dollars amonth. He got fifteen dollars.

LaVOY:What route did you drive?

FREY:Well, it would be the Lahontan northern route down Pioneer here.

LaVOY:How long did it take to get into school?

FREY:Oh, as I recall it, I'd have to leave home about quarter after seven. I had to go by horseback over to the Dietz place where Louis Mori now lives and I went by horseback over there across the river. Left my horse there in a little pen and got in the school bus and drove into town.

LaVOY:Then you repeated that when school was over.

FREY:Right, right.

LaVOY:Who were some of the people that you picked up on your school bus?

FREY:Oh, there was Harvey Jacobsen and Bud Jacobsen and a couple of Cadet girls, Matteuccis, the Moris, Louis Mori and his sister, Rosie Mori, Remo Matteucci, Bud Harriman.

LaVOY:You were a wild bunch on that school bus, I think.

FREY:Well, we were all from the country. (laughing)

LaVOY:Was Mr. McCracken the principal of the school at that time?

FREY:Yes. He was principal and all of us, as we've grown older, why we have resolved that he was one of he best and we should have more like him today.

LaVOY:Well, that's good to know. Everybody that has told me anything at all about him has nothing but the highest regards for him.

FREY:Yeah, he was very good.

LaVOY:By that time you must have added a few more rooms to your house or did you still have just the small house?

FREY:Just still had the cabin. We moved along as far as developing this property. We developed another forty, or another twenty and another forty-acre parcel. Two twenty-acre.

LaVOY:And what did you plant on those?

FREY:Those were all alfalfa too.

LaVOY:And you had to dig up the sagebrush and everything for those too.

FREY:Yeah, this was prior to 1941. One of the interesting things that I haven't mentioned was that the horsepower used in developing the place was originally from out of Austin. There were mustangs from the Gandolfo Ranch out there that they would allow us to bring in here during the winter months after they got through using them, or as they'd catch them. Anyway, we'd haul them in here and put them into the scraper team and they would be used for horsepower in the winter to move the dirt and then we'd feed them of course, and take them back out there and they'd use them in the hay in the summer time. We had our own horses up the river here to run the place up there.

LaVOY:That's much different from the way they're handling the mustangs now.

FREY:Yes, quite a bit different. We got a real education out of it and it was one of our recreations as far as Charlie and I were concerned. We didn't have to go to the rodeos, we could provide our own rodeos here, we could hook up and start breaking brush on rails and you'd have a little excitement; you'd run into a hornets' nest or a paperwasps' nest or something and we'd have a little runaway out in the brush. (laughing)
LaVOY:I don't know how you and your brother survived. (laughing)

FREY:Sheer determination.

LaVOY:Well, then, after you graduated from high school, you said in 1937?

FREY:Mmhum.

LaVOY:Did you go right on to the university then?

FREY:No, I stayed out a year. Started the university in fall of 1938. Graduated in the spring of 1937.

LaVOY:Well, now things must have been looking a little bit better for you financially for you to go to the university.

FREY:Right.

LaVOY:Were you the only one in your family that had this determination?

FREY:Had this opportunity, I'll put it that way. I had a cousin in Reno and they had a little room at the end of the woodshed and I moved in there for my freshman and sophmore years. Then I stayed out part of a year, and when I went back again, I stayed at a fraternity house and I had myself an NYA job, they called it a National Youth Administration job. I was washing windows and preparing lab specimens for biology class. It was a choloridated [chloral hydrate] anatomy class is what it was. They'd need cats and those kind of things that I was responsible for to see that we had those specimens. The prof was Peter Frandsen. I never can forget him and he took a liking to me and showed me how to prepare the cats and put the dye in the veins and the arteries, the blue dye in the veins and the red dye in the artery and to dissect the nervous systems and prepare specimens for class. As I said, I was staying at the fraternity house and I had a job there doing dishes and that took care of my board and room. There was about twenty-five, thirty kids in the fraternity house.

LaVOY:Now, which fraternity did you belong to?

FREY:Well, it started out Beta Kappa.

LaVOY:Is it Theta Chi now?

FREY:Theta Chi. Right. I was there for two years, until I graduated from the university in 1943. It was at this time that Uncle Sam had a finger on me. In December of 1943 I wound up going to Camp Robert's, California, and trained in the communications, radio and telephone communications. When we got through with that I went to Port of Los Angeles and we disembarked and we had our long underwear and everything issued to us and we were sure we were going to Alaska. We wound up in New Guinea.

LaVOY:Oh, my goodness.

FREY:This was about June of 1944.

LaVOY:Had you been in ROTC [Reserve Officer Training Corps] at the university?

FREY:Yes, I'd been in ROTC at the university.

LaVOY:Who were some of the Fallon men that were in ROTC with you?

FREY:You know, I can't think of a one. I'm sorry.

LaVOY:Well, that's all right. I know that some of the men that were in ROTC at that time have since come back to Fallon and are living in Fallon, like Mario Recanzone and those.

FREY:Right, I'm sure there's some, if I had a little more time to think about it, I'm sure I could find some of them.

LaVOY:Your ROTC instructor was "Doc" Martie?

FREY:Yes. One of them.

LaVOY:He was quite a colorful character up at the campus wasn't he?

FREY:Yeah, right.

LaVOY:Well, then were you commissioned?

FREY:No. I stayed a PVC [PFC]. (laughing) Well, when I went over to New Guinea, I went over as a replacement to the 31st Infantry Division. It was an old National Guard outfit from Alabama and Georgia and Florida and Mississippi. I suppose, like most National Guard systems today, if you weren't in it to begin with, or weren't from the area, why you were kind of shoved off into the corner, you know so to speak, and there wasn't that much of an opportunity for advancement. I wasn't too eager to do anything more than what I was doing. I was assigned to their machine gun company for about a week, and then I had a call to go to division headquarters and they interviewed me to check my qualifications for a medic, and to go with the 31st Calvary Reconnaissance Troop as their medic. And, lo and behold, why all the computers or somebody picked up my records that I'd had quite a bit of biology and bacteriology at the university and they said "Well, you'll make a good medic." So that's where I went--I went as a medic and we went on patrols as combat medics in New Guinea, then the East Indies, and wound up in Mindanao in the Phillipines when the war ended.

LaVOY:Now, with your job as a medic, what were some of the episodes that happened to you as a medic?

FREY:Well, not anything that a guy likes to think about too much, but we had our problems, you know, as far as combat and injuries and so forth.

LaVOY:Now, tell me some of the battles that you were a medic in.

FREY:Well, we were in Watke-Sarmi [New Guinea] area and to say that we were in strictly battle conditions all the time, that wasn't our job as a reconnaissance troop. Our job was to not be seen and not be heard and to visually observe Japanese in movement and to oberve their supplies, their routes of escape, or whatever was going on and fortunately, we were only pinned down two or three times and there was only two times that we lost people in the operation.

LaVOY:When you went on your first reconnaisance, were you frightened?

FREY:Terribly. You don't sleep.

LaVOY:How many Japanese did you see at a time when you were on reconnaisance?

FREY:Oh, you'd probably see twenty-five or thirty in certain areas. Some areas maybe more.

LaVOY:And they were all fully armed?

FREY:They were all fully armed and in the Watke Sarmi area they all seemed to be drifting to the Northern New Guinea and we presumed they were being evacuated by submarine or something of that nature. We didn't pursue them anymore than that and as far as the perimeter was concerned, every Division sets up a perimeter and anything beyond that, of course, is no man's land. The Division didn't go out and try to attack the Japanese unless there was an attack made on them, and then they would go out. But, they were just kind of letting them wither on the vine and moving out on their own and that was the way the war was fought at that particular point in time.

LaVOY:Well, now how did you get from New Guinea to Mindanao?

FREY:We went by ship of course. We loaded in Watke-Sarmi area and the first deal, we went from Watke-Sarmi to a little island called Morati off of the Netherlands East Indies, and there we set up a beachhead. There hadn't been any Americans in there at all and we established a beachhead there. It was pretty well pulverized by the time we got there. They bombed it all morning and ships fired on it and it just wasn't one of those things particularly fortified by the Japanese. We didn't have that much opposition there. We went on patrols again though, at the northern part of the island and we encountered Japanese in most every occasion, but nothing of any force that was giving us a real problem.

LaVOY:And then from there you went to. . .?

FREY:Mindanao. Well, it was Oro Bay, a little bay west of Davao on the southern coast of Mindanao. There the reconnaisance troop became mechanized. We didn't have foot patrols anymore, and we became mechanized, and we were leading the head of the whole division. I think on about the second day, why we encountered Japanese and we pulled back and reported to division headquarters that there was substantial resistance ahead and we pulled back until that evening. During the night one of the infantry divisions went in and there was gunfire and everything--artillery brought into action and the battle went on all night. The next morning, why the ambulances were coming and going and we knew they were really hitting fire power. Of course, we didn't sleep much as a reconnaissance troop that night either, but we'd done our job and that was one of the nice things about it, we didn't have to stay there and take all the consequences.

LaVOY:Well now, you were a medic with them.

FREY:Yes.

LaVOY:Did you have wounded that you had to take care of?

FREY:Not in this engagement, at this day. The next day I had some, I had a man hurt in a half-track and I had to try to save him and I couldn't.

LaVOY:How long were you in Mindanao?

FREY:Until the war ended, until August of 1945. I think we were probably there until October really, and then we went to the Island of Leyte to await coming home from the service.

LaVOY:Then you were discharged from where in the United States? What camp?

FREY:I want to say Beal Island, the one near San Francisco.

LaVOY:And you came back to Fallon here then.

FREY:Mmhm.

LaVOY:Now, you graduated from the University of Nevada in 1943.

FREY:Right.

LaVOY:So, graduation was prior to your being called to active duty.

FREY:Right. Right.

LaVOY:What did you get your degree in, George?

FREY:Agriculture and economics and livestock production.

LaVOY:Do you remember the names of some of professors?

FREY:Billingsly and Professor Wilson in animal husbandry and there was Peter Frandsen in the biology lab. The other teachers in English and history and a German course that I took, I can't recall.

LaVOY:It's just nice to get the names of some of some of the older teachers that were at the university during that period of time. All right now, you came back to Nevada, and right home to Fallon.

FREY:Right.

LaVOY:And let's take your life up from 1946.

FREY:January 6, 1946 I returned to Fallon and came to what Charlie had put together before I left. The summer of 1943 he got ahold of the Douglass Ranch where my nephew, Charlie Jr., now lives and he bought the place from R.L. Douglass, it was about 800 acres and he leased this place to Ellis Lewis during the time that I was in the service. When I got home, through his blessing and for all the work that I'd done during all of my school years and time off, we'd put all our money into one pot and everybody worked together and we made the thing go. Well, he gave me title to this place here with me taking over the Land Bank [Federal Land Bank] payments and getting equipment and so forth that I would need to continue operating it. By this time, the place had on this side of the river about sixty acres in production and we'd acquired the Petree place across the river that was 160 total acres and only about fifty-five acres in production. This was the base on which I started agriculturally and I produced hay and grain and again fed cattle for the Moffats, up until probably 1955 or 1956, when they moved elsewhere, or they just kind of quit feeding cattle in the area all together. They needed a more concentrated ration fed and they went to the big feed lots in Manteca, where grain was cheaper and they fed larger amounts of grain than we were feeding previously. So, with that, when I took over everything, I had to look around and try to find equipment to put up the hay. I made a lot of my own equipment and scrounged around, got used equipment and got my first tractor in the spring of 1946.

LaVOY:What kind was it?

FREY:It was a John Deere, Model G, and we did all the plowing that had to be done, all the haying that had to be done. We had an old mowing machine that went on it, and then we had a field chopper that would take the hay out of the winrow and chop it into a wagon. We elevated that thing to make it an old farmhand tractor that had about a twenty-foot lift on it and we used that to stack the hay, dumped it out of the wagons onto the ground and then stacked it with the farmhand and this went on for several years. Then I started buying cattle and then feeding weaners for other people. When we was going full bore in the 1960s, well we had room for around fifteen hundred head here--the weaner type cattle to feed and we would grow them up to about eight hundred pounds and then they would be shipped off to hot ration feed lot to reach slaughter condition.

LaVOY:George, you haven't mentioned your father. Was he alive at that time?

FREY:He was alive until 1958. He passed away at that time. He'd spent some time with Charlie down there at the Douglass Ranch during the time that I was in the service, and after I got out of the service in the 1950s, why he was here most of the time, living in the cabin that was out in back here that I'd since moved up beyond the house's present location.

LaVOY:When did you build this present home that you're in?

FREY:This present home was kind of a hodge-podge that was put together, was part of the old Petree house. The room in which we are sitting here was the total Petree house, and it was moved in from down at the corner of Pioneer Way where you come off and that long sweeping turn there. It sat back in there.

LaVOY:How did you move it?

FREY:Well, a good friend of mine, Charlie Lehman, got out of the service, and he put together an old GI four by four truck and some moving equipment, some dollies and we jacked it up and set it on those dollies. It had some plaster in the walls and we gutted all of the plaster out of it to make it lighter. Had a family living in it at the time, a fellow by the name of Banford Orr. He was born and raised here in the valley. And we jacked it up and moved it up the river and made brush mats and came across the river with it. Backed it in here, dug a partial basement, put in a foundation and set it in over the foundation, rolled the dollies over the timbers that we'd set on the foundation. Set the house down and it was a little out of plumb [pointing to northwest and southeast corner], and so we had to tie some cables around that corner and kinda push it to that corner and everything kinda plumbed up pretty good. (laughing)

LaVOY:Well, there must have been a time when the river wasn't very high to bring it across the river.

FREY:Yes, it would be, I think it was in the spring when we brought it in. Spring of 1947.

LaVOY:Then did you move right into it?

FREY:No, it took pratically a year before we got it to where we could move into it. Went out to a place out by Icthyosaurus Park.

FREY:There was an old CC camp out there. And these people, the Cislinis that lived here in Fallon or moved to Fallon from that area, had some lumber for sale and so I went out there with an old beat up truck that I had and left here about three o'clock in the morning and drove out there by way of Buffalo Pass out of Eastgate Way. I think I got it for twenty-five dollars a thousand or something like that. It was just about a gift as far as I was concerned at that point in time and brought it back here and we built on the bedrooms out of a lot of that lumber. The kitchen didn't come on screen until 1954 when Norman was born. This was the dining room, and the living room was over there, the kitchen here and we had the one bedroom, the front bedroom and the bathroom. This was, incidentally, the first house that I had ever lived in that had running water. This point in time I was practically thirty years old.

LaVOY:Well, that's interesting. You must have married then after you returned from service?

FREY:Yes. I married in November 15, 1947.

LaVOY:And who did you marry, George?

FREY:I married Eleanor Candee, whose father was a pioneer here in the valley. Her grandparents were also pioneers here in the valley.

LaVOY:How many children did you have?

FREY:We had three children, there was Norman, Norman was the youngest born in 1954. Jerry, next in 1952, and Louise in 1950. And our first born, Donnie Frey, was born in 1948, and he was drowned in a ditch.

LaVOY:Oh, one of the irrigation drownings. That must have been very tragic. Was he with you?

FREY:Yeah, yeah. Something that we vowed to correct, and now we have the ditch covered, it's a pipeline.

LaVOY:Oh, I see. All right, then you continued on and your property was getting larger and larger. Did you go into raising various breeds of cattle or just a mixed breed?

FREY:No, just continued putting property together. What I call the Morgan Place, right down Highway 50 and Pioneer Way, came up for sale, the Placerville Lumber Company owned the property, and I was leasing it from them and making substantial improvements with some of their equipment they had. They had logging equipment in here--a couple of D-8 tractors--and we moved a couple of hundred thousand yards of dirt, levelling the place and improving it. When they got through, why, I farmed it for a couple of more years and then they wanted to sell it and I turned around and bought it.

LaVOY:George, didn't you become a director on the Land Bank [Federal Land Bank]?
FREY:Yes.

LaVOY:Now, when was that?

FREY:That was 1972, I believe.

LaVOY:All right, well this is much later so we'll go back then. The Morgan Place, you cleared that all off and then bought that one?

FREY:Right.

LaVOY:And, what did you raise on that ranch?

FREY:It was mainly alfalfa and grain and corn for silage.

LaVOY:Now were you selling this to somebody else, or were you using it yourself in your feed operation?

FREY:Using it in combination. We'd sell some and feed some of our own cattle, we'd usually split it, maybe feed a third of it to our own cattle, buying them and reselling and then the other went to custom feeding.

LaVOY:Did you have one set company that you sold your grain and hay to?

FREY:Not particularly. No, these were people that were livestock producers themselves for the most part. Would come in and want to winter their calves or there were people that wanted to buy their calves in the fall of the year so they would have them the next spring to put on pasture in California.

LaVOY:Did you truck them, or did they truck their own cattle?

FREY:They trucked their own cattle. We wound up, we was feeding them mainly on a gain basis. This assured them that we would take good care of the cattle and try to keep them alive and healthy and this is one of the prerequisites, it seemed like. It always worked; it was kind of a tough way to do it, but you had to perform or you wouldn't get the job done. You wouldn't get repeat customers.

LaVOY:Well, it seems to me that you have worked so hard all of your life. Did you join any organizations at that particular point in time?

FREY:Well, in 1947, I believe, I was a director on the Churchill County Farm Bureau, and then in 1950 I think I was county president, and in 1955 I was state president of Nevada State Farm Bureau for one year, and then I gave that up. It was just too much to try to keep up with all the requirements of being president. You had to attend national meetings and it was just too much for a young fellow anyway to do. Most of the older people were in those kind of positions. Then I went on after Farm Bureau, I went on to the school board [Churchill County School Board] and I was on that for twelve years. This was 1958, I think I went on the school board. Got off the school board, just elected not to run again and went to the Federal Land Bank. And I was on the Federal Land Bank for twelve years and finally got the mortgages all paid off. I'd had a recent heart attack and had an operation and I just forgot about the whole thing and I've kind of set back since.

LaVOY:Went home and enjoyed life.

FREY:I overlooked the one thing as far as acquisition of property is concerned. In 1963 the people that owned the property where Norman is, down in the old Shuey place, were wanting to sell. They were an older couple who had moved here from Bishop, California in 1938. In April of 1963 I approached them about the purchase of that property and they felt that my terms and offers were good, and I felt theirs the same and we got together, and like I say, on April 6 I took possession. They had lifetime tenancy to stay on the property and everything worked out. We did a lot of work there in improvements, relevelling the fields and getting them in what I call first-class shape.

LaVOY:Is that where all of the garlic is raised now?

FREY:Yes. We raised garlic in both places, we have had garlic here and just the rotations at this point in time we were down there.

LaVOY:Tell me something, with the raising of garlic, do you have to contract that?

FREY:Well, you have the privilege of either contracting it or planting it on the open market and the contract is a little safer way to go. We had some here a few years ago, on open market garlic and we got a fungus in it, what they call "white rot" and that just about did us in as far as the garlic crop is concerned. It costs so much to plant garlic, you have to plant about a thousand pounds of seed to acre. And, at fifty-five or sixty cents a pound, why it gets really expensive and we wound up going back to the contract deal. Last year we had some open market garlic. It did very well, but we didn't have that much and most of it was contract garlic. This year we have all contract garlic.

LaVOY:Who do you contract with?

FREY:Well, Basic Vegetables is who we are with right at this point in time. They're out of Salinas and Gilroy.

LaVOY:I've noticed that you've got so many foreign field hands in your fields in the fall. Where do you get them from?

FREY:Well, they're picked up, usually they're people that have been working for the Workmans in the summer and we are able to get ahold of them. Then Norman has been working through the Job Corps and between the Job Corps and that source, why we've been able to get the help we need. Usually the harvest comes off in the latter part of July and the first of August and there's a little lull there in Workman's crew and we're able to get substantially most of them from there.

LaVOY:Is the garlic pulled by hand or machinery?

FREY:Well, it's done by machinery. It's lifted up and laid on top of the ground, much as the old potato digger. A shaker chain, a blade going under it and the shaker chain lifting it and shaking the dirt out of it and depositing the garlic on top of the ground and then it was picked up and bagged by the Mexicans.

LaVOY:How long does it have to lie on the top of the ground before you put it in bags?

FREY:Well, you have to have it in bags within three hours after you lift it or you'll sunburn it. But it stays in the bag to cure for ten days to two weeks.

LaVOY:And it doesn't mildew in the bag?

FREY:Doesn't mildew in the bag. Not if it's dug at the proper stage. If it wasn't mature, why you'd probably run into some problems but otherwise, that's the way it's done.

LaVOY:Well, from the very beginning to now, how many acres do you own now?

FREY:Well, we have 800 acres altogether. There's 450 up here and 350 down at the other place, down where Norman is.

LaVOY:You mentioned before, that you were having problems with water, especially water this year with the drought. Would you mind going into your feelings about our water problem here in Fallon?

FREY:The long-term water problem is, I think, in very serious trouble. The Operation Criterion Procedures Act which Senator Reid's bill embraces, makes it almost imperative that we're going to have more frequent dry years. He says that he hasn't taken a bit of water right away from us as individual farmers, we're still guaranteed three and a half and the four and a half acre feet that was purchased from the Bureau of Reclamation. But that is kind of besides the point, when you have more frequent dry years. They have just finished working on the Lahontan here a few years ago, spent some three million dollars on it building it up to handle 315,000 acre feet of water and at the present time, why we're only allowed a maximum of 285,000 in it and the rest of the water after that point, once Lahontan reaches 285,000, anything else has to go to Pyramid Lake. No question in my mind that we can get along on that 285,000 in Lahontan. The other thing, as far as the Reid bill is concerned, our maximum use to the valley out of Lahontan is 288,000. That gets a little bit confusing from the standpoint that I just said, that there was only 285,000 allowed in storage, but there is some flow comes in prior to the June 15th cutoff date for storage and that helps us get the 288,000 that it takes. When you figure the canal loss and everything, why we run into a real problem with the Reid bill in that it specifies that we have to reach seventy-five per cent efficiency rating and that as long we don't meet that efficiency rating, why it appears that we are building a deficit, owing a debt of water to Pyramid. This gets to be real antagonizing and threatful as far as being able to get water on a continuous basis, year after year. Used to be it was twenty to thirty years between drought periods, but now, we had a drought in 1967 and we had a drought again in 1978 and we're just going to get more frequent droughts. Though our water rights entitled us to the four and a half and three and a half acre feet why, there's no guarantee that there's going to be water there. So, the water right isn't worth too much as far as the farmer is concerned.

LaVOY:Well, there's so many people that are selling their water rights for the wetlands, what do you feel about that?

FREY:Well, I think it's their privilege. I think every bit that's sold is going to hurt the position of the farmers that are going to stay from the standpoint that the operation of the district and the voting power of the district will deteriorate until the recreationists start telling us what we're going to do. And, like I say, more drought periods and financial problems will develop and when you have financial problems and the bank says you pay up, you have a water source, you have money, you sell it. And that's about the way the cookie's going to crumble.

LaVOY:That's very interesting. I wanted to ask you, we're only getting, what is it, thirty per cent of our water this year?

FREY:That's the last report on the last evaluation. There's supposed to be a new forecast coming out here the first of April. Should be out in the next few days.

LaVOY:Now, with only that amount of water, how's that going to affect your crops this year? What are you going to do with your 800 acres?

FREY:Well, we're going to have to just get along with using water only on the most productive fields; with the garlic, we're putting in a drip system at the present time, it's costing six hundred dollars an acre. And, a lot of work and a lot of technology that we're not really up on. But Norman's determined that he's going to learn and I'm going to stay behind him, so, we'll work from there. Getting back to the 800 acres, that is not all crop land. We have five hundred thirty-nine acres of water right acres, put it that way, crop land. There's a lot of marginal acres. We have river, and we have sand hills and so forth and so on that there's no crop land. It's not crop land.

LaVOY:Well, George, are you running cattle at all now?

FREY:None other than as a ranch. We're all incorporated as Rambling River Ranches, but Irene and I have a small Gelbvieh herd, purebred herd, that we keep here on this place and there's about fifty head total.

LaVOY:And do you take them to shows?

FREY:Well, we go to the county fair here. We've took, one of the grandsons, took one to the Reno Fair last year. But we're not going to San Francisco and to Denver and all the big shows. It just gets to be, well, I call it a rat race. You've got to stay in the politics of the thing and you've got to be at the right place at the right time. Irene and I are both getting too old to keep up with that kind of a grind. We were just back in Iowa here this ten days ago, looking for a herd sire, but again we just kinda took it for a trip and we took cattle and looked at cattle and bulls. We've decided to stay pretty much with the A I operation and going that route.

LaVOY:What is an AI operation?

FREY:Artificial insemination from real credited herd sires.

LaVOY:You said you took cattle back to Iowa with you?

FREY:No, we flew back to Iowa, and then rented a car and then went to various ranchers there that had cattle, had Gelbviehs and really the top type of cattle that we were looking for.

LaVOY:Now, you're mentioning Irene. Would you give me Irene's full name and when you were married?

FREY:Irene was Irene Matzen. She was originally from Petaluma, California. Her father was a dairyman. Her name was Irene Moreda and she married Larry Matzen and they moved to Fallon in 1963. He was killed in an airplane accident up near Orovada in 1968, I believe it was. And, I was divorced from Eleanor Candee in August 26, and Irene and I were married on August 28th. There was no collusion going on there between us before or during the separation.

LaVOY:Was this 1976?

FREY:1976, yeah. And we got together and enjoyed each other and thought that we'd live out our lives together, and that's what we're doing.

LaVOY:You seem to have a very, very happy life together. Irene is raising roses and flowers. Are you helping with that a bit?

FREY:Well, I manage to get myself in trouble maybe with them every once in a while. (laughing) Needling her that this needs to be done, or something needs to be done, and she needles back while she's getting to it. (laughing) She does an excellent job with the roses, though, it's all her project and I'm grateful that she does have that interest.

LaVOY:Well, you have such a beautiful home here, I must say that after all of the work that you have done throughout the years, you deserve to have such a beautiful home and such a nice life at this point in time.

FREY:I really feel grateful and I can't help but thank all the people of Churchill County as far as that's concerned. They've always contributed to our success, my success in particular. Anytime I wanted to do something, or if I needed to borrow a piece of equipment when I was first starting, why, there was no if, ands, or but, "But sure, come on George, get it, bring it home though." And I'd always try to get equipment back home in better shape than I received it if it did break down, anything damaged to it or anything, why, I always tried to make certain that I did unto others as I would like other to do unto me.

LaVOY:That's a marvelous philosophy. Have you joined any organizations since you have more or less semi-retired?

FREY:Well, the Elk's Club is about the only organization.

LaVOY:George, just before we finish this interview, I do want to ask you one more question. I believe that you went into politics for a short time. Could you tell me about that?

FREY:Yes, it was a very short time. After I got out of the service, being a veteran, why some of the people in the valley said that they would like to see me run for the assembly and I had somewhat of a reservation about it, but I thought, oh what the hell, and give it a try and lo and behold I won the election by a sizable margin and went to Carson City of course in January of that year representing Churchill County in the assembly. There was Vaughn Chapman . . .

LaVOY:Who did you run against?

FREY:Oh, there was Claude Smith, was one of them, and I just can't think of the other party.

LaVOY:You won by quite a large margin.

FREY:I received more votes than the two opponents did, so I figured that I had a pretty good following. They had faith in me and went on to the legislature and this other young fellow and I, Harold Jacobsen, from Humboldt County and I from Churchill County, we were kinda recognized as the junior bull block. It was a kinda of an extension of one of the old bull blocks that was the agricultural interests in the state of Nevada that kinda predominated the State Assembly and the Senate prior to our time. But we voted no on most questions and when we got through we didn't have too good of a rapport with the Speaker of the House as legislation goes and we were kinda chastized and I elected not to pursue politics any further.

LaVOY:What were some of the bills that you were instrumental in getting passed?

FREY:Well, I think we had some of the bills of the 4-H and the educational bills representing relative to the University of Nevada appropriations and to school appropriations and consolidations of schools in the state and, also, I recall one bill with the Farm Bureau taking over, being instrumental in divorcing Farm Bureau from the extension service. Up until this time the Farm Bureau had been tied into the extension service through tax purposes and to give Farm Bureau independence why it was severed from that tax service by the request of Farm Bureau. Then the other thing that came up, I believe, was the election of TCID directors, that they be elected by districts rather than from the district as a whole. And that was about the major things that come to mind at this time.

LaVOY:Well, I'm certain that you were a good legislator. You mention Jacobsen as being from Humboldt. Was he Humboldt or Douglas?

FREY:Harold Jacobsen was from Douglas County and Lawrence Jacobsen was from Douglas County. He could have been an assemblyman at that time, but one of my admirers from Douglas County was Senator Settlemeyer. He was my coach, so to speak, and kinda put me under his wing. Harold and I both being young senators, why, he stood behind us on most everything that we were after. We didn't have an axe to grind when we went over there, per se, and we tried to leave there that way, the way I think politics should be played. I think it should be more from a statesmanship standpoint than what has become today a political platform which is not in the best interests for the majority of the people. It contributes to mob rule.

LaVOY:Did you live in Carson City while this session was going on?

FREY:Yes.

LaVOY:Where did you live?

FREY:Lived in a room in the Old Hunter's Lodge. Harold Jacobsen and I rented a room together and we stayed there.

LaVOY:How long did the session last?

FREY:Oh, I think we ran over probably fifteen days. We didn't get through right on schedule, but it was almost on schedule.

LaVOY:You're doing far better than they are doing today.

FREY:Well, I think so. (laughing) Better than the last term anyway.

LaVOY:Well, George, I think we've covered just about everything that either of us can think of and on behalf of the Churchill County Museum Oral History Project I want to thank you for this very interesting interview.

FREY:Thank you

Marian Hennen LaVoy

George Frey

977 Pioneer Way, Fallon, Nevada

Churchill County, Nevada