Willie Capucci Oral HIstory

Willie Capucci Oral HIstory

Willie Capucci Oral History

Churchill County Museum Association

Churchill County Museum Association

February 20. 1993

Analog Cassette Tape, Txt File, MP3 Audio

English

Recording 1, 1:03:13
Recording 2, 1:03:03
Recording 3, 16:49

128kbps/44100hz

CHURCHILL COUNTY MUSEUM & ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
an interview with
WILLIE CAPUCCI
February 20, 1093
OH
Cap
This interview was conducted by Marian LaVoy; transcribed by Glenda Price; edited by Norma Morgan; final typed by Pat Baden; index by Gracie Viera; supervised by Myrl Nygren, Director of Oral History Project/Assistant Curator Churchill County Museum.
PREFACE
Surrounded by hordes of loudly quacking ducks, stately white geese and strutting peacocks, this gentle man assiduously tosses leaves of lettuce and spinach, grapes and surplus food products
from the tail-gate of his vintage red truck. Watching him and
sensing a deep dedication to his feathered friends proved a pleasant change from my usual activities. The Capucci property is an ever changing palette. Spring and autumn bring gaily colored birds and a Christmas wonderland emerges from the wagon-wheel covered fence, festooned with twinkling Christmas lights.
Willie has always been a "sharer" . . . He shared his basketball expertise with his classmates and traveled to Oregon on a basketball scholarship; homesickness brought him back to Fallon where he shared "outings" with the Italian families of the community; and moved on to share a simple sound system with the
community's renowned baseball team. This inauspicious start
catapulted him to the prosperous business that he enjoyed for many years . . a business that led him to meet famous movie stars and
moguls, alike . . . his faithful black Lab, "Barney" shared his
activities and was accorded a gentle petting by Mrs. Pat Nixon. Willie travels to Palm Springs, California each year and bemoans the changes in Palm Springs, one of his favorite sound company
"gigs."
Willie's knowledge of businesses that were in Fallon during his youth is phenomenal. His master chart covers approximately 1920 to the present and he can share a little vignette about each merchant! His memory is sharp and when asked about the history of the Churchill County Museum, a smile wreaths his face and his eyes
gleam. He has a day by day recollection of the first month's
activities that culminated in the dedication of the museum! His tireless efforts in locating accessions and his off-hand comments on diverse acquisitions like the sagebrush wood display case and the bottle collection's origin make exciting reading. Willie held the honor of being the first curator at the museum.
This unassuming, pleasant man appreciates the beauty of collections of cut-glass as well as the mellow glow on fine antique furniture . . . it brings to mind his outstanding collection of antiques which he sold at auction several years ago. A portion of his collection's sale was shared with the local Churchill County Museum Association.
I had never met Willie prior to preparing for this oral history, but friends had told me how kind and caring he is . . . now, I have had the pleasure of recording the life story of this unpretentious and benevolent man.
Marian La Voy
Interview with Willie Capucci
This is Marian Hennen LaVoy of the Churchill County Museum Oral History Project interviewing Willie Capucci at her home 4325 Schurz Highway on February 20, 1993.
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CAPUCCI:
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Good morning, Willie.
Good morning.
How are you this morning?
Well, pretty good this morning, anyway.
Well, good. Willie, would you tell me when and where you were born?
I was born in Fallon, Nevada, by the Oats Park School. My dad helped to build that, and that was in 1913. We had a house back there where the Oats Park garage has their school buses, and.that's where I was born.
And what date were you born?
December 21, [1913] the shortest day of the year. (laughing)
Oh-h-h, I see that. Tell me the name of your parents. Your father first.
My father's name was Ernest Capucci.
And where was he born?
He was born in Naples, Italy.
What prompted him to come to the United States?
I don't know that part, but I know that when he came to the United States he was only seventeen years old. He could never speak English and could never read, but we understood each other. I'd talk part of it in Italian and mix some of the American words with it, but he could never quite understand the American part.
Oh, I see. What was your mother's name?
My mother's name was Louise Ponte.
What part of Italy was she from?
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CAPUCCI: I think in the northern part of Italy.
LaVOY: Genoa?
CAPUCCI: Yes, I think that's where it's at. I'm not too sure about that.
LaVOY: What prompted her to come to the United States?
CAPUCCI: I don't know that part at all. I know that my mother worked in a place where they make threads, when she first came. That was either Chicago or New York.
LaVOY: How did she and your father meet?
CAPUCCI: My dad went to Virginia City, and he worked for his
board and room there for a long time.
LaVOY: What did he do?
CAPUCCI: He worked in some kind of a ranch there by Dayton, and then they met and were married in Reno, Nevada.
LaVOY: Do you know what year?
CAPUCCI: No, I don't know that.
LaVOY: What prompted them to come to Fallon?
CAPUCCI: We had some friends that he knew. They were Italian friends. There was quite a few Italian ranches around here. There was the Gettos and the Pontes and the Moris and Venturaccis and there was quite a bunch of those and they talked to my dad to come down here, so after I was born in Fallon, they moved to Union District 'cause there was a family named the Cristanis that lived right back there. Mother and Mrs. Cristani were great friends so we kind of stuck with'them. After the Cristanis sold their place in Harrigan Road, they moved in Sheckler, so then we sold our place and moved in Sheckler, and that's where we were raised and went to school from there.
LaVOY: Now tell me, how many brothers and sisters do you have?
CAPUCCI: I have one brother, and I had three sisters, but my youngest sister named Linda passed away when she was fourteen. She had appendix and it ruptured. In those days we didn't have no penicillin or nothing, and she passed away at the old, old hospital named the Moore's Hospital which was located by the Chinese laundry. I don't what the name of that street is but it's down
there where Kent's is.
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Tell me the name of your other sisters.
Lena is still with us, but she's not too well, and Rosie passed away. That was my oldest sister, and she passed away in Sacramento. She was born in Wadsworth, Nevada, and she married a section foreman of Southern Pacific [Railroad]. My brother's name is Armond, and he's still doing the farm work in Sheckler District. We have about a sixty-four acre ranch there.
Now, is that the old family farm?
Yeah. There was five of us in the family, and then I had an uncle named Baccicca.
Was that a nickname, or was that his last name?
A lot of them called him Sam, uptown, but his name was Baccicca is all I know. Casazza, I think, was his last name. He got killed on a farm accident. At that time they had these dump rakes and he was haying out in the fields, and the horses, for some reason, got scared and took off. He couldn't hold them, and he fell in front of the teeth of the rake and he passed away that way.
What crops did your father raise out there on the ranch?
We raised mostly vegetables and potatoes. After we moved away from the Harrigan Road to Sheckler, we used to peddle uptown on horses and wagon. We had a little buggy, and I'd go on one side of the town with my brother and sell vegetables, and my dad would go on the other side of the town. In those days you'd work for two dollars a day, but on the vegetable route we'd make about seventeen dollars, each of us. My dad and me and my brother would make about the same. My dad would always compliment us. When we'd go home, we'd count all the small change and everything, and he'd always say, "My gosh, you kids really did good. You made seventeen dollars and eighty-five cents," and we wouldn't spend any of that money at all. What few vegetables we had left, we'd take them to the Chinamen. They had a lot of Chinamen restaurants in Fallon those days and they'd come out and pick up the tomatoes that weren't too good, the corn, a few potatoes, and then they would give us a hot pork sandwich that was listed at twenty cents, and that's the way we got our meal. That's why we never spent no money that we made.
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LaVOY: If your father peddled on one side of town, with his not speaking English, wasn't that difficult for him?
CAPUCCI: Yeah. I'll tell you the way he would do it. Lots of time he would buy something, like one time, I remember, he bought pork chops, and they sold pork chops by the dozen. I think they came to eighty-five cents, and my dad would give the butcher fifty cents, and then the butcher said, "No, Mr, Capucci, that's not enough. Some more money." And the old man would say, "Well, I don't know. Pretty high." Well, anyway, he finally ended up by giving them a dollar, so then when the butcher would give him the fifteen cents in change, my dad would ask for a slip. There wasn't very many slips then, but they did write it on a piece of paper. The pork chops were eighty-five cents, so my dad would take the fifteen cents and wrap it all up and put it in his pocket. Then he'd come home and tell me, "How much did they charge me, Willie, for the pork chops?" I'd look at the slip, and I'd say, "Well, cinquanta soldi was a half a dollar; venti cinque soldi was two bits; and ten cents was dieci soldi." "Oh, darn, too much money."
LaVOY: (laughing) Tell me, when did you first start school?
CAPUCCI: I started at kindergarten, but I don't remember the year. Then from the kindergarten I went to West End which is west of Fallon. There's a school there now, but these school buildings were made out of brick, and they were two stories, and they had a great big slide made out of tin for the upper story in case of fire. In those days we had a big stove in the corner, and it burnt coal.
LaVOY: Did the teacher put the coal in?
CAPUCCI: No, we had an Indian boy that would do that. And then from the West End, I went to the Oats Park School, and the school is still there, but it's closed. Then from there I entered in high school in the midterm in 1929, and I graduated in 1932.
LaVOY: Who were the principals of the schools that you attended?
CAPUCCI: I don't know the principals then, but I remember some of the teachers. Laura Mills was one of them at the Oats Park. The high school principal was George McCracken.
LaVOY: Tell me something about him.
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CAPUCCI: Well, a lot of fellows didn't like him, but I wish we had him nowadays 'cause I'll tell you why. When we had parties, he was very strict. We couldn't smoke, and the girls couldn't smoke at all. You never hardly saw a girl smoke. When we'd come into school in the morning, the girls would go to the right and the boys would go to the left, and that's the way we kept separated. When we'd have a dance, he would sit up there on the lobby up there and watch everybody, and if you got too close to the girl, he would come down and tap you on the shoulder and say you'd have to kind of separate. Those days was tough, I'll tell you, but it was really good.
LaVOY: Besides school, where were some of the dances held in town?
CAPUCCI: The Fraternal Hall [39 South Maine] was the main one, and is still there. They use it a little bit, but not too much. Everybody would go to the dance then, and we'd all have a good time.
LaVOY: Who were some of the orchestras that played?
CAPUCCI: One of the main bands was--can't remember the name of them--but there was Ray Alcorn played the saxophone, and he's still with us, and Vernon Mills was another one that played a sax and he was good. Louise Witherspoon was a piano player, and she was terrific. That piano would almost jump off of the floor, and Clarence Bird who moved to Reno was another one. -Then there was a fellow by name of Harry Marsh played the drums, and he had a butcher shop next to Kent's which is no longer there. And the country dances were good then. Sheckler had a dance, Hazen had a dance. These were all in the school houses. Harmon, Stillwater, and Union, and I can remember all of those.
LaVOY: Were you a good dancer?
CAPUCCI: Fairly good. Yeah. Stepped on a lot of toes, but I
got by. (laughing)
LaVOY: Who were some of your favorite partners for dancing?
CAPUCCI: Ramona Kirn was one of my favorites, but she was a good looking girl, and when you'd go up and ask her for the dance, she'd always tell you, "Well, the eighth one is yours." (laughing) Yeah, I remember that. And then some of the other girls--I can't remember too many of them. There was a lot of them. But, Ramona Kirn, I think she still lives in Reno.
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LaVOY: Well, that's very interesting. You mentioned in something that I did some research on that there had been a number of fires in Fallon while you were a young man. Could you tell me something you mentioned in particular? One at the People's Store.
CAPUCCI: Yeah, the People's Store is located next to Fraternal Hall lookin' towards the post office. I think there's a pawn shop there now, but there was a great big store there and I can remember 'cause we kids came up to peddle. When we came that morning, we saw the building all burnt down and there was oranges on the ground half burnt, but us kids went over and picked them up and took them home. I remember that. See there was a fountain out there in the middle of Maine Street in front of the court house, and that's where Dad would water the horses and that's why, while he was watering the horse, we walked across the street and picked up the oranges. That was a great big fire.
LaVOY: Why did you pick up the oranges?
CAPUCCI: Well, in the olden days, when we had a celebration it was bananas and oranges and nuts and very little candy 'cause we didn't see it every day like we do now. So in those days when we got something like that it was great. It was either a picnic at Lahontan or a special event 'cause we never saw oranges or bananas on the table every day like we do now, and we really used to save the candy. Not eat very much. Keep it thirty, forty days.
LaVOY: That's very interesting Now, you also mentioned, I
believe, that there was a big fire at Dodge Construction.
CAPUCCI: Yes, yes, I remember that. Dodge Construction was located near the railroad tracks where the Kent's Supply is now, but it was on the left-hand side. We went down there when the fire was going. We leaned up against the building across the street and when these oil drums would blow up, my gosh! The firemen come over and told us we'd have to move. It was a great fire, and it burnt to the ground, and then they rebuilt where the Sierra Pacific Power Company is now [346 North Maine] and that was the old Dodge building.
LaVOY: Did they have any idea what started the fire?
CAPUCCI: No, I never asked about that. I don't know. It was probably the grease or something 'cause in those days they drained the oil outside and it would just go down
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into the ground, but I don't know what caused it.
LaVOY: Did the volunteer fire department work on that fire?
CAPUCCI: Yeah, they had a small whistle. At that time, if I remember right, it's where the Fallon Bank is now. That was the fire house, and the little old whistle they had up there was on a frame like a windmill, and we could hear it clear out to the ranch when they'd blow it, and they had different sections in town. The first whistle was a warning there was a fire. Then they'd blow it one more time. That meant it was on the west side of the Maine Street. If it blew two times it was on the right side of Maine, and if it blew three times it was towards the high school on the left, and if it blew four times it was on the right of the high school, and that divided the town in four sections.
LaVOY: Could you tell me who some of the old volunteer firemen were at that time?
CAPUCCI: Well, let's see. Edgar Maupin was one. He was related to the Maupin family that worked for Dodge Construction. Nick Jesch was one. He was a barber that had a barber shop in Fallon. I think Lester Moody was one of them, too. He became a sheriff of Fallon and finally became a Highway Patrol[man]. I can't remember too many of the other ones.
LaVOY: Someone told me that Mr. Jesch could have somebody in
his barber chair with soap on their face . . .
CAPUCCI: I don't know what they did. They either locked the front door and kept the guy inside. I don't know how they did that, but he'd have to run to the fire house. I remember that.
LaVOY: That's very interesting. You were talking about going down to Lahontan on picnics. Would you tell me about that?
CAPUCCI: At that time we all had buggies and horses. There was very few cars. So when we'd decided to have a picnic at Lahontan, Mother would call all the Italian families and ask them if they could make it a couple of Sundays from now so a lot of them could make it. So when we'd all start out, we'd all meet where Williams Avenue is now, but it was all dirt roads, and we'd all take off in these buggies. It was about ten, twelve miles up there. It would take quite awhile to get up there, but anyway, when we got up there we had to cross the bridge at Lahontan, and I remember my dad had two frisky
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horses and we were all in the buggy. Dad would say, "You kids all get out. Mother, get out. Hang on the back of the wagon, and I'll take the horses across the bridge," and that's what we had to do was walk across the bridge. Then he would stop on the other end and pick us all up. Then we'd go down by the river and have a picnic. I can remember the gnats and mosquitoes were so bad, but that didn't seem to bother us. We always were excited about the good stuff that we were going to eat. Oranges and bananas again and good homemade chicken and so on.
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Did you swim at Lahontan?
No, no. We were down below in the river. We just played in behind the trees and in the sagebrush and stuff like that. Yeah, I remember that.
You mentioned that you went down Williams Avenue. It was dirt. Then where did you turn to go to Lahontan?
Well, at that time the highway did not go straight. It went to the right. Let's see, it turned off there by the Stockman's somewhere and went on around--it was all dirt. There was willows there, and then before you come to the canal it turned to the left, and then we went straight down the Reno Highway. Then we got to Leeteville, which is Ragtown, we'd take off to the left, and we'd go up to those ranches like the Harriman ranches, and the Moris lived up there and we followed the old road clear up to Lahontan. It was not on-the highway then.
Did you spend the night, or did you leave early in the morning?
We'd leave early in the morning and then come back that evening. One time we went to Fort Churchill with the horses and wagons. It took us quite awhile, but we stayed overnight there. That was a two-story house by the Carson River, and it's still there.
To whom did the house belong?
Oh, they were Italians and they were good friends of my folks, and that's why we went up. I remember we were young kids then and they had a beautiful garden and we picked a rose and then we got bawled out for that in the garden 'cause we didn't know any better.
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LaVOY: Did Fort Churchill look a lot like it does now?
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CAPUCCI:
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Yeah, I don't think it was restored as much. You could go anywhere. There was nobody there then. We used to go to those old buildings and look at them, but we were always scared to go too close. We were scared the walls might fall off. (laughing)
Oh, I see. Well, it sounds like you had a lot of fun. So, that would have been you and your four brothers and sisters.
Yeah. Three sisters and my brother, five of us, and Mother and Dad and my uncle.
You mentioned that you got behind the buggy. Did you hold onto it?
Well, part way, and then the horses moved faster than we could walk, so we'd finally turn loose and walk
across. 'Cause see, the bridge was very narrow, like it is now, and Dad was scared that the horses might take off, so, for our safety, he would tell us to get off and walk across, so that's what we did.
Some of the families that would meet you. You've mentioned the Moris and the Venturaccis. Who were some of the others?
Gettos, Mussis, Testolins, Ponte, Matteucci, lived close to Lahontan Dam. He had a ranch there. They used to get our name mixed up. Matteucci and Capucci.
Well, I can see why. When your father, I understand, bought his first car in 1925, tell me about that.
Yeah, we bought the first touring car from a fellow named Brown who worked for George Coverston at the Fallon Garage. It was a Chevrolet touring, and we paid almost eight hundred dollars for it. Dad didn't want it, but Mother wanted it, so she had her way. We finally bought it, and then we didn't have no place to put it. I remember we had a shed that had all the harnesses and collars and stuff for the horses, so Mother told us kids to move all that stuff out and put nails on the side of the building and put all the horse collars and harness and things, bridles on the side of the thing, and we moved the car inside. Dad sure did not like that, so he kind of raised the devil but finally, the cars those days had wooden spokes and we saw Dad out there with these gunny sacks putting water on them and putting them over the spokes of the wheel to keep them solid like a buggy. Our first trip--my oldest sister named Rosie was the only one that could
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,drive, so one day we decided to go to Tahoe, and it was a long trip, so after we got all the beds rolled up,
I'll tell ya, it really looked something. Us kids in the back seat with all these bedrolls, we took off. Well, Dad didn't understand too much about cars, moving
parts. 'Cause I'll tell ya, when we cut the hay, we had mowers and rakes and we had to grease them quite often. So Dad bought five gallons of cup grease and two grease guns and on the way up we had to stop about-let's see, I think we stopped at the turnoff is to go to Carson City. He said, "You'd better stop and grease the car." He had a canvas, so we put the canvas under the car and we greased it up. And then another ten, fifteen miles up Dad says, "Stop the car. Grease it again." And I'll tell you, before we got to Tahoe, we greased that car five times.
Then after we got to Tahoe I can remember Zephyr's. Cove. There was hardly nothin' there. Just one little store and a little gas station, and us kids stopped pretty close to that station in the woods in the pine trees and we gathered all the pine needles and we put them all in a pile and that's where we laid our canvas and our bed and that's the way we slept overnight on top of the needles. Then I can remember when Dad went to the store he bought a quart of milk, and we could not drink it. I'll tell you why. There was a lot of cows up there grazing and there was a lot of wild onions and when the cows would eat these onions the milk would taste like onions so we could not drink it. Then Dad decided to buy us all an ice cream and they were ten cents up there while in Fallon they were five, and I remember Dad raised the devil about the price of the ice cream cones 'cause they were ten cents at Tahoe.
LaVOY: Tell me your impression of the lake.
CAPUCCI: I think we went down there quite a bit, but we didn't swim. We just stuck on the side, and I remember we didn't have no swimming suit. We had old Levis, and that's what we used for swimming suits. We didn't have nothing, but just went like we were. Take our shoes off and wade out in the water with our Levis.
LaVOY: How long did you stay up there then?
CAPUCCI: We stayed a couple of days and then came home after that. The roads were very narrow. We had to be very, very careful with the twists and turns. But the cars those days didn't travel very fast. Twenty-five, thirty-five miles was the speed.
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It seems to me that I read that your sister had trouble coming down from the top of that mountain?
Yeah. We had quite a problem. It seemed like they told us what to do when we went up to Tahoe. Be sure and put it in second gear, and that's what my sister did. So when we descended from the mountains going downhill, she'd hold the clutch in and away we would go and the brakes were smoking and everything. Mother would put both arms around us two kids and try to hold us in the back seat and we finally brought the car to a stop. Then we had to wait quite a while to see another car coming and asked them how we could get down these steep hills without going too fast, and we finally found out what the problem was. My sister held the clutch in and used the brakes, so you can imagine how fast you could go down a hill that way.
It's a wonder you didn't turn over!
Yeah, it was, but we's lucky, yeah. We finally come to a hill that was going straight up sort of, not straight up, but on an angle, and that's what slowed it down, and we finally brought it to a stop.
I bet your father was terrified.
Oh, yeah. He was very mad about it.
Was he yelling, "Whoa"?
He thought the car went crazy, went too fast.
(laughing) Well, if he was used to driving horses, I can see he didn't have any control at all. When did you learn to drive?
During the high school I finally learned how to drive a little bit out in the country. Not too much uptown. 'Course those times there was not much traffic in town, and you could drive almost anywhere. Didn't have to worry about another car hitting you or nothing, and Maine Street was very, very wide. At one time, you could park in the middle of the Maine Street. Cars to the north and cars to the south besides the cars to the east and cars to the west. There was four parking lanes in Maine Street, Fallon.
That's amazing. If you lived in the country and you didn't drive until you got into high school, did you ride the school buses to school?
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CAPUCCI: Yeah, we rode the school buses. In those days, the buses were different. We had side curtains, no heat, and we had to walk a quarter of a mile to get the bus 'cause all the neighbors' kids would meet us there all in a bunch there waiting for the bus to come. And what we were happy about in the winter time is when the bus got stuck and we were late going in to school and then when we'd walk in, well, we had a great big smile on our face 'cause here we were late and didn't get bawled out for it 'cause the bus got stuck in the mud.
LaVOY: Who were some of your bus drivers?
CAPUCCI: No, I can't remember that part.
LaVOY: I just wondered if Harold Rogers was one of them because he did drive out in that area.
CAPUCCI: I knew Harold. He lived a little ways from us, but I couldn't say if he was a bus driver or not, but I do remember Harold Rogers. He lived by the river, and when I got a little bit older we used to hunt ducks. At that time the river had a lot of water. It's not like it is now. The water's very low there. But, anyway, we would walk up the river and get on the back side of Rogers' house and Mrs. Rogers is out there working in the garden and I remember that little Harold Rogers . . . very small . . . when he'd see us kids coming with the guns, he'd run to his mother and get between her legs and hang on 'cause he was scared to death of us 'cause we had a gun.
LaVOY: Oh, that's interesting. He was a wonderful man. Now we have you in high school. Tell me about your high school graduation.
CAPUCCI: The graduation was not too much money, and we had our class rings. We had an annual and then the senior graduation dance at the auditorium, but we didn't have enough money so we had to choose between the two. So we decided to skip our annual and decided to make it smaller and make it ourselves instead of having it printed it up. So we bought the class ring and we had the banquet in the auditorium and then a little later on we made our own annual. I still got one. It shows a class picture, the whole, not individual, and it gives us a history on almost everybody.
LaVOY: Tell me some of the people that were in your class. CAPUCCI: I can't remember all the girls and boys that graduated
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with me 'cause I do have that little annual at home but I didn't bring it. But I remember Ida Frazzini was one
and Joe Wallace was another one, and Kevin Callaghan, Carl Dodge, Elena Getto. That's about all I can remember right now.
LaVOY: Well, that's a pretty good representative group. Did you go on to school?
CAPUCCI: After I got out of school, I started playing basketball for the Fallon Merchants. It was a town team. In those days we had a lot of good basketball players 'cause I'll tell you why. We didn't have scholarships. Very few, if there was any. I can't remember any, and most of them could not afford to go to college so most of the ball players stuck around so that's why we had a lot of good teams. Reno, Carson, Lovelock, Tonopah, all had great teams. So I played basketball for twenty-some years in Fallon after I got out of high school.
I had a friend named, Bob Lovelady, and he wanted to go to University of Corvallis [Oregon]. It was a state university, and I wanted to play basketball. I had a scholarship to play basketball at Eugene, Oregon, University of Oregon, and so I went to school only one semester and then I came back. I remember I was given some property in University of Oregon so I wouldn't have to pay that out-of-state tuition. Then I had to sign some papers that after I got out of school that this property would be turned back to the guy that owned it or whatever it was.
LaVOY: Oh, I see. How did you find going to Oregon after having spent your whole life in Fallon?
CAPUCCI: Well, there was a scouter. He was an attorney named Cooper out of Oregon, and he saw me play basketball, and he come and said, "Willie, why don't you go to college and get an education out of it instead of pluckin' basketballs for the town team that you won't get too far?" So he kept corresponding to us and everything like that and that's the way I got going. The only reason I quit was 'cause Lovelady played football and when that season was over he had a girlfriend in Fallon, and he wanted to come back and not go back and I didn't want to go up by myself, so we both quit. I got a nice letter from the Cooper who got me in the University. Told me it was too bad that I didn't contact him to try to help me out to stay in school and he said, "Try to buck up yourself. Come back to college and get an education out of it besides
14
playing ball."
LaVOY: Well, then when you came back from school, what did you do then?
CAPUCCI: I started going into business. My first business was a service station near the Fallon Garage named the Richfield Service Station. There was no car washes then, and I made most of my money by washing cars. I think we only charged a dollar to wash a car. Then from there I went to tend bar in the Bank Club in Fallon. It was owned by a woman named Mrs. Teglia. I got four dollars a shift on that and I saved all my money from that. From there I got a club named the Esquire Club. It's next to the courthouse looking south where the Nugget has their parking lot. I went in that part. I didn't own the building, but I got a five-year lease, and I went in partners with a senator from Carson City named Ken Johnson, and he and I operated that. Then when my lease was up, there was three or four fellows from Lake Tahoe. Musso was one of them that owns the Heavenly Valley ski club. They saw what business I had. I had a tremendous business. I catered to the Navy, and my joint was packed chuck full. It was named the Esquire Club, and after I lost my lease, Ken decided to sell the property to all those fellows from Tahoe.
LaVOY: You mentioned that the Navy were your best customers. Had the base opened at that point in time?
CAPUCCI: It was open, but not very big. They had these squadrons coming in and I would then make a banner of "WELCOME VF-1 or VF-2" and I'd put it out on the front of the building and that's what attracted all the Navy, something new. It wasn't like it is now. We catered to the Navy and did real well on that.
LaVOY: Did you have dancing in the club?
CAPUCCI: At that time I tried to get dancing but it was against the City ordinance to have dancing in the club and I tried three or four times, but I was turned down every time. Finally when Danny Evans became the mayor of Fallon and he was a fairly good friend, we finally passed an ordinance that you could dance in the club but you had to serve food. Well, I had the coffee shop next to me and it was leased out to a Chinaman and we finally cut a hole in the wall, so if a guy wanted a sandwich, we could serve food. That's why I got by on the cabaret license.
15
LaVOY: Tell me why was there no dancing in the clubs?
CAPUCCI: I don't know why, but they didn't allow it, and there was no clubs on the right hand [east] side of the street. It was all on the left [west]. Although, years ago there was one club named The Hub. It's where Palludan owns the building. It was the Fallon Bank then 'cause I remember the marble and the brass bars in front, and right next to that was The Hub. And only the rich men went in there. I can remember Dad went there one time and they had a cigar lighter that you could light your cigar. It had a razor blade on one side you cut the end of the cigar off. Then you'd press the button and it would buzz and put a little flame up and that's the way you lit your cigar. I remember The Hub for that reason.
LaVOY: Who were the habituates of The Hub?
CAPUCCI: Carl Dodge, Sr., Bob Dodge, Tom Dolf, R.L. Douglass, and George Wingfield who owned a ranch here at Fallon where the Serpas live now. He became the big executive officer for the bank in Reno. Yeah, all of those fellows were the main ones.
LaVOY: And you were very impressed with the cigar cutter and lighter.
CAPUCCI: (laughing) Yeah. That lighter was on the counter.
LaVOY: You mentioned that about when you had the Esquire Club that you had a good friend, Lester Moody.
CAPUCCI: Yeah, Lester Moody. After Ken could not be there all the time he told me to go ahead and get Lester Moody as my partner. Lester Moody spent a lot of time in Las Vegas as a patrol or whatever they called it then. Well, anyway, when he lived here in Fallon, had a wife and a daughter named Vanna. Vanna married a fellow in Reno that owned the Jubilee Club in Washoe Valley.
LaVOY: Pagni?
CAPUCCI: Pagni, yeah. Moody became our partner, and then when we put the gambling in, Moody had a little problem down in Vegas and the gaming commission turned him down on our license for his part, so I finally bought out Moody 'cause we couldn't get a license to operate with.
LaVOY: And then you mentioned Lloyd Whalen.
CAPUCCI: Right after I was to give up the Esquire Club we had
16
that earthquake--I think it was 1955. Lloyd Whalen was the city engineer and he was a very good friend of mine. He examined the building and since I was going to go out why he condemned the building, and that's what closed up the Esquire Club. But, the building, I think, was made out of stone and they had an awful time tearing it down. They put the steel cables through the upstairs windows. See, we had apartments upstairs and the coffee shop and then we had a liquor store on the north side of the building. With the big tractor eight and the cables up there from one window to the other and trying to pull it down they just had an awful time pulling it down. I think that building would of stood up nowadays.
LaVOY: Tell me, was not that building built by Basque stone workers?
CAPUCCI: I don't know who built it, but before the club went in there, it was an old post office, and there was a pool hall. A fellow named Yetters run the pool hall. And then on the other side there was a tunnel and there was something like a kind of a grocery store. I can't remember the guy that run it, but I remember there was a tunnel in there and then after they remodeled it, it became a liquor store. A guy by the name of Dunlap run the liquor store, and his boy is the one that's in Reno and he's an attorney or something.
LaVOY: You mentioned the earthquake. Tell me about that.
CAPUCCI: Well, the earthquake really hit hard. The Fraternal building was damaged, and the Esquire was damaged. There was quite a few places on that 'cause I worked on the Fraternal Hall for a construction guy named Boyce Miller. We had to rebuild part of the Fraternal Hall upstairs, and then the crack on the highway. I
remember I went out and took a look at the earthquake fault. You can still see it. Dixie Valley into Fairview, Nevada. 'Cause I pick pinenuts out there and I went quite a few times. You can still see that ridge where it dropped ten to fifteen feet.
LaVOY: How did you react to the earthquake? Were you in the club?
CAPUCCI: I remember I put my hands on the wall. I don't know why I did it. It seemed like an awful long time, but really it was really short but it seemed long. Yeah, I can remember, I stretched both hands out to the wall and trying to hold it, you know.
17
LaVOY: Were there a lot of people in the club when the earthquake happened?
CAPUCCI: No, no, not too many that I remember.
LaVOY: When you finally got dancing in the club, did you have a lot of the local girls that came and danced with the sailors?
CAPUCCI: Yeah, quite a few of them, yeah. That's about it on the dancing part. I had a woman that played the organ. She was a real heavy woman but she played the organ great. I remember hiring her.
LaVOY: What was her name? Do you recall?
CAPUCCI: I think her name was Bliss. One time we had street festivities and they allowed us to serve beer and stuff on Maine Street so I had a couple of imitation palm trees and I had Mrs. Bliss play the organ and that really drew the crowd right on Maine Street, and then we couldn't have it no more. We tried it a couple of times.
LaVOY: You owned the club from 1950 to 1955?
CAPUCCI: Yeah, five years is all I had. I had a lease, and then a woman that owned it lived in Canada. I can't think of her name now.
LaVOY: And then you and Mr. Johnson together gave up the club. Or had he given it up sooner and you had brought in Mr. Moody?
CAPUCCI: Ken Johnson from Carson City, actually he was a very good friend of this lady from Canada that owned it, and she lived in Fallon here. After my lease was up why then they decided to let these fellows from Tahoe have it, and I think they bought the property.
LaVOY: Well, that must have been a very interesting spot to have gone. On the west side of the street there were a good number of bars, were there not?
CAPUCCI: Yeah, there was the Corner Bar, was owned by Mr. Hoover. He was a mining man. And then the Bank Club was next looking towards the Court House. Francis Wildes was one of the fellows that owned it. Smokey Flippen bought it later, and then Mrs. Teglia bought it after that. And then going up was the Horseshoe Club, and that was two fellows. I remember Ciccatini was one of them, and I can't remember the other one. Since
18
then it's changed many a hands. Mori owned it one time. Then going up the street a little bit more, the Toggery, was on the corner, that was not a bar. That was a clothing store run by Harold Bellinger and Fred Saunders, and then the Sagebrush was owned by Allen Powell, and he's still with us here in Fallon, and then next to him was the Star Club. It was owned by Harry Metler, and the Nugget bought that. And then after the Star Club, the Palace Club was next to the Star Club, and that was owned by the Lofthouse brothers, then the Owl Club was next and that was run by Latasa. They had a boy and then a daughter. The boy, I think, still works in Reno in one of the clubs.
LaVOY: I want to back up just a little bit back to the Sagebrush Club. The Sagebrush Club was owned by Bill Powell, I think, wasn't it?
CAPUCCI: Bill and Al. Bill was the dad, and Al was the son, and Bill Powell--he was pretty old, and I'll tell you. We had a benefit thing at the Fallon Theatre, and he used to do this buck and wing at his age. It was kind of a-I don't know what kind of a dance. He'd kick up his feet and throw his arms out, very active, but at his age. I remember that. The buck and wing dance by Bill Powell. They asked him every year to come and do the same thing.
LaVOY: I believed he married Marie Ludwick.
CAPUCCI: Yeah, Marie Ludwick, and then there was a daughter named Stacia (Wildes), and then I can't remember the older daughter.
LaVOY: There was Gertrude [Gorman] and Cleo [Beeghly].
CAPUCCI: Yeah, and they had a house down there by the Oats Park park. It's still there. The brick house. That's where the Powells lived.
LaVOY: Does that Sagebrush Club now belong to the corporation that has the Nugget?
CAPUCCI: Yes. I remember the Sagebrush had all the wild ducks mounted on the back bar. That was something, and when they used to have the Greenhead banquet that's where they would have the banquet and that's when they all chose up sides on the Greenhead Hunting Club. You didn't know what side you were on. They selected a captain on each side, but they didn't tell you which side you were until the duck season was over. When you'd bring the ducks in they'd chop off a foot so you
19
couldn't bring the ducks back outside and bring them to your friend and let him come back in. We had a hatchet
and a block. We had to chop a foot off, and the Chinaman would save the legs and feet to make soup out of them.
LaVOY: Well, then, now tell me, whoever brought in the most ducks, that team would win?
CAPUCCI: Yeah, that team would win, and the losing team would have to pay for the banquet.
LaVOY: Oh!
CAPUCCI: Yeah, and they gave points. A hen mallard, I think, was forty points. The greenhead was fifty, and then the honker was a hundred points, and that's what they went by, so if you hunted next to your partner you didn't know if he was on your side or not. We didn't know that 'til after the hunt was over.
LaVOY: Who set up this banquet?
CAPUCCI: The directors of the Greenhead Hunting Club. I think the money went back to the Greenhead Hunting Club which is still down in the TCID [Truckee Carson Irrigation District] hunting grounds. It was great then.
LaVOY: How many members approximately?
CAPUCCI: I didn't know that, but I know to belong to the Greenhead you had to wait 'cause they only had so many members and if somebody wanted to give up their membership you could buy it.
LaVOY: What did it cost to buy a membership, do you recall? CAPUCCI: I think twenty-five dollars, if I remember right.
LaVOY: Well, that was rather high in those days. CAPUCCI: Yeah, oh, yes. That was quite a club.
LaVOY: And where was this Greenhead banquet always held?
CAPUCCI: I think they held it right there in the Sagebrush, if I remember right. Downstairs, I think. There was a downstairs banquet room, and they had steel doors from the outside on the Maine Street from the sidewalk and when they're not using it, the two steel doors would come down and block it off, and then when they had something going they'd open up these steel doors and
20
fasten them with a chain to the wall, and then you'd go downstairs.
LaVOY: Oh! I'm sorry to have interrupted you there, but you had mentioned going down the street. You had gone to the Owl Club. What was past the Owl Club to the south?
CAPUCCI: Let's see, there was a club named Eddie's, I think. There was another club named . . . first it was named the Oasis, I think, and there was a woman named Mrs. Kinney, Jack Kinney's wife run that, and then it went to Frankie's Club. It was next to the Owl Club, but that's where the Nugget parking lot is now.
LaVOY: Well, that side of town must have been filled with bars!
CAPUCCI: Yes, it was. After the Corner Bar, the first one. coming down, then there was a Fallon Slaughter House and then, of course, I mentioned the Bank Club, the Horseshoe, and the Fallon Bakery was stuck in between there. A guy by the name of M.B. Johnson run that. And the Western Hotel and the Toggery was run by Fred Saunders and Harold Bellinger and then, let's see, there was a dry goods store in there and then, of course, the Nugget, Mission Cafe, Star Club, Eddie's Lounge, and Eldridge and Hursh had a clothing store there, too.
LaVOY: Something you mentioned. The slaughter house. Was that actually for butchering?
CAPUCCI: Well, they called it the Fallon Slaughter House, but it was a meat market. There was a fellow named Walt Dexter, who was the Chief of Police, and Dan Callaghan was his partner. And those days back of the counter they hung the meat up on hooks and the hooks were very fancy. They had pictures of a bull or a cow's head or a sheep and that's where they hung the meat and when you'd want to get a steak they'd take the hind quarter off, lay it on the block, and cut the steak off the way you wanted it. I can remember the refrigeration part of it 'cause they had a fountain there and it was ice cold water. That's the only place you could get ice cold water 'cause they run the lines through the refrigeration pump to keep the meat cool. They used to give us a weinie 'cause the weinies were very cheap and us kids used to love weinies, but all the butchers when us kids'd go in they'd each hand us a weinie.
(laughing)
LaVOY: Was the meat just hanging out there with flies and
21
everything or was it behind the glass?
CAPUCCI: Yeah. I don't remember too many flies in there, but it didn't make much difference I don't think. Now I might say there was a rumor but anyway Walt Dexter, the Chief of Police, one of the owners of the meat market, why he lost a finger grinding up hamburger, so I remember
that. (laughing) I can't remember what he said. The finger went in the hamburger, but I don't know. It was
a rumor. (laughing)
LaVOY: (laughing) There was another meat market in town that still exists that was Heck's. Was that farther down the street?
CAPUCCI: Heck's Market was up there by Frazzini Furniture Store. It's still run by one of the Beeghly boys now. Heck had it first, and I can remember they had the Heck's slaughter house where they did the slaughtering, and one day, I guess, he was butchering a beef or something and something happened and he cut his main artery and before he got in the car and made his way to Fallon, well, he bled to death. And that was the old dad.
LaVOY: Where was the slaughter house?
CAPUCCI: The slaughter house is going out towards the base off of Harrigan Road. It's still there but it's not in use. There's a house on the corner and then the next building going towards the base on the right. You can
still see it. It's still there.
LaVOY: Well, that's very tragic. Were there many doctors in town at that point?
CAPUCCI: Well, yeah. Heck got in the car and tried to drive in, see, and that's what happened. There was quite a few doctors then, but you had to call them. I think a lot of them didn't have no office. Dr. [Harry] Sawyer was my favorite doctor, and he lived there on Williams Avenue where Berney's Real Estate is [290 West Williams Avenue] and that was the doctor's office. Dr. Dempsey was on Maine Street up above the Palace Club. Way upstairs. He was another good doctor.
LaVOY: Did you only have the two doctors in town at that point in time?
CAPUCCI: Dr. Wray was another one. His office was across from the VFW hall. [405 South Maine Street] The two-story building there. That was the office for that one. [406 South Maine Street]
22
LaVOY: Oh, I see. Did you get to the doctor very often, or were you very healthy?
CAPUCCI: Well, I never did like to go 'cause I never did like to
see blood. I'll tell you. I was real funny those days. I didn't like to see blood, and when I went to the barber shop and they used the razor on my neck I used to go on down and I'd ask for a glass of water 'cause I couldn't stand it. I never looked at the instruments in the doctor's office or anything like that 'cause it bothered me.
LaVOY: Oh, I see. Tell me a little bit more about downtown on the other side of the street which would be the east side of the street. Starting on Stillwater Avenue, what were some of the stores that were there?
CAPUCCI: On the other side of the street there was the VFW hall. There was an ice cream and hamburger parlor there named the Green Spot, and it served the kids from the high school, and then after the Green Spot was bought, they named it Dew Drop Inn. Then up further there where the video shop is now, there was the Olds' Drug Store and it was owned by the Olds. Then there was a Kolhoss Store. There was no bank on the corner there where it's now, but the next one was Kolhoss, and it'd been there for many, many years. And then the Fallon Mercantile. That was a great store. Jake Bible owned that, and then a fellow by name of Joe Jarvis were partners in there, and some of the employees in there was Sam Beeghly. He was a butcher. Ray Alcorn was a clerk in there. Johnny Weakley was another one that worked in there, and then at the corner was Gray, Reid, Wright store which was a big store in Reno, but this is where they started in Fallon.
Then going up the corner was the Kent's big store, and they had three compartments in Kent's. One was the grocery store and then the middle part was the hardware and on the other end was the cash and carry. If you had the cash, you could get your groceries for two or three cents less, and then they had a center place where you sent the money. They had trolley, little cups that traveled on wires and they went to the main part which was in the middle and you'd send, make out the slip, put it on the clip, pull the cord, and it would travel to the center and send the money out and she would mark it stamped, paid, and send it back, and they had all these wires just above, up towards the ceiling. I remember that very much. Then after the Kent's was the big store and then after that was the Western
23
Union, and it was run by Mrs. Born, and she was crippled. She was related to the Fergusons. Sonny
Ferguson is still with us here. He was one of the school teachers. And then after that was a barber shop, and after the barber shop was the bank building. No, Harry Marsh's Meat Market was in between there.
LaVOY: A drug store?
CAPUCCI: Yeah, the big bank was in there. It was a nice building. It's still there, and then after that was Tarzyn's Cleaners. Joe Tarzyn. They named the Tarzyn Road out there in Old River District.
LaVOY: I want to interrupt you here. I believe you mentioned in something that I read that he always carried a needle in his mouth. Joe Tarzyn
CAPUCCI: Yeah, I think so. I know he was kind of hunchback and he was real pleasant. He'd always have something nice to say to you, and he'd laugh. Poor old Joe Tarzyn. Yeah, I remember him.
LaVOY: I believe you said he always had a needle and thread in his mouth because he was always mending pants.
CAPUCCI: Always sewing something. Then there was Young's Jewelry. Howard Young run that, and after that was, let's see, there was a theatre named the Rex for a while then they named it the Fallon Theatre. It was in there, and then next to that was the Sugar Bowl. It was an ice cream parlor.
LaVOY: Was that was the one that Laveaga owned?
CAPUCCI: Laveaga owned that and I think he's still living in Sparks. Brian Laveaga. And as kids we used to love to go in there 'cause they had marble top tables and the little chairs made out of twisted wire painted gold. They had fans running and us kids from the ranch couldn't believe that the fan could put out wind, and we'd follow the fan around wherever it turned and made a noise.
LaVOY: Your father probably didn't appreciate that.
CAPUCCI: No, he'd make us sit down again, but we'd get up and follow the wind around where the fan would move around. When we had ice cream, I remember they used to serve a little cookie with it, Nabiscos, and that was something. I forgot to mention the Azores Store was in before the Sugar Bowl there and Laveagas.
LaVOY: Excuse me just a minute. This Azores Store. Was it
run by a Portuguese person?
24
CAPUCCI:
LaVOY: CAPUCCI: LaVOY:
CAPUCCI:
A Portagee, yeah. I can't remember his name. Yeah, yeah, I remember that. He was a Portagee. That's why they named it the Azore Store.
What did they sell there?
They had clothing of all kinds. And let's see, after that was the Fraternal Hall, and it's still there. And then up the street there was a Texaco station, and then the Grand Hotel was run by Ramon Arrizabalaga. They came from Dixie Valley. Up a little bit further there was Mr. [Eli] Cann, an attorney. He had a little office in there, and then the post office was there. Then after the post office Tillie Caselton owned a little building. Then up further was the TCID. The Truckee Carson Irrigation District had their office there, and then up the street there was the Kent's Lumber Yard, and then there was the Fallon flour mill across the tracks. It was run by Mr. Tom Kendrick. Then after the Fallon flour mill, Dodge Construction was the next one which is now Sierra Pacific [346 North Maine Street], and then up a little further was the Oats' dairy. There was a silo there that was leaning. Kind of reminded me of the leaning tower of Pisa, and there was a dairy there, and now that's where the Fallon Eagle-Standard is in that same section. And that ended the businesses on that side of the street.
You mentioned a flour mill. Where did Mr. Kendrick get all the wheat?
The farmers raised most of the wheat here in the valley and they would mill it and make flour out of it. That was quite a process.
Did they sell the flour out of Fallon?
Yeah, it was named Lahontan Flour.
I understand there was a sugar beet factory here, too. Do you know anything about that?
Yes, the sugar beet factory was where the cemetery is now. There was a great big building and a lot of the people raised beets here, and they'd take the beets into the factory, and then they would make sugar out of it. I had a little sack. On it "The Fallon Sugar Beet Factory." Was a little souvenir sack full of sugar,
CAPUCCI:
LaVOY: CAPUCCI:
LaVOY:
25
.and I think I still got that but I'm not sure. They had the railroad track run across that field over to the sugar beet factory. After it closed down, some outfit come in there, and they were supposed to do something. I can't remember, but they were using the sugar from the old vats to make whiskey, and they finally caught them and arrested them.
LaVOY:
CAPUCCI:
LaVOY:
CAPUCCI:
Oh, my! Bootlegging.
See, the sugar would cake on the bottom of the big vats that they had, so this guy moved in there and he made alcohol. He already had the sugar.
Did he sell it locally?
Well, I don't know, but I remember they caught him. There was quite a story on that.
Now, another thing, there were a lot of cantaloupes raised in the valley. Did your father raise any of those?
Yes. We raised not as many, but there was a lot of them raised here. They were great cantaloupe named the Hearts of Gold. They were extra sweet. Kent's was the one that you could take your cantaloupes in, and he would pay you for the market price on them and they were shipped out. And a lot of them was shipped out in small crates. The twelve in the little crate to your friends. It didn't cost very much to ship them out. Although, they had to pick them little bit green so they could stand the trip. They'd always send a crate to the President of the United States every year. Same as a turkey. We had a lot of good turkeys. For some reason, the meat was real white and broad breast and all that. I know we had a lot of turkeys and cantaloupe. Fallon was really noted for that.
I believe I read that you mentioned that the turkeys were brought in by the Indians from their colony.
Yeah, the Indians down in Stillwater. In those days they had horses and wagons, and I can remember seeing them Indians come in there with the turkeys all dressed and the heads hanging on the side. I guess dust didn't make no difference in those days. But I can remember a lot of the turkeys that were raised had a crooked breast, and you could buy them cheaper, a lot cheaper, but it was the same kind of turkey exceptin' for some reason, I don't know if that's where they roosted and made a difference or not, but a lot of the turkeys had
LaVOY: CAPUCCI:
LaVOY: CAPUCCI:
26
a crooked breast, so they sold a lot cheaper and a lot of people would buy them instead of the Grade A.
LaVOY: Who did the Indians sell their turkeys to?
CAPUCCI: They sold them to Kent's. I'll tell you why Kent's was real popular those days. Money was short, and you could get credit from Kent's. He would advance you food, groceries, and maybe a little money if you needed. He had a fellow by name of Dan Evans, Sr., and he was the guy that went around the country. If your bill got a little bit behind, he'd come out there and ask you what you had to sell. He'd buy hay, turkeys, cantaloupes, or whatever you had to square up your bill.
LaVOY: Oh!
CAPUCCI: Yeah, so that's why Kent's was real good. They were very good to help out the community. You could get credit. About the only place you could get credit.
LaVOY: This was Ira H. Kent?
CAPUCCI: Yeah, Ira Kent.
LaVOY: Did his sons work in the store with him?
CAPUCCI: He was in there a lot in the office. Ira Kent was the main one, and then M.N. Wallace was another one in there. But Danny Evans, I remember him. He's the one that would approach you and try to settle up the bill.
LaVOY:
CAPUCCI:
LaVOY:
Now, that would be the grandfather of the city attorney that just passed away.
Yes. And Danny Evans, Jr. and then Mike Evans were all related.
Well, you certainly remember the town very, very well.
CAPUCCI: Yeah, I could mention a lot. Like going down Center Street towards the Oats Park School, there was a Atkinson Ford building and Mrs. Kent's home was almost in town, next to the Fallon Garage. I know she had a beautiful garden and a lot of roses. She had a lady that took care of Mrs. Kent. Her name was Mrs. Brotherson. I remember her 'cause she had some kind of a dark skin on one side, it was real dark. She's the one that took care of her. And then there was a Blue Eagle Service Station. Mary Foster had a place there. There was a clothing store named the New River Room.
27
LaVOY: Mary Foster. Was that a photographic shop?
CAPUCCI: Yeah, that's where she started as far as I know. Then the Fallon Garage and then the Overland Hotel was across the street. Been there for a long time.
LaVOY: Excuse me, who owned the Fallon Garage? CAPUCCI: George Coverston.
LaVOY: Who owned the Overland Hotel?
CAPUCCI: I don't know who owned that, but the building is still there. It's about the same. A little past that were P & H selling parts for cars. It was named the Maples Dance Hall 'cause there's a hardwood floor, and I remember that. And then there was a blacksmith shop up a little ways further, and a guy named [Amos] Marker run that. The Commercial Hotel was just around the corner, and it was pretty popular, too, but it's been torn down. And then, going up a little further, was the Union Steam Laundry. They're going to tear that building down now, and I hate to see it 'cause the words are still up there. Union Steam Laundry in 1913. And then there was a Frazier garage where the Motor Supply was. Then up a little bit further was the Catholic Church, and it's been torn down and moved. It's apartments there now, and then there was a service station across from the little school there, named Shorty's Service Station, and then there was a Weaver's Market where the swimming pool is, run by the Weavers. The Beyer's Garage was on the right hand side where the school administrative building is, and then the Beyer's Garage, and then there was a swimming pool there at the Oats Park School. Some of the kids smoked those days and that's where they went down the hole so the
teachers couldn't see them. (laughing) The old swimming pool. I remember that, and then the Oats Park, and then, of course, we mentioned the sugar beet -Factory on the way out.
LaVOY: Well, that's very, very interesting. Something I just happened to think about. How did you react when the Navy Base came to town?
CAPUCCI: Well, when the wars started, I was playing basketball, and they told me that you better get in some kind of a defense work 'cause I was working in the bars then. So then I contacted a fellow down in Hawthorne, Nevada, and since I played ball they decided to have a good basketball team. So they hired me as a personnel
28
manager where they're building the base. And I'll tell you, that was something. I did all the hiring and there was a long line of people coming in, and we couldn't get enough help, especially labor. So we'd hire at carpenter's wages to do the labor work, and then we had a discharge section, and the people coming in on my side, lot of them would quit and go out the other way so there was steady employment. I hired a lot of my friends from Fallon to come down, and, of course, the big problem was the rooming. You could not find a room in Hawthorne. People would get cardboard boxes and that's where they're sleeping. Finally the health department got onto us that we do not hire nobody unless they got a place to stay. The restaurants couldn't serve the food. I remember when we used to go down for breakfast, the El Capitan was one of the main ones. They had hot cakes stacked up already cooked in the back of the stove. All ready to be served. Eggs were already cooked. Bacon was already cooked so they could serve the people going on the hill. When you went to work out there, we had three major, big companies. Dinwiddie-Munson was one. William P. Neil and Radich & Brown. Dinwiddie-Munson was the one that came to Fallon and built the Fallon Navy [Fallon Naval Auxiliary Air Station]. Dinwiddie, that's who I played basketball for. But, anyway, going back to Hawthorne. When you were hired, they gave you a brass with a number on it, and the low numbers were the bosses like one to a hundred, and then from a hundred to two hundred was the supervisors and so on up. A lot of people would pick up their brass and then go back up town and not work and hand in their brass in the evening, so they finally hired a checker. He'd come by and see if you were working. If he saw you working, he'd get your number and jot it down. So that was Hawthorne, and it was a great place, anyway.
The Fallon Navy Base was a place where they rebuilt airplane motors, and finally the Navy decided to rebuild, and Dinwiddie-Munson got the contract on that. Barney Fritz was one of the main guys out there.
LaVOY: And he helped rebuild the engines? [See Addendum]
CAPUCCI: They were rebuilding engines 'til the Navy decided to take over. Marshall Coverston had some kind of a flying deal. They only used a small runway then. Marshall Coverston was related to Fallon Garage. He's the one that run the airport out there. And then Dinwiddie-Munsen came in and started building that up.
29
LaVOY: It has certainly improved the economy of Fallon, hasn't
it?
CAPUCCI: Oh, yes. You bet.
LaVOY: CAPUCCI: LaVOY:
CAPUCCI:
LaVOY:
CAPUCCI:
When did they put the regular airport here in Fallon?
The first airport was where the rodeo grounds is. [Regional Park, 99 Sheckler Road] There was a landing strip in there. Andy Drumm had an airplane, and he used to land there. That was the first airport that we had here in Fallon. It run from the east to the west over the highway. They had a real strip there. But, see, it run clear back there where [Howard] Hiskett is now [2120 Allen Road], past the swimming pool. That's where the runway was.
Were there many people that had airplanes at that time? No, not very many. Very few.
Coming along with you. You had worked in Hawthorne, and after you finished your job there, what did you do?
I went to work at the base, and when they built the houses, we were doing the insulation in the attics wrapping up the duct work from the heaters and the air conditioning. That was our job, and we were paid so much a house to do them. When we first started out we weren't doing very good, and then after we got learning how to--'cause all the houses were built alike--and after we cut out so much insulation and wrap it with wire. I remember the inspectors would come by and take a look to see what we're doing, and he'd always say, "Is the same house you guys are on?" (laughing)
Who did you work for when you were putting the insulation in?
It was a private company. Can't remember, but one of the inspectors was Clint Ogden. I think his wife is still living in here in Fallon.
Then after that job finished what did you do?
After I left the base, let's see, I can't remember what I did.
I understand that you went into sound systems.
Oh, yeah. The way the sound system started, Fallon had a great baseball team and so did Lovelock and Reno and
LaVOY: CAPUCCI:
LaVOY: CAPUCCI:
LaVOY: CAPUCCI:
30
all of those. Well, anyway, everybody went to the ball games on a Sunday 'cause we didn't have no TV and there wasn't much to do but go to the church in the mornings and then after church we'd all go to the baseball and they'd really would draw the crowds. Cars were parked all around. Grandstands were full. Well, one day we was playing Lovelock, and I was there, and the regular announcer never showed up so Danny Evans, Sr. would always go down there in front of the home plate, and we'd all stand up and sing the national anthem and everything, but before that, the regular announcer never showed up so they asked me to announce the game and I said, "Well, I don't know nothing about baseball except from watching it." "Willie, please get up there. You can announce and play the national anthem and we'll give you the names of the umpire and the name of the players on both sides," and we was playing
Lovelock that day. I said, "Well, I don't know. I'll
try it." And I didn't know what to do. I started to shaking already, but I took a piece of paper and I made a diamond like the baseball field, and I had to ask somebody, "What was number one?" He said, "That's the pitcher. Put that number one down on his name on the Fallon side." Number two was the catcher. Three was first base, four was second base, five was the third base, back to short stop was six, left field was seven, eight was center fielder, and nine was right, and then I'd turn it over and write Lovelock with the same way. So when the batter would get up to bat, the ball would go out in left field, I'd turn it over and look at the left field, and I'd say, "Caught by," and name the-name, and that's the way I got started. And I did a real good job, and I didn't think so, but, anyway, they asked me to announce the game from then on. So that's what I did. And the city owned their PA system, so they let me take care of their PA. It was made out of plyboard then. It wasn't like now, the PA. After we had the PA home for about a year, lot of the people would ask, "Would you lend us your sound equipment for the dance?" And I said, "Sure." I'd make ten dollars on the side, but the city found out about it, and they said, "Well, you cannot rent our sound system out." So then I decided I'd buy my own,and that's what we got started.
LaVOY:
Where did they play these baseball games?
At the North Maine Street. It was no lawn. It was just all dirt. Still the same place.
Where would that be from Sierra Pacific? Was that up north of that where they're still playing ball?
LaVOY: CAPUCCI:
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CAPUCCI: Yeah. There was a CCC camp there named the New River CCC Camp, and then the Sierra Pacific was on the right-'course that was Dodge Construction, and it was on the left hand side. There was a store named Gevelhoff. It was a hardware store. I remember then the Fallon Ice Company was in there, too. Fallon Ice Company made their ice and sold soda pop.
LaVOY: I'm still just not quite sure. It was continuing on up the Lovelock Highway on the east side or the west side of the road?
CAPUCCI: It'd be on the west side going to Lovelock. It's still there. The same field.
LaVOY: Is that by where Venturacci has put in a lot of new property?
CAPUCCI: Venturacci's further west. The apartments are all in there, and then the TV station is there now. Fallon Eagle's on the right.
LaVOY: Right across from the Fallon Eagle. Then, you started using your sound system for dances. Did you do that only in Fallon, or did you go to outlying towns?
CAPUCCI: I started out in Fallon. There wasn't too many PA systems, and people found out about what I was doing, and they'd call me up. Like the State Fair in Reno hired me and I went all over. Finally, we had to buy more than one unit. We had to buy three or four, and I had a partner named Don Weaver. He was on the police department in Fallon. He was my partner, and we ended up by doing many, many jobs. I used to go to Palm Springs, California, twice a year to do the Sheriff's Posse Parade and the Desert Circus Parade which was put on by Bob Hope. Then I went to Death Valley doing their Death Valley Forty Niners, and I did three President's arrivals, mostly in Reno. One in Palm Springs. Kennedy arrived in Palm Springs, and I did set up the sound equipment for him, but he did not go up town. He got off the airplane, and we had a platform there on the airport. President Johnson, I did in Reno where the Pioneer Auditorium is now, and they had to inspect all my equipment for shock, and they had guards up on the roofs all around when President Johnson arrived. I did Vice-President Nixon at the Centennial in Virginia City. He arrived up there on a platform, and I did Truman on the end of the train. He did not get off the train. He was on the back of the platform on the Pullman back there, and we
32
set up the sound equipment for that. I did Johnson, Kennedy, Nixon, and Truman. I did four Presidents' arrivals. Then I used to do the Carson parade, the camel races in Virginia City, Jim Butler Days in Tonopah which I still do. And then I did the movie, The Misfits with Clark Gable. The Misfits was taken in Dayton, Nevada, and that was something there, too. What's her name? The movie star with Clark?
LaVOY:
CAPUCCI:
Marilyn Monroe?
Yeah, and she was something. She was real nice. I had two dogs, and she'd come and pet my dogs, and she come out of Reno in a limousine, and we always had to wait 'cause she was late, but she didn't care. And she was a nice looking woman. Very nice. Yeah, I remember that. The Misfits.
What was Clark Gable like?
Well, I can remember the mustache and tall, and he had a dog, too. He and I were going to go hunting. At that time the Holiday Hotel in Reno had a hunting ground somewhere over in Smith Valley, and I told them we were doing a movie. I was good friends with a guy by the name of Macintosh that run the Holiday Hotel in Reno, so they made arrangements for Clark Gable and me to go hunting. Clark got a hold of me and told me about a couple of weeks he was going back to Hollywood and then he would call me. In the meantime he had that heart attack and it never went through and I still got the invitations.
Well, how nice. What was the name of your company?
Capucci-Weaver Sound, and just Capucci Sound now, and I still do a lot of work. Last year, we got thirty-three jobs all over.
That's very interesting. I also understand that you are a licensed decorator. Is that correct?
Well, we used to do Christmas decorations. Mostly the
banks. My sister, Lena, would help me. She would put
a lot of stuff together, but it paid good excepting it was such a short season, and most of the business houses and the banks would like to have their decorations between the first and tenth of December. We decorated thirty-three places one year. It was a rental deal 'cause I did not sell them the stuff 'cause if I sold it to them then they would do their own work. By rental I got the jobs every year, and we'd put them
LaVOY: CAPUCCI:
LaVOY: CAPUCCI:
LaVOY: CAPUCCI:
33
up and then take them down and clean them up and then I'd save the stuff and rotate it around. Yeah, we used
to do a lot of Christmas decorations. They were real nice. I used to go to Frisco [San Francisco, California] to buy the stuff, and then finally the Cohen and Sylvan Display Company--was out of Frisco-they finally rented a room at the Riverside Hotel and they would set everything up and save me a trip to Frisco. They would put it up early. Sometime in June they would decorate two or three rooms in Reno, and I'd go up and pick what I wanted.
LaVOY: Did you do decorating in Reno or just in Fallon?
CAPUCCI: Reno, yeah, most of the banks in Reno, Fallon, the El Capitan in Hawthorne and the Nugget in Carson City and some in Gardnerville and one even in Mina 'cause it was a good friend of mine and she was quite aways, but I went clear down to Mina and decorate, yeah. And I used to decorate a lot of the buildings for special occasions like the inaugural and the post office in Carson. When they opened up that I decorated that with red, white, and blue banners. Special occasions, we did that, too.
LaVOY: How did you happen to get into that business?
CAPUCCI: I used to decorate my own club. Started out by decorating and putting the banners outside and people would come to me, "Why don't you decorate my place?" and that's the way we got started.
LaVOY: You have no formal training?
CAPUCCI: No, just guess work. At first, it was terrible. I don't know how I ever got another job (laughing) 'cause I didn't know too much about color schemes like they do now.
LaVOY: Did you ever do any decorating for Grey, Reid, Wright?
CAPUCCI: No, no. I did a clothing store there on Maine Street across from the court house. It was a shoe store. I can't remember his name. I used to do that every year and Coffee's Jewelry. I did that every year, too..
LaVOY: Well, I think that's wonderful that you just started on your own.
CAPUCCI: The banks were really nice to work with 'cause they were clean. See, the clubs. Too much smoke. A lot of the decorations we'd get smoked up and when I'd take
34
them home, we had a great big trailer just for that alone, a sixty-foot trailer and it was full of Christmas stuff and you could smell the smoke, and even I didn't smoke. I never did smoke, but when I'd work in those clubs, I'd come home and my clothes would smell like smoke. Terrible. Well, anyway, I finally quit that, and I donated all my Christmas stuff to the Fallon Fire Department. They sold a lot of the stuff out and made a little money, so I donated all my stuff. A lot of stuff was new.
LaVOY: Were you living with your family out on Sheckler Road at this point in time?
CAPUCCI: No, I moved out from the ranch. I rented a couple of houses in town, and I finally bought my own place. I started out with a little house there by the football field where the junior high school is now. It's got the ornamental iron all the way around it, and it's still there. Then I moved out where I was, and that's where we did most of the decoration from there 'cause my sister lived with me.
LaVOY: Which sister?
CAPUCCI: Lena. She's in the convalescent home now.
I had a dog named Barney, and everybody knew him. He went where I went, and even the Governor would pet him. When I went back to when the President, I met Pat Nixon (Mrs. Richard). She came to Reno one time, and r tied my dog over in the corner, and 'course the securities before she arrived there to make a speech, why, they told me, "You cannot leave your dog, 'cause," she said, " if the dog should happen to bite her." And I said, "Well, I'll move him." But I kind of stalled around 'cause I didn't know where to put him, so I left him there and left him, and pretty quick here come Pat Nixon, and she come over, and she saw the dog, and she went over and petted him, and I thought, "Oh, my gosh! Here we go," but nothing happened, and, anyway, when the thing was all over, security came up to me, said, "Well, that's never happened before, but you got by."
LaVOY: What kind of a dog was Barney?
CAPUCCI: He was a black labrador. One morning, I saw the dog. He was tied up in front of my yard one morning, and I saw the dog, and I'd never owned a dog, and I tried to run him off, but he was tied up with a little string, and so I walked out there, and he was wiggling his tail, and there was a thumb tack with a note on it and
35
it said, "Willie, we have to leave town. Can't tell you why or where. Please take care of Barney. We'll be in touch." But nobody ever come over, and I was scheduled to go to Palm Springs to do their parade. I took the dog and I put him there by my house and tied him up and my sister, Lena, said, "What are you going to do with the dog?" I said, "Well, I don't know." She said, "Well, Willie, I can't take care of him." I said, "Well, I'll take him to Palm Springs." When I took Barney to Palm Springs, let him out five or six times, and he was a great dog, and he stuck right with me, so when we got down to a motel that's when I thought I might have a problem. I stayed at the Jamaica Motel, and I told that lady, I said, "Well, somebody had tied a dog," and I said, "I had to bring
him with me. Do you think it'd be all right?" "Oh, sure," she said. "We got a room here. It's got a back door with a little lawn and you can put your dog in
there." I said, "Fine." So that's what we did. I set
up my sound equipment in Palm Springs, a beautiful
town. All palm trees and everything, and I had a
little carpet, and I'd tie him to the palm tree. I'd have a ladder climbing up the tree putting up my speaker. People would come by and pet the dog. One lady even left a quarter there for food for my dog, and every year--I went twenty-five years in Palm Springs-and when I'd go down there, I'd always have my dog, and they'd say, "Well, there's that guy from Nevada. There must be a parade." It was funny, and so that's the way I took Barney down there. So when I brought him back, why nobody could ever take him away from me. He lived to be seventeen years old.
I wanted to buy a new pickup, and I didn't know how was the best way to save money, so I went to the First National Bank, and I said, "I want to buy a bag of
pennies. New pennies." And they said, "All right, we'll make arrangements." There was five thousand pennies to a bag that weighed thirty-five pounds, and they were sealed. I had to pay four dollars and something freight on them, so I started to buy a bag of pennies a month to buy a pickup. But fifty dollars a month would not buy a pickup, so after several years buying these pennies every month, I ended up with eighty-five bags of pennies, and they were in my basement. Then when they changed the pennies to the zinc, I quit collecting them because these were all copper, sealed and uncirculated.
Well, anyway, George Lott invited me down to the fire department one time for a banquet, and he said, "We're going to have short ribs or some kind of ribs," and
36
said, "Bring your dog down 'cause we'll have plenty of bones." So I did.
Then I got thinking one time, "Well, what am I going to do with all them pennies?" So I asked the fire department, "How many members on the fire department?" They said, "Thirty-three." I said, "I'll tell you what. All these pennies are willed to my dog. If something happens to me, whoever takes care of him will get the eighty-five bags of pennies. But Barney wants to donate one bag to each member of the fire department." So arrangements were made. They accepted the bid, and they came down. They brought the fire engine down to my house, and there was fifteen or sixteen firemen, and the pennies were in my basement, so they had to relay them by tossing them from one fireman to the other clear out to the Betsy, and they ended up with thirty-three bags of pennies. Theyre in the museum on "Old Betsy" now, and they're still there with, I think, my picture with Barney's on them. So that's what's happened to my pennies. Since then I give a bag to the Ducks Unlimited and the Bighorn, and they raffle them off. The first bag of pennies brought in two hundred and forty dollars, and that was given to the Ducks Unlimited or the Bighorn banquet, and I still do the same thing now. And I give some of my friends a bag of pennies.
LaVOY: Well, that's wonderful! How did you end up buying the truck then?
CAPUCCI: Well, my house was full of antiques, and the basement was full, and the upstairs you couldn't hardly get around, and I had a lot of visitors keep coming and coming, well, I thought it was time to get rid of some of my stuff 'cause the house was broken into a couple of times, and there was some property stolen. So I made contact with the museum [Churchill County Museum], and they decided that they would help me out, and the auction [Stremmel Auctions] gave them five per cent of the auction, and I gave them five per cent. We had fifteen or sixteen ladies come down there for a couple of months to box up all this stuff, and they took their choice of what they wanted and the rest of the stuff went to Stremmel's in Reno. So they ended up making a little money, but they did work hard, the girls.
LaVOY: Now, that brings in the museum. I understand that you were one of the founders of the museum. Would you tell us the history of that?
CAPUCCI: Well, with all this stuff I had, I decided, "Why don't
37
I donate some of this stuff to a museum if we had one." Doris Drumm was a real good friend of mine, and I went and seen Doris, and I told her, I said, "Let's try to start a museum," and she said, "Well, Willie, I don't think it'll ever go," and I said, "Well, I'd sure like to try something." Well, anyway, that's all that was said, but Doris right away was running around town trying to find a building, and there was a building where the Urgent Care is now with the pillars out in front. It was owned by Mrs. [Annie B. Coffrin]
Nichols, and she lived in California, so Doris came over one day. She said, "The building was vacated."
She says, "I'll try to get that building. I'll contact
Mrs. Nichols." I said, "That'll be great." Well, anyway, it took about a month or something. In the meantime, Doris came down to the house. She says, "You know what?" and I said, "No." She said, "We got the old Safeway building." And I said, "Oh, yeah?"
I'll tell you the way that happened. There was a fellow named Alex Oser and his wife lived down in Long Beach, California, and they were great hunters. They used to go down to Hammie Kent's and hunt, and one day Alex Oser mentioned, "I'd like to do something for Churchill County," 'cause he come down two or three times a year, and he said, "I think the library." Well, Hammie Kent or Nina Kent told him, "Well, I think the library got some kind of a grant, but I think they're talking about a museum," and that's all that was said, so Alex Oser went back to Long Beach. He contacted the Safeway people. Safeway had moved out, and the building was vacated, so Alex Oser bought the property and the building and donated it to us for a museum. So, Doris Drumm come over one day, and she said, "You know what? We got a building." I said, "Oh, did you get a hold of Mrs. Nichols?" And she says, "No! We got something better! We've got the old Safeway store, and I've got the key. Come on down. Let's go look at it," and that's the way it started.
LaVOY: About what year was that?
CAPUCCI: I don't know what year [1967], but when I first got started, it was around February 1. I remember that 'cause I kept a small diary and I kept track of everything that I did, but I didn't keep my diary going 'cause I had so much things going on, so when we went down there we looked at the building and Andy Drumm was a contractor and all the work was done volunteer. I was the curator, but I didn't know nothing about it excepting I'd go out and contact people to bring stuff in. Contacted the school. Don Travis was the
38
principal and some of the kids would come down and help
us. [AL] Childers was a contractor. He built the showcases for us for nothing. [Edward] Cooper was a painter. He painted. Joe Wallace donated all the paint from Kent's from Wallace's Farm Store, and the glass was donated by the glass company. I have something here, but it's quite long, but I'll leave it and you can probably go through it. Harrah's Club. We asked it about donating a car and all that, but anyway I've got it here if you want to make a separate deal on that.
LaVOY: Thank you.
CAPUCCI: On the museum I kept a diary, but I didn't put the year on it.
February 1, I contacted the high school and Don Travis for a school project. I told him what we wanted down there, and then I talked to Mrs. [John] Gaines and same members of the Artemesia Club, for the space for a kitchen scene. Talked to the Fallon Chamber. They have a large showcase with rocks in it, which they donated to the Museum.
On February 4, was a Sunday. I didn't do nothing.
February 5, spent several hours at the high school ag shop, and they will donate material and labor for the museum. Talked to Lem Allen for a high school display. Went to Ellen Mills' place and looked at some antiques. Called Mrs. Dodge for a display. Went to Frazzini's store about a rug as a gift. Made arrangements to have the County safe to be moved at the museum. Talked to [Ernest Samuel, Jr.] Berney about--we had a bill and
talked about a burglar alarm. Phoned Mr. Kent at the rock shop on the Reno Highway for a rock display and moved a brass bed and a stove from the Venturacci's for a bedroom display. Went to my place. Picked up a marble dresser for the bedroom and ordered thirteen locks and some brackets from the showcases from the Mercantile.
February 6, we decided to build a partition in the
middle of the building. TCID display. Picked up
a coffee grinder from Kolhoss Store. Picked up a picture, Fallon country fair, from Mrs. [Tillie Benadum] Caselton. Picked up a Nevada, the Nevada Building Exposition of San Francisco, 1915, a gift from Mrs. [Minnie] Blair.
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February 7, picked up a marble topped table and an antique picture and a basin, a water pitcher, and a bedroom set, two lamps from my place for the bedroom. Both hung three flags at the museum, an old state flag, Nevada state flag, and the Virginia City centennial from my place. Told Bob Miller, our carpenter, to make a dolly with
rollers on it to put the Kolhoss coffee grinder on it, and decided to hang some plyboard from the ceiling display items and so on and talked to Warren Hursh about a little money to pay for the material to be used in our lobby room for the art room and Mr. Cooper of Fallon, the painter, said he would donate the paint and not charge us nothing, so we got the building free. We would furnish the paint and he said he would tape and sand down our lobby, tape and glitter the ceiling free if we would furnish material. Twelve dollars to fifteen dollars for material. That's what I went to see Warren Hursh about to see if he could give us the monies. He talked to Mrs. Gaines about the Nevada booth. Went to the TCID. Asked them about the Lahontan picture which is still standing there, and everything was donated at that time. Talked to Chub Huff. He said he would make a duplicate copy of any picture we wanted free of charge. I also called the captain of the Navy base for his photographer for making enlargements and the City of Fallon picture 1911 at the Pioneer Title office.
February 8, hung some pictures. Uncle Tom's
cabin. Talked to Mr. [Earl] Stuart of the County about moving a safe. Went to Fallon Mercantile about glass for the cases. Met Mrs. Beuna Dodge at her home. Showed me her collection of valuable glass. Said she would display about twenty pieces at the museum. Talked to Andreason about a gift.
February 9, hung Beulah Buckner's picture on the wall. Talked to Doris Drumm. Said she would put a bottle display. Went to Kolhoss and got two boxes of old hats that Mr. Kolhoss donated.
February 10, went to Mr. Blair. Picked up some items for the kitchen. Picked up some rags from the Hereford's home for the museum.
February 12, moved some lumber to make more room for two more booths: a large picture of Lahontan
40
Dam and another booth for the City and County. Talked to Ron Baxter, Schurz--that's the Indian Reservation--exhibit of Indian stuff. Mrs. Garnick's mother [Mrs. Mattor] said she would put an exhibit of her rare china and a booth was reserved for her. Mrs. Gaines called me and said she could not get anywhere with Mrs. Wall. Mrs. Wall had a lot of old stuff, but she would not talk to us. The fellow behind the Farmer's Market told me to pick up a showcase. Moved the showcase around. Started to clean it.
This showcase was very funny. It was highly polished and everything, and somebody came down and said, "Do you know what that showcase is made of?" and I said, "No." He said, "That's sagebrush wood highly polished." And I couldn't believe it.
LaVOY: Is that still in the museum?
CAPUCCI: I think it is. I'm not sure. I'll check up on that.
But, anyway, this was that showcase. We moved it, cleaned it up.
The high school class showed up, did a lot of work putting partitions up and got a buggy from Mr. Lou Anderson. Took the four high school kids, myself, and Mr. Miller to dismantle it and put it in the museum, Mr. Miller moved the partition back getting the booth ready for the TCID. Went down to see Mr. [Larry] Fister, the sheriff of Fallon, and made arrangements to borrow some of the prisoners to help us out. He loaned us four prisoners.
They were painting and doing some other works, and the second day one of them escaped. The third day one of them was sniffing glue in the boiler room so I had to take the prisoners back and didn't get too much work out of them.
LaVOY: (laughing)
CAPUCCI: February 16, some negatives were made by Chub Huff, the photographer. Took a prisoner, [Daniel] Soltice, to help me move two showcases from Riggs' Upholstery so the sheriff loaned me two more prisoners, but I had to take them back. Met Mr. [L.] Raabe who said he would build part of the showcase for the fashion booth. That's the fellow that worked for Childers. Talked to Mr. Berney about the museum. Talked to Mrs. Drumm about her
41
display. High school finished the front platform. Partition was completed. Talked to Mrs. [Don]
Rightmire about the brands. Made arrangements for the Cowbelles to purchase two pieces of plyboard for their displays, so they paid for two pieces of plyboard. Met Mrs. Drumm. Said she would build a partition For us between the two iron poles.
Danny Soltice, the prisoner, and I picked up some Indian rocks at Drumm's and a large Indian stone from the Eckert's. Went to Ray Nygren's place in Harmon District. Picked up a pump, a table, a toilet, and odds and ends.
Now, you see, when I started out here, I didn't know what to pick. I picked up a lot of stuff, but after the curator got here, she took a lot of the stuff back.
Like the toilet. (laughing)
LaVOY: (laughing)
CAPUCCI: But, anyway, we picked up odds and ends and two chairs, a spittoon, a typewriter.
February 18 was a Sunday. Did not work.
February 19 swept the floor. Helped paint. High school kids did some more work.
The prisoners worked, and that's when they escaped. I told you about that.
The Wildlife Department about a display. Talked to Berney about the wildlife display and a phone call to Reno. Met the Churchill County crew and worked most of the day moving the Churchill County safe. Two prisoners showed up. They painted most of the day. Went to Palludan's. Checked on some glass. Went to Kent's to pick up three large pieces of plate glass free. The high school kids showed up again. Grace Kendrick and I made arrangements for the rock display. The roofers showed up, patched the roof. No charge. The paint showed up. Finished the lounge. Nina Kent showed up and talked on the museum. The telephone crew showed up. Delivered two showcases free.
February 21, it was a Wednesday. Prisoners showed up. High school boys showed up. Andy Drumm's crew showed up. Completed their work. Received a letter from Harrah's Club, Rena. They turned us down on the loan of a car. Moved a couple of
cases from the rock club.
42
February 22, it was a Thursday. Worked eight hours today. Mr. Miller went to Reno. I had two prisoners that worked. Mr. Fister, the sheriff, visited the museum. Checked on his men. Mrs. Gaines came to check on her museum display. Mrs. Drumm also came. I cleaned the stove. Moved it in the booth. Bedroom scene is completed.
Wildlife men showed up. They did some measurements.
February 23, met Mr. Raabe again. He went to Kent's Lumber Yard. Made some arrangements to cut some plate glass. He thought it was best to cut it there. He started to put the frame on for the patio and the fashion booth. Mr. Carlson from Youngstown, Ohio, said he would donate seventeen florescent lights.
He lived in Ohio, and he was a very good friend of Mr. Charleston. When he came down here, he visited the museum and saw what we were doing and he owned this florescent light company back in Ohio. So here they come. Seventeen lights for our booths, free of charge.
Talked to [Charles "Cassy"] Alworth about painting a scene for the Chamber's booth.
February 24, talked to Grace Kendrick. Said she was leaving for two weeks. Lined up some work for the rock booth and Fallon Bottle Club. Three prisoners worked today, two Indians--they were in the jail--came over and helped us do some work.
February 26 picked up two branding irons. Took them out to Mrs. Rightmire. Three prisoners worked today and did some work on the fashion booth. Talked to Don Travis about the letters for the museum on the outside building to advertise the Fallon Museum. He said the carpenter shop would do the letters, and they made them in an antique style.
I think they're still there.
February 27, Tuesday, went to TCID. Took down the large picture of Lahontan Dam. Moved it to the museum. I went to Bill Lattin's ranch about blacksmith items. Went to Willie Cristani on Johnson Ranch for some items. Went to [Cliff] Raney's ranch and picked up a coffee grinder and some nice antiques at his place. Prisoners worked
43
all day today.
February 28, spent some time at the museum. Talked to Doris Drumm and talked to Bud Berney. Talked to a Mrs. Manning about her rocks booth. Prisoners worked today.
February 29, Sprouse and Reitz store, Mrs. [Mary or Walter] Richards donated some cloth for us. Went to the upholstery and Frenchman Station, fire department, telephone company. Glenn Stewart back from the Farmer's Market. Marge Dodge, [John] Rigg's upholstery store. Eddie Cooper was a painter. He came down and did some painting, and Lee brothers did some cement work free. Jack Tedford furnished some sand for the Forty Mile Desert display. Sheriff's department sent us some labor. The City police some labor. City of.
Fallon cleaning, free propane. Bob Miller, a carpenter, Bud Berney painting, Norton's Bootery some glass, Palludan's glass, Doris Drumm some glass. Courthouse typewriter was donated and an adding machine. KVLV did some advertising for us. Fallon Eagle Standard, Heck's glass, Ron Bigg's sign, the safe county crew, Drumm large timbers, and so on. The Motor Supply, a California glass company, Lafeyette, California, Kent's farm, paint, Marge's yarn, glass. Wilford Stone, Dick Graham, and Noble Evans, the painters, all did this for all free. Clarence Taylor showcase. Last of the showcases. The measurements. Talked to Sheriff Fister for a display at museum of prisoner weapons. They said they would put a display in. Talked to Ray Alcorn about the display of wildlife. Prisoners worked, and the high school boys worked again. The radio station talked for five minutes on wanted glass for showcase and help to work on the museum. Public to start putting items in the museum on the loan basis. Have had several responses on this. A cabinet maker called right away. Said he would help to build and meet him at ten o'clock tomorrow. Mrs. Norton's, let's say, something about her daughter called, said she would donate some glass. Mrs. [Annabelle] Eckert called. Said she wanted to donate an Indian rock and bowl. Mr. [Dana] Coffee called. Said he wanted to donate an old lamp.
LaVOY: That's all very interesting.. You were very, very busy during the month of February, and you said it took quite a few more months before you opened it. Can you
tell me about the opening of the museum?
44
CAPUCCI:
LaVOY:
CAPUCCI:
Well, riot too much on that. I can't remember too much on that. I don't know what to tell you on that.
Were you on the first board of directors of the museum?
I was the first curator. My name is on a plaque outside the building by the rock . . . There's a big bin there they used in the mines, and it's full of rocks. And when we filled that bin full of rocks, somebody stole half the rocks. So the next batch we got, the guy duplicated them, and we cemented them in so they could not steal them. But my name is up. I was the first curator, and there was no pay. I would say all of our work for the first year was all donated and even the help inside. And when we first opened up, we had members of the Board of Directors and all of that and all the help was donated and there was hardly no pay. I know that I owed some money, fifteen or sixteen dollars, and I called up Mr. Berney, who was one of the directors, and told him we owed some money. Well, in the meantime, the mayor, [Merton] Domonoske, found out about it, and he sent us the check for the full amount. It was fifteen or sixteen dollars to pay off something we owed at Palludan's or somewhere. That was the first bill we got.
Did you have many things stolen from the museum when it first opened?
Yeah. I had a potbellied stove come up missing, and a couple of other things. There was a valuable pistol stolen from the display, and not too much, but we couldn't watch everybody. It was kind of a tough deal, but a lot of the people was okay. There was just a few of them that . . . There's always that wherever you do. It was very fortunate. There was only a few things.
I can't imagine a potbellied stove being stolen.
It belonged to Eddie Venturacci. See, when I picked up the stove, I didn't know too much how to do it 'cause we were starting from scratch. We had no schooling. We never went to other museums to see how they did it. We started it from scratch and did it the best way we could. The same as the display cases turned out very good 'cause most of them are still there. But we did have a lot of help from Mrs. Drumm, Mr. Drumm, and Grace Kendrick, Bud Berney, Edgar Clayton, Hammie [Ira Hamlin] Kent, Nina Kent, and many, many others. They'd come down and suggest this, and we'd go along with
LaVOY: CAPUCCI:
LaVOY: CAPUCCI:
45
them. When we first went to see the museum, the meat market is where we put all the kitchens and all that stuff, and on the other side there was a super market, but like I say we had no expense hardly, and we never thought after we built the museum, who's going to keep paying it and keep it going. We never even thought of that.
LaVOY: Well, when did the county take it over?
CAPUCCI: I don't remember that, either. But they donated us a budget to work on and it wasn't very much to begin with, but donations were great. I was the one that started the Pet Memorial 'cause I had my dog. The way the Pet Memorial started was if friends of mine would call me up, said their dog passed away, and they give me the name, and I would send a donation, and that's the way it got started. So they got quite a pet donation in there. Same as a memorial. Yeah, lot of donations come in rather than flowers, and that's really helps out.
LaVOY: How long did you work as a curator?
CAPUCCI: After they decided we'd better get a curator, they asked me if I wanted to be one, and I said, "No, I don't have the time. I cannot be there all the time, and it wouldn't be fair to receive wages and not be there," which I had a problem with one of our curators-I won't mention his name--but everytime you'd go down there, he was never there, so, you know, it wasn't right, but the last couple were great. I think we've got a great one now. I haven't met her, yet, but I'm going to go down and meet her. I went there the other day, but she was off work.
LaVOY: Well, the museum is absolutely wonderful, and I can see that you did a great deal of work on it.
CAPUCCI: Yeah, and it really panned out, and, like I say, when we first started out, Doris didn't think it'd go over, but she got interested in it. It was through Drumms a lot that they did a lot of work 'cause he had the equipment.
LaVOY: I understand that Mrs. Drumm used to have her husband take his backhoe out in the hills and dig up old dumps and that's where a lot of your bottles came from. Is that correct?
CAPUCCI: Well, that was in Virginia City. See, at that time, you could dig anywhere and find these old, old bottles.
LaVOY:
46
At that time, I wasn't sleeping too good, and I was eating too much, and I talked to Ned Kendrick, and Ned Kendrick said, "What's you need, Willie, is a little bit of hard work. Why don't you go to Virginia City and start digging those bottles?" So I said, "Well, maybe I'll do that." So I went up there one day, and I started digging and I found quite a few bottles, but I didn't know the value of them, and I used to trade them off at the bar and get a six-pack of beer to come home with them, and finally Ned looked at these bottles that I'd come home [with], and say, "My gosh! Where'd you get that one? I didn't find one of those." And I got interested. I kept going back and forth all the time. So that's the way it got started. So, anyway, Mrs. Drumm wrote to the people back east that owned a big lot there and it was a dump. So they gave us permission to go ahead and bulldoze and put it back in a level land, so that's what we did, but there was a lot of people were angry. We had a bottle club at that time, the Fallon Bottle Club, and we dug up a lot of bottles, and we drew numbers, and after we drew the numbers, you picked out the bottle you wanted. Number one got to pick the first one, number two the second one, and so on down. But, anyway, in Virginia City there was a lot of people angry about what we did, and I can see it now. I didn't think about it then, but now it's awfully hard to dig anywhere 'cause it's all private property, you know, and what the heck?
Well, now, there are a lot of those bottles in the museum in their collection, but do you have a lot-at your home, too?
CAPUCCI: Yeah, I had a lot of them, too, but Doris Drumm's collection was the best. We all decided we'd donate one of our best bottles to the museum and name it the Fallon Bottle Club. I donated one. Mine was from Seven Troughs. It was a little medicine bottle with a rubber stopper on it, and it had a grasshopper inside. Seven Troughs is up there by Lovelock. It's an old mining town, so evidently, I don't know if there was a creek up there or not, but I figured that probably that bottle belonged to a fisherman that was fishing with grasshoppers. Well, he threw the bottle down, and I've got it. It's got "Seven Troughs, Nevada." There was a lot of bottles in Virginia City. Drugstore bottles with their name on them and Virginia City, Gold Hill. And I might mention this, too. There was a druggist named Tom Woodliff, and his son is still with us.
Frank owns the Western Hotel and the motel behind
there. Tom Woodliff was the druggist, and he had a lot of bottles. I had some of his bottles. So the booth
47
of the Fallon Bottle Club has got one each of the members in their booth.
LaVOY: Is the bottle club still going?
CAPUCCI: No, we dismantled since digging got tough. All the Fallon dumps and the Tonopah dumps were all gone over. You'd be surprised how much good stuff came out.
Tokens. The tokens are a little brass, metal thing look like a quarter, and the business house is stamped on there. Like the bakery, "good for a ten-cent loaf of bread" and drinks, especially a twelve and a half cents. There's a lot of collectors on those. We found a lot of them in Tonopah, Goldfield, Fallon dump.
LaVOY: Did you go out as a group to dig bottles?
CAPUCCI: No, most of them individual. We did that one time, but most of them couldn't get off the same time, but if we'd go up there, there'd be three or four digging all the time. Yeah, it was something. People so deep down you couldn't even see them. See the dirt flying out. The bottles were buried . . . see, in those days, the lot of saloons in Virginia City--I'll take Virginia City, for instance, or Tonopah--lot of clubs, and then when they got through with the empty bottles there was no regular dump. They just went out there and dumped
them, and that's the way it happened. Man! (laughing)
LaVOY: You put in so many years with the museum. After you retired as curator of the museum, what did you go-into?
CAPUCCI: I just stuck with my sound system and then I built my little house out there, and after all my antiques moved out, why I stuck with these ducks and geese that I'm
doing now. (laughing) It's quite a job.
LaVOY: I notice that you have such a collection of ducks and geese and pheasants. Would you tell me how you started on that?
CAPUCCI: Somebody had dumped a duck off. It was a female, I remember that, and I didn't have the male, so there was a fellow down in Harmon District named Baumann, had a bunch of ducks, and I went out there and bought one. He charged me five dollars for the male, so I started out with a pair. Now look what I got!
LaVOY: How many do you feed every day?
CAPUCCI: Well, this year the Fish and Game came out and counted them this winter when everything was froze out. They
48
figured we had about fifteen or sixteen hundred, but these are the wild ones, and I can't control that 'cause they fly in and eat and then fly out, but the tames ones I ended up with over a couple hundred. (laughing)
LaVOY: Tell me about your daily trip to get food for them.
CAPUCCI: I buy corn, and I spent about eight hundred dollars this year on corn and wheat to feed them, and then I did get quite a bit of help this year. The Fish and Game donated some money to buy wheat and the Wildlife donated some, and the only reason I like to keep a going on the Ducks Unlimited 'cause you'd be surprised how many people come out there with their little kids with a loaf of bread, throw it over the fence, and all the ducks come a running, and it's something. Then at the end of a school year--I think it's the West End School---the teacher gets permission from the school board to bring twenty, thirty kids over to my house, have a picnic the last day of school. They bring bread. They have two buses. So they do that every year. I put the benches out there and a garbage can, and they have popsicles or something, and they feed the ducks.
LaVOY: A lot of those ducks that might have migrated, cannot because there's no water around here because of the drought, then they come to your place and that's where they spend some time.
CAPUCCI: I have a well there, and I pump water. That's why I got water there. In the summertime I draw out of the canal 'cause I have a water right, but in the wintertime there's no water in the canal, so I have a pump and I pump water and I feed them. Well, like this year was very bad. There's no water in Harmon, no water in Stillwater, Lahontan's down very low, and then the Sheckler Reservoir, nothing. So I had probably the only open water outside of Soda Lake, and then I feed them, and that's why they come.
LaVOY: What got you interested in the peacocks that you have?
CAPUCCI: I had three males and three females, but if you know anything about a peacock they're very noisy during mating season, and I didn't want the neighbors to complain, 'cause when they holler it sounds like a little kid getting run over. Well, anyway, I got rid of my hens, and I'd thought I'd keep the males 'cause they're beautiful, They spread their tails. You wouldn't believe it. Did you ever see a peacock? How
49
they do it?
LaVOY: Yes, yes.
CAPUCCI: Well, anyway, I got three peacocks. The kids from the school also come over and get the feathers. They study the feathers. So, every year I have a bunch of kids that come over and they collect the feathers.
LaVOY: Do they go around your property picking them up?
CAPUCCI: Yeah, and we pick them up when we see them and we save them. Yeah, there's a lot of people want them. Lot of fishermen want them for making flies.
LaVOY: You have golden pheasants, too. How did you get into that?
CAPUCCI: There was a fellow named [Robert] Childers. He's up in Alaska. Well, he had these about his place. He had about six cages. Well, he was moving, and he asked me if I wanted the birds, and they were beautiful. There was all kinds of them, so I said, "Yes," so he donated all them birds, and I got them in the back of my place. And that's another thing, now, the kids come over and look at the birds. They're pretty old, but I still got them.
LaVOY: One thing that I did notice when I passed your place
one time last year, you had a huge ram there.
CAPUCCI: The sheep I had belonged to Venturacci, and it was a small lamb, and it slept with the dog, but when Venturacci planted the garden it was eating his garden, so he asked me if he could bring it over and put it in the pasture after it grew up a little bit, and I said, "Yeah," so he brought it over, and he never come after it. But I do go over to his place and pick up a bale of hay once in awhile. I've had this sheep for many, many years, but finally it passed away.
LaVOY: Oh! that must have been recently.
CAPUCCI: Yeah, it was bad. He couldn't get up, and all the kids come over and pet him. He was the only one I had.
LaVOY: I understand that you owned Oasis Bowl [1555 South Taylor] for a year. Would you tell me about that?
CAPUCCI: Yes, I had that -For a year, and when I first started out, business wasn't too good, and so I tried to promote something. There was a fellow came through and
50
he was a hypnotist. He had a turban around his head and everything, and he wanted to hypnotize some lady that I knew and he said it would draw a big crowd, so I kind of went for it. So we made the right contact. Got this girl to be hypnotized every night for a while. Then she was going to try to break the world's record for endurance. When we first started out, we drew numbers, like one, two, or three and on up, and when we hypnotized the girl, we hypnotized her under a number. Then we'd charge people a dollar, and we had numbers one to fifty, and if you had number twenty-five, for instance, and if you hollered twenty-five, she'd wake up. We'd go in my office and hypnotized her number twenty-five the first night. And then if somebody guessed that--the Lion's Club donated five hundred to be distributed for a while. And the next night, maybe number seven, and it was really interesting, 'cause if nobody guessed those numbers, at the end of the show the hypnotist would ask somebody would give the number
eight. "You holler number eight." "Number eight,"
and she'd wake up. So that went over big. I have a picture home with all the money that . . . Well, anyway, when we hypnotized the lady to break the world's record, I can't remember how many days she went. We had a special nurse to take care of her and all that, and people were parked all over to come and see it, and hypnotism was really something. I didn't believe it too much, either.
Another thing we did, too, we had chairs in there and he'd hypnotize three or four kids. Some of them; he couldn't hypnotize. They wouldn't go through with it, so he'd tell them to leave, but the five or six that were hypnotized, he would tell them, "Now, we're going up to North Pole, and it's getting colder and colder,"
and this kid would bundle up. It was really funny.
Then we moved down south. "It's getting warmer and warmer and warmer," and the kid would start look like he was sweatin', and I couldn't believe it. Another thing he did, too. He took two chairs. Hypnotized this one fellow solid as steel, steel, and we'd sit three or four guys on top of him and he wouldn't even bend. Now, unhypnotize, one guy, and he'd 90 down. Another thing, he hypnotized one kid and he said, "You're going to try to leave this bowling alley and there's a monster in the back door. You start over there." And, boy, that kid went over and turned around and run like the devil. It was really interesting.
Well, anyway, this girl that was hypnotized to try to break the record, why, she went a long ways, but
finally the doctor said, "Well, I think we better give
51
her a rest." But even the mayor came down.
LaVOY: Who was the mayor?
CAPUCCI: Domonoske was the mayor. He came down, and I got a lot of letters congratulating, told us to break the record. I've got a lot of that stuff at home.
LaVOY: Was it a local girl that was hypnotized?
CAPUCCI : Yeah, she was a waitress girl. We paid her. I forgot how much to do this. I had to hire three nurses to make sure she was all right. Nothing happened. It was something.
LaVOY: And that helped your business at the bowling alley?
CAPUCCI: She would bowl. She'd just keep bowling. Take her time. Hour after hour after hour at night time and daytime.
LaVOY: How close did she come to the world's record?
CAPUCCI: I think she lacked a day or so is all. She was getting pretty tired. We even had to have a doctor look at
her, but I made money. (laughing)
LaVOY: Why did you give up the bowling alley?
CAPUCCI: The fellow that owned it before me didn't pay the royalty on Brunswick. Brunswick owned the bowling equipment and he owed quite a bit of money. When I took over, the Brunswick people got a hold of me and said if you try to pay it, we'll go along with you, but you'll have to pay so much, but I couldn't afford to do that 'cause they owed quite a few thousand dollars. So then I finally got out. and Barney Fritz bought me out and I don't know if they ever paid it off or not. It's changed hands quite a few times.
LaVOY: About how long ago was that that you owned it?
CAPUCCI: I don't know. When it was first built, there was three officers from the base that built it, and they had it for quite a while, and then I forgot who owned it after that. It was pretty tough to make a go of it 'cause Fallon was small then. I don't even know who's got it now, but Barney Fritz had it for a while and Barney did pretty good on it.
LaVOY: Well, you've had such a very, very interesting life. Is there anything else that you would like to tell me
about how Fallon has changed and what your feelings are about the change?
CAPUCCI: In my line of work the sound business, I travel a lot in the summertime. I saw Palm Springs grow up. I've been going down there for twenty--Five years, and you couldn't believe. When it started changing I could go anywhere with my dog and let him out just off of Main Street which is Palm Canyon Drive and Indian Avenue and just go out a little ways and it's all desert and a lot of road runners and my dog used to enjoy going out in the desert, but now it's all houses and everything. One-way streets. Bob Hope has got a beautiful place up on the Rimrocks and I wanted to go see that Rimrock, his place. There's a restaurant a little ways from his place named the Rimrock, and every year we'd try to get up this curved oiled road with lamps on both sides. It goes way up on steep, overlooking Palm Springs, but they have a security there in a glass thing, and he'd stop us and I told him I wanted to go up further. He said, "Well, that's a private property." I said,
"Well, isn't that the cafe?" I knew that, but we were trying to get up there. Well, he turned us around, and he said, "You have to go down the street. That's where the Rimrock Restaurant is." But Palm Springs has changed. Death Valley's about the same. The only thing they've changed there is tear out some of the palm trees and some of the lawn to make motels and things and I saw Reno grow up and Gardnerville, Carson
City, and Fallon, too. I'll tell you. We used to know
everybody, but no more.
LaVOY: Well, I think that's the way that a lot of people of your age -Feel that the town has grown and so many people are gone now, but your interview has been very, very interesting, and on behalf of the Churchill County Museum Oral History Project I want to thank you for taking the time to give this interview.
CAPUCCI: Thank you very much. And if I'd known this I would of studied a little bit better 'cause I had to hesitate on some of the items and look around, but . . . (laughing)
LaVOY: You did a beautiful job, Willie, and thank you. CAPUCCI: Thank you.
ADDENDUM
F. J. (Barney) Fritz purchased five hundred surplus DC3 engines from the US Government and started a small engine overhaul business
(Nevada Airways Machine Shop). He sold the completed engines to
small South American airlines. His place of operation was at the Naval Auxiliary Airstation that had been decommissioned. The Navy decided to reactivate the air station and gave Fritz thirty days
to move his operations. He had no place to go so sold the
remaining engines to Texas Railroad Equipment Co. According to
Mrs. Ruth Fritz the engines were melted down for scrap metal. Shortly thereafter the Korean War started and the US Government had great need for DC3 engines, but most of them had been destroyed.
Employees of this overhaul business were: Beryl Boden, Don Mills, Gil Laufenberger, Clint Linnamen, Max Lewis, Ray Laval and H. B. Tyler.
INDEX
Willie Capucci
Airport Page
Antique auction 29
36
Barney 34-35, 36
Bars 14-16, 17-20
Birth
Business interests 14-17, 29-35, 45, 49-
52
Capucci, Armond 3
Capucci, Ernest 1-4, 9-11
Capucci, Linda 2
Capucci, Louise Ponte 1-2, 9, 11
Capucci, Rosie 3, 9-11
Casazza, Baccicca (Sam) 3
Center street businesses 26-27
Chinese restaurants 3
Churchill County Museum 36-45
Clubs - see Bars
Cristani family 2
Decorating business 32-34
Dinwiddie-Munson Company 28, Addendum
Doctors 21
Dodge Construction Company 6
Drumm, Doris 37, 40, 41, 43, 44,
45, 46
Earthquake 16-17
Entertainment 5, 7-10
Esquire Club 14-15
Evans, Danny 14, 26
Fallon Bottle Club 46-47
Fallon Flour Mill 24
Fallon Mercantile 22
Fallon Merchants basketball team 13
Fallon slaughterhouse 20-21
Farm life 3-4, 7-8
Fritz, F. J. (Barney) 28, 51, Addendum
Ft. Churchill 8
Greenhead Hunting Club 18-19
Hawthorne, NV 27-28
Hearts of Gold cantaloupe 25
Heck's Market 21
Hub - see Bars
I. H. Kent Company 22, 24, 25-26
Italian families 2, 9
Lahontan Dam 8, 9
Lovelady, Bob 13
Maine Street businesses 6, 11, 16-18,
30-31
McCracken, George 4-5
Mills, Laura 4
Misfits, The 32
Moody, Lester 15
Moore hospital 2
Oser, Alex 37
Overland Hotel 27
Palm Springs, CA 52
Penny collection 35
People's Store 6
Powell family 18
Public address system experiences 29-35, 52
Public fountain 6
Richfield service station 14
Rogers, Harold 12
Saloons - see Bars
School buses 12
Schooling 4, 12-13
Sugar beet factory 24-25
Sugar Bowl 23
Tarzyn, Joe 23
Turkey raising 25-26
U. S. Naval Air Station 28-29
Volunteer Fire Department 6-7, 35-36
Whalen, Lloyd 15-16
West End School 4
Wild bird sanctuary 47-49
Williams, Lena Capucci 3, 32, 34, 35
Woodliff, Tom 46
Zephyr Cove, NV 10
20-24,

Marian Hennen LaVoy

Willie Cappucci

4325 Schurz Highway