Laura Ellen Marke Corkill Oral History

Laura Ellen Marke Corkill Oral History

Laura Ellen Marke Corkill Oral History

Churchill County Museum Association

Churchill County Museum Association

October, 20, 1998

Analog Cassette Tape, Text File, MP3 Audio

English

Recording 1, 1:03:05
Recording 2, 51:37

128kbps/44100hz

Churchill County Oral History Project
an interview with
LAURA ELLEN MARKE CORKILL
Fallon, Nevada
conducted by
MARIAN LaVOY
October 20, 1998
OH
COR
This interview was transcribed by Glenda Price; edited by Norine Arciniega; final by Pat Baden; index by Gracie Viera; supervised by Myrl Nygren, Director of the Oral History Project, Churchill County Museum.
Preface
A tall dignified lady greeted me with warmth and charm. It was Laura Marke Corkill. She started her life's story with a litany of her parents' travels from the midwestern states to the ranchlands of Wyoming, Idaho, and eventually Nevada. Particularly poignant was her description of the shipping of the family's personal belongings from farm machinery to household goods packed on a railroad freight car. Upon arrival in Hazen, Nevada, her mother cooked over the sagebrush and barren alkali flats and cried
copious tears.
In the 1920s Fallon was a very small, isolated rural community. Moving from one district to another necessitated hardships for the children getting to school, but of particular interest is Laura's story of her parents who at this point in time lived near Leeteville renting a small house near York Lane for five of the school age children to live in Monday through Friday. The eldest daughter, Vena, was in charge of the younger brood and food was supplied daily by the parents. This arrangement was made so they could ride the school bus each school morning. All went well until a neighbor who did not know nor bother to find out the circumstances, complained to the authorities that children were living without adult supervision and "something needed to be done about it." As a result it was back to walking to school or riding in a horse-drawn buggy.
Vena and Laura were both excellent basketball players and helped the Fallon team retain the state championship. Laura mentioned how she would run the three miles from town to her York Lane home after practices. Her complaint was that no one ever offered her a ride, but she added, "There was very little traffic on the highway in those days."
Her quiet sense of humor surfaced when she told of her days as a Central in the local telephone office.
Her marriage to handsome Harry Corkill resulted in complete
happiness . . sisters married brothers. She discusses their
lives in the same house with a sister and brother-in-law to moving to a second small house to the compound on Corkill Lane. Her attempt to wallpaper the old walls is a story in itself.
As the years passed, three children arrived, and the couple were eventually able to buy their own ranch. The description of putting two houses together to make one very charming ranch house enlightens one as to how people survived the Great Depression, World War II, and other exigencies, but by sheer determination prospered, played cards with friends and lived on to old age with dignity and grace.
Laura's husband preceded her in death, but tears come to her eyes and her throat chokes as she talks of his last days. Time soothes all grief, but Laura's love for Harry is still burning brightly.
Interview with Laura Ellen Marke Corkill
This is Marian Hennen LaVoy of the Churchill County Museum Oral History Project interviewing Laura Marke Corkill at her home 455 West Corkill Lane, Fallon. The date is October 20, 1998.
LaVOY: Good morning.
CORKILL: Good morning.
LaVOY: How are you?
CORKILL: Just great. How are you?
LaVOY: Fine. Beautiful, beautiful fall morning, isn't it? CORKILL: Wonderful.
LaVOY: I wanted to ask you, first of all, about your grandparents. Would you mind telling me what your grandfather's name was?
CORKILL: My grandfather's name was Samuel Marke.
LaVOY: When was he born?
CORKILL: In 1848.
LaVOY: Where was he born?
CORKILL: He was born in Bern, Switzerland.
LaVOY: How long did he stay in Switzerland before he came to the United States?
CORKILL: I don't know. He was a young man when he came with his brother, and they settled in Wisconsin where they were both brewers.
LaVOY: Oh! Beer brewers?
CORKILL: Yes. One brother came west, my grandfather came west, and the other brother stayed in the East.
LaVOY: Did they ever mention what brewery company they worked for?
CORKILL: No, I don't remember anything like that.
LaVOY: What prompted him to come west?
CORKILL: You know, I just don't know. I also think I should have talked more to my grandparents, but when I was a
kid I never thought I'd want all that history. [laughing]
LaVOY: Well, that happens to everyone. Let's just discuss your grandmother a moment. What was her name?
CORKILL: Her name was Dora Shultz.
LaVOY: Where was she born?
CORKILL: I think she was born in Iowa. That's where she got married. They had twelve children. Six boys and six girls.
LaVOY: When was she born?
CORKILL: She was born in 1858.
LaVOY: Did they ever mention how they happened to meet?
CORKILL: Like I say, I just didn't talk to them about their early life. I just didn't.
LaVOY: Did they marry back east?
CORKILL: They married in Iowa, I'm pretty sure.
LaVOY: You don't know how they met or anything, but you know they were married in Iowa. What prompted them to come west?
CORKILL: I think my grandfather was like my father. He just liked to move. My father moved a lot even after us kids were born.
LaVOY: You said there were twelve children in the family. Do you, just off the top of your head, remember all of their names?
CORKILL: I have it if you want me to go get that. I have a picture of them and all their names.
LaVOY: Well, we'll just stop a minute and let you go do that.
CORKILL: Paul Samuel, Charles Ralph, Clara, Herman, William Tell, Alice Mabel, Emma Minnie, Julie Del, Fred, Orlena, Albert, and Esther.
LaVOY: That is quite a crew.
CORKILL: Yes, it is.
LaVOY: How many of those came west?
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CORKILL: Everyone of them.
LaVOY: What was your father's name?
CORKILL: William Tell. They named him after that old Switzerland legend of William Tell.
LaVOY: And the apple.
CORKILL: Um-hum.
LaVOY: And your father was born in Rockfort, Iowa?
CORKILL: Rockfort, that's right. I thought it was Des Moines, but it's Rockfort.
LaVOY: This Rockfort, Floyd, Iowa, is Floyd the county? CORKILL: Yes.
LaVOY: What year was he born?
CORKILL: 1882.
LaVOY: Do you know the date?
CORKILL: Yes. December 29.
LaVOY: About how old was he when he decided to come west?
CORKILL: Actually, I think he was just a very small child, maybe two or three years old.
LaVOY: When I say he came west
CORKILL: He came with his parents, of course.
LaVOY: Yes, he had to come with his parents, and where exactly did they come?
CORKILL: They went to Nebraska.
LaVOY: What did they do in Nebraska?
CORKILL: I think my father was always into the farming business.
LaVOY: So, you think that the parents were doing farming then?
CORKILL: No, my father's father was a brewer, but when he came to Nebraska, he went to work for the Watkins Company.
LaVOY: That's the company that makes vanilla and whatnot?
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CORKILL: Um-hum. That's what he did the last I knew of what he was doing. Then when he got older and his wife was gone, he moved to Lodi, California, and lived with Herman. Then he worked in my uncle's vineyard.
LaVOY: Which uncle was it that had a vineyard?
CORKILL: Herman.
LaVOY: That was one of the twelve children?
CORKILL: Yes.
LaVOY: This vineyard that he had in Lodi, did he sell wine to
the big wineries, or did he make wine himself?
CORKILL: He didn't make wine. I don't know what he did with his grapes.
LaVOY: What prompted him, do you think, to go California instead of staying in Nebraska?
CORKILL: When my father was living in Nebraska, he and two of his brothers decided to homestead in Wyoming, and that's what they did. The weather was so severe that the folks didn't like it, so they moved to Idaho.
LaVOY: What part of Wyoming were they in, do you remember at all?
CORKILL: Our mailing address was Slater, Wyoming, and then we did our shopping in Chugwater.
LaVOY: What do you remember them raising in Slater or Chugwater?
CORKILL: He raised wheat, and I can remember millet and barley. That's all I can remember.
LaVOY: To whom did he sell this?
CORKILL: I remember they hauled it to Wheatland. They hauled it in wagons to Wheatland.
LaVOY: What did they use to pull the wagons?
CORKILL: Horses.
LaVOY: They did? Many times they used oxen is the reason that I'm asking.
CORKILL: It was a long trip there and back. I don't remember
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just how far Cheyenne was from where we lived, but it was probably about fifteen miles.
LaVOY: Do you remember as a small child seeing them load the wheat?
CORKILL: I saw them thrash it, and when they threshed it, all the neighbors--they were very neighborly around there, and they all helped my mother cook for the crews. Then she helped them. I can remember those threshing machines coming in there and grain going into a granary and us kids would get up there and slide down the grain piles in the granary.
LaVOY: And there was no worry at all about you smothering in the grain?
CORKILL: [laughing] No, there certainly wasn't.
LaVOY: About how many people would come to help? CORKILL: You mean the threshing crew?
LaVOY: Um-hum.
CORKILL: There must have been quite a lot of them. I know they had a full table of them eating at noon. There must have been ten or twelve of them. The power was with horses. I don't know how that worked, but I know that was the only power they had.
LaVOY: And they would go through the field with the old threshing machine?
CORKILL: No, the men would cut it and bind it, and then they would go out and shock it in shocks, you know. Did you ever see shocked wheat? Well, they shocked all that, and after they got it shocked they would go out and haul that in to the . . . the threshing machine was stationery there, and they'd pitch it into the thing that separated the grain from the . . .
LaVOY: And then somebody stood holding sacks, or did it just go into a pile?
CORKILL: Oh, I don't think it went into sacks because I know when my dad took it to Wheatland it was always in the bulk. They didn't put it in sacks.
LaVOY: A regular grain wagon.
CORKILL: Yes.
LaVOY: CORKILL: LaVOY:
CORKILL:
LaVOY: CORKILL: LaVOY:
CORKILL:
LaVOY: CORKILL: LaVOY:
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My, how times have changed today.
Yes.
What did your mother usually have to cook to serve all of these people that were working?
Well, I can remember winter squash. I was very young then. I was seven when we left there, but I can remember this squash. This yellow, yellow squash. She always had rhubarb. She made rhubarb pies. They made sauerkraut. She always had cabbage and sauerkraut.
Did you ever watch her make the sauerkraut? Yes, I did.
After we finish what else she served, I'm going to have you tell us how to make sauerkraut.
From seven years old? [laughing]
Besides rhubarb pie, sauerkraut, and potatoes, what else?
Potatoes, and they always had rice. Always had fried chicken 'cause they had chickens, and they were easy to take care of.
Did she have to cook just one meal for them, or did she have to cook three?
I'm sure she cooked all the meals while they were there. They must have been there several days.
When they were finished, your father would move on with them to the next place?
CORKILL: LaVOY:
CORKILL: Oh, no.
LaVOY: CORKILL: LaVOY:
CORKILL: LaVOY: CORKILL:
No, he stayed right there.
They didn't go with the threshing crew.
They stayed right there. Do you know how much he had to pay the threshing crew for helping?
No, I don't.
Probably a very, very small sum of money.
It must have been pretty small. I don't know. Have no
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idea.
LaVOY: With you as a little girl there in Slater, what were some of your chores? Did you have to go gather eggs and things?
CORKILL: I don't remember gathering eggs, but we had a great big rooster, and he would take after us kids. My brother was just a toddler, and that rooster got him down, was clawing him. When my dad saw that, he chopped his head off. I was scared of that rooster even after he was lying there on the tail end of a wagon bleeding. [laughing]
LaVOY: I can well imagine. When they get mean, they get very mean.
CORKILL: Oh, yeah.
LaVOY: You were mentioning sauerkraut, and I'm just curious because we get it in cans today. Do you remember roughly--your folks raised the cabbage?
CORKILL: Yes. I remember my mother and dad both shredding that cabbage, and they'd put it in a fifty-gallon wooden barrel. They just had a lot of cabbage. When they got that barrel full, they weighted it down. They had a lot of salt on it. When it fermented, then it was ready to eat. When we left Wyoming, my mother took-there was only five of us kids then--back to Nebraska to visit her relatives, and every relative we went to had one of those things of sauerkraut. I can see those women yet picking that out. [laughing]
LaVOY: [laughing] Picking it out of the barrel and eating it.
CORKILL: Some of it had a thin coat of ice over the top of it. They just loved it.
LaVOY: It was a very popular dish at that time. What did they weight it down with?
CORKILL: I don't know if it was heavy stones or what it was, but I know that they put a heavy weight on it and that pushed it down and the salt and everything, and it didn't take it long to ferment.
LaVOY: That's very interesting. You were about seven at this point in time. Where was your next move?
CORKILL: Well, you see, when I was seven, my father sold out. Before we left, like I said, my mother took a trip back
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to Nebraska. Actually, that was the last time she saw her relatives till she got up in her eighties. Then we moved to Idaho.
LaVOY: CORKILL: LaVOY: CORKILL:
LaVOY: CORKILL: LaVOY:
CORKILL:
LaVOY:
Where in Idaho?
Caldwell, Idaho
What did your family do there?
They were still ranching. They had a lot of Jersey cows. We watered our place--they had a big water wheel there. This water wheel would go around and around. Did you ever see a water wheel?
Yes.
Well, that's what they watered the place with.
With Jersey cows, did he sell milk to the dairies, or did you use it yourself?
I think we just must have used it ourselves. I don't remember. They could have. You know, I was very young then. I don't know if they ever took cream to town or what they did. I know they separated it.
The old separator was an interesting piece of machinery.
CORKILL: It was.
LaVOY:
CORKILL: LaVOY: CORKILL:
And cleaning it was worse. [laughing] Did you start school there in Caldwell?
Yes.
Did you have a lot of friends in that area?
Yes, we did. Our neighbors had two daughters. One of them was my age, and then one of the daughters was a teacher in that Midway School we went to. We rode with them in a buggy to school every morning. One thing about those people. They were very religious. There were always great flocks of ducks landing our place. One day Dad went out, and he shot four times and got twenty-five ducks, [laughing] so Mother went and fixed up two ducks for those neighbors. They just looked like a picture out of a magazine. She just went to a lot of work to make them very nice. My dad took that over to them, and they wouldn't accept them because it was on Sunday.
LaVOY: CORKILL: LaVOY: CORKILL: LaVOY: CORKILL:
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CORKILL:
LaVOY:
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Oh, my goodness.
My mother was crushed.
So, he brought them back home?
Yeah.
And you enjoyed them.
Uh-huh. I know that he did a lot of hunting of ducks, and my mother made all of our pillows, and she made feather beds and everything out of those feathers.
Did you ever help her with making the feather beds? Well, I imagine I did. I don't remember.
How did she get all the feathers to stay where they belonged in the feather beds?
Well, every day she'd just fluff them all up. Us kids weren't allowed to sit on those beds in the daytime because she'd just made the bed fluffy and beautiful. It was nice to sleep in those, but she wouldn't let us kids mess around on those beds in the daytime.
How long did it take her to make a feather bed?
Oh, it must have taken a long, long time to get enough feathers for that.
And she used the wild duck feathers and the tame duck feathers, too?
LaVOY: CORKILL:
CORKILL: Yes. We had tame ducks, also.
LaVOY: Geese, too?
CORKILL: Yes.
So, she combined the feathers of all of them.
My dad would get a goose once in awhile. This took a long time to collect that many feathers.
I imagine that it did.
Even when I got married she gave me two pillows that she had made. I didn't know everything about washing wool and feathers, and I put those pillows through a washing thing, and they never did get fluffy after
LaVOY: CORKILL:
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that.
LaVOY: Well, your mother had the secret, and she didn't pass it on to you. [laughing]
CORKILL: Well, if I'd had a dryer or something, I probably could have fluffed them up, but I put them out on the line and tried to fluff them, but I couldn't get them fluffy again.
LaVOY: Well, I say, some of those older women really had the knack for . . . maybe it's they had the time to take to fluff those pillows.
television cut
showing
That's it. They didn't have all these, like and movies and stuff to go to, and my mother millions of little pieces like that [fingers one-inch square] to make quilts.
Did she make a lot of quilts?
CORKILL:
LaVOY:
CORKILL:
LaVOY:
No, not a lot, but the ones she made were just an immense lot of work. That dress that she's wearing in that picture, she made that all by hand.
Is that her wedding dress? Entire dress. How many years did you live in Caldwell, Idaho?
CORKILL: LaVOY: CORKILL: LaVOY:
Only two
And then
We moved
'cause I was nine when I got here. from Caldwell, where did you move? out over on Harrigan Road.
Who did you buy that property from, or did you take it as they . . .
CORKILL:
LaVOY:
CORKILL:
LaVOY:
No, we bought it from a man named [Hugh] Lionberger. It was a new house, then. It's still there, but they have added on to it, and it's quite a lot larger than what it was when we moved in.
Was that about in November, 1919? What prompted them to leave Idaho and come to Fallon? Do you have any idea?
Like I said, my father and his father liked to move. [laughing]
I've asked you a great deal about your father, William Tell Marke. What was your mother's maiden name?
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CORKILL: Cora Jane Pitts.
LaVOY: And she was born where?
CORKILL: She was born in Belvedere, Nebraska, April 23, 1888.
LaVOY: Very obviously, your mother and your father must have met in Nebraska.
CORKILL: Oh, yes.
LaVOY: Did they ever say anything about their wedding to you at all?
CORKILL: That's another thing I just . .
LaVOY: That you wish you had asked. And this dress that she made that is in the picture that we have, she made her wedding dress herself. Where were they married, do you know? I mean, in a church or in a home?
CORKILL: I certainly don't know that.
LaVOY: And then they picked up and made their move, as you say, to Wyoming and then to Idaho.
CORKILL: They moved to Wyoming when I was a baby and homesteaded there.
LaVOY: Then they moved to Idaho, and then in 1919 they moved here to Fallon. You were approximately how old when you moved to Fallon?
CORKILL: Nine.
LaVOY: When was the date of your birth?
CORKILL: February 12, 1910.
LaVOY: What did you think of Nevada in comparison to having been in Wyoming and Idaho?
CORKILL: Well, I'll tell you, when we got to Hazen on the train- we had our livestock and a car and chickens and everything on a car--they had a little train come into Fallon. My mother when she saw that alkali flat there where what they call Mahala. All that alkali stuff, she just cried.
LaVOY: Oh, I imagine so.
CORKILL: We had a very nice place in Idaho. It was all green
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and trees, but when she saw that alkali flat, she just cried
LaVOY: Well, I have sympathy for her. Why did he decide he wanted to move here?
CORKILL: He had the wanderlust.
LaVOY: And it was greener on the other side of the fence.
CORKILL: That must have been it. You know, after us kids were raised, then they moved to Oregon. Just moved all the time. [laughing]
LaVOY: Getting back to your growing up here, what school did you go to when you lived over on the Lionberger place that you bought?
CORKILL: I went to the old West End. You know where the West End is now? They had an old building there. They called it the old West End, and that's where I went. I was in the fourth grade.
LaVOY: How did you get to school?
CORKILL: The bus went right by our place.
LaVOY: Describe the school bus at that time.
CORKILL: Soon after that when my sister got in high school, they weren't allowing high school kids to ride on the bus, so she had to ride a horse to high school.
LaVOY: Which sister is that?
CORKILL: Vena.
LaVOY: You rode the bus, and she rode a horse. Do you recall who any of the bus drivers were when you were little?
CORKILL: The bus driver we had over there, his name was Sam something, and they lived where Sonya Johnson lives [5755 Weaver Road] right north of the Weaver Road. don't know what his last name was.
LaVOY: Digressing just a little bit back, I found some place in research that your father had also been a railroad car inspector some place.
CORKILL: Yes, he was in Sparks.
LaVOY: Oh, I see, and that was prior to your coming here?
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CORKILL: When he left here, they went to Oregon. When they came back, they settled in Sparks.
LaVOY: We'll get to that, but I just happened to think that I had read about that. When you left Idaho, how did you happen to come by train, instead of by car?
CORKILL: Well, that's the way we traveled. Every time we moved, we traveled on a train.
LaVOY: Oh! Did you have a car, or it was all wagons and horses?
CORKILL: No, we didn't have a car until we got here, and then he bought an old Model T. That was our car for quite awhile.
LaVOY: Coming by train, where did you get on the train in Idaho?
CORKILL: Must have been Caldwell.
LaVOY: What did you remember about the train?
CORKILL: I remember counting telegraph poles. [laughing]
LaVOY: Were all the children with you on the train?
CORKILL: There were five of us. My younger brother was born over there on Harrigan Road.
LaVOY: What do you remember about traveling on the train? CORKILL: I think us kids kind of enjoyed it.
LaVOY: Did your mother have to pack a lunch for you?
CORKILL: Yes. I can remember she always fried chicken for us. We always have fried chicken, and we didn't get in a Pullman either. We just had the coach. But, when we came here we went across the Great Salt Lake. Now then, I just think, and I'm not too sure this is right, but I'm sure there's a railroad across that lake. Do you know if there is or not?
LaVOY: It goes by it, yes.
CORKILL: It seemed like it went through it 'cause there was just water all around it. I just often wonder if there is a railroad across that lake?
LaVOY: You loaded all of your animals and everything on one of
the cattle cars. Is that right? CORKILL: Yes.
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LaVOY:
CORKILL: LaVOY: CORKILL:
LaVOY: CORKILL: LaVOY:
CORKILL:
LaVOY:
Your animals? Your machinery? Or just animals?
I know when we got over there, he had enough stuff to run mowing machine and rake and stuff, so he must have brought machinery, too.
And household goods--your furniture?
Oh, yeah. We always had that. I can remember my mother wrapping the furniture legs with newspapers, and I often wondered why she consented to do all that moving.
Well, in that day and age, I don't think that the women had much choice.
That's the thing. The man was the boss. She had to do all the wrapping of the legs.
Oh, he helped her. That was one thing about it. He was very good about helping her.
They always raised a big garden wherever they were, and they did a lot of canning, and my father was right there helping her. He was stringing beans and peeling apples. He was just wonderful that way to help her.
Well, he loved her.
Yes, he did.
Do you recall how much time it took to do all this canning?
I don't think there was very many days of summer that they weren't canning fruit, and then they would go out to the orchards. In those days the orchards were very profuse. Different. It seems like everything freezes these days, but I know like over at the Kallenback place they had peaches and plums and apples and pears. They had all those kinds of fruit, and our folks would go around places like that and buy fruit to can.
You mentioned the Kallenback place. What was that?
LaVOY: CORKILL:
LaVOY: CORKILL:
CORKILL: It's over on Testolin Road. Do you know Marie Sherman?
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LaVOY: Yes.
CORKILL: She inherited that place. She's running it now, and that was the Kallenback place. [4700 Testolin Road]
LaVOY: And that's where you went to get your
CORKILL: Well, some of it. We went all over. We went up to Fulkersons up in Swingle Bench.
LaVOY: Did you do pressure canning?
CORKILL: No, they didn't have pressure canning. They had a big boiler, and they did it hot pack method. They don't approve of that at all now because they're afraid of botulism, but we ate it, grew up on it, and that's the way they canned it. String beans and everything they canned that way.
LaVOY: Something I'm curious about, did they also make drinks, too, like root beer and things like that?
CORKILL: Yeah, we did make some root beer. Us kids did.
LaVOY: Do you remember how you did that? How you capped it was always what amazed me.
CORKILL: Gosh, we had a great big cart of little bottles like that, and they had a capper thing they put the caps on. My folks didn't do that. That was a kid project.
LaVOY: Did you and your sister, basically, be the ones that made the root beer?
CORKILL: Well, until the boys got old enough to help.
LaVOY: And then the boys probably changed it to beer. CORKILL: No, they never did that.
LaVOY: They didn't. Just plain root beer. It was a nice way of life, wasn't it?
CORKILL: Yeah.
LaVOY: You were going to school, do you remember who some of your teachers were?
CORKILL: When I first came here, Mrs. Lucy Burton was my teacher. They called her Lucy Grimes Burton, I think. That was in the low fourth, and then when they got in the high fourth upstairs in that West End, it was Adah
LaVOY: CORKILL: LaVOY:
CORKILL:
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CORKILL:
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Gerjets.
How did you like them as teachers?
I liked them.
Would you explain this low fourth and high fourth to me?
I don't know. They had that like when we got through the fourth grade, we went over to Oats Park in the fifth grade, and they had that high and low thing till we got to high school. Then later years they did away with that high and low.
I've often wondered. It wasn't like A class and B class. It went along every year, didn't it?
One semester was low. If you made that you went into high the next semester.
This is a very interesting concept. Who were some of your close friends when you were at the Oats Park School?
I was always friends with the Ernst's kids. Then there was a Capucci girl I was real good friends with. Then some people came here that lived on the old Leeteville place. You know where that is?
No, I don't.
Well, it's a place where the people that were traveling stayed. It's still there. I think George Frey owns it now. It's about eight miles from Fallon. It was called Leeteville.
Oh, right at the Y of the road out there?
Right close to that, and there was a girl there named Evelyn Biddick, and she was one of my pals.
What games did you play in school during recess?
I can remember playing jacks every recess, and we had a teacher by the name of Erma Bendel. She would sit right down on the concrete with us and play jacks. We just played jacks, I think, all the time we were there. We, also, played ball. You know that place where they got the swimming pool down there at Oats Park?
LaVOY: CORKILL:
LaVOY: CORKILL:
LaVOY: CORKILL:
LaVOY: Yes.
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CORKILL:
LaVOY:
CORKILL: LaVOY: CORKILL:
CORKILL:
LaVOY:
Well, they excavated a hole there when I was still in that Oats Park School to build a swimming pool, but it was years and years and years before they ever built it. There was a lot of snow there it seemed like every winter. The boys would get on one side of that, the girls on the other, and we'd throw snowballs at each other. [laughing]
Oh, my goodness. [laughing]
But that hole was there for years before they ever built the swimming pool.
And it was just left as a hole. My goodness. I think the swimming pool came in during the WPA [Work Projects Administration] time, didn't it?
It probably did.
What was your favorite subject when you were in school?
I had Laura Mills for a teacher. Did you know her? Well, they named Laura Mills park after her. She was a wonderful teacher. I thought she taught hygiene and English. Those are the two things that I remember, and I really liked both of them.
She was very noted for her photographs. Was she interested in that at the time you were in school?
Um-hum. She was a nature lover. She just loved nature, and she was a professional photographer.
Did she ever take pictures of you kids?
She probably did, but I don't have any of them.
Do you have any of your school pictures at all that were taken at that point in time?
No, I don't know why we didn't. In every May they'd have a Maypole. They built a pole out there, and these girls would dress up. Our mothers would make us dresses out of crepe paper. Just real fancy little dresses, and then they'd have all these streamers down. Did you ever see them dance at a Maypole? They did that every year that I was there.
Oh, my. On the first of May?
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CORKILL: Yeah, and they'd have, I think, every girl in the whole school. They'd have all these different Maypoles, and
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the mothers would all come. It was quite an event.
I think that's wonderful.
Yeah.
That has sort of been done away with, and it's really too bad because it was a nice welcoming of spring.
Then it was a place for the mothers to go and visit.
Your mother, naturally, having quite a few children was always very, very busy, but she still took the time.
Well, she'd do things like that. I don't think my sister and I ever had a store-boughten dress till we got in high school. She always made all of our clothes.
What was your favorite dress that she made for you?
I remember one time I was there in Oats Park, and it was a little yellow dress with black dots, and she put little pockets here, and then she put little French knots in black all around those pockets. I really liked that dress.
That took a lot of time on her part to do it. When you stop to think of all the work that she had to do and still she took time to dress her daughters in pretty dresses.
It seemed like every year she'd make outing flannel nightgowns for all of us kids, and she'd sit there and do those buttonholes hour after hour.
My goodness. Did she sew for the boys, too?
I don't remember her making shirts or anything.
Basically, just the girls' clothes.
And her own clothes.
Downtown Fallon was nothing like it is now. Can you tell me what some of the stores were when you were at Oats Park School?
They had the Kent store and then Grey Reid's right across from that. Those were the two main stores, Kent's and Grey Reid's. I know that's mostly where we did our shopping.
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19
LaVOY: I understand that on the west side of the street were basically bars.
CORKILL: Yes. You know, we had the most wonderful principal of the high school, George McCracken. I don't why they didn't name something in Fallon after him because I think he was the greatest teacher that ever went through these parts. He always said, "I don't have any authority over you children except on this school ground, but ladies do not walk down the west side of the street." It was all saloons, and he said, "Ladies don't walk down the west side of the street." I never saw a girl walking down there.
LaVOY: That side of the street, did it have wooden sidewalks? CORKILL: You mean when we came here?
LaVOY: Yes.
CORKILL: Oh, no. This was when I was in high school, like in the twenties, and it was all paved then.
LaVOY: Somebody had told me that there were wooden sidewalks that were in front of that west side of the street, and I have just often wondered if that was correct.
CORKILL: Well, not in my time.
LaVOY: Earlier.
CORKILL: I don't think that when we came here that the main street was paved, but I don't remember walking on any board sidewalks.
LaVOY: Was the fountain in front of the courthouse? CORKILL: It was still there.
LaVOY: When you came to town, you basically came by school bus, but then when you and your parents came to town, you came in the Model A Ford that your father had purchased.
CORKILL: Um-hum. I don't remember us ever coming to town in a horse-drawn outfit. When we lived over there when we first came here, we did have, till Dad bought that Model A, we went to town in a buggy.
LaVOY: Do you remember the name of the horse that pulled the buggy?
20
CORKILL: No. [laughing]
LaVOY: That is, basically, over on Harrigan Road is where you were living. Is that where the family lived all the time that you were growing up?
CORKILL: Oh, no.
LaVOY: Where else did they move?
CORKILL: I think we only lived there about two years, and then my dad went to work for the TCID [Truckee-Carson Irrigation District].
LaVOY: What did he do with the TCID?
CORKILL: He was a ditch rider, and we moved eight miles from Fallon way, way up there past Leeteville, and it was two miles for us kids to walk to school. It was very cold in those days in the winter time, and my brothers were just little guys. We lived there two years, and then he was transferred closer to town on the same ditch, but when we were up there, our folks went and rented a house on Lucas Road for us kids to stay in during the week. That was real nice 'cause the bus went right by.
LaVOY: Did your mother go to Lucas Road?
CORKILL: No, just us kids.
LaVOY: Did you live with somebody on Lucas Road.
CORKILL: No. Just the five of us kids lived there in that little house. My sister must have been close to fifteen.
LaVOY: That was Vena?
CORKILL: Yeah.
LaVOY: And she cooked for you?
CORKILL: Well, the folks always brought food and put it there for us. I suppose we did some cooking, but the folks furnished food all the time. Well, one of the neighbors reported that there was minor children living there alone, so the authorities made us leave.
LaVOY: Oh my.
CORKILL: So, we went back to walking two miles.
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LaVOY:
Oh, dear. What school did you go to then?
At that time I was in Oats Park, and Vena, I think she was in high school.
What about the little fellows?
They were all at West End. Some of them were at the Old High.
That was hard.
It was hard.
Did your father ride a horse to check the ditches?
Oh, he had a cart, and then he had a car. Some of the roads along the ditches, he had to use a horse and a cart.
Something that I'm wondering about, did he sell the Lionberger place when he took the TCID job?
CORKILL: LaVOY: CORKILL: Um-hum. called it the T two years closer Lake and Old
And just moved eight miles out of town.
Yeah, he had a ditch house up on, they line, and then they transferred him in to town, and he had charge of the Soda River Districts.
LaVOY:
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When he was in charge of those districts, where did you live?
We lived in a house right out there. You know where the old York place is?
Yes.
It was just right back there. That house is still up on a hill back there. They moved it up on a hill, and it's a real bright pink.
That house belonged to the TCID? And you all lived in that house?
Um-hum.
What are some of your memories of living out there?
That was a very good time of our lives. I just really
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enjoyed my high school years. My sister and I were sort of athletes. I can remember when I'd get through practicing basketball at night, 5:00, I would run almost all the way home. It was about three miles.
You exhaust me just listening to you. [laughing]
But you know all those years that we walked to school, nobody ever picked us up, and in those days people picked up hitchhikers, but when I was walking home from high school, I don't even remember seeing a car go by, but you'd of thought sometime I would have got a lift, but I never did.
You were talking about basketball. Wasn't the Fallon team the champions?
Yeah, they started that being champions before my sister got into it, and then when she got into they were champions. For nine years those high school girls were the basketball champions.
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LaVOY: You mean like, your sister did four years , and then you
came along and did a couple of years more after that, so you're speaking about a nine-year time frame.
CORKILL:
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Well, no, not as far as we're concerned. It was just the teams go through their . .
For nine years, and who all did you play?
We played Winnemucca, Lovelock, Hawthorne, Reno, Sparks.
How did you get there to play the games?
The parents furnished the transportation.
No school bus?
No. And the boys and the girls all went to these different towns together. I remember we stayed in The Golden Hotel. We went up there for a tournament, and the boys and the girls stayed in the Golden Hotel. Do you remember the Golden Hotel?
Yes. In Reno.
Oh, it was just wonderful. Our principal was always there, too. He kept a tight rein on the kids, and the coach, also.
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LaVOY: Who was your coach?
CORKILL: Joe Scott, and then they had a lady teacher, Eunice Allen. She was Lem Allen's sister. She went along as a chaperone for the girls. I remember one time down there in that Golden Hotel for breakfast we were all sitting around there. Mr. McCracken ordered a dish of white figs for breakfast. When he come back they were all gone. [laughing] We all helped ourselves to his figs. He was very dignified. We called our coach Daddy Scott. You would never say daddy or father to McCracken. He was very, very dignified. He was a great disciplinarian. I don't know of any kid that ever went through school with him that didn't praise him
LaVOY: Well, it is odd that something isn't named after him. I had never given that a thought before.
CORKILL: I thought they should have. They did for E.C. Best.
LaVOY: When you were in Reno, did you win the championship after you ate all the white figs?
CORKILL: They won the championship for sure. The boys weren't as good as the girls.
LaVOY: Well, that's wonderful. Of course, you and your sister were both very tall. Were the rest of the girls tall, too? Who were some of the members of the team?
CORKILL: There was Dorothy and Daisy Ernst, Doris Buerer, Dorothy Mackedon--she's Len Mackedon's sister, and a girl by the name of Mary Kay Morris. I don't know if you ever heard of her or not, but we had two famous people go through this high school. One of them was Alan Bible. I call him famous because he became a United States senator, and then there was Mary Kay Morris. She was a lawyer on Wall Street for twenty years, and she was one of the girls.
LaVOY: What did her parents do here?
CORKILL: I never knew what happened to her parents, but her aunt raised her. Her aunt was a music teacher.
LaVOY: Is she still living?
CORKILL: No, she died last year.
LaVOY: And was a lawyer when she died? That's very interesting. I never heard that before. Did she go
24
right straight from Nevada? Where did she get her lawyer degree? Do you have any idea?
CORKILL: No, but it was some prestigious school. I don't remember what it was.
LaVOY: It's very interesting that there has not been any history written about her.
CORKILL: You don't have anything in the archives about her?
LaVOY: Not that I know of. There may be. Describe her a bit to me. How she was in school. What did she look like?
CORKILL: I have a picture of her. Do you want to see it?
LaVOY: Well, when we're finished I would love to see it.
CORKILL: She was very intellectual, and when they had the debating teams, she was always . . . they had contests with the debaters. They even went to Los Angeles. McCracken and somebody went with her to Los Angeles. Also, with Alan Bible. He went down there, and he won down there. When they come back, McCracken was telling about it. McCracken went with Alan Bible's father to this debating thing down in Los Angeles, and he said, "Alan won. Jake Bible and I made fools of ourselves the way we cheered for that boy." [laughing]
LaVOY: [laughing] And then did the girl win, too?
CORKILL: No, she didn't go on that trip, but she did go on a lot of them.
LaVOY: And did she win on the trips?
CORKILL: She won many of them.
LaVOY: And who went as her chaperon?
CORKILL: McCracken always went with her. I don't know about what woman went, but I know McCracken was always there. But, he had time for those things. He taught math, and he was the principal. Of course, there was only a bout 350 kids in the high school. He ran a tight ship, and the kids admired him for that.
LaVOY: With your being in high school and being on the basketball team, tell me what year did you graduate?
CORKILL: 1928. Then I went back a year for post-graduate. I took a commercial course, and I wasn't prepared to go
25
to a university. I decided I was going to try that, so I went back for a post-graduate course, and I took all academics. Chemistry, geometry, things that I hadn't had in the commercial course.
LaVOY: Did you enjoy those classes?
CORKILL: Yes, I did, but, then, after I got through there, I went to work for the telephone office. I thought I'd save enough money to go to the university. It's a laugh. Of all the girls that I knew that went to the university, they were working their way through. They were waiting on tables and all kinds of things. But, anyhow, Harry came along.
LaVOY: Well, now, let's hold off on Harry just a minute. When you went to work for the telephone company, what did you do?
CORKILL: I was an operator. They called us central. There's a picture in one of those Focus magazines of that old switchboard that we worked on, and there's a Gladys Allison and Stewart--I forgot her first name. I worked with both of them.
LaVOY: Did you? Tell me some of the interesting things that happened to you as a central? What were some of the funny things that happened?
CORKILL: Do you really want to know? Well, there were three of us there, and it was kind of a slow time. We decided we'd have some fun, so we called this boy up. He was very proud of himself.
LaVOY: He thought he was God's gift to humanity?
CORKILL: Yeah, he thought he was, and so we made a date with him to meet us in front of the court house.
LaVOY: Did he know who you were?
CORKILL: No, he didn't know that we were operators. We didn't tell him our name, but we said we'd meet him in front of the court house. So, he came, and he just paced up and down, up and down. I think he must have stayed there for an hour, and we just had hysterics laughing at him, and in the meantime we were answering calls. [laughing]
LaVOY: [laughing] Did he come all dressed fancy?
CORKILL: Well, he was dressed up, like they dressed in those
26
days.
LaVOY: And when you made the date with him, where did you tell him you were going to go?
CORKILL: We just told him we'd meet him in front of the court house.
LaVOY: That you were admirers of his?
CORKILL: Yes.
LaVOY: Oh, you were little devils, weren't you?
CORKILL: Oh, yeah, we did tell him that we thought very highly of him. We'd just really like to have a date with him.
LaVOY: And he fell for it hook, line, and sinker. And, of
course, your supervisor knew nothing of this.
CORKILL: Oh, no. It was probably on a Sunday. We would never have done that with our supervisor around there. It was just a very dull time probably on Sunday afternoon. It was really something.
LaVOY: Did you have to answer a lot of emergency calls?
CORKILL: At that time when the telegraph office would close--it was called Churchill County Telephone and Telegraph, so when the telegraph office was closed, we took the telegrams. Sometimes that whole board would light up with lights or local calls. Somebody's be giving you a telegram, and you'd have to ignore lights and take the telegram. The customers got so irate that we weren't answering their calls, but they had no idea what it was like to be taking telegrams and also local calls.
There were three of us all the time there, but that old switchboard got pretty obsolete before we got through with it.
LaVOY: You said the people got irate with you; were they very nasty about it?
CORKILL: Oh, yeah. They'd curse at us, and they'd say,
"Central, this is the thirteenth time I've tried to get you." [laughing] But, you know, it was too bad we couldn't answer their calls.
LaVOY: But, you had the priority.
CORKILL: One man called in, and his telegram was in code. A page like that, it filled up when I wrote it down. He
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Yeah, it was in code.
What do you mean, in code?
Instead of spelling it like t-o-w-n, town, it would be different letters for that.
Oh, I see. Do you remember reporting any fires?
Oh, yes. They had the siren button right there, and we were all supposed to memorize the wards. If a fire came in from Ward Four, we were supposed to ring that thing four times. We also rang it at noon. One time one of the girls rang the wrong ward, and the firemen went to the wrong ward. When they finally found the fire, they got it out, but the fire chief came in there, and he ripped us up one side and down the other for sending them to the wrong ward.
Who was the fire chief at that time? Do you remember?
Yeah, his name was Bafford. Old Tom Sanford, I think he had some kind of a managerial position in the telephone office 'cause I know he scolded us really bad that day. Do you remember Mary Foster?
Yes.
Her first studio was right there on Center Street in the old Tom Sanford house.
And he was one of the key people with the fire department. That was a volunteer fire department at that time, too, wasn't it?
I think those two that I told you about were in the telephone--the manager of the telephone business, not the fire department, but they're the ones that scolded us for giving the wrong thing to the fire department. They weren't the fire department. They were the telephone office. The manager and probably the assistant manager of the telephone office.
said if you make one mistake, it's all wrong.
And who was he sending it to?
Oh, I don't remember that.
But to have it in code.
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LaVOY: Where was the fire department located at that time?
28
CORKILL: I have no idea.
LaVOY: Did they have the big old one truck that they took out? CORKILL: I suspect that's all that they had was the one truck.
LaVOY: Did you have any serious accidents and things like that that you had to report?
CORKILL: No.
LaVOY: Just basically fires. How long did you work for the telephone company?
CORKILL: Just one year.
LaVOY: And then what happened?
CORKILL: Got married.
LaVOY: Where did you meet your husband?
CORKILL: At my sister and her husband's wedding. They got married on November 22, 1929. We got married November 22, 1930.
LaVOY: Oh, and sisters married brothers.
CORKILL: That's where I met my husband at their wedding.
LaVOY: Oh, my. Tell me, at the wedding did you take an interest in one another right at that point in time?
CORKILL: I think we did. He had a date with a girl that he had to fulfill, and then from then on, it was just us.
LaVOY: And where did you go on your dates?
CORKILL: There wasn't a movie in town that we didn't see. We went to movies, and my husband didn't dance. He took me to a couple of dances, but he never danced, but we saw every movie in town. Wednesday nights and Saturday nights.
LaVOY: With the movies at that period of time which would have been the start of the Depression, did the movie houses have the tickets for twenty-five cents?
CORKILL: I expect it was about like that, I don't know.
LaVOY: And did they have the drawings for different things to get you into the movie?
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CORKILL: I don't remember that, but I know the movie house on the stage they would put on entertainment like the different clubs around town would put on entertainment on the stage of the theater. Lots of really nice entertainment there they had.
LaVOY: What were the names of the theaters in Fallon?
CORKILL: The one across the street was the Palace, and I think [the other one] was just called the Fallon Theater.
LaVOY: Were the theaters real fancy, or were they just very plain?
CORKILL: Well, they seemed fancy and ornate at that time.
LaVOY: Your husband, what's his full name?
CORKILL: Just Harry Corkill.
LaVOY: And where was he born?
CORKILL: He was born in Maughold on the Isle of Man.
LaVOY: When was he born?
CORKILL: 1899, February 18.
LaVOY: Did he come from a large family?
CORKILL: Yes, his mother had eight children.
LaVOY: What was his mother's name? Her maiden name. CORKILL: Her maiden name was Ward.
LaVOY: Bessie Ward. And his father's name was? CORKILL: Edward Thomas Corkill.
LaVOY: Did they stay on the Isle of Man, or did they come to the United States?
CORKILL: They emigrated to the United States when Harry was fourteen. There was three of her children already here in the United Sates, and that's the reason they came. She brought five of them across on a steamer. Her husband died when he was forty-two, so she married another man.
LaVOY: What was his name?
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CORKILL: Neill. I don't know his first name. They came, and they settled in Bishop [California] because that's where two of her children were.
LaVOY: Did your husband go to Bishop?
CORKILL: Yes. He was fourteen years old. She had made an agreement with those children that when they could afford it, they were to pay her back six hundred dollars each for the trip because this Neill that she had he didn't like any of her children. He just couldn't tolerate the children, so she soon divorced him, and then she was alone until several years later she married a bee keeper and had a very good life after that.
LaVOY: What was his name?
CORKILL: [Charles] Westover. But I remember Harry telling me when they came through Bishop on a train, and all the cottonwood trees were just beautiful. They had never seen a sight like that in their lives. That's the thing that struck him the most when he was fourteen.
LaVOY: Where would he have come in on the ship, San Francisco or New York?
CORKILL: New York.
LaVOY: And then had to travel all the way across the country. CORKILL: On a train.
LaVOY: Did he ever talk to you about his trip across the United States?
CORKILL: Well, he just told me it was a lot of fun. He liked it.
LaVOY: Came by train.
CORKILL: Uh-huh.
LaVOY: And everything, of course, was new to him.
CORKILL: Uh-huh. I was going to tell you that when school started that fall, his brother and his sister went to school on a bus.
LaVOY: Now, this was in Bishop?
CORKILL: Yes. These children had to go to work 'cause the
31
mother was a widow, and the stepfather wasn't doing anything, and he went to work for some people by the name of Christian. In fact, John Christian lived here for awhile. His mother told me one time that when the school bus went by, Harry was out in the dairy, and he had his head down crying because he couldn't go to school. He never got to go to school, but he went through the eighth grade. In the Isle of Man the eighth grade was equivalent to what a high school education was here 'cause he spoke very good English, and he could just do math like nobody's business, so he had a good education before he came here.
LaVOY: He had a European education, but when he came to Bishop, he couldn't go to school anymore.
CORKILL: No, his mother put him out to work.
LaVOY: And he was milking.
CORKILL: Yes, he was working for a dairy.
LaVOY: What prompted them to come to Fallon?
CORKILL: Well, they sold out. The city of Los Angeles bought the water there where they were. Most of the farmers sold out, and they had friends that had come here from Bishop and kind of influenced them, so Harry came first and bought the little place down there on Berney Road where Bud Ernst lives now.
LaVOY: What was the name of that place at that time? That's not the Beckstead ranch?
CORKILL: No.
LaVOY: That was down
CORKILL: What was that man's name that they bought the . . . forgot his name, but, anyhow, Harry came first. He and Tom liked to work together, so Tom came up from Bishop, and they went into partnership.
LaVOY: They went into partnership what? Ranching? CORKILL: Yes. There on Berney Road.
LaVOY: When did they buy the Beckstead place?
CORKILL: They came there in 1927, and then they bought the Beckstead place.
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LaVOY: I'm just trying to get it in my mind where your husband was first. You say it must have been on Berney Road very close to where the back gate of the base is now?
CORKILL: Yes.
LaVOY: That's where he first settled?
CORKILL: Yes. They lived there from 1927 to just before Tom and Vena got married. They bought this place from Beckstead.
LaVOY: This Beckstead place is an interesting sounding place. Tell me the history of that.
CORKILL: They had a store there, Mr. and Mrs. Beckstead, and they furnished supplies to freight wagons going out east to the mines. They also had a grocery store there. I think it was a pretty big operation.
LaVOY: How big was the building?
CORKILL: It was a pretty big building. I don't know what size it was, but it was just a great big building. When we moved there it was just a great big empty building. Nobody had lived in it since they gave up the store, so we kind of put wall board on it and fixed it up a little. The four of us lived together there for awhile. They traded that place down on Berney Road for this, but they also owed a lot on it. In those days it was a lot. Mr. and Mrs. Beckstead, as long as we owed them money, they kept a close a watch on us. They'd drive down around that corner on that place every single night. One night they saw that we each had a dog, and they stopped in and told us that we could raise two calves for what those dogs cost.
LaVOY: [laughing]
CORKILL: Then Vena had a child and I had a child, and they said-this was all in the Depression. We got married, had our families all in the deepest in the Depression.
Then they said one child is plenty these days. [laughing]
LaVOY: [laughing] Where did they live that they could come by your place?
CORKILL: They lived in town, and they didn't have any children. No relatives. All they had to do was keep tabs on us, [laughing] and I'll tell you they were hard task masters. Because during those times and us paying for
LaVOY:
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the ranch, it was tough.
I imagine so. I want to go back just a little bit. Where were you and your husband married?
We were married in the Episcopal Church in Fallon. What did you wear?
I didn't have a white dress or anything. Just a strawberry-colored dress with a big collar.
Where did you honeymoon?
We went to Reno. I don't like to tell you what else we did. I'll tell you anyhow. We went over to Carson City, and we went through the prison. [laughing]
You did!
Out in front of the prison they had rocks in the shape of a flag painted red, white, and blue. Did you ever see that?
Yes.
Had it there for many years. Oh, it was just something to do, and we didn't have much money to do anything else.
Where did you stay in Reno?
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CORKILL: At the Golden Hotel.
LaVOY: CORKILL: LaVOY:
CORKILL:
LaVOY: CORKILL: LaVOY: CORKILL: LaVOY: Who were your attendants at your wedding?
Vena and Tom and my mother and dad were there.
Were that the only ones you had at your wedding? Did you have dinner together afterwards?
Oh, yeah, my mother was always having us for dinner.
So, you had a nice wedding dinner.
Yes.
What kind of a car did you have at that time?
He had an almost new Model A. It was a coupe.
And so the two of you took off and went to the Golden
Hotel.
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CORKILL:
LaVOY:
CORKILL:
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Yeah, and, you know, going to Reno in those days was an event.
Yes, it was. [laughing] At that point in time, was the road paved between Fallon and Reno?
I think it was just a graveled road.
I do, too. So, you arrived, the honeymooners, at the Golden Hotel in Reno.
Went and had our pictures taken, went to a movie, went over to Carson, drove around Carson, and went to the prison. [laughing]
Then came home. Had you already divided the Beckstead house up before you were married so that the two families could live in that? Was the house already fixed when you came back from your honeymoon?
Yeah, they had fixed it up a little bit. We lived there about year and then she had a child, and I had a child, and then it was time to get out of there. We had an old house down in the field that they moved up with horses. And what they did, they dug what they called, they put a dead man, buried it. It was a big log in the ground, put chains--I was asking my sons about this the other day. I don't remember just how that worked, but they told me how it worked. They put this big log in the ground, put chains around and then kind of winched that house up out of that field and they put it right there in the same yard with that old Beckstead house, and we lived there for ten years.
How big a house was it?
It had four rooms in it. Just very small rooms. But, that house, when you go back to town, you go by the experiment farm and that house where all those propane tanks are, that's the house. When we moved up here, Tom sold that house and those people moved it. 'Course they fixed it up a lot, the. yard and everything, but that's the house.
Who was your first child?
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CORKILL: Gaylan.
LaVOY: When was he born?
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CORKILL: In [October 13] 1931.
LaVOY: So, you and Gaylan and your husband moved into this
little house that you moved up from the field.
CORKILL: LaVOY: CORKILL: Yes.
I bet you had it fixed up real cute.
[laughing] I tried. You know, it just really needed fixing. The old wallpaper, I tore that all off the walls, and there was cheesecloth back of it. The wallboards were just foot boards with cracks about like that between every board, so I tore all that off, and I went and got me some new wallpaper, and I papered that. I thought it just looked beautiful. At night it was pop, pop, pop all night long. Every place there was a crack that wallpaper popped. I didn't know that I should have put cheesecloth up there. I didn't know that that was necessary. I wondered why they had put it up there
LaVOY: In other words you had to put the cheesecloth over those little boards.
CORKILL: Yeah. That's the way they papered in those days, but I didn't know that till later. I saw that old cheesecloth, and I wondered why that dirty old stuff was up there.
LaVOY: So, what did you have to do then? Put cheesecloth up and re-paper?
CORKILL: No. We stayed there--we just couldn't afford to do anything else. We stayed there for ten years, and we moved up here just two weeks before Pearl Harbor [December 7, 1941].
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Oh, my goodness. You bought this place when?
It was in 1941.
And the ranch belonged to whom?
When we moved here Travises lived here, and they were renting it from . . . I was talking to Bill about this the other day, and, of course, Bill was only about six at that time. I thought it belonged to what was called the California Land and Livestock Company. I know Travis ran it, but Bill said he thought it was called the Bank of Italy, but I'm not sure about that.
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LaVOY: Well, it could have been. I think the Bank of Italy, Geoninni's Bank, actually owned a lot of the land, but it would have been called the California Land Livestock, I think.
CORKILL: I'm pretty sure that's what it was called then.
LaVOY: Was it Ray Travis that was leasing it from the bank? Prior to his leasing it, it belonged to someone else Cochran? Was that the name?
CORKILL: Lyle Wightman told me one time that they built this house. Then there was a man by the name of Cochran. We always called it the old Cochran place, but I was talking to Lyle Wightman one time, and he said his dad built that part of it, and Goldie deBraga lived in this house, the Norcutts, for a short time. She said they brought this part of the house in from an old mine. I think it was Rawhide. Her dad moved this part of it in. Of course, there isn't any of that original thing left. Not even the studs are there anymore because it was all re-done.
LaVOY: That's interesting. So, the north side of your house was built by the Wightmans, and the south side of your house was deBraga's--what was her name? Norcutt?
CORKILL: Her father's name was Norcutt, and she told me--now, this is just what she told me that her father pulled this part of the house from Rawhide. I don't think it was much more than a shell.
LaVOY: Did you know anything at all about this Mr. Cochran who owned the land before?
CORKILL: No, I don't know anything about him. I don't even know anybody alive that would know anything about him.
LaVOY: I'm just wondering why they called it the Cochran ranch. He must have owned it.
CORKILL: Oh, he did own it. Yes. I think he must have bought it from Wightmans. But, this is just guess work. I'm not sure about any of that. I don't even know anybody that's alive now that could tell you about it. Pete Cushman could have.
LaVOY: I guess you moved the Travises off the land when you bought it.
CORKILL: Yeah, they were wanting to buy it. They had property in California that they wanted to sell so they could
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buy this, but their deal didn't go through or something. They just weren't able to buy it.
LaVOY: I bet they were very unhappy with you for moving them. CORKILL: You can say that again.
LaVOY: Well, these things happen. So, here you are with how many acres?
CORKILL: There was 170, and then when the highway went through, they took some of it off of the place.
LaVOY: Was it in fairly good condition, or did you have to do a lot of work?
CORKILL: It seemed like in those days, they just really raised good hay here, but there's part of the ranch now--I think there's about a third of it that isn't much, but we always pastured that.
LaVOY: With your moving here, what was the first thing you did to the house?
CORKILL: Well, they put a linoleum down. My husband built some cupboards.
LaVOY: Then after you got your kitchen fixed up, what else did you do in the house?
CORKILL: Right down there in that house right down there at the old Class place--it's the first house you come to when you go down that road when you turn from here. When you go from here and go towards your home, it's the first house you come to right there.
LaVOY: On the corner of Union Lane?
CORKILL: Yeah, it's kind of on the corner.
LaVOY: A little white house.
CORKILL: Yeah. He was a carpenter [Ted Bentley], and he came in here and he just tore all the old paper off and put new rafters and everything. It was a nine-foot ceiling and he lowered it.
LaVOY: You'd have no idea that the ceiling was that high.
CORKILL: Yeah, they were. This one wasn't, but those others were. He lowered the ceilings and put new rafters and put wallboard. All you could get during the War was
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that old cellotex wallboard. He put that all through the house, and we painted it. We had a man put in a bathroom.
LaVOY: Was the original bathroom outside? Like most of them were at that point in time. Was the well working, or did you have to have a well dug?
CORKILL: That well was working, but my husband had a new well dug. Mr. Shuey was a well driller, and he dug that well. That was in the forties, and that thing has unlimited water. What yard I water, I water with it, and the cattle are on it. They also dug another well down by the barn. But that well was really good water for a long time, but now it's polluted so I don't use it. I just use it in the bathroom.
LaVOY: Why is it polluted?
CORKILL: I don't know. I've have it tested, and it has coli in it. Not the e-coli, but just some coliforms in it, and then it has nitrates in it. I think it gets it from the fields.
LaVOY: Oh, just the ground water soaking into the well. So, what are you using for your sink water?
CORKILL: I use it for the dishes and stuff, but I get my water for the cooking and drinking in at the Regional Park.
LaVOY: Oh, how do you bring it out here?
CORKILL: I have three gallon jugs.
LaVOY: You can't put clorox or anything down the well to kill the coli?
CORKILL: I have been doing that every year except I did it till about three years ago. The gophers worked over the casing and stuff and I couldn't get into it, so Harry fixed it the other day so I could get into it, and I put a gallon of clorox down there and to leave it all night. That was last week and then tomorrow morning if I get my car back, I'm going to--I've already got the little bottle you send to the lab in Reno. You take it into the hospital, and they test for you, so I'll have it tested to see what's right.
LaVOY: I certainly hope that's it cleared up for you.
CORKILL: I think that'll get rid of it, but I'm still not going to drink it.
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You've gotten in the habit of getting the water from the park, and if it's no problem to you .
Do you have good water up there?
Yes, we do.
When you moved here, you had your son, Gaylan. Did you have another child that moved here with you?
All three of the children were born at that time.
Who were the other two?
Bill.
Bill was born where?
Down there, and so was Harry.
What was Bill's birth date?
June 9, 1935.
And then the next boy?
His is September 11, 1938.
And that is?
Harry Ward.
And Bill is what?
Edward.
William Edward [Corkill] and Harry Ward [Corkill]. Did you have any other children?
[shakes head no]
It must have been an exciting time living here with three boys on the ranch.
You know, that was the best time of our lives. I'm sure it was. What were the boys' chores?
Mostly milking. They weren't old enough to do too much when we first moved here. Gaylan would be ten. They had wood to carry in and stuff like that. They didn't help much with the milking because they weren't old
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enough.
LaVOY: How many cows did your husband have?
CORKILL: I think when he first started up here he was milking fifteen.
LaVOY: Was that to sell the milk?
CORKILL: Yeah. They had a dairy that picked it up. Well, at first they just sold the cream. They separated and sold the cream, and then they had pigs to feed the skim milk to.
LaVOY: I didn't realize that you had a dairy here. You
started with fifteen cows, and you sold your cream to whom?
CORKILL: It was called the Modesto Creamery.
LaVOY: Did they come from California, or did they have an office here?
CORKILL: They had a plant down here, and they made butter here. It think it was all handled here. I'm not too sure, but I know it was called the Modesto Creamery. I know they made butter and cheese down there.
LaVOY: Did they come to collect the cream, or did you have to take it in?
CORKILL: They collected it.
LaVOY: Did you increase your dairy herd?
CORKILL: Yeah, they increased it, and they built a Grade-A dairy, and the boys were big enough then to help with that.
LaVOY: Where was the dairy located on your ranch? CORKILL: It was right down there. You can still see it.
LaVOY: The east side of your ranch.
CORKILL: Yeah. And then we sold the milk to Model Dairy from Reno.
LaVOY: That must have been a very ambitious undertaking. CORKILL: It was, but we had three boys that were . .
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LaVOY: The three boys did the milking.
CORKILL: Kept them busy and out of trouble. [laughing]
LaVOY: Did they milk before they went to school?
CORKILL: Gaylan did. I guess they all did when they got in high school. At first, Gaylan was the only one that was old enough. When he got to be thirteen he helped his dad milk by hand, and then when they got the Grade-A dairy they were all old enough to work in it. This was the three boys. Have you seen that picture?
LaVOY: No, I haven't. That's a lovely, lovely, lovely picture.
Just getting back here just a minute to the dairy, how many years did you run the dairy?
CORKILL: Gee, if I could just think when we built it.
LaVOY: This was run basically by you and your husband. His brother was not involved in it. It was strictly you and your husband. When did you decided that you were going to give up the dairy business?
CORKILL: Oh, Gaylan went off in the service. He was out of it, and Bill was mostly for beef cattle and stuff. He was interested in the beef business. He liked to work with beef cattle. Then after he got married, I don't think Harry and young Harry ran the dairy after that.
LaVOY: Was your husband still alive at that time? CORKILL: Oh, yes. He didn't die until 1991.
LaVOY: I see. Now, with this dairy, you had to raise alfalfa and all the feed?
CORKILL: Oh, yeah, we raised all the feed. We had barley.
LaVOY: And your family alone took care of the entire ranch? CORKILL: Well, they had to hire some help during harvest.
LaVOY: You and your husband decided to stop the dairy business about when?
CORKILL: If I could just think when Bill and Bunny got married. [May 14, 1960]
LaVOY: Probably in May of 1960.
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CORKILL: Well, Harry and his dad ran that dairy for awhile after that.
LaVOY:
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So approximately in the sixties.
I think before the sixties they quit the dairy business.
And then what did you continue doing.
My husband and I? Oh, we just ran this farm with young Harry helping us.
And put up hay and sold the hay and that sort of thing. Kept you very, very busy. In the meantime you had mentioned that your parents had moved from the Fallon area. Where did they go from the Fallon area?
They went to Oregon.
And what did they do in Oregon?
My father and his sons, my brothers, worked in the lumber.
Oh, in the lumber mills.
No, they worked out in the forest.
Cutting the trees. Did they enjoy doing that?
Yes, they did.
About how many years did they do that?
They only did that for about three years. Then they came back here.
They came back to Nevada?
Yeah, and they went to Virginia City and the father and the boys worked in the mines. One time a fire came through there, and my mother was getting ready for bed. She looked out the window, and that fire was just right there. A great fire. They had their night clothes on, they got out, and got in the car. Their neighbor was deaf. He didn't know anything about this, so they got him out of there, and they went to Reno in their night clothes. They got into a motel there, and they called me. My brother was here, and his house was just down below where my folks' house was. They said to tell him to get home and see if he could save his house. But,
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if the fire was raging like it was, my brother didn't think there was any chance, so he didn't go, but it did miss his house. Then the folks lived with him until they got a place in Sparks. My brother became an engineer on the railroad. My dad worked in maintenance on the railroad.
LaVOY:
CORKILL: LaVOY: CORKILL: LaVOY: CORKILL: Your brother, that would be Willard Marke, was an engineer on the railroad. Didn't he have a twin?
Yes.
Willis. Was that his name?
Yes.
What did he do?
He was a mechanic for the State Highway Department in Sparks.
LaVOY: Oh, I see. Where did they live in Sparks? Do you
remember?
CORKILL:
Yes, I do. Willard lived on Mongolo Lane. He had a nice home right on the corner of Mongolo, and then Roy lives just a block further on York Lane.
In Sparks?
Willard lives up on Palisade Drive.
Oh, I was speaking of when they lived in Sparks.
First he built a house on Sullivan Lane when he was married to Anna Ahern. Then when they divorced he moved up on Palisade Drive.
Your parents, then, with your father working for the railroad, he inspected the cars, was that it? What's involved with inspecting the cars?
I don't know. He looked underneath them and all kinds of . . . I know he did an awful lot of looking underneath the cars.
There was such a close brotherhood among the railroad people in Sparks that I just wondered how many years he and your brothers worked for the railroad.
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CORKILL: I don't know. When that fire started in Virginia City, two of the brothers had just gone overseas. One
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brother had just gotten married, and he just had a truckful of wedding presents and they were all burned up
LaVOY: Oh, what a shame!
CORKILL: And they both had cars there and they burned up. They'd just gone into the service, so they lived in Sparks from 1942 till 1970.
LaVOY: They lived there literally for twenty [thirty] years. Which one passed away first?
CORKILL: My father passed away in 1957, mother in 1970.
LaVOY: She lived as a widow for many years then.
CORKILL: She had a son, my brother that was kind of handicapped.
LaVOY: Which brother was that?
CORKILL: Otis.
LaVOY: And he lived with your mother. Did she enjoy coming out here to visit you and your husband?
CORKILL: Oh, yes.
LaVOY: Did she come often?
CORKILL: They came often, yeah. When young Harry was born--do you know where Mary Foster had her studio at the last, that old hospital?
LaVOY: I believe I do.
CORKILL: Well, that was a hospital there. Harry was born there. About the second day after he was born, the cook and her boyfriend had a drunken fight in the kitchen in the hospital. My doctor came and he said, "Do you have anyone to take care of you if you go home?" In those days they thought you had to stay in bed for ten days.
LaVOY: Who was your doctor?
CORKILL: Dr. [Harry] Sawyer, and he said, "You gotta get out of here," so Harry called my mother and dad. He said, "Could you come down and stay with Laura for a few days. Everything blew up here." Now, that's what he said to them, and they got in the car and they came down here and they didn't know. Always thought about that so many times that he said that to them, but they
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came down here in a rush. Young Harry was the last patient they ever had in that hospital.
LaVOY: Really! My goodness! So, your mother and father stayed here for the ten days or so?
CORKILL: Yeah.
LaVOY: Oh, my, how things come in circles, don't they?
You said your husband passed away in 1991, and what was the cause of his death?
CORKILL: Just heart. But, you know, until his last two weeks, he was just as sharp as ever. He was getting kind of weak walking around but he was just great right up to the last I thought. He got tired, and he kept saying, "I'm living too long." He lived till he was ninety-one, but he was getting tired. That night they took him to the hospital, and the doctor in there said he needed a pacemaker, so they care-flighted him to Reno. He was up there seventeen days, and they put this pacemaker in him, and he had to keep going down to the basement to have it re-programmed. He said, "I'd rather be in hell than go through what I'm doing here." So, finally, they sent him down here to the Convalescent Center, and when he got there he said . I still can't talk about it.
LaVOY: I know it's very, very hard for you. And he passed away at the time?
CORKILL: He begged me to bring him home, but I couldn't.
LaVOY: And he passed away at the Convalescent Center. CORKILL: After a week.
LaVOY: You've been here by yourself for seven years. I know you are a wonderful card player, so how many card groups do you belong to?
CORKILL: Two.
LaVOY: And what days do you play?
CORKILL: Every other Monday and every other Thursday. We only play the first and third Mondays, but then we play every other Thursdays.
LaVOY: What other organizations have you belonged to?
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CORKILL: I belonged to the Rebekah Lodge for fifteen years. We belonged to the Farm Bureau. The boys still pay dues in the Farm Bureau. When we first moved here we belonged to a Five Hundred Club. There was twenty of us, five tables. I even had to take the bed out of that bedroom to string the tables out. [laughing] We did that for years, and you know I'm the only one left out of those twenty people.
LaVOY: Who were some of the people that were in your Five Hundred Club?
CORKILL: There was Vena and Tom, Hughena Miller and her husband [Willie], Chet and Margaret Merling, Don and Ellen Chapman, Herb and Pauline Lattin, John and Leola York, Paul and Virginia Candee, Leonard and Margarite Faupel. Then some of them would drop out, and we'd get other ones. Ruby and Miles Robison.
LaVOY: How often did you meet?
CORKILL: We would kind of go in alphabetical order.
LaVOY: Once a week?
CORKILL: Oh, no, no. Probably once a month. Candees got in charge of Lahontan Dam, and we'd go up there. At midnight we'd put on a full-course dinner.
LaVOY: What do you mean they were in charge of Lahontan Dam. I don't quite understand.
CORKILL: They always have to have a man up there that sees about the water.
LaVOY: Like a superintendent.
CORKILL: I guess he was a superintendent. I know he was in charge of the water release.
LaVOY: Oh, I didn't realize that. So you had a full, full dinner at midnight.
CORKILL: When I think of that I just wonder how we could do that.
LaVOY: I think it's because you were young. CORKILL: I can't believe the things we used to do.
LaVOY: That makes all the difference in the world.
CORKILL: That's right. I just can't believe the things they used to do.
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How many grandchildren do you have? All of three of your sons have been married?
Yeah. I have three sons, six grandchildren, and fifteen great. [laughing]
And all Corkills.
Well, no, Mary, Bill and Bunny's daughter, they married Well, I mean that they were all from your sons.
My husband and I were responsible for twenty, thirty people.
That kept you busy. [laughing] Now that you are retired and whatnot, what is your feeling about how Fallon has changed, or do you think it has changed?
Oh, I should say it has changed. I just can't believe how it's changing and how it's growing. It's still growing, isn't it?
Are you pleased that it's growing, or would you like to see it like it was?
Well, not way back there, but I liked it better twenty years ago.
With the base getting so big, what was your reaction when the base first opened up?
I don't know that I had any thoughts for or against
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LaVOY: Do the planes bother you at all?
CORKILL: No..
LaVOY: CORKILL: LaVOY: It certainly has helped the economy of the town. Oh, it surely has.
I think we have pretty well covered everything about your life and your life as a little girl. Is there anything that you can think of that I might have forgotten?
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CORKILL: No.
LaVOY: You certainly have done a beautiful job, and on behalf of the Churchill County Museum Oral History Project I want to thank you.
Laura Ellen Marke Corkill
Index
Basketball experience Page
Beckstead place 21-23
32
Bible, Alan 23, 24
Birth 11
Cattle cars 13-14
Churchill County Telephone and Telegraph 24-28
Cochran place 35-38
Corkill, Bessie Ward 29-31
Corkill, Edward Thomas 29
Corkill, Gaylan 34-35, 40, 41
Corkill, Harry 3, 29-32, 41, 44-
45
Corkill, Harry Ward 39, 44
Corkill, William Edward (Bill) 38-39, 41
Ditch rider 20-21
Entertainment 28, 45-46
Farm life 5-10, 14-15, 19,
34-35, 39-41
Fire Department 27
500 Club 45-46
Kallenback family 14-15
Leeteville 16
Maine Street 18, 19, 28
Marke, Cora Jane Pitts (Mother) 7-12, 18, 41, 43
Marke, Dora Shultz 2
Marke, Otis 43-44
Marke, Samuel 1, 3-4
Marke, Willard 42-43
Marke William Tell (Father) 3-6, 8, 10-14,
20-21, 41-42,
43
Marke, Willis 42-43
Marriage 28, 32-34
McCracken, George 18-19, 22-23, 24
Modesto Creamery 40
Morris, Mary Kay 23-24
Schooling 8, 12, 15-18, 20-
24
Teachers 15, 16, 17, 18-
19, 22
Theaters 28

Marian Lavoy

Laura Ellen Marke Corkill

455 West Corkill Lane, Fallon, Nv 89406