Margaret Louise Reed Estlow Oral History

Margaret Louise Reed Estlow Oral History

Margaret Louise Teed Estlow Oral History

Churchill County Museum Association

Churchill County Museum Association

November 16, 1999

Analog Cassette Tape, Text File, Mp3 Audio

English

Recording 1, 1:02:55
Recording 2, 30:58
Recording 3, 21:26

128kbps/44100hz

Churchill County Oral History Project
an interview with
MARGARET LOUISE REED ESTLOW
Fallon, Nevada
conducted by
JANET SWAN
November 16, 1999
This interview was transcribed by Patricia Boden; edited by Norine Arciniega; final by Patricia Boden; index by Gracie Viera; supervised by Myrl Nygren, Director of the Oral
History Project Churchill County Museum
Est
Preface
Margaret Louise Reed Estlow is a native Nevadan having been born March 11, 1912 at the Stewart Indian School where her father was employed by the Indian Service. Later as a five year old she lived on the McDermitt Indian Reservation 100 miles north of Winnemucca. During her lifetime she has lived in Nevada and California, experienced two major earthquakes— in Long Beach, California and in Fallon— and worked as a teacher in both states after graduating from the University of California at Los Angeles [U.C.L.A] with a degree in education. She held various office positions for the U. S. government and the State of Nevada. In the 1950's she was a fiscal accountant at the Naval Auxiliary Air Station [NAAS] in Fallon. She became the Churchill County Welfare Director in the 1960's, resigning in 1969.
Margaret has been a lifelong member of the Methodist Church and continues to be an active participant in the Epworth United Methodist Church in Fallon. She is twice past president of the American Association of University Woman [AAUW], Fallon Branch. She belongs to the PEO Chapter D national educational organization. Margaret Estlow has lived in Fallon for the last thirty-five years. She has led a full and interesting life and has many memories of early Nevada days to share in this oral history recorded November 16, 1999 in her home in Fallon.
Interview with Margaret Louise Reed Estlow
This is Janet Swan on behalf of Churchill County Museum Oral History program interviewing Margaret Estlow at 520 West B Street, in Fallon, Nevada on November 16, 1999.
SWAN: Thank you, Margaret, "for agreeing to do this interview; I appreciate it. Maybe we could start by talking about where you were born and when and your parents.
ESTLOW: Well, I was born--the record shows I was born in Carson City, but I actually was born at the Stewart Indian School because my father [Dale Harry Reed] was in the Indian service and he had come here from South Dakota where he and my mother [Josie West Bailey Reed] were on the Pine Ridge Reservation. They were the only so-called white people for about a hundred miles at that time. And I have some pictures of where they lived and it's the most bleak, desolate looking place you ever saw--not a tree, not a blade of grass. Very, very desolate. And when my dad went for supplies, my mother had to stay alone, and she had two children by that time, my two sisters, Alice and Mildred. And my mother was timid and she was scared, so instead of staying in the house she'd get out, put the kids in the buggy and walk up and down. Well, one of my father's pupils was a boy who couldn't speak out loud, he whispered, and he knew my mother was frightened, so he kept walking around the house to reassure her and whispering and scared her worse. [laughing] So she made my oldest sister Alice who was then probably six or seven years old, go in and look under all the beds before she'd go back in the house. And then of course my father got home eventually.
But then, back to Stewart--
SWAN: That was a family story [laughing]?
ESTLOW: We lived in Stewart for several years and then my father was transferred to McDermitt which is on the border of Idaho, and there was a day school. And at that time the Indian children had an eye disease and I never can say it, but it was highly infectious. So my father didn't think that we should go to school with the Indian kids for fear we would catch this. Well, in order to have a teacher for us, they had to have five pupils. Well, the farmer had a son, there were three Reed children, me and my two sisters. They started me at age five in order to make the five children.
SWAN: When was that, first grade?
ESTLOW: Yeah, I was in the first grade. Then there was a young girl named Martha St. Martin who lived on a ranch somewhere and she came, so that made the five children. And I always got through, being in the first grade, I got through and I'd be tired so I'd put my head down on the desk and sleep until the rest of the kids were out, 'cause there was nobody to play with. And we were there, oh gosh, I don't know how many years we were there, but I was the first grade at that point and my oldest sister was like, about sixth grade.
Anyway, this was the beginning of World War I and my father was too old for the draft, so he joined the YMCA work. And we left McDermitt and went to Orange, California where my grandmother Josie Bailey lived. She was my mother's mother, and the only grandparent that I knew because my other grandparents were all dead before I was born. So we lived in Orange for a short time and then my father was stationed at Camp Kerney which was near San Diego. So we lived in San Diego and I went to the second grade there.
SWAN: Oh, so you were in McDermitt only two years?
ESTLOW: We were there about a year or two because by the time we got to San Diego I was in the second grade. So there was a Normal School in San Diego at that time and the girls were doing practice teaching, and--I am left-handed--one of them kidded me into using my right hand. Now my mother went to school and told them to leave me alone because I was very left-handed. Both my father and mother were left-handed, so I inherited it from them. But this teacher kidded me into using both hands and if I'd been left alone I probably would have been ambidextrous, but the next teacher didn't know about this and of course I went right back to my left hand. And the only thing that I do with my right hand, naturally, is to bat because nobody could pitch to me, being left handed.
In later years I did a lot of payroll work and I taught myself to use calculator with my right hand. It was very convenient because I could sit there and run the calculator and then write it down. And to this day, nobody notices that I'm left handed till I use a pair of scissors, and I don't know what the difference is, but they'll say, "I never knew you were left handed." My mother went to school and taught me to turn my paper this way [with top to the right]. You see, a right handed person turns their papers this way [with the top to the left] so that's why they write this cramped way because they're
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trying to write across away from them. So my mother taught me to turn my paper so I wrote from left to right. I write a legible hand not a good one.
Now, my mother broke her wrist when she was a young girl so she learned to use her right hand, but my father and I were both definitely left handed. Neither of my sisters were, which is kind of interesting genealogically.
SWAN: Yes.
ESTLOW: Well, then after we left, after the war was over, we went back to Los Angeles to live and that was at the time of that terrible flu epidemic, which was in 1918 I think. Somebody in our family, I don't know whether it was one of my sisters, but we were quarantined and my father was not allowed to come home. So he had to stay at the YMCA.
SWAN: For goodness sakes.
ESTLOW: Until we got over the flu and fortunately none of us succumbed because a lot of people died. And we had to wear masks all the time. We did in San Diego. Face masks so that we didn't transmit.
SWAN: When you went to school or just . . .
ESTLOW: Just out in public, no we didn't wear them at school.
SWAN: Huh! So let me see how this is recording here. Maybe we can go back to what you remember about Stewart.
ESTLOW: Very little, except about the time, you want me to tell that?
SWAN: Sure.
ESTLOW: Well, my mother used a hand lotion that was made of glycerin and rose water and evidently it had raw alcohol in it. And I loved the smell of it, so one time I went in the bathroom and took the hand lotion and drank it. And it made me drunk [laughing] and I was maybe three years old at the time. Well, apparently the alcohol was dangerous, so the school nurse, this was at Stewart, and my mother made me walk until it wore off, and that I can remember, the walking. I never drank it again.
SWAN: [laughing]. Were they upset with you?
ESTLOW: No, they were scared because actually she said I could die if I went to sleep. Now I don't know if that would be true or not.
SWAN: Do you remember anything about the surroundings or the people your father worked with?
ESTLOW: Well, you see we went back there in later years and I lived there after I was grown up.
SWAN: So that's what you remember.
ESTLOW: So that's what I remember. I do not remember Stewart at all as a small child. I do remember McDermitt.
SWAN: Yes, what did your father do at McDermitt?
ESTLOW: Well, he was in charge. He was called the superintendant.
SWAN: Oh.
ESTLOW: And he was in charge. It was a day school and he had to give out supplies to the Indians. They were given flour, dried apples and things like that. And I was very fond of the dried apples. So when my dad was issuing supplies, I would sneak in and eat dried apples. Until I was discovered and then I no longer did.
SWAN: How fun. So they gave them the food.
ESTLOW: It was given out regularly to them.
SWAN: And it came from the Federal government.
ESTLOW: Much like they do now to people who don't have sufficient funds.
SWAN: And how did he get into the Indian Service?
ESTLOW: He went in as a teacher. He was a teacher at Pine Ridge.
SWAN: In South Dakota.
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ESTLOW: Yes, Pine Ridge, South Dakota. But, before that he had been in--and I can never remember whether it was North or South Carolina. My mother did not go there because he was sent back to South Dakota soon after that. So my dad went there alone. And I have pictures of some of the children who were in school there. They had to wear uniforms.
SWAN: Oh.
ESTLOW: And they were Cree Indians. At South Dakota they were Sioux. And here they were Washoe, Paiute and Shoshone. Here at Stewart. And my mother and father learned to speak Sioux when they were in South Dakota, and when they wanted to talk and us not know what they were saying, they used Sioux.
SWAN: Oh.
ESTLOW: And the only thing I can remember is my father used to say to me, "Enokaneen win chinchilla." and that meant "Hurry up, little girl."
SWAN: Oh, cute.
ESTLOW: So, I guess even then I was slow.
SWAN: [laughing] Kids are always in a hurry.
ESTLOW: I never learned any more.
SWAN: Well, they must have been real linguists to learn.
ESTLOW: The Sioux Indians were very highly developed. Not like we think of the Paiutes who are not very high in the hierarchy. Now, to me when I hear Paiutes speak it just sounds like a series of grunts. If they say, "Urn" it means one thing, if they "ugh" it means some other. It does not sound like language to me.
SWAN: But the Sioux are more . . .
ESTLOW: It's a descriptive language, Sioux is. Because my folks told me they did not have a name for banana, it was unknown to them. So they took words that meant yellow crooked fruit in their language and that's how they described bananas.
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SWAN: Oh, goodness.
ESTLOW: Now, I had an uncle who lived in Arizona had a trading post and he spoke Navajo.
SWAN: Oh, for goodness sake.
ESTLOW: But I don't know any Navajo [laughing].
SWAN: Was that your father's brother?
ESTLOW: My mother's brother. My mother's youngest brother.
SWAN: For heaven's sake.
ESTLOW: And he lived there for many years, he had--the property had the only spring for quite some distance--it was out from Winslow. And the government wanted to buy the property in order to have the spring for a source of water, and they told my uncle if he would sell out they would build a hospital. So he finally agreed to sell out, and the hospital was never built.
SWAN: That was too bad. And what about at McDermitt, now those were Paiute, Shoshone and . . .
ESTLOW: I imagine they were Utes and Paiutes .
SWAN: Now, you said you had your own . . .
ESTLOW: We had our own school. And it was in the front room of the farmer's home. And we had desks and anything and our teacher's name was Miss Royce, and she was young and very pretty. But she made school very interesting for us. Like one time she hid boxes of candy and ran strings all over the place, if you can remember when they used to do that. And we had to follow the strings to find our box of candy. Well, later on they changed farmers and the farmer who came was a friend of my parents and they had a little girl whose name was Sarah. And I was a shy child, believe it or not, but Sarah was the opposite and she talked all the time. So the teacher would punish us by making us stand in front of the class on either side of the desk. I would stand there and cry and Sarah would stand there and laugh.
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SWAN: [laughing]
ESTLOW: But I finally had a companion and we kept in touch for many years until I was out of high school.
SWAN: Oh, for heaven's sake.
ESTLOW: We kept in touch with their family and after my parents moved here to Fallon, the man, his name was Weston, came to visit them; his wife had passed away in the meantime. So, they kept in touch for many years.
SWAN: That's really nice.
ESTLOW: But we used to go out and pull turnips out of the ground and eat them. We loved the turnips, and we went barefoot all summer, then it hurt to put on the shoes. And we wore those horrible long-johns and of course they stretched and you had to fold them like this (pull bottom edge tight and fold over excess) in order to get your socks on.
SWAN: So you were just folding the bottom.
ESTLOW: It would stretch you know, after you'd worn them awhile and then we'd have to fold them over.
SWAN: Oh, yes.
ESTLOW: And there was a big white or gray horse; in my memory it's white, but I think it was probably gray, and my oldest sister was about thirteen or fourteen by then, she was allowed to ride. So they would let Alice ride, behind her would be my sister Mildred hanging on to her, and behind my sister Mildred would be me hanging on.
SWAN: [laughing] Oh, what fun!
ESTLOW: Then when we got home our mother would go over us with a fine tooth comb looking for ticks, which are very dangerous, and will bury into your skin. And the only way you get them out is you light a match to the end of their tail to get them out. Lovely things!
SWAN: Did you every have any ticks?
ESTLOW: Not that I remember.
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SWAN: I'll bet she was worried.
ESTLOW: I don't think we ever did, but Mom always went over us very carefully to be sure that we didn't have any. And we lived--McDermitt was about a hundred miles from Winnemucca, and so my parents usually took me with them if they had to go because I was still pretty small, but they would leave my sisters in charge of the teacher, this Miss Royce. So one time, they decided to leave me home and they went. We had two horses besides the gray one that looked almost identical. One of them was broken to drive, but not to ride, and one of them was broken to ride, and my oldest sister could ride the riding horse. So while my folks were gone, she decided to go riding. She asked the Indian boy who took care of the horses to saddle up the one that was rideable. Well, I wanted to ride up to the house from the stable, so I begged and teased until, then she suspected something, but she let me ride up, well, the minute the horse got out of the stable it bucked. And I go off {whistle} and landed on my head. And I had a concussion and I was out for three days.
SWAN: Oh, my heavens.
ESTLOW: And when my parents came home, my mother was frightened out of her wits because they thought I was a gone goose. But, I fooled 'em.
SWAN: My goodness. Was your sister worried . . .
ESTLOW: But I can remember that. I can remember soaring up in the air and coming down.
SWAN: And then nothing for three days. Was your sister upset or worried about you? Probably didn't know what else to do but put you to bed.
ESTLOW: I've always said that's why I'm such a nut nowadays. Because I landed on my head. [laughing]
SWAN: You know, it's amazing what kids can survive.
ESTLOW: I never had any ill effects from it apparently.
SWAN: Well, that was fortunate .
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ESTLOW: I remember sleeping in my mother's bed, and I thought that was a big privilege. It was a big bed.
SWAN: Well, how was life for your mom; did she just work from morning
till night taking care of the house and cooking and . . .?
ESTLOW: Well, when they were in South Dakota,she helped teach the girls domestic science, cooking and sewing and things like that. But after that she did not work; she took care of the house and looked after us. Tried to keep us in line. [laughing]
SWAN: Well, did you, I mean I assume you had a garden and a cow or . . . .
ESTLOW: Oh, yes. We had cows and I can remember one time my dad had to bring in a range cow because the milk cow had gone dry. And range cows are very difficult to handle, if you know anything about 'em. And he had to tie the darn thing down because it would kick all the time when he was trying to milk it. And I remember going to the barn to watch 'cause I wanted to see it kick.
SWAN: [laughing] You weren't worried about it.
ESTLOW: Well, I knew my dad was all right. I would have worried because I was very close to my father. My mother and father were very, very fine people, very Christian. My father was a lay preacher at one time. And they raised us very strictly, so we didn't use bad words or things like that. But I still remember going and sitting on the fence and watching dad milk that cow. And he had to tie her legs because she would kick.
SWAN: Who did a range cow belong to?
ESTLOW: Well, it belonged to the school.
SWAN: And ordinarily it would just be left out on the range.
ESTLOW: Just be left go.
SWAN: So then your mom would make butter?
ESTLOW: Oh, yes, she made her own butter and she made her own bread. And we loved the crust when it came out of oven and she used to get very angry with us because we cut up all the bread to eat the crusts.
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SWAN: [laughing]
ESTLOW: And when we first went there we had a very nice house, but there was no indoor bathroom, and there was a four holer out in the back yard, a little distance. And one of my, I won't name which one, sisters always thought it was a terrible waste of time to go to the bathroom, and she would wait until she couldn't wait any longer, then whoosh she'd go running out to the outhouse. But my dad tore that down of course, and he built an indoor bathroom. Or had one built.
SWAN: That must have been pretty nice in the winter. So then World War I came and that was when you moved to . . .
ESTLOW: That's when we moved to California and we lived in Orange where my grandmother lived.
SWAN: Now, you said your father went in the service?
ESTLOW: He went in the YMCA work because he was too old for the draft.
SWAN: Oh, right.
ESTLOW: And he taught the non-English speaking draftees at that time. And then after World War I when he went out away from teaching, he went into county YMCA work which was work with young boys. And we lived in Woodland, California near Sacramento.
SWAN: Oh, right.
ESTLOW: And we were there, we must have been there three or four years. My oldest sister graduated from high school there. And my middle sister was a senior, and I was probably in maybe the fourth grade when we moved to Stockton, California. And my father worked at a big YMCA building there which was, I guess, three or four stories. This was a very nice building, and they rented rooms to young men. And that's how my oldest sister met her husband because he roomed in the YMCA.
SWAN: Oh. [laughing]
ESTLOW: And she met him and they were married and went to San Francisco to live. He was in Western Union. He had grown up in Santa Cruz;
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he started out as a delivery boy on bicycles and then became a manager in later years. And that's how she met him was there.
SWAN: Did they continue to live in San Francisco?
ESTLOW: They lived in San Francisco, we didn't. We stayed in Stockton, and I went to the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh and eighth grades there. And then we moved--my father went out of YMCA work. He resigned, and we moved to southern California to Hemet which is near Riverside.
SWAN: Oh, right.
ESTLOW: And I went to the eighth grade there. And then we moved--my dad worked with my uncle and he had a Ford agency there. And then we moved to San Pedro, California, where my father bought a little grocery store. A little "mom and pop" grocery store.
SWAN: [laughing]
ESTLOW: And I went through three years of high school in San Pedro and graduated there.
SWAN: Now, when did you graduate, what year?
ESTLOW: 1929.
SWAN: Oh, okay.
ESTLOW: And then I went two years to Long Beach Junior College, which is now Long Beach State. And we lived there at the time of the terrible 1933 earthquake when Compton and Long Beach were practically destroyed.
SWAN: My gosh!
ESTLOW: And the school was badly damaged at that time. And then I went to UCLA for my final two years and got my degree in education there.
SWAN: What do you remember about the earthquake?
ESTLOW: Oh, I remember the devastation, it was terrible.
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SWAN: Were you at home or at school?
ESTLOW: We were downtown; it was the day before my birthday and my mother and my sister and my sister's little girl had gone down to J. C. Penny's to buy me a new dress for my birthday.
SWAN: Which was the 11th of March, right?
ESTLOW: Yes, and we were on the mezzanine floor where the dresses were, and when the earthquake hit, it was--you had the feeling that a whole train had crashed into the building.
SWAN: Wow.
ESTLOW: Now, if you remember the old Penney's store had lights that were like this one, they hung on long chains, and I said to my mother and my sisters, "Don't try to go outside, you're not supposed to." And they got behind me and pushed me out the door and here were these lights going like this (swinging back and forth).
SWAN: For heaven's sake.
ESTLOW: So then we went home and my dad still had the store, and of course everything had gone off the shelves. All the pickles, and all the glass stuff all over the floor. And my dad and I cleaned it up because my sister and my mother were scared to death of the after-shocks. It was terrible. We had after-shocks for two weeks.
SWAN: Were a lot of people killed in that earthquake?
ESTLOW: I'm sure a lot of people were but it was not publicized because Long Beach was considered a recreational area, and they didn't want --but my boyfriend at that time and I drove over to Long Beach the night that it happened and drove all over the town, and you never saw such devastation. Houses just clear off of their foundations, the brick work all off the fronts of the buildings, and you could see bathtubs and everything else exposed. The next day the National Guard took over and they wouldn't let anybody in and we had been all over town. And my boyfriend was in the Navy and he was put on a rescue crew and they had to go into the buildings to try to find people, and he said, "Believe me, we didn't look very hard because we didn't want to find people." And that night we were all scared to sleep in the house. The store had an apartment up stairs where we
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lived so we all put our cars out in the front and slept in the cars. [laughing]
SWAN: I think people do that still, don't they?
ESTLOW: And then one night at church at that time, they had evening church services, and we had a assistant preacher who was very long-winded and he was praying at great length, and we had an after-shock, and the whole congregation rose and started to go out while he was still praying. [laughing] And I remember that very well.
SWAN: He didn't even know you were leaving? [laughing]
ESTLOW: His name was Reverend Poole, I remember that.
SWAN: I guess he survived. [laughing]
ESTLOW: Oh, yes, we all survived. San Pedro was not damaged to any extent; Long Beach was terrible and I guess Compton was even worse. But Long Beach was just--it happened about four thirty or five o'clock, when people were going home from work. And all of those brick buildings fell out so you know a good many people must have died. But it was never publicized.
SWAN: Well, they didn't have TV then.
ESTLOW: They had to admit that some people were killed, but there were never any statistics given out.
SWAN: Well, you moved around a lot---
ESTLOW: I never went to school more than three years in any one place.
SWAN: How was that for you? Was it hard?
ESTLOW: Well, it was very difficult because I always cried for two or three days when we moved to a new school and I had to get used to things, but looking back I feel it was a very good social influence for me because I had to readjust all the time to new people, new friends.
SWAN: Margaret, we were talking about your memories of school and you were saying that you walked to school?
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ESTLOW: This was in Stockton. I walked to school for some distance. In San Pedro we lived right across from the high school field, so I only had to walk out the front door, walk one block and be in school.
SWAN: Oh, that's nice.
ESTLOW: And I graduated there and I went two years to junior college and I had met my first husband, who was a Navy man, and we were married, and in the meantime my father had decided to go back into government service and earn his retirement.
SWAN: In civil service.
ESTLOW: Yes, he went back into civil service. I was married. We left the store and my father was sent back to Stewart and he and my mother lived in the same house where I was born.
SWAN: For heaven's sake, just a circle all those years . . .
ESTLOW: So my husband and I came up to visit them and they offered him a job at Stewart and we stayed. So I lived at Stewart as a grown up as well as having been born there. And then by that time, I was a teacher and I had taught for three years in southern California. And I used to substitute in the school at Stewart, in the Indian school.
We moved to Reno and my husband and I both worked at the Reno Army Air Base. It's now Stead.
SWAN: Oh, but it was called something else?
ESTLOW: It was called the Reno Army Air Base, it was Air Force. And the planes came in directly from Asia. And they were very concerned for fear that they would bring back typhoid and things of that nature, so we all had to take shots. And we had a man who was deathly afraid of needles. And there were also some horses used there to patrol the fences. And the nurse knew that this man was afraid of needles and she thought it would be funny, so she went and got a horse syringe, and when he came up to get his shot, she pulled that out and he passed out cold.
SWAN: [laughing]
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ESTLOW: Which I thought was a very dirty trick, but she thought it was funny. And I worked in payroll and my husband was a welder . . .
SWAN: This was what, in the beginning of World War or what . . ESTLOW: This was during World War II.
SWAN: Oh, during World War II.
ESTLOW: Yeah, and my husband was a welder and then we were divorced. I went to work for the Veteran's Administration in Reno.
SWAN: Oh.
ESTLOW: I was secretary to the dietician and then I had an opportunity to go to work for the highway department in Carson. So I moved to Carson and in the meantime my father and mother had moved to Fallon. My dad had been employed with the War Manpower Commission and had moved to Fallon, and the War Manpower Commission reverted to the state and he was the State Employment Office manager here.
SWAN: Oh, state employment office. Is that what they called the state employment?
ESTLOW: Yes.
SWAN: Oh, gosh. And so what year did they move to Fallon?
ESTLOW: Oh, it was in the early forties, sometime in the early forties.
SWAN: But you stayed in Reno?
ESTLOW: I was living in Carson at that time and working for the highway department.
SWAN: So, you were a state employee?
ESTLOW: Yes. So I worked in the right-of-way department of the highway--I was the secretary. So then my father heard of a civil service job because he was in the employment service--and he told me about it. So I came and applied for the job at NAAS {Naval Auxiliary Air Station] and I went to work as a fiscal accountant at NAAS. This is where I met Berney, my second husband.
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SWAN: What was he doing?
ESTLOW: He was in the Navy he was a bosun's mate. Which is the same as a cop in the Navy. And we met and were married.
SWAN: Well, how soon after you met did you .
ESTLOW: Well, he used to come in the office where I worked; he had to bring money from the chow line and I thought he was one of the neatest looking sailors I'd ever seen.
SWAN: [laughing]
ESTLOW: And one day he came and stood by my desk and grinned at me.
SWAN: Ah, ha.
ESTLOW: And from then on we became acquainted and . . . . And we were married for almost forty-one years.
SWAN: For heaven's sake, you were married, let's see when?
ESTLOW: April 18, 1956.
SWAN: Did you keep working?
ESTLOW: I worked there; oh, my husband was transferred back to sea duty and he was stationed on the USS Navarro, which was the transport vessel which transported those little-I don't know what they properly were called--they took the men ashore from — to fight, you know those funny looking things [amphibious landing craft]. Well, that's what they did. And of course, he went all up and down so I moved to Long Beach because he was based in Long Beach. And I didn't work in Long Beach. And then he had an opportunity to resign from the Navy, after the war was over, they were letting people out in order to reduce the number of sailors. So he took an early retirement and so he was in the Navy not quite ten years.
So we came back to Nevada and we both went to work at Hawthorne, and he worked in the building trades, carpenter work and all of that, and he had full clearance and he worked with a lot of the highly secret stuff that was made there.
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SWAN: Ammunition?
ESTLOW: Ammunition, I couldn't say the word. And he helped pack things and so on that were shipped out. And I worked in the supply. First I worked in the high explosives loading area and that was pretty exciting because one time they had what was called an implosion which was not an explosion. Instead of exploding out, it exploded in. And the ammunition was made by cooking it in great big pots-now I can't give you any details because it was secret and I never even knew how it was done. But they had this implosion and the kettles where it was cooked were up on a high point and earth work was all down around it to support this. My boss who was a little chubby man with short legs, ran up that earth works in nothing flat bless his little old heart. He had to go up that. It was his duty. Well, all of the big shots came out to see what was wrong, and the fire department and everything else and it didn't do any damage, fortunately. They sent me up to the main office, to keep me in the office because all of these men, the high officers and everything were in our office and they didn't want a woman around. So they sent me up to the main office.
SWAN: [laughing]
ESTLOW: Well, then, we applied for work in Fallon, both my husband and I. And he was accepted and went to work here and became a full-fledged house painter. And I did not go to work at the base, there was no opening for me. So, they had an opening for a county welfare officer here and I applied for that,and I was the county welfare officer for almost five years
SWAN: What years were you.. .
ESTLOW: That would be probably from 1964 to 1969.
SWAN: Oh, gosh, and then after you I guess was Kaz Nojima?
ESTLOW: Yeah, that's when Kaz took over. Well, there was another lady in the meantime, but she left and went to, I think, Alaska and worked in welfare.
SWAN: Well, had someone else been doing county welfare before you did it, or did you start?
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ESTLOW: Selma Groth. Sally's mother. Her mother Selma preceded me. SE-L-M-A.
SWAN: Oh, huh.
ESTLOW: And she retired and I went to work as the county welfare officer. And then I quit in 1969.
SWAN: In 1969. Well, what was your job like, did you work all by yourself?
ESTLOW: I gave out food chits for indigent people, who were mostly passing through and didn't have enough money to eat or buy gasoline or anything. And I had cards which entitled them to go to Kolhoss' grocery and get say ten dollars worth of food. I did not handle any money, it was all paper work.
SWAN: And you didn't give out food packages or any of that?
ESTLOW: Not at that time; later on when they started giving out commodity foods, I gave out commodity foods.
SWAN: And people would come to you for assistance?
ESTLOW: We had a little place down by the swimming pool, where the food was stored. It had been a store.
SWAN: Oh, over by Oats Park?
ESTLOW: Uh huh. And the people would come there and the state welfare office authorized how many were in the family and so on and let me know and then I gave out the commodities.
SWAN: Well, where was your main office?
ESTLOW: In the brick building where we pay our utilities bills--City Hall.
SWAN: Oh, at City Hall.
ESTLOW: At City Hall [55 W.Williams Ave.] first and then we moved over to where Berney Real Estate [290 W. Williams Ave.] is now.
SWAN: Oh, across the street then on the corner.
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ESTLOW: Down, the state welfare office was there and my office, also, was there.
SWAN: Well, county and city were separate though, weren't they?
ESTLOW: It was state and county.
SWAN: Oh, you worked state.
ESTLOW: They were state, I was county. I did the county welfare but they --
SWAN: There was state welfare and county welfare, but you were in City Hall just because there was space there.
ESTLOW: Yeah, I shared a room with Eve Kalousek who was the health nurse..
SWAN: What do you remember about that, I mean that's pretty interesting. Because she was before Carol Farrington, I guess.
ESTLOW: Well, we had nothing to do with one another, we simply shared the office. And the people had to come in and apply to me and the same thing was that I gave out chits for food and sent them to the police to get enough gas to get into the next county, where they would have to ask for help again. And we kept records, and this is a very interesting point, you'd look back and you'd find this family went through last year and they had added another baby. And so many of them went to California to work in the fruit and the lettuce and all those crops. And I never will forget one man who came in and he said, "All I need is just enough to get me down to California, and then my wife and kids can all go to work."
SWAN: [laughing] He didn't say anything about himself.
ESTLOW: He didn't say anything about himself, my wife and kids can all go to work.
SWAN: Well, you must have seen a real slice of life.
ESTLOW: Had a lot of very interesting experiences. I learned a lot about human nature, all bad. Because they came in smoking tailor-made cigarettes and begged for food. I finally resigned, it was— I went into it because I thought I could do some good in the world and it--
19
so much of it was fake. And so many of them were totally undeserving. And then on the other hand, I would have people--it broke my heart because I couldn't do anything for them. I had one little lady who came and she and her husband had lived in a trailer court, and I think it might have been the one out there now where Frontier is, and they lived on social security and he became ill and was in the hospital. And she had to ask for help. And she would come in and I would give her all I could give her which was very little. And she walked every day from that place out there into the hospital to see him. And she died and he lived.
SWAN: Oh, for heaven's sake.
ESTLOW: And we had things like that that I just couldn't stand any more because there was so little I could do for them. She should have had transportation and everything and I had no way of doing it.
SWAN: No, there just weren't the funds for that.
ESTLOW: Our funds were very limited. So I finally resigned and I said I would stay home and cook beans and knit. [laughing] And I haven't worked since then. And I never learned to knit. That was in 1969.
SWAN: You were ready for a rest, you'd worked a lot of years.
ESTLOW: Well, I was borderline anemic and not feeling well, so I just resigned. And Berney worked until, let's see, he retired in 1985.
SWAN: Hmm. So sixteen more years after you quit working.
ESTLOW: There's something wrong with that picture. Let's see.
SWAN: 1989, 1979.
ESTLOW: No, because he put in twenty years before he retired so that would all right. Yeah, that would figure out all right.
SWAN: You've always been active in . . .
ESTLOW: About the first thing we did was take a trip to New Zealand.
SWAN: Oh, that was after you --
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ESTLOW: After he retired, I was already retired. We had a wonderful trip. I would love to go back there. It's beautiful. They have a mean temperature on the north island of seventy degrees and it's so lush everything is so green, it's beautiful. And then on the south island they had glaciers because it's close to Antarctica. And I would love to go back there. I never will, but I would love to.
SWAN: Well, it's good that you got to. How did you happen to pick New Zeal and?
ESTLOW: Well, from a National Geographic. I was having my hair done and I was thumbing through and I saw this ad for New Zealand. And I came home and I said to Berney, "How'd you like to go to New Zealand?" He said, "I would." And we did. [laughing]
SWAN: [laughing] The National Geographic has a lot of . . .
ESTLOW: Yeah. It was odd because we had never even thought of it. But I thought that would be interesting.
SWAN: And so you took a tour?
ESTLOW: So, we had a lovely trip; we were there for almost three weeks.
SWAN: Did you go on your own or was it a tour?
ESTLOW: No, we went in a group. We traveled by bus. And I didn't know any of the people. We didn't know any of the people. And the only objection I had was that you moved to a different place every night and you had to live out of a suitcase. And of course everything you wanted was on the bottom of the suitcase. But they have wonderful dairy products down there. And every time the bus drove up to a hotel or a motel where we were staying there would be a whole stack of little bottles of milk about this big. And you could take as many as you wanted.
SWAN: Well, how nice.
ESTLOW: And there was no charge for that. And each room had a little refrigerator stocked with various kinds of alcoholic drinks, and you could use any of them you wanted and make a list and pay for it later. You were trusted to do that. Which we didn't indulge in. Berney loved his beer but I didn't drink anything.
21
SWAN: Well, you had a nice trip.
ESTLOW: Oh, it was wonderful. We went to Auckland, we landed at Auckland, and we were so tired because we had flown from San Francisco to Hawaii non-stop and we laid over one hour there and then boarded the plane and went on to New Zealand. And we were so tired by the time we got there we just fell into bed and slept. So I would say if you're going that way--stay over in Hawaii. Now you can fly direct from Los Angeles to New Zealand non-stop.
SWAN: It's still a long trip.
ESTLOW: A long, long trip. And we flew over a storm and they told us to check the port holes, they're little wooden blinds, they said you'll sleep better. Well, it wasn't that it was because we were flying over a terrible storm and you could see --we opened it up to see--and the lightening was just a going in all directions.
SWAN: They didn't want people to get alarmed.
ESTLOW: We weren't alarmed at all.
SWAN: That sounds exciting. Well, then let's see, we didn't really touch much... you said you went to junior college in Long Beach and what do you remember particularly about that? Is there any recollections about that in your mind?
ESTLOW: Well, it was basic first two years of college. And of course when you take all of the required courses in math and I took zoology because I wanted to get all my credits in one year and zoology was ten credits, ten units. So I took that and I dissected sharks and frogs and cray fish and got sick as a dog over the smell of the formaldehyde.
SWAN: [laughing]
ESTLOW: But your first two years, as you know, you take all your basic requirements in math and English and everything. And then when I went to UCLA I took the educational courses and did my practice teaching at the school near there. This was at the height of the depression and I never expected to get a job. There were very few. And I very unexpectedly got a job as a kindergarten teacher the year I graduated from college.
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SWAN: Gee, that was good.
ESTLOW: And I went to San Jacinto to teach, which is near Hemet, where I went to junior high.
SWAN: And so when you went to UCLA, was that the first time you were living on your own?
ESTLOW: I still lived in San Pedro.
SWAN: So you commuted?
ESTLOW: We commuted and it took us an hour to go from Pedro to UCLA. Now it would probably take four hours because of the traffic. And we rode with a young woman whose husband was a teacher and she wanted to become a pre-school teacher, so she was taking graduate courses. And her name was Edith Viola Ragsdale Vanderpool.
SWAN: Wow! [laughing]
ESTLOW: I remember that because it was such an odd name, and she drove--
SWAN: Did she use all those names?
ESTLOW: No, she just used Edith Vanderpool. Because she was a graduate student we were allowed to park up on the campus. Ordinarily, the parking— having you ever been to UCLA?
SWAN: Uh hm.
ESTLOW: Well, you know the parking is on the lower level and we were allowed to park at the education building because she was graduate student. So that was a break, we didn't have to climb the one hundred steps to get to our car.
SWAN: There are a lot of steps, I remember that. Did you study hard?
ESTLOW: I was not a brilliant student and most of my grades were c's. I had a few b's. I don't remember I had any a's. And I didn't particularly enjoy my education classes and I found out after I went to teaching, they're not practical. You learned theory, but you have to adapt to practicality when you get out to teaching. But I taught kindergarten for three years in San Jacinto.
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SWAN: And that was the first time you lived alone?
ESTLOW: No, I was married at that time.
SWAN: Oh, that's right--you were married.
ESTLOW: He was still in the Navy. And I lived in San Jacinto and boarded with a family. And we would see each other weekends. But he was still in the Navy.
SWAN: And you were starting to say about your teaching your class--
ESTLOW: Well, there wasn't room in the school--this is how I got my job-there wasn't room in the school for the kindergarten, so they had decided to abolish the kindergarten, and the mothers got up in arms and demanded so--this was late in the summer--and so in August I heard about the position and applied and got the job and went to work in September.
SWAN: Wow.
ESTLOW: So that's how I managed to get a teaching job at the height of the Depression. Then I had to teach in the morning my kindergarten which--it was a small town and not that many kids--and then in the afternoon I taught physical education. About which I knew nothing! [laughing] So I would say, "Take the ball and the bats and go out and play baseball--or else you go out and play basketball." And I didn't know enough to referee the games. I was not interested in physical education. So after two years I went to summer school in Long Beach and studied music, which I had been involved in all my life. And I taught music in the elementary school for a year in all the upper grades. From, I think, about third grade on.
SWAN: What instrument did you play?
ESTLOW: Oh, no instrument. No, it was just singing.
SWAN: Oh, singing, oh.
ESTLOW: But I taught them to sing two parts.
SWAN: Well, good for you. [laughing]
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ESTLOW: I played piano. Not well, but I do play some. And so I could accompany myself
SWAN: Well did you take piano lessons as a child?
ESTLOW: I did when I was living in Hemet in the eighth grade, I had piano lessons so my contribution at the recital was always a little ditty that was played with one finger practically [laughing] because I was a beginning student. So I never became--now, my sister was a very fine pianist and she studied at College of the Pacific with a very fine instructor.
SWAN: In Stockton?
ESTLOW: In Stockton. And she was an accompanist; she did a lot of accompanying for soloists. She was a very fine piano teacher. And my oldest sister had a beautiful alto voice. And my father sang baritone. My father was part Welsh and he was addicted to the Welsh singing. And in later years, when I learned to harmonize, I thought I was singing alto and one time I was singing away and somebody said to me, "You sing a very nice baritone." And I was singing baritone because I had learned it from my father. But I didn't know it. And now, I sing in the Methodist Choir, and I started out as a lyric soprano and could sing real high. Then I smoked for twenty years and I no longer can sing high notes. I sing alto. Like an idiot I smoked.
SWAN: Well, many people did.
ESTLOW: One of the dirtiest habits you can ever get into. But I worked around people who smoked and I thought well, second hand. Well it was just as bad for me one way as the other. Finally Dr. Cecil said to me--I had to have--I substituted some when we came here too. I forgot to tell you that. But I had to have a chest x-ray in order to qualify as a substitute and I went to Dr. Cecil. He knew I smoked and he said, "You keep on smoking and you're going to ruin your lungs," he said, "Right now you're okay." I had two cigarettes left in a pack and I never smoked again.
SWAN: Good for you., Gosh, that was really good.
ESTLOW: And I substituted in Carson and Hawthorne and here.
2
SWAN: Besides your other jobs.
ESTLOW: Well, I didn't have other jobs. My certificates went from kindergarten through the eighth grade. So I could substitute in any of them. And in Hawthorne I even substituted in the high school `cause I was the only substitute they had with a degree, and you couldn't teach high school unless you had a degree. So I one time had the driver's license class? So do you think I took them out and drove--No, I said, "Open your books to page so and so," and we read the books.
SWAN: [laughing] Well that's a cute story. Talking about when you were a substitute teacher, do you have any other thoughts about that time?
ESTLOW: Well, I never minded substituting; most teachers do. But the reason I didn't mind was because I'm a big person. I could dominate and I could scare the kids into behaving.
SWAN: [laughing]
ESTLOW: And I used to substitute at E. C. Best when it was junior high and I would go in and I would say, Now you're going to get the kind of teacher you want; you behave and I'll be nice. You don't behave and I will be very nasty." So I got along very well. I never had a bit of trouble. And as I said, I did do some substituting at the high school in Hawthorne and a lot in the elementary school. And then I substituted here and when Berney first got out of the Navy we lived in Carson for a short time. I did some substituting there too. But like I say, I never minded because I could scare the kids into behaving. Most teachers don't like to substitute 'cause the kids are devils. And I suppose now--I wouldn't substitute now for anybody for anything. I wouldn't be able to anyway but--as far as I know my certificates are still good. They were lifetime certificates.
SWAN: Well, wonderful. Good for you. Did you miss teaching when you were pursuing your other career?
ESTLOW: No, because I never really wanted to be a teacher. So I did a lot of office work, I did payroll work, and fiscal accounting out here at the base. And this is very amusing; I can't balance my checkbook, yet I earned my living, as a fiscal accountant. [laughing]
SWAN: [laughing]
ESTLOW: I don't know what I do wrong. I subtract wrong or something, so every so often I take my check book down to the bank and I say, "Straighten it out." They straighten it out for me.
SWAN: Oh, good. [laughing]
ESTLOW: Another few months and I have to take it--I don't know what I do.
SWAN: Oh, well--
ESTLOW: I have a little calculator.
SWAN: Oh, do you?
ESTLOW: And I should be able to add and subtract on it, but I don't know what I do,--something. But they're very kind to me, they straighten me out.
SWAN: Well, since you said you never wanted to be a teacher and . .
ESTLOW: The reason was that I graduated from high school in 1929, the beginning of the Great Depression and nobody had any money. I had always wanted to go to college and I wanted to major in English. I wasn't interest in teaching or anything. I just simply wanted to study English. And my father said, "We can't afford to send you to college unless you are capable of earning a living." So I took educational courses and taught school. And did it successfully, but not lovingly.
SWAN: It wasn't your first love.
ESTLOW: I did love the little kids. The kindergarten kids I adored. I had some beautiful little youngsters. Farming community. You had show and tell in kindergarten the first thing in the morning; well, these little kids lived in a farming community they didn't have much excitement in their lives, so I had one little boy who always got up and sang, "I'm Popeye the sailor man" {singing and laughing]. That was his show and tell.
SWAN: Oh, how cute!
ESTLOW: And then that was my first experience with a horny toad. It's sort of a desert community. And I had never touched one of them and had
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no desire to do so. So he brings this horny toad in--I knew if I didn't touch it I was down the drain. So I let him put it in my hand and you know they aren't rough. They're soft. So I learned a lesson on myself.
SWAN: They weren't so bad after all.
ESTLOW: Oh, this you should know. There was no room in the school for the kindergarten that's why they almost abolished it. So they rented this little house about oh, maybe six or eight blocks from school. I had to do my own janitor work. I had to build my own fires. And I got $1100 dollars a year and thought I was rich. It was from 1933 to 1936.
SWAN: Gosh, that was not quite a hundred dollars a month. Wow. And you had to do everything. How many children were in your class?
ESTLOW: I had probably twenty to twenty-five. A small class. And I had some adorable youngsters. I had one little boy who was being raised by his grandparents and he had the face of an angel. And he was the worst little pill you ever saw in your life. He got into more mischief than you can count. And my sister said to me one time, "How come every time I come to your school, you have that poor child sitting in the corner?" And I said, "You ought to be around to see the mischief he gets into." But he had the face of a little angel. So his grandmother, at Christmas time, brought me a beautiful Christmas cactus which she had raised in an old wash basin. I treasured that thing for a long time. And I still have Christmas ornaments that I bought the first year I taught which was in 1933.
SWAN: Oh, gosh.
ESTLOW: A lot of stuff got broken, but I still have some of them.
SWAN: Did you have a pot belly stove or what?
ESTLOW: Pot bellied stove. The janitor brought me a load of wood and stacked it on the porch, and I had to bring newspapers and stuff and fix my own. And the bathroom was on the back porch, so there was no heat in the bathroom, but nobody lingered. A good thing too.
S WAN: Yes, right.
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ESTLOW: They put up a slide in the back yard so that the kids had a slide. I can't remember whether they had swings or not. Oh, and one thing, I had this beautiful little boy who had had a mastoid operation and it had left him crippled. 'His hands were badly crippled. And he couldn't walk, he was probably about seven years old. Beautiful child with big brown curls. And so loving. And they lived about a block from this little school, and his mother came to me and she said, "Would you let me bring Buddy to kindergarten? He hasn't been able to go to any school and we went him to have some schooling." And she said, "I will come over every day at recess and take him to the bathroom so you'll have nothing like that to take care of." Well, at first he was in a wheel chair, so I explained to the children that Buddy couldn't walk the way they did and they were wonderful to him. And he learned--we didn't have any desks--they had built two great big long tables and that's where they sat, and they did have little kindergarten chairs. Well, he learned to put his arms like this [folded across his chest each hand on opposite elbow] and drag his feet and move around those tables. And then his father built him a walker, like a baby walker, but he was bigger and so he came to school under his own power in the walker.
SWAN: Oh, for Heaven's sakes. You made a difference in his life.
ESTLOW: Well, then the next year, he was to go to first grade, and he had an older brother who was supposed to look after him, to take him to the bathroom, and it didn't work. And they finally had to take him home, and give him home bound teaching. But I have a picture of him, he was the sweetest child. So loving, and he loved it when I would take him out and put him up on the slide and catch him. He just adored that. Darling youngster. That was a beautiful experience.
And then when I taught music, every year they took from the different outlying schools to Riverside and the kids sang in chorus, from all different schools. And I was sick and unable to go so the principal had to take my group of kids but they did very nicely, and I was proud of them because I had taught them to sing two parts.
SWAN: Oh, good. [laughing] They harmonized. Great.
ESTLOW: My husband went to work--at that time they were building a tunnel through the mountain from San Jacinto to the Palm Springs area. And my husband was a welder and he worked there, so we lived for
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another year and I was not teaching at that time. But we lived there for another year and then left and we came up here to visit my folks and they offered him a job and we stayed.
SWAN: Here, in Fallon?
ESTLOW: No, in Carson.
SWAN: What was Carson like then, when you lived there?
ESTLOW: They rolled the sidewalks up at nine o'clock. It was very quiet, not much excitement. Nothing like it is today.
SWAN: That was in the 1940's, or was it the 1930's?
ESTLOW: No, it was later than that. That would be in the early 1950's. Because we were divorced in about 1958 and he died not too long after that. And I worked for the highway department and secretary in one of the offices until I got the opportunity to come here and go to work for civil service. That's when I did the fiscal accounting. And now I can't balance my check book.
SWAN: You did a good job at the base. What was NAAS like?
ESTLOW: Well, at that time, there were twelve women working on the base. And of course, it was much much smaller than it is now. It was the old original base which is more to the southeast. And I worked in the supply office, and of course, Bernie was in the Navy, that's where I met him. It was the Naval Auxiliary Air Station; we were auxiliary to Alameda, at that time. And then eventually as it grew it became its own air station.
SWAN: Well, did squadrons come up from Alameda to the base?
ESTLOW: Nothing like it is now.
SWAN: A smaller scale.
ESTLOW: It was a kind of a wild place at that time because there wasn't too much discipline and the sailors pretty much did as they wanted to do. And they used to tell me in the beginning when they first reopened it--it was closed for a number of years--they used to even ride horses into the barracks.
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SWAN: [laughing]
ESTLOW: And bring women in. Because there was no discipline, nothing. But that was before I worked there. But it was small and they ran buses into town for the sailors to have some recreation. And this of course, well we left there in 1957 and Berney was based in Long Beach and we lived in Long Beach for about nine months and then he got out of the Navy and we came back up here and lived in Hawthorne.
SWAN: What was Hawthorne like in the late fifties?
ESTLOW: Well, as I said, I do not consider that Hawthorne is part of the United States.. To my way of thinking at that time it was one of the crumbiest places I've ever seen. There was nothing to do but go to a bar, that was the only entertainment. And El Capitan was the bar, you didn't go any place else. They did have a very good restaurant there. That was about the only recreation we had, eating out.
SWAN: [laughing] At the El Cap?
ESTLOW: But we nearly always came over here on the weekend because my parents lived here and we'd come over and spend the weekend here and then go back to Hawthorne.
SWAN: And your parents, you said, lived on a ranch or they had a ranch for a while?
ESTLOW: Yeah, they had a little ranch out on the corner of Sheckler Road and the highway [Reno Highway]. There are now about five houses built on that property. At that time, they had the only house. And my brother-in-law had had a very severe heart attack and went into partnership with my father, and they started a Jersey herd because he could milk and they could sell the cream. And then later on he improved enough that he went to work for the roads department here. And then my father, who'd never earned social security, started raising chickens and selling eggs so he could have social security. So my dad used to sit by the hour cleaning the eggs, you know, with an emery board.
SWAN: Oh, that's how they did it huh? I didn't know that.
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ESTLOW: They had one house but it had a bedroom and a bath at this end and they turned the dining room into a bedroom for my parents and a bath and the only kitchen at this end of the house, and there was a living room in the middle, and they shared the house. And I used to come over weekends (between my marriages I used to come over weekends) and sleep on the couch in the living room. And that's where I was when the earthquake happened.
SWAN: Oh, in 19--
ESTLOW: In 1954.
SWAN: Oh, so was that your second big earthquake? I mean you had that one in--
ESTLOW: Second one I went through, yeah. And I was sleeping in the living room on the couch. My sister had a canary which hung on a big circular thing, do you remember those things, and it was beside the couch and on the wall there was a built in bookcase full of books. Well, when it hit, the only thing I could thing of was that canary, I thought it would tip over and kill it, so I'm out of bed holding onto the canary cage and my brother-in-law is going up to be sure the cows are all right, and it was absolute pandemonium. And I never once thought if that bookcase had fallen over, it would have fallen on me and done a lot of damage. Fortunately it didn't kill the bird.
SWAN: At what time was this that it struck?
ESTLOW: It was in the middle of the night.
SWAN: Oh, the middle of the night, gosh! It was a big one.
ESTLOW: And it was a rolling--it was like the ground did this [Margaret made up and down waving motion with hand]. And then we had a lot of after shocks after that, you always do.
I came to work at NAAS on the morning after the earthquake, and NAAS was a mess because those sailors didn't know anything about earthquakes and a lot of the lockers had fallen over and there were broken legs and what have you. And I went to work and had to have a physical before I went to work. And the doctor was a young physician who had been at sea. And he had to give me a physical examination, so the secretary to the captain had to sit on
32
these because he couldn't examine me without a woman being there. So he starts in to give me this examination and I got tickled because I could see he was so embarrassed and I said, "You hate this worse than I do, don't you?" And he said, "I haven't even seen a woman for two years, I've been at sea, you look healthy I'll pass you." [laughing]
SWAN: That took care of that.
ESTLOW: That took care of that. But I went to work the day after the earthquake.
SWAN: And then you said you worked there how many years?
ESTLOW: I worked there from 1954 to 1957 and then Berney was transferred to sea duty and we went to Long Beach. And I didn't do any more teaching, until we came back to Nevada. And then I did substitute a lot.
SWAN: Substituted when you were working county welfare.
ESTLOW: Well, we lived in Susanville for a short time.
SWAN: Oh.
ESTLOW: Berney wanted to go back to school and get more education. He had a high school education but he wanted a degree. So he went through the VA [Veteran's Administration] and they recommended that he go to junior college in Susanville because he'd been out of school for so long. So we moved up there and they said, " It will be no problem, that / could find a job easily." Well, not so. It was winter time and Susanville was, at that time, a mill for lumbering and it was seasonal; the summer time there was quite a bit of work, but in the winter, no. And I finally had one week of substituting in the school up there.
SWAN: Gosh.
ESTLOW: And I never did get a full-time job and then Berney got sick because it started to rain, and they brought him back down to the hospital in the VA, and we just packed up our stuff and moved back to Nevada. And we lived in Carson, and he worked as a guard at the prison because his rate in the Navy was equivalent to a cop. And he
worked there for a while and then he couldn't stand the lack of discipline--it was not very well disciplined at that time. So then we moved to Hawthorne.
SWAN: Again?
ESTLOW: From, let's see, I did teach school in Gardnerville for a few months. I taught first grade and then we decided we didn't want to stay there, so we moved to Hawthorne where Berney got a job.
And then they finally got an opening at the base out here and Berney went to work out there in the building trades, and there was no opening for me, and that's when I became the welfare officer.
SWAN: You went to work for the county.
ESTLOW: I went to work for the county, the county welfare office.
SWAN: And then you retired from there.
ESTLOW: And I resigned in 1969 and I haven't worked since then.
SWAN: But at home [laughing].
ESTLOW: But I have been very active in the Methodist Church.
SWAN: Yes, tell me about your religious upbringing.
ESTLOW: I was brought up a Methodist, my father was a very strict Methodist. My mother's father was a Congregational minister. And she never was happy as a Methodist but there weren't too many Congregational churches and she always went where my father went. And my dad became a lay minister and he used to go to Smith Valley and preach because they didn't have a preacher.
So I went to this Methodist church and Berney and my father helped build the new addition onto the Methodist Church. Berney used to say he remembered wheeling wheel barrows full of cement around for the basement.
SWAN: [laughing] That's a big basement too.
ESTLOW: Oh, yeah, that Wilson Hall is a big basement.
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SWAN: So when did they put that on, or build that addition?
ESTLOW: Oh, gosh. Must have been in the 1960's but I couldn't tell you the year for sure.
SWAN: Well, when did your parents die?
ESTLOW: My mother lived to be ninety-eight, and my father lived to be ninety-four.
SWAN: Wow.
ESTLOW: My mother died, I think, in 1981. I think my father died in 1975. And my mother was in the convalescent home here for three years before she died. My oldest sister lived in southern California and she died down there shortly after my father died. And my sister lived here. Her husband had died and she lived here on Cora Way, and in the meantime, her daughter had moved to Reno and her other daughter lived in Carson City. And they decided it was too much for her to keep up her house, which it was, she was not very well, and too much yard work. So they talked her into moving to Reno and they were all going to look after her and do this that and the other; well, they were too busy. And they found an apartment and they never realized that it was on the north side of building, she never had any sunshine. She was scared to go out by herself, and she just sat in that little dark apartment. Well, finally, she started having strokes. And one night she had one that she couldn't get up or anything, so in the morning my niece tried to call her and realized something was wrong, so she headed over to find her and called for an ambulance, and the fire department heard the call for the ambulance, so here's the fire department, the ambulance and everybody else. And they go and pick my sister up and take her to the hospital.
Well, Berney and I went in to see her, she was in Washoe [Washoe Medical Center] and I walked in and here she is sitting bolt upright and looking cross, oh, she looked cross. I said, "Mildred, what is the matter?" And she said, "I'm mad at God."
SWAN: Oh, dear.
ESTLOW: Well, I nearly howled. I said, "Why are you mad at God?" She said, "I wanted to die and I didn't." And I said, "Well, Mildred, you
35
aren't going to die until the good Lord is ready for you." And she recovered from that. But she lived in what they call a group care facility. The people were all supposed to be mobile, able to get around, and there were about eight people--and a very, very nice lady who ran the place, and she was very fond of Mildred. But Mildred actually couldn't walk by herself, she was paralyzed on her right side. But the lady was nice enough to keep her. Well, finally, she fell and broke a hip. So she went back to the hospital; they did surgery on her and she was getting along beautifully. This was August, and we went in on a Thursday, to see her and she was getting along fine and very happy. They were going to let her go home to this group care facility. So we were going to go back on Friday to see her again and my niece called me up and she said, "Mom's gone." She had waked up and said to the nurse, " Is this the first of September?" and the nurse said, "Yes" and went on about her business because Mildred was doing fine and she went back to sleep. She never woke up. Which was a beautiful way to go.
SWAN: Yes, I should say.
ESTLOW: But it left me the only member of the Reed family that was still alive.
SWAN: Gosh, that's right.
ESTLOW: I had my oldest sister's family in southern California. She had one daughter and the daughter had a daughter. She married and had four daughters and one son and they live in southern California, Tomecula. Between Riverside and San Diego. Berney and I went down there about three years ago before he died and visited them, and the traffic absolutely killed us. Berney said, "I will never drive down there again. I will fly."
SWAN: It's terrible.
ESTLOW: If he's been there since then he flew because he passed away in 1997. But they want us to come back down. But she is so funny. The niece that lives in Reno she is my other sister's daughter, Mildred's daughter.
SWAN: Oh, Alice is the oldest, then Mildred.
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ESTLOW: Alice is the oldest and her family is in Tomecula. Mildred was next and she lived in Reno; they moved her into Reno, and her daughter lives in Reno and works for the Teamster's Union. Well, the niece in southern California and the niece in Reno both giggle exactly the same. And you don't know who you're talking to when they get to giggling.
SWAN: Shows its familial, Huh., [laughing]
ESTLOW: Isn't that strange?
SWAN: Isn't that a kick?
ESTLOW: I talk to the one in California, a lot, on the phone. She and I are very close, she's only fourteen years younger that I. She was born when I was in seventh grade.
SWAN: Well, that's real interesting.
ESTLOW: Now, the picture of the four girls standing together those are my great, great nieces. And one of them, this was her wedding picture and the little girl that's standing behind is the daughter of some very wealthy people, for whom they have all baby sat. So she was in the wedding party.
SWAN: Well, that's a nice picture. The one girl's all in white.
ESTLOW: It's a darling picture. And now the one who got married, and that's when this picture was taken, she now has a baby boy, so I have a great, great, great nephew.
SWAN: Oh, well, that's wonderful.
ESTLOW: And he had his second birthday on the eleventh of November.
SWAN: Oh, how nice.
ESTLOW: And then the second sister got married this summer and he was the ring bearer. And he said, "I'm doing this for auntie." Two years old.
SWAN: Well, he's pretty smart
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ESTLOW: And they sent me a video of their reception of her wedding and it is the cutest thing. 'Cause there was a little girl who thought she was supposed to look after him, and every time he would walk off, she would go and grab him and bring him back. His name is Chase. A terrible name.
SWAN: All those names are popular now.
ESTLOW: Let's go back to my church affiliation.
SWAN: Yes, that would be very nice.
ESTLOW: As I've said before I was brought up in the Methodist church and since my husband passed away I didn't feel like I had enough to do; so I went to our minister who is Gary Pope-Sears, and I said, "Is there something I can do in the church and take a more active part than just simply attending church?" And I said, "Do you have a librarian for the choir?" and he said "No, we don't." But he said, "You'll have to talk to my wife, Sibella, because she's the choir director." So I went to Sibella and she said, "I'd be delighted to have you be the librarian." So I do that. I sing in the choir. And every Friday morning I go down at nine o'clock and a group of us fold the bulletins for the Sunday church service and any other correspondence that has to go out. So I am quite active in the Methodist church.
SWAN: Wonderful.
ESTLOW: And I sing alto.
SWAN: [laughing]
ESTLOW: And because I can't stand up I sit while the rest of them stand up.
SWAN: Well, they're lucky to have you with your musical background.
ESTLOW: Well, all my life I have sung, and I think, I don't know if I told you, my father was part Welsh and he had a beautiful baritone voice and all of us kids sang.
SWAN: Oh, great, so the church has really been an important part of your life.
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ESTLOW: And Berney was a member of the church too. He was raised in the Lutheran church but when he went into the Navy, they told him he to send ten percent of his income back to the church, and beginning sailors don't get much money, and he said,"That was it." He was no longer a Lutheran [laughing]. So he joined the church here with me in 1958. And we looked it up in the book the other day down there.
SWAN: My gosh, forty-one years. Isn't that wonderful. That's a long spell.
ESTLOW: We were not active in the church, we went, we attended regularly, but we didn't have any direct participation. But the minister we have now is a go-getter and his wife is a wonderful choir director. And they also have the bells. Have you ever heard them play the bells? Well, we have at least four different groups who play the bells.
SWAN: Oh, how nice.
ESTLOW: And these were donated by Bob and Phylis Mc Callum in memory of their son. And Sibella and Carol Jones who is a music teacher, if you know her, Well, they direct the bells and play them and it's beautiful and every so often they perform during the church service, and they did Sunday. Do you know Clayson Trigero who used to work in the bank?
SWAN: Uh huh.
ESTLOW: Well, he loves the bells and he is not a church goer, but I call him up when I know they're going to play to bells and he comes and listens to the bells.
SWAN: [laughing] That's nice.
ESTLOW: It's a real treat because they really work hard. They've even got the little little bitty kids doing what they call the chimes. There are about four different groups who play the bells.
SWAN: That's really nice.
ESTLOW: They've very lovely. This is the only church in this town and I don't know of any in Reno that have the bells because they're expensive for one thing. And you have to have somebody who knows how to teach them. I couldn't do it. A great deal of it is a
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matter of timing. They carry them this way [Hold with bell held vertically, handle down] with the clapper up, and then when they play them they do this.
SWAN: How do they use both hands and hold, do they hold them and then play them?
ESTLOW: They hold them like this. And when they play, they do this..
SWAN: Each bell is separate?
ESTLOW: Each bell has a different tone, and its a matter of rhythm more than anything. Now, I have never looked at their music and I mean to, to see how they read it to know what to do. But it's amazing--
SWAN: Oh, my gosh, I've never even heard of that.
ESTLOW: And they rehearse like the dickens And they're good. Very good.
SWAN: Oh, what fun.
ESTLOW: But they hold them this way so the clapper doesn't make any noise until they want it to and then they move it. And each hand is independent because they don't go this way; it's this hand and this hand, and this hand, and this hand. It's very beautiful, you ought to hear it sometime.
SWAN: Sounds like it would be very interesting.
ESTLOW: And Clayson adores it. [laughing]
SWAN: Now, the church has been important in your community life and I know that you belong to several organizations and have been officer.. .
ESTLOW: I used to be very active in AAUW [American Association of University Women] wouldn't you know. Of which you were president at one time.
SWAN: Yes, but you were twice, right?
ESTLOW: Yes, I was twice President because there wasn't anybody else. I was the first President and the third. Dottie [Austin] was the second
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one, and I took it again the third time because she couldn't get away from the mortuary. And Berney and I used to go to all the conferences and everything because she couldn't get away. And I also used to belong to Eastern Star because my husband was very active in the Masonic lodge.
SWAN: Oh, I see, so you were.. .
ESTLOW: And I went into Eastern Star and demitted because I did not enjoy it. They do the same thing over and over and over and over and over.
SWAN: That wasn't very stimulating for you?
ESTLOW: Nothing like AAUW. And PEO I joined, Dottie got me interested in PEO.
SWAN: Now PEO stands for?
ESTLOW: I always have to stop and think this. Philanthropical Educational Organization.
SWAN: Oh, okay.
ESTLOW: And we support a two year college in Nevada, Missouri, which was given to the organization many years ago by two elderly ladies who owned the property. And its like a junior college. Has very high standing scholastically. I have never been there. Dottie has and she said it's delightful.
SWAN: Right.
ESTLOW: We have scholarships, which are total scholarships that we give, we have international scholarships and we make loans to people, like women who are maybe in their forties or fifties and are suddenly widowed and they have to go back on the job market and take more schooling. And we make loans or outright gifts to help them. We have chapters in Canada as well as this country. And huge amounts of money go through our hands.
SWAN: That's wonderful. So all the chapters support the junior college?
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ESTLOW: As well as these loans and all of that. It's strictly an educational organization.
SWAN: Oh, that's really good.
ESTLOW: Also it's semi religious, you have to believe in the Christ and the Lord in order to belong; that's one of the requirements. And it's very well-known. It's the nicest organization to which I have ever belonged. I belong to Business and Professional Women's Club at one time as well as having been in AAUW, and the reason I demitted from AAUW is I do not like some of their current policies. They have gotten too political to suit me. I don't know how you feel about it. I don't like their position.
Berney was very active in the Masonic lodge, and he became a Shriner, which is the playground of Masonry but it is the support for
all the burn hospitals and the care of crippled children.
SWAN: I should say. They do good work.
ESTLOW: I went to the hospital in San Francisco, and I couldn't believe the things that they do for children. And they do it for absolutely nothing. It does not cost the children anything. And Reno has a transportation fund to help parents go to visit the children, when they're in there. And they recently built a five story hospital in Sacramento, and moved away from San Francisco because they were in a dangerous neighborhood. The nurses had to be escorted to and from their cars because of the dangers of the area. So they moved it to Sacramento. And I have not seen that hospital.
SWAN: I think they built a much bigger one in Sacramento.
ESTLOW: They do a wonderful, wonderful thing. Millions and millions of dollars go into it. They have the Shrine Circus every year, you know. That's one of the money making projects. One of the main ones.
SWAN: I should say. So anything else about your organizations?
ESTLOW: I think I told them all.
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SWAN: Oh, okay. You've spent many active years and helped a lot of people. Is there anything else that you'd like to talk about or any recollections of Fallon in the early years and how it's changed?
ESTLOW: Well, Fallon was funny when I first came here. Hardly anybody had a lawn; they had a water problem. And all the yards were just dirt. And then during the war because there was so many people on the base, you couldn't rent anything for love nor money. We used to joke; we said, "If you had a chicken coop, you could rent it." It was that desperate. And people lived in absolute hovels because there wasn't any place else and there wasn't that much housing on the base as there is now. And of course there were so few employees when I came here.
SWAN: Downtown was still the heart of town.
ESTLOW: Pretty much the same as it is now except on a lower scale. The main place was, what did they call it? The Senator [Esquire] and Willie Capucci was the bartender. And there was a nice restaurant next to the bar. And if you went in on Saturday night it was packed with sailors.
SWAN: As to your hobbies, you said you like to read.
ESTLOW: Well, I like to read; I am not good at fancy work. Both my sisters did beautiful crocheting and knitting, and I never learned because I'm left handed. It was very hard for me to learn. If I sat and somebody told me what to do, I could crochet, but I didn't know how to read the directions. But my sisters were very, very good. I have doilies that my oldest sister made. Right now I don't see one. And my other sister did a lot of knitting, and at one time I had a beautiful afghan that my oldest sister made, but after she passed away I sent it to her daughter. I thought she should have it. And then I have one that my other sister made, which I kept and have in my bedroom.
I've never been a collector, unless you might say books because I read copiously and I have all kinds of paper backs.
SWAN: What do you enjoy reading, I mean do you like fiction, non-fiction.
ESTLOW: Anything. Fiction. I like biographies, but mostly fiction. And we have kind of like a lending library in our PEO Chapter and we
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exchange books and sometimes we take them and sell them for fifty cents apiece. And sometimes we just rent them for two weeks and then return them and somebody else can have them. And I have in my bedroom, it's about this high a little book case full'of my books, and I've given away loads of them. But my favorites I have kept. And I think that and my music are my hobbies. All I have. I like flowers, but I'm no gardener. I don't have the patience, although right now I have a chrysanthemum that's blooming, did you see that? Isn't that gorgeous?
SWAN: It's absolutely beautiful, I hope it stays warm long enough for it . . .
ESTLOW: Now my plants in my rocks, there's a drip system that waters them, and I have to turn that on every so often, and water them. And I lost a couple last winter, a couple of the plants, they didn't survive cold weather.
SWAN: Here is a question for you, Margaret. Do you have a philosophy in life to share with others? Or what has sustained you in your life?
ESTLOW: I think my philosophy is based primarily on the Golden Rule, to do unto others as you would be done by. But I believe in contributing to the community and to your friends and to your relatives and doing everything you can to make it a better world because we have many, many, many problems. And I happen to belong to the Republican Women; I did not mention that but I'm not a very active member and I'm not into politics. I happen to be a Republican but it just happens. I was raised a Republican. But I vote for the person not for the . . .whether they are Democrats or Republican or whatever. I don't care, I vote for the person. And I have voted since I was twenty-one. Which is a good many years.
SWAN: Wonderful.
ESTLOW: And that was the first year that Roosevelt was elected, I was twenty-one. And that's the first time I voted.
SWAN: Gosh, in your mother's lifetime she got the right to vote, huh?
ESTLOW: Oh, yes. But my mother was not political, and she always had my father help her make out her sample ballot and then she voted according to the way my father voted..
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SWAN: [laughing]
ESTLOW: And he was strictly a Republican. Now my sister was a Democrat, Mildred the one that lived here. And she adored jack Kennedy and she said, "I would vote for anybody named Jack Kennedy." Well, it so happens I did not care for Jack Kennedy, so we did not discuss politics.
SWAN: [laughing]
ESTLOW: Through the years I think that's all of the organizations of any importance that I ever belonged to.
SWAN: Well, you've had a very full and active life. And done a lot of things.
ESTLOW: Well, since Berney died, I have been much more active than I ever was before because we traveled a lot, when he was alive. So I have filled my life with other things, like the church and so on. I'm not a good housekeeper and I'm not a very good cook. But when you live alone, you don't cook. You eat TV dinners or you eat out.
SWAN: And you go to the Senior Center.
ESTLOW: I go to the Senior Center almost every day for lunch. And I have a boy friend, at age eighty-seven, I have a boy friend. A very nice gentleman and we have a very pleasant, happy relationship. He is a widower and I'm a widow, we are neither one of us interested in marriage, but we enjoy one another's company.
SWAN: That's really nice. Anything else that you might add?
ESTLOW: I don't think of anything else, if anything comes to my mind I'll tell you later. I think we've pretty much covered everything.
SWAN: On behalf of the Churchill County Museum Oral History Program I thank you Margaret Estlow, for doing this history;, it has been very interesting and a pleasure.
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MARGARET LOUISE REED ESTLOW
INDEX
Birth, 1
California experiences, 10-13, 14, 23-25
Church affiliation, 34-39
Churchill County Welfare office, 17-20, 34
Civic memberships, 40-42
Earthquakes, 11, 13, 32
Estlow, Berney, 15-17, 20, 33-34, 41, 42
Fallon, NV, 43
Flu epidemic, 3
Groth, Selma, 18
Hawthorne, NV. Experiences 16-17, 31
Hobbies, 43-44
Kalousek, Eva, 19
Marriages, 14, 16
McDermitt, NV experiences, 1-2, 6-10
Naval Auxiliary Air Station, 15, 30, 32-33
New Zealand experiences, 21-22
Nieces, 36-38
Philosophy, 44
Reed, Dale Harry (Father), 1, 2, 4-5, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 34-35
Reed, Josie West Bailey (Mother), 1, 2, 9, 34-35
Reno Army Air Base, 14-15
Schooling, 1-3, 13-14, 22-23, 24
Siblings, 1, 2, 7, 10, 25, 35-36
Stewart Indian School experiences, 3, 14
Teaching experiences, 24, 25-26, 27-29

Janet Swan

Margaret Louise Reed Estlow

520 West B Street, Fallon, NV 89406