Edna Erb Douglas Oral History
Dublin Core
Title
Edna Erb Douglas Oral History
Description
Edna Erb Douglas Oral History
Creator
Churchill County Museum Association
Publisher
Churchill County Museum Association
Date
July 22, 1993
Format
Analog Cassette Tape, Text File, Mp3 Audio
Language
English
Oral History Item Type Metadata
Original Format
Audio Cassette
Duration
58:63
Transcription
CHURCHILL COUNTY MUSEUM & ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
an interview with
EDNA ERB DOUGLAS
July 22, 1993
This interview was conducted by Ces Jacobsen; transcribed by Glenda Price; edited by Norma Morgan; final by Pat Boden; index by Gracie Viera; supervised by Myrl Nygren, Director of Oral History Project, Churchill County Museum.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this interview and preface are those of the interviewer and interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Churchill County Museum or any of its employees.
PREFACE
Edna Erb Douglas is an alert eighty-six year old woman who walks using a walker. About six months ago she had a stroke, and though she manages to get about her house not always using the walker, she feels more secure with it.
The interview covers Edna's early life primarily until she married Chester Douglas in 1926. After that there is less detail though there is some narration about living in the Northam District of the Fallon area and some discussion of her husband's time working at the Lahontan Dam Powerhouse, but little detail.
She discusses her work on the ranch. Her father said she "is the best man" he had. She did little indoor work. After graduating from Churchill County High School she worked for I.H. Kent, where she met her husband.
Interview with Edna Erb Douglas
JACOBSEN: This is Ces Jacobsen, interviewing of Edna Erb Douglas who lives at 1025 Taylor Place. We are doing this for the Churchill County Oral History Program. This is July 22, 1993, 1:30 in the afternoon, and Mrs. Douglas and I are sitting at her kitchen table. And the first thing I’m going to ask her. Edna, why did you come to Churchill County? Both physically and the reason behind it.
DOUGLAS: Well, I don't know how my dad found out about this Reclamation Project.
JACOBSEN: Do you think that's what he was interested in?
DOUGLAS: Yes. That's what he came here for, was to file on that land, homestead on the land. But where he got his information from back in Pennsylvania I don't know other than he did have a brother living here.
JACOBSEN: Which brother was this?
DOUGLAS: Bert. Burton Erb.
JACOBSEN: And Burton Erb had already filed?
DOUGLAS: Well, I don't know if he had, or he just was living.
JACOBSEN: I see.
DOUGLAS: And then my mother and older brother and I came out by train.
JACOBSEN: And you were about how old at that time?
DOUGLAS: Well, they said I was about six months old when we came to Fallon.
JACOBSEN: And this is 1907?
DOUGLAS: Um-hum.
JACOBSEN: And you came by train. From the stories that the family told, did you get off at Hazen?
DOUGLAS: No, I think the train came right on to Fallon, but I'm not sure about that either.
JACOBSEN: On that siding where Kent’s is?
DOUGLAS: And that's where it came, at the old depot, on North Taylor Street.
JACOBSEN: I see, and where did you settle as an infant with your brother and your father and mother? Which brother was this now? Your older brother.
DOUGLAS: Hobart, or Pete, as we always called him. This uncle, we stayed with him when we got to Fallon.
JACOBSEN: And he [where] was living?
DOUGLAS: Well, it's what they used to call the half house here in Fallon.
JACOBSEN: Where was that?
DOUGLAS: If you went out South Maine Street, it would have been off the highway there at the Y where the two roads come together as near as I can remember.
JACOBSEN: Would it have been in the V shape, or would it have been more on the Sheckler side or . .
DOUGLAS: No, on the east side.
JACOBSEN: More on the town side there.
DOUGLAS: Yeah. And I don't why it was called a half house unless that he had never completed the house. It wasn't finished at the time.
JACOBSEN: Was it his property?
DOUGLAS: I assume it was.
JACOBSEN: And then, what happened from there? That you can remember from family stories?
DOUGLAS: Well, Dad built part of the ranch house out on Old River.
JACOBSEN: And what would be the approximate address now of it? Do you have any idea?
DOUGLAS: I don't know, other than Old River Road.
JACOBSEN: It was on Old River Road?
DOUGLAS: Uh-huh. But he built part of a house out there. Adobe house.
JACOBSEN: Did he make the bricks?
DOUGLAS: Well, it wasn't bricks. He poured forms.
JACOBSEN: Oh, of the 'dobe of the place. I see. So it was kind of loose to pour it.
DOUGLAS: Uh-huh, and my first remembrance out there was of us living in this. It was two rooms, but they were big, big rooms. One was kitchen and the other one, I guess, was bedroom.
JACOBSEN: How old would you say that this first recollection was?
DOUGLAS: Oh, I probably was six, seven years old.
JACOBSEN: Remember playing with toys or helping your mother clean house?
DOUGLAS: Well, what I remember mostly was, and I don't know how many more kids there was at that time, but they had a long table--probably Dad had made it--in the kitchen. I remember being sick and my mother made me a bed on this long table in the kitchen, where she could look after me and still do her chores and whatnot. And then my next remembrance is my dad building an addition onto those two rooms which was big, too. I remember I had a little lard pail. Just a real small lard pail, and I would carry the 'dobe in that lard pail and dump in these forms.
JACOBSEN: Was the lard pail something that had been bought at the store with lard in it?
DOUGLAS: Right.
JACOBSEN: It wasn't home rendered lard?
DOUGLAS: No. There was a space in there [inaudible].
JACOBSEN: Anything about playing or what your father and mother were doing or talked about?
DOUGLAS: My folks never done anything but work, 'cause Dad was improving the ground at that time putting in the alfalfa and he raised an immense garden every year. 'Course we all had to work in the garden, too.
JACOBSEN: Including your mother?
DOUGLAS: No, Mother done the canning, but it's unbelievable what she put up to feed us.
JACOBSEN: Meats, too, or were the meats put down?
DOUGLAS: Well, we mostly had pork because at that time there was no refrigeration or anything, any way to keep meat, and my dad would cure the pork.
JACOBSEN: Did you salt it, too, or was it just smoked?
DOUGLAS: No, it was salted down in a barrel in a brine. After it was cured in the brine, he would take it out and hang it in this smokehouse and smoke it.
JACOBSEN: Do you ever remember him saying anything about the farming chores or anything like that or did you have to wait 'til you got older?
DOUGLAS: Well, he had a dairy and I couldn't tell you how many cows, but probably in the twenties. But we milked as we got big enough to do these things,. We had an old separator that you cranked to separate the cream from the milk, and that’s what he sold was the cream.
JACOBSEN: Do you remember to whom he sold it?
DOUGLAS: Yes, there was a creamery down on North Maine Street along the railroad track on the west side of Maine Street.
JACOBSEN: Same place where Kent’s is now?
DOUGLAS: On the other side.
JACOBSEN: On the other side where there's a parking lot and things like that now.
DOUGLAS: There was a flour mill.
JACOBSEN: Yes, Lahontan Flour Mill. It burnt down some years ago
DOUGLAS: Yeah, it was across the street to the east from the creamery, and my dad used to take the cream to the creamery there.
JACOBSEN: Did he ever save any for home use?
DOUGLAS: Oh, always. We always had plenty of good fresh milk and cream and butter. I can remember that old churn that you stomped up and down, and if the cream wasn't the right temperature and whatnot, why you'd have to wait 'til it warmed up or cooled off or whatever 'cause it wouldn't . . .
JACOBSEN: You said you had no refrigeration there for a long time. How did you keep the dairy products?
DOUGLAS: You know I don't know know. I can't .
JACOBSEN: Remember that. You didn't have a well or something like that that you put the water . . .
DOUGLAS: Well, Dad had a big cellar. An underground cellar and that's where Mama kept her canned stuff, and potatoes and onions and things . .
JACOBSEN: That could be kept over the winter. The root veg-
DOUGLAS: Yeah. And that could be where they kept the milk and stuff 'cause it stayed pretty cool down in that cellar.
JACOBSEN: You fed pigs, that's why you had pork so much. You fed pigs with the milk left from removing the cream. Before I interrupted you before to ask these small details, you started to say that the next thing you remembered was, you were older. Can you pick up from there, or did I discumbuberate you too much?
DOUGLAS: Kinda. I don't know what I was going to say…
JACOBSEN: How did you go to school?
DOUGLAS: Well, when the schools consolidated to town, there was a bus that had seats around the side of it. It wasn't a bus like we know a bus now. It was just benches around the outside of it.
JACOBSEN: But, that was when you went to high school, wasn't it?
DOUGLAS: Right.
JACOBSEN: All right, but let's go back a little bit to the Old River time, and you were about seven years old in about 1914. Had you started school by then?
DOUGLAS: Oh, yes.
JACOBSEN: How did you get to school? Did you walk or ride?
DOUGLAS: Walked. We walked to Old River School, and it was, oh, not quite a mile, but we walked. Took our lunch.
JACOBSEN: What'd you carry your lunch in?
DOUGLAS: Lunch pails. Remember like the men used to?
JACOBSEN: Those black ones?
DOUGLAS: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
JACOBSEN: And did you have thermoses in them?
DOUGLAS: No.
JACOBSEN: How'd you keep your milk cool?
DOUGLAS: Well, we probably didn't. We probably drank water.
JACOBSEN: Oh, I see. From the well at the school?
DOUGLAS: Uh-huh.
JACOBSEN: And what time did you have to get to school?
DOUGLAS: Oh, I think it was eight or nine o'clock in the morning that we had to be to school.
JACOBSEN: After you did all your chores?
DOUGLAS: After we did our chores.
JACOBSEN: And was it a one-room school house?
DOUGLAS: Um-hum, one room.
JACOBSEN: Do you remember how many kids were there?
DOUGLAS: Oh, there was probably close to twenty, maybe.
JACOBSEN: Did your dad ever sit on the school board for the Old River School?
DOUGLAS: Not that I know of.
JACOBSEN: Or your mother?
DOUGLAS: No.
JACOBSEN: Did they approve of what you were being taught?
DOUGLAS: Apparently, I have never heard any
JACOBSEN: Did they ever have to go to school about you or your brothers? Were your brothers good kids, too?
DOUGLAS: Oh, they were all pretty good kids. I don't remember that they had to go to school.
JACOBSEN: Do you think you got a pretty good education in that one-room school house?
DOUGLAS: Yeah. We had all men teachers. There was no women teachers when I went to school, and if you went out past the newspaper office and down Serpa Lane, just where you go into Serpa's place there, there was a house in there. One of our school teachers lived there and he walked from there to Old River School.
JACOBSEN: Which wasn't very far if I remember where the Old River School was.
DOUGLAS: Well, it was quite a little ways.
JACOBSEN: Was it? Longer than you had to walk?
DOUGLAS: Yeah.
JACOBSEN: Where was the Old River School? Tell me now in relation to . . .
DOUGLAS: Do you know where Kirn and Verna Bradleys used to live?
JACOBSEN: Can you give me some cross sections for people who wouldn't know? What are the road names now where the Old River School was?
DOUGLAS: That section in there is still Old River Road. But when we moved there, that I can remember, there was only one ranch farther out on the desert than us, and that was Corbeils'.
JACOBSEN: Did they have children who came into school, too?
DOUGLAS: No, no, they didn't.
JACOBSEN: So, you, basically, had your own friends out there and your family.
DOUGLAS: Right.
JACOBSEN: It was just the kids and your family.
DOUGLAS: We very seldom went away to play and we never went to shows or anything like that. Well, it was horse and buggy days. You just didn't go.
JACOBSEN: Even when you got into high school, it was still mostly work and going to school?
DOUGLAS: Oh, you bet. I used to milk my four and five cows every morning and hustle into the house and clean up a little bit and get a bite to eat and catch that school bus.
JACOBSEN: Because they're very interested in the relationship of agriculture to the everyday lives in Churchill County, can you give us any insight into how the farming went along? Or weren’t you involved enough in it? Do you remember your folks talking?
DOUGLAS: My dad put that whole place in. He had eighty acres and he leveled it all with horses and tailboard, plowed the ground with horses. There was no machinery, and when it come time to harvest his crops, and he was an excellent farmer, why he had his own mowing machine. It was pulled with horses, and the old dump rake. And I was, as he said, the best hired man he ever had, to rake the hay and, what he called, bunch it. Now, I raked it with the old dump rake and a team of horses.
JACOBSEN: It was a kind of a side rake, wasn't it? The dump rake?
DOUGLAS: No, it just went straight down the row.
JACOBSEN: And the team of horses was how many?
DOUGLAS: Two. Two horses to a mower and two horses to a rake. And I'd rake it into a windrow, then I'd turn around and come back, and every so often I'd dump it.
JACOBSEN: Ah, yes, I see, to make it easier to pick up and put in a wagon?
DOUGLAS: Uh-huh, and then they'd come along with a wagon and pick up those bunches of hay up on the wagon.
JACOBSEN: With a pitch fork.
DOUGLAS: With a pitch fork and we'd go to the stack, and I'd drive derrick. Had an old derrick in the stack yard with a Jackson fork, and I would drive derrick to unload that hay onto the haystack, and then we'd go back for another load of hay.
JACOBSEN: Did you get paid for doing this?
DOUGLAS: Oh, no, no.
JACOBSEN: The fact that you lived in the family was enough to…
DOUGLAS: We never got paid for that.
JACOBSEN: Well, how did you get money? Say you wanted a dress or something.
DOUGLAS: My mother made most of our clothes, and she would buy a piece of material if she saw a piece uptown. We didn't have clothes like they do nowadays. We had maybe two changes for a week. When we got home from school at night, we changed clothes.
JACOBSEN: Did you wear pants, by the way?
DOUGLAS: Yeah, I have pictures of me with jeans on.
JACOBSEN: Did your mother wear jeans or did she wear skirts.
DOUGLAS: No, always wore dresses.
JACOBSEN: And as you grew older, did you wear dresses or did you stay in your jeans when you did your chores and all?
DOUGLAS: No, we stayed in the jeans to do the outside work and I done very little housework.
JACOBSEN: You were one of the boys?
DOUGLAS: I was one of the boys 'cause I was next to the oldest. Now Ruth was the one that made the school lunches and she's the one that was supposed to help Mama to get the meals on the table.
JACOBSEN: In other words, you're telling me you had your work divvied up. What did the boys do then?
DOUGLAS: Well, the boys done all kinds of outside work. Irrigating and feeding the cattle and that sort of stuff.
JACOBSEN: Heavy lifting work?
DOUGLAS: Yes.
JACOBSEN: You weren't asked to do those kinds of things?
DOUGLAS: Oh no, no.
JACOBSEN: You mostly worked on machinery?
DOUGLAS: Right.
JACOBSEN: I see. Do you remember anything about irrigating or the ditches? Did your father have trouble getting the water?
DOUGLAS: No, not that I can remember. Now, the ranch sat right by the canal. The canal went right in front. In fact, we had to cross a bridge from the road to go into the ranch. Dad took the water out of that big canal a little farther down, and then he had his own ditches that run through the ranch that he turned the water into the fields.
JACOBSEN: Did they have ditch tenders at that time, too? How did you get hold of them to ask for water?
DOUGLAS: Well, I don't know, unless you had certain days or something that you --
JACOBSEN: Did the ditch rider come by and stop and schmooze a little?
DOUGLAS: Yeah, but you know I can't remember the names. In fact, names escape me terribly. And we never went very often to any place to play, because of our bunch of kids, and then there was Baffords. Now, "Mert" [Myrtle] Edwards, she's a Bafford, and there was, oh, probably six of them or so, and they pert near always come to my folks' place. There wasn't a game hardly that we didn't have enough kids.
JACOBSEN: When you say a game, are you talking about baseball, football?
DOUGLAS: Baseball, football, hide and seek, any of them.
JACOBSEN: Did you ever have playdays at the school at all, or things like that?
DOUGLAS: I can't remember. We probably did, but I don't know.
JACOBSEN: Did they have organized football at the high school the way they do now when you were in high school? Were you a cheerleader or did they have cheerleaders?
DOUGLAS: No. Oh, I guess they did.
JACOBSEN: You graduated in 1925, didn't you?
DOUGLAS: Yeah. I guess they had games and stuff there, because Whalens moved down below us, eventually. They weren't there when we were there, but they bought a farm down below and lived down there so there would have been "Chub" [Dennis] and Lloyd and all those kids and Jewel [Jewel Whalen Evans Frey] and the Whalen kids played ball, so they must have had it.
JACOBSEN: Can you think of anything else about the farm that you think might be of interest to people? Did the house get any bigger with the addition of the two rooms?
DOUGLAS: Yes. Dad built that one big room on and it was like our living room, our family room there. Although there was a bed in the corner here and a bed there.
JACOBSEN: Well, with all those children…
DOUGLAS: And then after that he built on, this was wood, now, that he built on. I couldn't tell you how wide it was but a pretty good width, too, of a screened-in porch, across the, the east side and part way down the south side. Then he built solid on the south side which turned into the kitchen and a bathroom. Then across the west were three more bedrooms.
JACOBSEN: Is the house still standing as of 1993?
DOUGLAS: Um-hum.
JACOBSEN: He sure built to last, didn't he?
DOUGLAS: Um-Hum.
JACONSEN: And you had no inside responsibilities, so you don't remember how it was particularly furnished or anything?
DOUGLAS: Well, there wasn't a whole lot of furniture. Wood stoves, of course, and my mother used to chop wood, too, and wash clothes on a washboard.
JACOBSEN: When did you get electricity, do you remember?
DOUGLAS: No, I can't remember the year. I can remember the lamp that used to hang on the wall back of the kitchen table.
JACOBSEN: Was that electric?
DOUGLAS: No. Kerosene lamp.
JACOBSEN: Um-hum. Did you have it when you graduated from high school?
DOUGLAS: Oh, yes, we had electricity long before that. I don't know what [year].
JACOBSEN: I'd like to go back and ask one more question about the ranch and then I'd like to go on. Did your father ever have trouble getting water? Did you have drought years the way we had just recently?
DOUGLAS: Not that I know of. Not that I remember.
JACOBSEN: Do you remember any really hard times? Money wise?
DOUGLAS: Money was short all the time.
JACOBSEN: What did you do in hard money years?
DOUGLAS: I don't know.
JACOBSEN: You weren't aware of the financial arrangements or anything. If you needed some money for something, they would try to make it available?
DOUGLAS: Dad probably would sell a cow or maybe some pigs or something. He had some sheep but I can't remember that he had them when I was on the ranch. I think maybe he got those later, but he had cows. And he had registered cows. They were registered Holstein.
JACOBSEN: That's interesting. Where did he get his cows from? Oatses?
DOUGLAS: I couldn't tell you that either.
JACOBSEN: Now, when did you meet Ches [Chester] Douglas?
DOUGLAS: Well, let me say this first. Kent’s store, the building that's there now, was in three departments.
JACOBSEN: Now, which store is this? The farm store or…?
DOUGLAS: No, no. Where Bob was.
JACOBSEN: On the corner of Center and Maine there?
DOUGLAS: It was divided into three stores, and the one that would be along Center Street there was the grocery store and it had the ladder that ran along something or other on the wall, so if you wanted something clear up
JACOBSEN: Oh, yes, yes, you climbed it.
DOUGLAS: You pushed the ladder pushed to where you wanted to go, then climbed the ladder and got out what you wanted. And he also had a meat market in there, and a vegetable department and also a candy department. They had good candy in there.
JACOBSEN: Hard candy?
DOUGLAS: No, chocolate. Well, I suppose there was hard candies, too. I don't know, 'cause I worked at Kent’s.
JACOBSEN: Oh, did you? When?
DOUGLAS: Oh, gosh. In 19…
JACOBSEN: After you graduated from high school?
DOUGLAS: Uh-huh. Anyway, the middle part of the store was a hardware store. No lumber or anything like that, and then the other part where Bob had his place, was what they called the Groceteria, and they said that was the first place that had ever been in Fallon where you picked up your stuff--like we go to Raley's now and pick up our stuff well, that's the way you did in that store.
JACOBSEN: Oh, did you have a little pushcart like they have?
DOUGLAS: I can't remember, Ces, if we did or not. But Ches' brother was manager of that store, and I was working for him.
JACOBSEN: What was his brother's name?
DOUGLAS: His name was Ed.
JACOBSEN: Ed Douglas.
DOUGLAS: Uh-huh. And I worked for Ed in that store, and Ches would come in to see his brother. So that's how
JACOBSEN: He was younger than you or older than you?
DOUGLAS: My husband?
JACOBSEN: Yeah.
DOUGLAS: He was born in 1901 [September], so he was seven years older. And so that's how I met him, was through him going into the store there.
JACOBSEN: And what did he do?
DOUGLAS: My husband?
JACOBSEN: Yes
DOUGLAS: Well, when I knew him he still trained race horses. He was a jockey.
JACOBSEN: Oh! Where did he come from?
DOUGLAS: Well, his folks were mining people from Ione and Berlin and out in that area is where they came from.
JACOBSEN: I see, and how did he get into being a jockey in this area.
DOUGLAS: Well, he was a little man. He was slender and wiry. About as tall as me.
JACOBSEN: Where did he race these horses?
DOUGLAS: Well, I think he raced them quite a few different places. After we married he worked for Lem Allen, Sr., father of the folks here and we went with Lem to Tijuana, Mexico, and spent a winter in Mexico. He worked with horses down there.
JACOBSEN: Were you a lady of leisure then?
DOUGLAS: Oh, sure, and we went to Winnemucca and Elko and all these little towns around here.
JACONSEN: Weekend races?
DOUGLAS: Uh-huh. And then in later years he became an electrician, and he worked for T.C.I.D. [Truckee-Carson Irrigation District] mostly.
JACOBSEN: Did you and he ever farm?
DOUGLAS: No, not really. We had thirteen acres here [Taylor Place] in this piece of property and he had it in alfalfa because we usually had a cow.
JACOBSEN: Is Raley's on part of your property?
DOUGLAS: No, that was Madeline Taylor's property.
JACOBSEN: So, I was just wondering how your property extended. It was across the road, across Taylor Place, for the thirteen acres?
DOUGLAS: No. It was all back this way.
JACOBSEN: Oh, I see, that's the Pepsi warehouse there.
DOUGLAS: I did own that. We owned that property there where Pepsi is built up, back down to the next section to the repair place where you turn off to go back over to Allen Road. Clear down there. We owned all that in there, and after Ches passed away why I couldn't take care of it or anything, so I sold it. I've got twoacres. I got my tax thing the other day, said I had two acres here.
JACOBSEN: Do you still have water right on it?
DOUGLAS: No, I sold my water right.
JACOBSEN: Who did you sell your water right to?
DOUGLAS: Back to the T.C.I.D. And we gave David [Douglas] this piece of property over here that he built his home on.
JACOBSEN: When did your husband die?
DOUGLAS: In 1976, I believe it was. It know it was seventeen years ago in January that he passed away.
JACOBSEN: You were married then for approximately fifty years.
DOUGLAS: Yeah, if he had lived 'til September it would have been fifty years.
JACOBSEN: Can you think of anything that you might like to add about seeing how Churchill County and Fallon have changed and grown and things like that?
DOUGLAS: Well, I remember the courthouse being the same now as it was at that time. I can't see that it has changed any really, and [end of side a of the tape] I remember that in the middle of Williams and Maine Street the fountain.
JACOBSEN: The horse fountain?
DOUGLAS: The horse fountain, and down underneath where the dogs could drink. Had a place for the dogs to drink.
JACOBSEN: Did it have anything for the people to drink from there?
DOUGLAS: Not that I remember. You see everybody came to town with a horse and wagon or horseback or something. I remember that. And, of course, Kents' store's been there forever.
JACOBSEN: But, did it extend further along than it is now?
DOUGLAS: No.
JACOBSEN: It was always the way it is now?
DOUGLAS: Far as I can remember. When I first went to work for Kent’s, out of high school, there were two girls-sisters, there were three sisters in the family—but two of the girls worked in Kent’s store. Mikie and Jule Klingingbeard.
JACOBSEN: What an interesting name. I've never encountered it before.
DOUGLAS: And if I can remember they lived up in the area where Jodie Johnson Wemple lived
JACOBSEN: On Rice Road?
DOUGLAS: No, In town in town.
JACOBSEN: Oh! On South Maine Street there and Stillwater?
DOUGLAS: They lived over somewhere in there and I lived with them, and when I tell people this they looked at me and they say, "Well, you sure have lost your marbles." I paid those girls’ rent.
JACOBSEN: Yeah, I was going to ask how much. Do you remember?
DOUGLAS: You know I can't remember exactly what, but I paid rent.
JACOBSEN: Did they board you, too?
DOUGLAS: Board and room and I got sixty dollars a month for working at Kents'.
JACOBSEN: (laughing) This was during from when to when, approximately?
DOUGLAS: Oh, probably, well, 1925, 1926.
JACOBSEN: Yeah, from the time you got out of high school to the time you were married. Did you have a room of your own?
DOUGLAS: Um-hum.
JACOBSEN: Did you have the run of the house?
DOUGLAS: Um-hum.
JACOBSEN: Did you have to help with the meals at all?
DOUGLAS: Oh, I did, but I don't know that I was overworked or anything.
JACOBSEN: I was just wondering if they considered that when they gave you the food, you know.
DOUGLAS: It seems like I paid thirty dollars a month.
JACOBSEN: So, actually, then, you paid half your salary for your room and board?
DOUGLAS: Board and room, uh-huh.
JACOBSEN: Why didn't you stay home?
DOUGLAS: I had no transportation. No way to go to work.
JACOBSEN: And it was more expensive to buy a horse and cart to get out there, and now it takes what? Ten minutes to get from Maine to where you live.
DOUGLAS: After we were married, Ches and I used to walk from town out to my folks place, and usually we'd spend the night, and then sometimes they would bring us back to town. They had an old Dodge sedan, I remember that. Open air, you know. No glass or anything and sometimes they'd bring us back to town, and sometimes we walked back to town.
JACOBSEN: Where did you live when you and Chester got married?
DOUGLAS: On Center Street, I believe, the address was. Do you know where Dexters used to live in that big house by the… Did they call it Cottage School? It was the old high school, years back. It would have been east of where Kolhoss' store used to be.
JACOBSEN: That's Richards. Oh, and the high school was where the Cottage Schools are now?
DOUGLAS: Yeah, yeah.
JACOBSEN: Oh, I see. There was a big building there?
DOUGLAS: Yeah, I've got a picture of that some place. Some of these days, Ces, when I get to feeling better I'll go through my pictures.
JACOBSEN: Why don't you call me up while you're doing it because I will try not to influence you but maybe we can get some for the Museum to copy and return to you.
DOUGLAS: Oh, yes, definitely. You know, when my dad died--Mama died before Dad
JACOBSEN: When did she die?
DOUGLAS: Well, she died before Ches did, so I can't tell you for sure.
JACOBSEN: Oh, uh-huh. We probably have it on file some place.
DOUGLAS: But, when Dad died, my sister-in-law immediately went down to the house and gathered up all the old pictures Mama had.
JACOBSEN: Now, who was this?
DOUGLAS: Mary Louise [Erb]. And do you know she would hardly let us look at them or take them out of her house or anything, and I know that there was pictures that Mama brought from the east with her. I don't know why she is that way because they mean so much more to us.
JACOBSEN: Well, do you think it's possible that Mary Louise is a history buff?
DOUGLAS: I don't know.
JACOBSEN: And wants to make sure none of this gets lost in the transitional period?
DOUGLAS: I don't know.
JACOBSEN: She might be willing to let the Museum copy them.
DOUGLAS: I don't know.
JACOBSEN: Do you ever see her?
DOUGLAS: I see her in the store. I haven't been to their house for a long time. I'm ashamed that I don't go more often. The reason I say I doubt that she would, and, again, she may, is because, well, Betty Paul, has quite a history of the Erb family.
JACOBSEN: How is Betty related to you?
DOUGLAS: Pete's daughter. My brother. She's my niece. Betty asked her if she could take some pictures and do something with them. She wouldn't let her have them, so that's why I say I doubt that she'd let you. But she might. I don't know. I've never ask her.
JACOBSEN: Well, maybe if the Museum asks her…
DOUGLAS: If she understood that she'd get them back. My nephew's daughter wrote me here recently. She lives in Sparks, if I would help her with the Erb thing, and that was about the time that I was in the hospital and whatnot and I never did write to her, but Betty got to see her when John was in the hospital. They came to visit John and she gave her what information she could on the Erb family.
JACOBSEN: I think we were back some place about where you were living in Fallon, and you stayed there for some length of time.
DOUGLAS: Well, David was born there. Now, that little house that we lived in was, I guess you'd call it a duplex. It was a little two-family . . .
JACOBSEN: Is it still there?
DOUGLAS: You know, I thought about that the other [day]--I don't think so.
JACOBSEN: I was trying to think of East Richards there near the Cottage Schools and I can't seem to place the duplex.
DOUGLAS: The property belonged to Judge Winters. Do you remember Dolly Winters?
JACOBSEN: I remember she married a Jacobsen. Not related to us, but that's why I've heard of her. I don't know her personally.
DOUGLAS: Well, the property belonged to them and was next door to them, but I don't know what it is now. And then we lived for a short time over on North Broadway. I think there's a beauty parlor in the building over there now, on the west side of the street.
JACOBSEN: And it's on a corner?
DOUGLAS: Either two or three houses there.
JACOBSEN: Okay, and you just kept moving around.
DOUGLAS: Yes.
JACOBSEN: You didn't own any of them?
DOUGLAS: No.
JACOBSEN: You were just a tenant? How did you feel about being a tenant after living on your dad's place and then boarding with them, [the sisters] did you feel that you wanted to get property?
DOUGLAS: Oh, always, and I never liked it in town.
JACOBSEN: You were a farm girl at heart.
DOUGLAS: Right, and, of course, Ches never lived in town. His folks lived out in the mountains. He strictly was hunting and fishing and that type of thing. He didn't care about town.
JACOBSEN: So, you were glad to pick up this place.
DOUGLAS: And Ches knew the Walt Whitakers.
JACOBSEN: Ah, yes. The ones Whitaker Lane is named for.
DOUGLAS: I suppose so. And that's how we got this property. He bought it from Walt Whitaker. Then we bought this house in Hazen and had it moved down here. There's railroad people in Hazen by the name of Sharp owned this house. Well, Hazen was really not much of a town or place after they lost the transfer point. Do you know Steffie Lewis? You know Chris Bass?
JACOBSEN: Yes.
DOUGLAS : Well, Steffie is Chris' sister and she was married to Ivan Lewis. Ivan was a trucker, and he moved this house from Hazen and set it up down here for us.
JACOBSEN: I see. It's interesting how when the town was small everybody sort of interwove their lives one with the other.
DOUGLAS: Yeah, you knew everybody. 'Course I didn't know very many people uptown, but I remember .
JACOBSEN: Even when you worked at Kents'?
DOUGLAS: Yeah. I was young enough, you see that I didn't know…
JACOBSEN: Who was your social group? The people you graduated from high school with?
DOUGLAS: Well, no, they were more the people that lived out in Old River that we grew up with.
JACOBSEN: Oh, I see. You just sort of stayed with them after you moved to town and all?
DOUGLAS: Yes.
JACOBSEN: I see. I was trying to think if we have anymore directly-related questions to Newlands. Did you ever go out to Lahontan Dam to see what the Dam was like?
DOUGLAS: No, not really. We lived at Lahontan for a short period of time. When he worked as an operator in the power house out there, we lived at Lahontan but that was only for a short [time].
JACOBSEN: Where did you live?
DOUGLAS: In those old houses.
JACOBSEN: That's on the northwest side of the Dam there?
DOUGLAS: Yeah.
JACOBSEN: And what did he do as an electrician in the power house?
DOUGLAS: Don't ask me. Those machines pumped water, I think, out of the pool into the Derby Canal to water those places back up on Swingle Bench and up in there because that was the only other place. There was no other canals or anything up there at that time, but I think that's what they did.
JACOBSEN: How long did he work out there?
DOUGLAS: Oh, Ces, I couldn't tell you.
JACOBSEN: A year?
DOUGLAS: Yeah, probably more than a year.
JACOBSEN: About when? Right after you were married?
DOUGLAS: No.
JACOBSEN: Was David born then?
DOUGLAS: Yes. Let me think a minute. David went to Northam School, and although the girl that drove the bus lived next door to us up there, they wouldn't let David ride the bus to school in Fallon unless we paid transportation.
JACOBSEN: You had to pay transportation to ride the bus?
DOUGLAS: For him, since we lived in…
JACOBSEN: Northam, and the District wasn't consolidated yet.
DOUGLAS: Right, right. I was on school board up there at Northam District.
JACOBSEN: Oh, you were! Did you have interesting experiences on the school board?
DOUGLAS: Not really. No.
JACOBSEN: So, this had to be sometime around 1937, someplace in there, 1938, 'cause if David was born in 1930, he had to be about six or seven.
DOUGLAS: I would say he was maybe in, about the fifth grade when he went to Northam School up there, and we had to take him to school and go get him when school was out. Well, we didn't go get him very often. Did you know the Rattis lived up on the railroad track? Well, those kids all went to Northam School, too.
JACOBSEN: They lived in Bango, didn't they?
DOUGLAS: Yeah. And there was many a night that I had kids hanging out of our car every place that they could hang from to keep the poor little fellows from walking so far to go to school. And the Solaeguis lived up there also and, of course, their mother was dead and Grace was really the …
JACOBSEN: Did she raise them?
DOUGLAS: Oh, yes. And if I wasn't there to pick David up when school was out, why he and Pete Solaegui, or the Solaegui kids, well, Pete was David's age, they'd all go to Solaegui's until we picked them up.
JACOBSEN: How far was it from Northam School to the Dam? It was a good mile. Was the highway there in that place there?
DOUGLAS: Yeah.
JACOBSEN: Cause it ran down in front of Moris and all, too. That's interesting. Very interesting. When you lived at the Dam, did you mostly just do homemaker-type things?
DOUGLAS: Yeah.
JACOBSEN: And you had electricity there, too.
DOUGLAS: Yeah.
JACOBSEN: But you don't remember how long you were out there?
DOUGLAS: We were probably there a couple of years.
JACOBSEN: Did Chester retire from T.C.I.D?
DOUGLAS: No. Because his health got so bad he couldn't work. He had emphysema really bad.
JACOBSEN: How come? Oh, he smoked
DOUGLAS: Yeah, he smoked real bad.
JACOBSEN: But he'd worked for T.C.I.D. for a long time, didn't he?
DOUGLAS: Yes.
JACOBSEN: Do you remember how many years?
DOUGLAS: No, I don't, Ces.
JACOBSEN: Well, is there anything else that you think might be of value to somebody who was doing research on Churchill County or the Newlands or the way women lived or raised their children or things like that?
DOUGLAS: Well, my dad's place out there--'course he had a lot of animals to feed and he fed them well, too. In the summer time when we'd finish milking in the mornings he'd turn those cows out and there was nothing but desert out there and they would live off that desert
JACOBSEN: And still give good milk?
DOUGLAS: Oh, yes!
JACOBSEN: So, you're saying that what was growing there at that time it was pretty fertile then.
DOUGLAS: Right. It was virgin. Nothing else had ever been grown on it other than brush.
JACOBSEN: And there was no Bureau of Land Management or anything to charge you for things. It was much more free.
DOUGLAS: Yes. Well, that's why we had this old gentle horse that we rode. Every so often we'd have to get on that horse and go out on the desert to see where those cattle were.
JACOBSEN: Check them out. And they'd come in at night to be milked?
DOUGLAS: Well, we'd go and . .
JACOBSEN: . . . bring them in.
DOUGLAS: Bring them in at night to be milked, yeah. And then just turn them out in the morning. Oh, we used to ride the cows occasionally, too, out on the desert.
JACOBSEN: (laughing) At night, did you keep them in the corral so you didn't have to run them down the next morning?
DOUGLAS: Oh, yes. Always.
JACOBSEN: When did you do your milking in the morning? About five, six o'clock?
DOUGLAS: It was early I know.
JACOBSEN: And it was cold in the winter?
DOUGLAS: Oh, yes. No heat.
JACOBSEN: I don't think the barns still have any heat, do they?
DOUGLAS: I doubt it.
JACOBSEN: Would you live through it again?
DOUGLAS: I was happy out there. I worked hard on the farm, but I don't think that hurt me any. I don't think hard work hurts a person. Probably done me good. Kept me out of, maybe, other troubles. Who knows? I remember, also that I'd want to go, there'd be a dance uptown or something, I loved to dance. Ches and I went to all the dances. We went to Sheckler and any place there was a dance in the Valley.
JACOBSEN: The old Saturday night school house dances?
DOUGLAS: You bet. We always went, and when I was a kid on the ranch, my brother, Pete, liked to go to town, and he didn't have a car like the kids now, either, and he'd ask Dad, "Can I have the car to go to town tonight and whatnot?" "Yes, you can, if you'll take Edna with you."
JACOBSEN: (laughing) Did you get along with your brothers and sisters?
DOUGLAS: Oh, yeah.
JACOBSEN: There was no, what they call now, sibling rivalry or jealousy or anything. Everybody worked together.
DOUGLAS: More now than when we were kids.
JACOBSEN: Oh, there's more now. (laughing) Well, don't let's detail family rivalries.
DOUGLAS: No, no, we got along good, and we helped Mama with the littler kids. In fact, my brother, Dick, my sister-in-law, Grace, or Betty Paul's mother, and I gave Dick his first bath.
JACOBSEN: Oh, my. He was one of the younger ones?
DOUGLAS: He's the youngest. He's a year older than David, my son.
JACOBSEN: Well, do you think we've covered things pretty well? Tell you if you have any additions you'd like to make or if you think of things you might have missed or anything we can get together again. And I want to thank you on behalf of the Oral History Project in Churchill County. And you’ll have a chance to see these in print after it’s been gone through and all and make any comments. I don’t know if they’ll…
DOUGLAS: Accept them or not?
JACOBSEN: No, they’ll accept them. I don’t know if they’ll make any changes or anything because I’m not into that part of it, but you’ll be hearing more from me. Okay? And thank you so very much. Really appreciate it.
DOUGLAS: Oh David he thought I’d enjoy it. “I wondered,” he said, “why they didn’t ask you to do this” ‘Cause I had my 86th birthday in April
JACOBSEN: I should have asked you something about your days as an aid at the schools, too
DOUGLAS: Oh, you know all that.
JACOBSEN: But I think we’ll let that go for the time being.
DOUGLAS: You know, speaking of that, I went to that McFarlane [inaudible] wedding on the 10th and it was something different. The groom’s attendants all came in on horseback and the bride’s bunch came in a carriage. Beautiful horses. And they had an old building that I understood they had gotten up in Battle Mountain. You see on TV just the front of these old buildings with that little smoke roof down in front. Well that’s what this little old building looked like up there. And that’s where the minister was and the whole thing for the wedding. It was really… a different. Something different.
JACOBSEN: A movie set almost, huh?
DOUGLAS: Well, yeah. But I was gonna tell you, there were several people taking pictures that day, and somebody said to me, “well you know who that is taking pictures, don’t you?” and I said, “no I don’t.” They said it’s Harold Ludwig. And I said it doesn’t look like the Harold Ludwig I worked with. He had the grey whiskers and beard. And, you know, after a while he got down in front where it was very close to me and I hollered at him. And he stepped up and we visited but I don’t know.
JACOBSEN: Wasn’t the Harold Ludwig you knew at school? Well people change, I think. Don’t they?
DOUGLAS: Yeah, I think so.
JACOBSEN: Well, I’m gonna switch this [off]
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
an interview with
EDNA ERB DOUGLAS
July 22, 1993
This interview was conducted by Ces Jacobsen; transcribed by Glenda Price; edited by Norma Morgan; final by Pat Boden; index by Gracie Viera; supervised by Myrl Nygren, Director of Oral History Project, Churchill County Museum.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this interview and preface are those of the interviewer and interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Churchill County Museum or any of its employees.
PREFACE
Edna Erb Douglas is an alert eighty-six year old woman who walks using a walker. About six months ago she had a stroke, and though she manages to get about her house not always using the walker, she feels more secure with it.
The interview covers Edna's early life primarily until she married Chester Douglas in 1926. After that there is less detail though there is some narration about living in the Northam District of the Fallon area and some discussion of her husband's time working at the Lahontan Dam Powerhouse, but little detail.
She discusses her work on the ranch. Her father said she "is the best man" he had. She did little indoor work. After graduating from Churchill County High School she worked for I.H. Kent, where she met her husband.
Interview with Edna Erb Douglas
JACOBSEN: This is Ces Jacobsen, interviewing of Edna Erb Douglas who lives at 1025 Taylor Place. We are doing this for the Churchill County Oral History Program. This is July 22, 1993, 1:30 in the afternoon, and Mrs. Douglas and I are sitting at her kitchen table. And the first thing I’m going to ask her. Edna, why did you come to Churchill County? Both physically and the reason behind it.
DOUGLAS: Well, I don't know how my dad found out about this Reclamation Project.
JACOBSEN: Do you think that's what he was interested in?
DOUGLAS: Yes. That's what he came here for, was to file on that land, homestead on the land. But where he got his information from back in Pennsylvania I don't know other than he did have a brother living here.
JACOBSEN: Which brother was this?
DOUGLAS: Bert. Burton Erb.
JACOBSEN: And Burton Erb had already filed?
DOUGLAS: Well, I don't know if he had, or he just was living.
JACOBSEN: I see.
DOUGLAS: And then my mother and older brother and I came out by train.
JACOBSEN: And you were about how old at that time?
DOUGLAS: Well, they said I was about six months old when we came to Fallon.
JACOBSEN: And this is 1907?
DOUGLAS: Um-hum.
JACOBSEN: And you came by train. From the stories that the family told, did you get off at Hazen?
DOUGLAS: No, I think the train came right on to Fallon, but I'm not sure about that either.
JACOBSEN: On that siding where Kent’s is?
DOUGLAS: And that's where it came, at the old depot, on North Taylor Street.
JACOBSEN: I see, and where did you settle as an infant with your brother and your father and mother? Which brother was this now? Your older brother.
DOUGLAS: Hobart, or Pete, as we always called him. This uncle, we stayed with him when we got to Fallon.
JACOBSEN: And he [where] was living?
DOUGLAS: Well, it's what they used to call the half house here in Fallon.
JACOBSEN: Where was that?
DOUGLAS: If you went out South Maine Street, it would have been off the highway there at the Y where the two roads come together as near as I can remember.
JACOBSEN: Would it have been in the V shape, or would it have been more on the Sheckler side or . .
DOUGLAS: No, on the east side.
JACOBSEN: More on the town side there.
DOUGLAS: Yeah. And I don't why it was called a half house unless that he had never completed the house. It wasn't finished at the time.
JACOBSEN: Was it his property?
DOUGLAS: I assume it was.
JACOBSEN: And then, what happened from there? That you can remember from family stories?
DOUGLAS: Well, Dad built part of the ranch house out on Old River.
JACOBSEN: And what would be the approximate address now of it? Do you have any idea?
DOUGLAS: I don't know, other than Old River Road.
JACOBSEN: It was on Old River Road?
DOUGLAS: Uh-huh. But he built part of a house out there. Adobe house.
JACOBSEN: Did he make the bricks?
DOUGLAS: Well, it wasn't bricks. He poured forms.
JACOBSEN: Oh, of the 'dobe of the place. I see. So it was kind of loose to pour it.
DOUGLAS: Uh-huh, and my first remembrance out there was of us living in this. It was two rooms, but they were big, big rooms. One was kitchen and the other one, I guess, was bedroom.
JACOBSEN: How old would you say that this first recollection was?
DOUGLAS: Oh, I probably was six, seven years old.
JACOBSEN: Remember playing with toys or helping your mother clean house?
DOUGLAS: Well, what I remember mostly was, and I don't know how many more kids there was at that time, but they had a long table--probably Dad had made it--in the kitchen. I remember being sick and my mother made me a bed on this long table in the kitchen, where she could look after me and still do her chores and whatnot. And then my next remembrance is my dad building an addition onto those two rooms which was big, too. I remember I had a little lard pail. Just a real small lard pail, and I would carry the 'dobe in that lard pail and dump in these forms.
JACOBSEN: Was the lard pail something that had been bought at the store with lard in it?
DOUGLAS: Right.
JACOBSEN: It wasn't home rendered lard?
DOUGLAS: No. There was a space in there [inaudible].
JACOBSEN: Anything about playing or what your father and mother were doing or talked about?
DOUGLAS: My folks never done anything but work, 'cause Dad was improving the ground at that time putting in the alfalfa and he raised an immense garden every year. 'Course we all had to work in the garden, too.
JACOBSEN: Including your mother?
DOUGLAS: No, Mother done the canning, but it's unbelievable what she put up to feed us.
JACOBSEN: Meats, too, or were the meats put down?
DOUGLAS: Well, we mostly had pork because at that time there was no refrigeration or anything, any way to keep meat, and my dad would cure the pork.
JACOBSEN: Did you salt it, too, or was it just smoked?
DOUGLAS: No, it was salted down in a barrel in a brine. After it was cured in the brine, he would take it out and hang it in this smokehouse and smoke it.
JACOBSEN: Do you ever remember him saying anything about the farming chores or anything like that or did you have to wait 'til you got older?
DOUGLAS: Well, he had a dairy and I couldn't tell you how many cows, but probably in the twenties. But we milked as we got big enough to do these things,. We had an old separator that you cranked to separate the cream from the milk, and that’s what he sold was the cream.
JACOBSEN: Do you remember to whom he sold it?
DOUGLAS: Yes, there was a creamery down on North Maine Street along the railroad track on the west side of Maine Street.
JACOBSEN: Same place where Kent’s is now?
DOUGLAS: On the other side.
JACOBSEN: On the other side where there's a parking lot and things like that now.
DOUGLAS: There was a flour mill.
JACOBSEN: Yes, Lahontan Flour Mill. It burnt down some years ago
DOUGLAS: Yeah, it was across the street to the east from the creamery, and my dad used to take the cream to the creamery there.
JACOBSEN: Did he ever save any for home use?
DOUGLAS: Oh, always. We always had plenty of good fresh milk and cream and butter. I can remember that old churn that you stomped up and down, and if the cream wasn't the right temperature and whatnot, why you'd have to wait 'til it warmed up or cooled off or whatever 'cause it wouldn't . . .
JACOBSEN: You said you had no refrigeration there for a long time. How did you keep the dairy products?
DOUGLAS: You know I don't know know. I can't .
JACOBSEN: Remember that. You didn't have a well or something like that that you put the water . . .
DOUGLAS: Well, Dad had a big cellar. An underground cellar and that's where Mama kept her canned stuff, and potatoes and onions and things . .
JACOBSEN: That could be kept over the winter. The root veg-
DOUGLAS: Yeah. And that could be where they kept the milk and stuff 'cause it stayed pretty cool down in that cellar.
JACOBSEN: You fed pigs, that's why you had pork so much. You fed pigs with the milk left from removing the cream. Before I interrupted you before to ask these small details, you started to say that the next thing you remembered was, you were older. Can you pick up from there, or did I discumbuberate you too much?
DOUGLAS: Kinda. I don't know what I was going to say…
JACOBSEN: How did you go to school?
DOUGLAS: Well, when the schools consolidated to town, there was a bus that had seats around the side of it. It wasn't a bus like we know a bus now. It was just benches around the outside of it.
JACOBSEN: But, that was when you went to high school, wasn't it?
DOUGLAS: Right.
JACOBSEN: All right, but let's go back a little bit to the Old River time, and you were about seven years old in about 1914. Had you started school by then?
DOUGLAS: Oh, yes.
JACOBSEN: How did you get to school? Did you walk or ride?
DOUGLAS: Walked. We walked to Old River School, and it was, oh, not quite a mile, but we walked. Took our lunch.
JACOBSEN: What'd you carry your lunch in?
DOUGLAS: Lunch pails. Remember like the men used to?
JACOBSEN: Those black ones?
DOUGLAS: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
JACOBSEN: And did you have thermoses in them?
DOUGLAS: No.
JACOBSEN: How'd you keep your milk cool?
DOUGLAS: Well, we probably didn't. We probably drank water.
JACOBSEN: Oh, I see. From the well at the school?
DOUGLAS: Uh-huh.
JACOBSEN: And what time did you have to get to school?
DOUGLAS: Oh, I think it was eight or nine o'clock in the morning that we had to be to school.
JACOBSEN: After you did all your chores?
DOUGLAS: After we did our chores.
JACOBSEN: And was it a one-room school house?
DOUGLAS: Um-hum, one room.
JACOBSEN: Do you remember how many kids were there?
DOUGLAS: Oh, there was probably close to twenty, maybe.
JACOBSEN: Did your dad ever sit on the school board for the Old River School?
DOUGLAS: Not that I know of.
JACOBSEN: Or your mother?
DOUGLAS: No.
JACOBSEN: Did they approve of what you were being taught?
DOUGLAS: Apparently, I have never heard any
JACOBSEN: Did they ever have to go to school about you or your brothers? Were your brothers good kids, too?
DOUGLAS: Oh, they were all pretty good kids. I don't remember that they had to go to school.
JACOBSEN: Do you think you got a pretty good education in that one-room school house?
DOUGLAS: Yeah. We had all men teachers. There was no women teachers when I went to school, and if you went out past the newspaper office and down Serpa Lane, just where you go into Serpa's place there, there was a house in there. One of our school teachers lived there and he walked from there to Old River School.
JACOBSEN: Which wasn't very far if I remember where the Old River School was.
DOUGLAS: Well, it was quite a little ways.
JACOBSEN: Was it? Longer than you had to walk?
DOUGLAS: Yeah.
JACOBSEN: Where was the Old River School? Tell me now in relation to . . .
DOUGLAS: Do you know where Kirn and Verna Bradleys used to live?
JACOBSEN: Can you give me some cross sections for people who wouldn't know? What are the road names now where the Old River School was?
DOUGLAS: That section in there is still Old River Road. But when we moved there, that I can remember, there was only one ranch farther out on the desert than us, and that was Corbeils'.
JACOBSEN: Did they have children who came into school, too?
DOUGLAS: No, no, they didn't.
JACOBSEN: So, you, basically, had your own friends out there and your family.
DOUGLAS: Right.
JACOBSEN: It was just the kids and your family.
DOUGLAS: We very seldom went away to play and we never went to shows or anything like that. Well, it was horse and buggy days. You just didn't go.
JACOBSEN: Even when you got into high school, it was still mostly work and going to school?
DOUGLAS: Oh, you bet. I used to milk my four and five cows every morning and hustle into the house and clean up a little bit and get a bite to eat and catch that school bus.
JACOBSEN: Because they're very interested in the relationship of agriculture to the everyday lives in Churchill County, can you give us any insight into how the farming went along? Or weren’t you involved enough in it? Do you remember your folks talking?
DOUGLAS: My dad put that whole place in. He had eighty acres and he leveled it all with horses and tailboard, plowed the ground with horses. There was no machinery, and when it come time to harvest his crops, and he was an excellent farmer, why he had his own mowing machine. It was pulled with horses, and the old dump rake. And I was, as he said, the best hired man he ever had, to rake the hay and, what he called, bunch it. Now, I raked it with the old dump rake and a team of horses.
JACOBSEN: It was a kind of a side rake, wasn't it? The dump rake?
DOUGLAS: No, it just went straight down the row.
JACOBSEN: And the team of horses was how many?
DOUGLAS: Two. Two horses to a mower and two horses to a rake. And I'd rake it into a windrow, then I'd turn around and come back, and every so often I'd dump it.
JACOBSEN: Ah, yes, I see, to make it easier to pick up and put in a wagon?
DOUGLAS: Uh-huh, and then they'd come along with a wagon and pick up those bunches of hay up on the wagon.
JACOBSEN: With a pitch fork.
DOUGLAS: With a pitch fork and we'd go to the stack, and I'd drive derrick. Had an old derrick in the stack yard with a Jackson fork, and I would drive derrick to unload that hay onto the haystack, and then we'd go back for another load of hay.
JACOBSEN: Did you get paid for doing this?
DOUGLAS: Oh, no, no.
JACOBSEN: The fact that you lived in the family was enough to…
DOUGLAS: We never got paid for that.
JACOBSEN: Well, how did you get money? Say you wanted a dress or something.
DOUGLAS: My mother made most of our clothes, and she would buy a piece of material if she saw a piece uptown. We didn't have clothes like they do nowadays. We had maybe two changes for a week. When we got home from school at night, we changed clothes.
JACOBSEN: Did you wear pants, by the way?
DOUGLAS: Yeah, I have pictures of me with jeans on.
JACOBSEN: Did your mother wear jeans or did she wear skirts.
DOUGLAS: No, always wore dresses.
JACOBSEN: And as you grew older, did you wear dresses or did you stay in your jeans when you did your chores and all?
DOUGLAS: No, we stayed in the jeans to do the outside work and I done very little housework.
JACOBSEN: You were one of the boys?
DOUGLAS: I was one of the boys 'cause I was next to the oldest. Now Ruth was the one that made the school lunches and she's the one that was supposed to help Mama to get the meals on the table.
JACOBSEN: In other words, you're telling me you had your work divvied up. What did the boys do then?
DOUGLAS: Well, the boys done all kinds of outside work. Irrigating and feeding the cattle and that sort of stuff.
JACOBSEN: Heavy lifting work?
DOUGLAS: Yes.
JACOBSEN: You weren't asked to do those kinds of things?
DOUGLAS: Oh no, no.
JACOBSEN: You mostly worked on machinery?
DOUGLAS: Right.
JACOBSEN: I see. Do you remember anything about irrigating or the ditches? Did your father have trouble getting the water?
DOUGLAS: No, not that I can remember. Now, the ranch sat right by the canal. The canal went right in front. In fact, we had to cross a bridge from the road to go into the ranch. Dad took the water out of that big canal a little farther down, and then he had his own ditches that run through the ranch that he turned the water into the fields.
JACOBSEN: Did they have ditch tenders at that time, too? How did you get hold of them to ask for water?
DOUGLAS: Well, I don't know, unless you had certain days or something that you --
JACOBSEN: Did the ditch rider come by and stop and schmooze a little?
DOUGLAS: Yeah, but you know I can't remember the names. In fact, names escape me terribly. And we never went very often to any place to play, because of our bunch of kids, and then there was Baffords. Now, "Mert" [Myrtle] Edwards, she's a Bafford, and there was, oh, probably six of them or so, and they pert near always come to my folks' place. There wasn't a game hardly that we didn't have enough kids.
JACOBSEN: When you say a game, are you talking about baseball, football?
DOUGLAS: Baseball, football, hide and seek, any of them.
JACOBSEN: Did you ever have playdays at the school at all, or things like that?
DOUGLAS: I can't remember. We probably did, but I don't know.
JACOBSEN: Did they have organized football at the high school the way they do now when you were in high school? Were you a cheerleader or did they have cheerleaders?
DOUGLAS: No. Oh, I guess they did.
JACOBSEN: You graduated in 1925, didn't you?
DOUGLAS: Yeah. I guess they had games and stuff there, because Whalens moved down below us, eventually. They weren't there when we were there, but they bought a farm down below and lived down there so there would have been "Chub" [Dennis] and Lloyd and all those kids and Jewel [Jewel Whalen Evans Frey] and the Whalen kids played ball, so they must have had it.
JACOBSEN: Can you think of anything else about the farm that you think might be of interest to people? Did the house get any bigger with the addition of the two rooms?
DOUGLAS: Yes. Dad built that one big room on and it was like our living room, our family room there. Although there was a bed in the corner here and a bed there.
JACOBSEN: Well, with all those children…
DOUGLAS: And then after that he built on, this was wood, now, that he built on. I couldn't tell you how wide it was but a pretty good width, too, of a screened-in porch, across the, the east side and part way down the south side. Then he built solid on the south side which turned into the kitchen and a bathroom. Then across the west were three more bedrooms.
JACOBSEN: Is the house still standing as of 1993?
DOUGLAS: Um-hum.
JACOBSEN: He sure built to last, didn't he?
DOUGLAS: Um-Hum.
JACONSEN: And you had no inside responsibilities, so you don't remember how it was particularly furnished or anything?
DOUGLAS: Well, there wasn't a whole lot of furniture. Wood stoves, of course, and my mother used to chop wood, too, and wash clothes on a washboard.
JACOBSEN: When did you get electricity, do you remember?
DOUGLAS: No, I can't remember the year. I can remember the lamp that used to hang on the wall back of the kitchen table.
JACOBSEN: Was that electric?
DOUGLAS: No. Kerosene lamp.
JACOBSEN: Um-hum. Did you have it when you graduated from high school?
DOUGLAS: Oh, yes, we had electricity long before that. I don't know what [year].
JACOBSEN: I'd like to go back and ask one more question about the ranch and then I'd like to go on. Did your father ever have trouble getting water? Did you have drought years the way we had just recently?
DOUGLAS: Not that I know of. Not that I remember.
JACOBSEN: Do you remember any really hard times? Money wise?
DOUGLAS: Money was short all the time.
JACOBSEN: What did you do in hard money years?
DOUGLAS: I don't know.
JACOBSEN: You weren't aware of the financial arrangements or anything. If you needed some money for something, they would try to make it available?
DOUGLAS: Dad probably would sell a cow or maybe some pigs or something. He had some sheep but I can't remember that he had them when I was on the ranch. I think maybe he got those later, but he had cows. And he had registered cows. They were registered Holstein.
JACOBSEN: That's interesting. Where did he get his cows from? Oatses?
DOUGLAS: I couldn't tell you that either.
JACOBSEN: Now, when did you meet Ches [Chester] Douglas?
DOUGLAS: Well, let me say this first. Kent’s store, the building that's there now, was in three departments.
JACOBSEN: Now, which store is this? The farm store or…?
DOUGLAS: No, no. Where Bob was.
JACOBSEN: On the corner of Center and Maine there?
DOUGLAS: It was divided into three stores, and the one that would be along Center Street there was the grocery store and it had the ladder that ran along something or other on the wall, so if you wanted something clear up
JACOBSEN: Oh, yes, yes, you climbed it.
DOUGLAS: You pushed the ladder pushed to where you wanted to go, then climbed the ladder and got out what you wanted. And he also had a meat market in there, and a vegetable department and also a candy department. They had good candy in there.
JACOBSEN: Hard candy?
DOUGLAS: No, chocolate. Well, I suppose there was hard candies, too. I don't know, 'cause I worked at Kent’s.
JACOBSEN: Oh, did you? When?
DOUGLAS: Oh, gosh. In 19…
JACOBSEN: After you graduated from high school?
DOUGLAS: Uh-huh. Anyway, the middle part of the store was a hardware store. No lumber or anything like that, and then the other part where Bob had his place, was what they called the Groceteria, and they said that was the first place that had ever been in Fallon where you picked up your stuff--like we go to Raley's now and pick up our stuff well, that's the way you did in that store.
JACOBSEN: Oh, did you have a little pushcart like they have?
DOUGLAS: I can't remember, Ces, if we did or not. But Ches' brother was manager of that store, and I was working for him.
JACOBSEN: What was his brother's name?
DOUGLAS: His name was Ed.
JACOBSEN: Ed Douglas.
DOUGLAS: Uh-huh. And I worked for Ed in that store, and Ches would come in to see his brother. So that's how
JACOBSEN: He was younger than you or older than you?
DOUGLAS: My husband?
JACOBSEN: Yeah.
DOUGLAS: He was born in 1901 [September], so he was seven years older. And so that's how I met him, was through him going into the store there.
JACOBSEN: And what did he do?
DOUGLAS: My husband?
JACOBSEN: Yes
DOUGLAS: Well, when I knew him he still trained race horses. He was a jockey.
JACOBSEN: Oh! Where did he come from?
DOUGLAS: Well, his folks were mining people from Ione and Berlin and out in that area is where they came from.
JACOBSEN: I see, and how did he get into being a jockey in this area.
DOUGLAS: Well, he was a little man. He was slender and wiry. About as tall as me.
JACOBSEN: Where did he race these horses?
DOUGLAS: Well, I think he raced them quite a few different places. After we married he worked for Lem Allen, Sr., father of the folks here and we went with Lem to Tijuana, Mexico, and spent a winter in Mexico. He worked with horses down there.
JACOBSEN: Were you a lady of leisure then?
DOUGLAS: Oh, sure, and we went to Winnemucca and Elko and all these little towns around here.
JACONSEN: Weekend races?
DOUGLAS: Uh-huh. And then in later years he became an electrician, and he worked for T.C.I.D. [Truckee-Carson Irrigation District] mostly.
JACOBSEN: Did you and he ever farm?
DOUGLAS: No, not really. We had thirteen acres here [Taylor Place] in this piece of property and he had it in alfalfa because we usually had a cow.
JACOBSEN: Is Raley's on part of your property?
DOUGLAS: No, that was Madeline Taylor's property.
JACOBSEN: So, I was just wondering how your property extended. It was across the road, across Taylor Place, for the thirteen acres?
DOUGLAS: No. It was all back this way.
JACOBSEN: Oh, I see, that's the Pepsi warehouse there.
DOUGLAS: I did own that. We owned that property there where Pepsi is built up, back down to the next section to the repair place where you turn off to go back over to Allen Road. Clear down there. We owned all that in there, and after Ches passed away why I couldn't take care of it or anything, so I sold it. I've got twoacres. I got my tax thing the other day, said I had two acres here.
JACOBSEN: Do you still have water right on it?
DOUGLAS: No, I sold my water right.
JACOBSEN: Who did you sell your water right to?
DOUGLAS: Back to the T.C.I.D. And we gave David [Douglas] this piece of property over here that he built his home on.
JACOBSEN: When did your husband die?
DOUGLAS: In 1976, I believe it was. It know it was seventeen years ago in January that he passed away.
JACOBSEN: You were married then for approximately fifty years.
DOUGLAS: Yeah, if he had lived 'til September it would have been fifty years.
JACOBSEN: Can you think of anything that you might like to add about seeing how Churchill County and Fallon have changed and grown and things like that?
DOUGLAS: Well, I remember the courthouse being the same now as it was at that time. I can't see that it has changed any really, and [end of side a of the tape] I remember that in the middle of Williams and Maine Street the fountain.
JACOBSEN: The horse fountain?
DOUGLAS: The horse fountain, and down underneath where the dogs could drink. Had a place for the dogs to drink.
JACOBSEN: Did it have anything for the people to drink from there?
DOUGLAS: Not that I remember. You see everybody came to town with a horse and wagon or horseback or something. I remember that. And, of course, Kents' store's been there forever.
JACOBSEN: But, did it extend further along than it is now?
DOUGLAS: No.
JACOBSEN: It was always the way it is now?
DOUGLAS: Far as I can remember. When I first went to work for Kent’s, out of high school, there were two girls-sisters, there were three sisters in the family—but two of the girls worked in Kent’s store. Mikie and Jule Klingingbeard.
JACOBSEN: What an interesting name. I've never encountered it before.
DOUGLAS: And if I can remember they lived up in the area where Jodie Johnson Wemple lived
JACOBSEN: On Rice Road?
DOUGLAS: No, In town in town.
JACOBSEN: Oh! On South Maine Street there and Stillwater?
DOUGLAS: They lived over somewhere in there and I lived with them, and when I tell people this they looked at me and they say, "Well, you sure have lost your marbles." I paid those girls’ rent.
JACOBSEN: Yeah, I was going to ask how much. Do you remember?
DOUGLAS: You know I can't remember exactly what, but I paid rent.
JACOBSEN: Did they board you, too?
DOUGLAS: Board and room and I got sixty dollars a month for working at Kents'.
JACOBSEN: (laughing) This was during from when to when, approximately?
DOUGLAS: Oh, probably, well, 1925, 1926.
JACOBSEN: Yeah, from the time you got out of high school to the time you were married. Did you have a room of your own?
DOUGLAS: Um-hum.
JACOBSEN: Did you have the run of the house?
DOUGLAS: Um-hum.
JACOBSEN: Did you have to help with the meals at all?
DOUGLAS: Oh, I did, but I don't know that I was overworked or anything.
JACOBSEN: I was just wondering if they considered that when they gave you the food, you know.
DOUGLAS: It seems like I paid thirty dollars a month.
JACOBSEN: So, actually, then, you paid half your salary for your room and board?
DOUGLAS: Board and room, uh-huh.
JACOBSEN: Why didn't you stay home?
DOUGLAS: I had no transportation. No way to go to work.
JACOBSEN: And it was more expensive to buy a horse and cart to get out there, and now it takes what? Ten minutes to get from Maine to where you live.
DOUGLAS: After we were married, Ches and I used to walk from town out to my folks place, and usually we'd spend the night, and then sometimes they would bring us back to town. They had an old Dodge sedan, I remember that. Open air, you know. No glass or anything and sometimes they'd bring us back to town, and sometimes we walked back to town.
JACOBSEN: Where did you live when you and Chester got married?
DOUGLAS: On Center Street, I believe, the address was. Do you know where Dexters used to live in that big house by the… Did they call it Cottage School? It was the old high school, years back. It would have been east of where Kolhoss' store used to be.
JACOBSEN: That's Richards. Oh, and the high school was where the Cottage Schools are now?
DOUGLAS: Yeah, yeah.
JACOBSEN: Oh, I see. There was a big building there?
DOUGLAS: Yeah, I've got a picture of that some place. Some of these days, Ces, when I get to feeling better I'll go through my pictures.
JACOBSEN: Why don't you call me up while you're doing it because I will try not to influence you but maybe we can get some for the Museum to copy and return to you.
DOUGLAS: Oh, yes, definitely. You know, when my dad died--Mama died before Dad
JACOBSEN: When did she die?
DOUGLAS: Well, she died before Ches did, so I can't tell you for sure.
JACOBSEN: Oh, uh-huh. We probably have it on file some place.
DOUGLAS: But, when Dad died, my sister-in-law immediately went down to the house and gathered up all the old pictures Mama had.
JACOBSEN: Now, who was this?
DOUGLAS: Mary Louise [Erb]. And do you know she would hardly let us look at them or take them out of her house or anything, and I know that there was pictures that Mama brought from the east with her. I don't know why she is that way because they mean so much more to us.
JACOBSEN: Well, do you think it's possible that Mary Louise is a history buff?
DOUGLAS: I don't know.
JACOBSEN: And wants to make sure none of this gets lost in the transitional period?
DOUGLAS: I don't know.
JACOBSEN: She might be willing to let the Museum copy them.
DOUGLAS: I don't know.
JACOBSEN: Do you ever see her?
DOUGLAS: I see her in the store. I haven't been to their house for a long time. I'm ashamed that I don't go more often. The reason I say I doubt that she would, and, again, she may, is because, well, Betty Paul, has quite a history of the Erb family.
JACOBSEN: How is Betty related to you?
DOUGLAS: Pete's daughter. My brother. She's my niece. Betty asked her if she could take some pictures and do something with them. She wouldn't let her have them, so that's why I say I doubt that she'd let you. But she might. I don't know. I've never ask her.
JACOBSEN: Well, maybe if the Museum asks her…
DOUGLAS: If she understood that she'd get them back. My nephew's daughter wrote me here recently. She lives in Sparks, if I would help her with the Erb thing, and that was about the time that I was in the hospital and whatnot and I never did write to her, but Betty got to see her when John was in the hospital. They came to visit John and she gave her what information she could on the Erb family.
JACOBSEN: I think we were back some place about where you were living in Fallon, and you stayed there for some length of time.
DOUGLAS: Well, David was born there. Now, that little house that we lived in was, I guess you'd call it a duplex. It was a little two-family . . .
JACOBSEN: Is it still there?
DOUGLAS: You know, I thought about that the other [day]--I don't think so.
JACOBSEN: I was trying to think of East Richards there near the Cottage Schools and I can't seem to place the duplex.
DOUGLAS: The property belonged to Judge Winters. Do you remember Dolly Winters?
JACOBSEN: I remember she married a Jacobsen. Not related to us, but that's why I've heard of her. I don't know her personally.
DOUGLAS: Well, the property belonged to them and was next door to them, but I don't know what it is now. And then we lived for a short time over on North Broadway. I think there's a beauty parlor in the building over there now, on the west side of the street.
JACOBSEN: And it's on a corner?
DOUGLAS: Either two or three houses there.
JACOBSEN: Okay, and you just kept moving around.
DOUGLAS: Yes.
JACOBSEN: You didn't own any of them?
DOUGLAS: No.
JACOBSEN: You were just a tenant? How did you feel about being a tenant after living on your dad's place and then boarding with them, [the sisters] did you feel that you wanted to get property?
DOUGLAS: Oh, always, and I never liked it in town.
JACOBSEN: You were a farm girl at heart.
DOUGLAS: Right, and, of course, Ches never lived in town. His folks lived out in the mountains. He strictly was hunting and fishing and that type of thing. He didn't care about town.
JACOBSEN: So, you were glad to pick up this place.
DOUGLAS: And Ches knew the Walt Whitakers.
JACOBSEN: Ah, yes. The ones Whitaker Lane is named for.
DOUGLAS: I suppose so. And that's how we got this property. He bought it from Walt Whitaker. Then we bought this house in Hazen and had it moved down here. There's railroad people in Hazen by the name of Sharp owned this house. Well, Hazen was really not much of a town or place after they lost the transfer point. Do you know Steffie Lewis? You know Chris Bass?
JACOBSEN: Yes.
DOUGLAS : Well, Steffie is Chris' sister and she was married to Ivan Lewis. Ivan was a trucker, and he moved this house from Hazen and set it up down here for us.
JACOBSEN: I see. It's interesting how when the town was small everybody sort of interwove their lives one with the other.
DOUGLAS: Yeah, you knew everybody. 'Course I didn't know very many people uptown, but I remember .
JACOBSEN: Even when you worked at Kents'?
DOUGLAS: Yeah. I was young enough, you see that I didn't know…
JACOBSEN: Who was your social group? The people you graduated from high school with?
DOUGLAS: Well, no, they were more the people that lived out in Old River that we grew up with.
JACOBSEN: Oh, I see. You just sort of stayed with them after you moved to town and all?
DOUGLAS: Yes.
JACOBSEN: I see. I was trying to think if we have anymore directly-related questions to Newlands. Did you ever go out to Lahontan Dam to see what the Dam was like?
DOUGLAS: No, not really. We lived at Lahontan for a short period of time. When he worked as an operator in the power house out there, we lived at Lahontan but that was only for a short [time].
JACOBSEN: Where did you live?
DOUGLAS: In those old houses.
JACOBSEN: That's on the northwest side of the Dam there?
DOUGLAS: Yeah.
JACOBSEN: And what did he do as an electrician in the power house?
DOUGLAS: Don't ask me. Those machines pumped water, I think, out of the pool into the Derby Canal to water those places back up on Swingle Bench and up in there because that was the only other place. There was no other canals or anything up there at that time, but I think that's what they did.
JACOBSEN: How long did he work out there?
DOUGLAS: Oh, Ces, I couldn't tell you.
JACOBSEN: A year?
DOUGLAS: Yeah, probably more than a year.
JACOBSEN: About when? Right after you were married?
DOUGLAS: No.
JACOBSEN: Was David born then?
DOUGLAS: Yes. Let me think a minute. David went to Northam School, and although the girl that drove the bus lived next door to us up there, they wouldn't let David ride the bus to school in Fallon unless we paid transportation.
JACOBSEN: You had to pay transportation to ride the bus?
DOUGLAS: For him, since we lived in…
JACOBSEN: Northam, and the District wasn't consolidated yet.
DOUGLAS: Right, right. I was on school board up there at Northam District.
JACOBSEN: Oh, you were! Did you have interesting experiences on the school board?
DOUGLAS: Not really. No.
JACOBSEN: So, this had to be sometime around 1937, someplace in there, 1938, 'cause if David was born in 1930, he had to be about six or seven.
DOUGLAS: I would say he was maybe in, about the fifth grade when he went to Northam School up there, and we had to take him to school and go get him when school was out. Well, we didn't go get him very often. Did you know the Rattis lived up on the railroad track? Well, those kids all went to Northam School, too.
JACOBSEN: They lived in Bango, didn't they?
DOUGLAS: Yeah. And there was many a night that I had kids hanging out of our car every place that they could hang from to keep the poor little fellows from walking so far to go to school. And the Solaeguis lived up there also and, of course, their mother was dead and Grace was really the …
JACOBSEN: Did she raise them?
DOUGLAS: Oh, yes. And if I wasn't there to pick David up when school was out, why he and Pete Solaegui, or the Solaegui kids, well, Pete was David's age, they'd all go to Solaegui's until we picked them up.
JACOBSEN: How far was it from Northam School to the Dam? It was a good mile. Was the highway there in that place there?
DOUGLAS: Yeah.
JACOBSEN: Cause it ran down in front of Moris and all, too. That's interesting. Very interesting. When you lived at the Dam, did you mostly just do homemaker-type things?
DOUGLAS: Yeah.
JACOBSEN: And you had electricity there, too.
DOUGLAS: Yeah.
JACOBSEN: But you don't remember how long you were out there?
DOUGLAS: We were probably there a couple of years.
JACOBSEN: Did Chester retire from T.C.I.D?
DOUGLAS: No. Because his health got so bad he couldn't work. He had emphysema really bad.
JACOBSEN: How come? Oh, he smoked
DOUGLAS: Yeah, he smoked real bad.
JACOBSEN: But he'd worked for T.C.I.D. for a long time, didn't he?
DOUGLAS: Yes.
JACOBSEN: Do you remember how many years?
DOUGLAS: No, I don't, Ces.
JACOBSEN: Well, is there anything else that you think might be of value to somebody who was doing research on Churchill County or the Newlands or the way women lived or raised their children or things like that?
DOUGLAS: Well, my dad's place out there--'course he had a lot of animals to feed and he fed them well, too. In the summer time when we'd finish milking in the mornings he'd turn those cows out and there was nothing but desert out there and they would live off that desert
JACOBSEN: And still give good milk?
DOUGLAS: Oh, yes!
JACOBSEN: So, you're saying that what was growing there at that time it was pretty fertile then.
DOUGLAS: Right. It was virgin. Nothing else had ever been grown on it other than brush.
JACOBSEN: And there was no Bureau of Land Management or anything to charge you for things. It was much more free.
DOUGLAS: Yes. Well, that's why we had this old gentle horse that we rode. Every so often we'd have to get on that horse and go out on the desert to see where those cattle were.
JACOBSEN: Check them out. And they'd come in at night to be milked?
DOUGLAS: Well, we'd go and . .
JACOBSEN: . . . bring them in.
DOUGLAS: Bring them in at night to be milked, yeah. And then just turn them out in the morning. Oh, we used to ride the cows occasionally, too, out on the desert.
JACOBSEN: (laughing) At night, did you keep them in the corral so you didn't have to run them down the next morning?
DOUGLAS: Oh, yes. Always.
JACOBSEN: When did you do your milking in the morning? About five, six o'clock?
DOUGLAS: It was early I know.
JACOBSEN: And it was cold in the winter?
DOUGLAS: Oh, yes. No heat.
JACOBSEN: I don't think the barns still have any heat, do they?
DOUGLAS: I doubt it.
JACOBSEN: Would you live through it again?
DOUGLAS: I was happy out there. I worked hard on the farm, but I don't think that hurt me any. I don't think hard work hurts a person. Probably done me good. Kept me out of, maybe, other troubles. Who knows? I remember, also that I'd want to go, there'd be a dance uptown or something, I loved to dance. Ches and I went to all the dances. We went to Sheckler and any place there was a dance in the Valley.
JACOBSEN: The old Saturday night school house dances?
DOUGLAS: You bet. We always went, and when I was a kid on the ranch, my brother, Pete, liked to go to town, and he didn't have a car like the kids now, either, and he'd ask Dad, "Can I have the car to go to town tonight and whatnot?" "Yes, you can, if you'll take Edna with you."
JACOBSEN: (laughing) Did you get along with your brothers and sisters?
DOUGLAS: Oh, yeah.
JACOBSEN: There was no, what they call now, sibling rivalry or jealousy or anything. Everybody worked together.
DOUGLAS: More now than when we were kids.
JACOBSEN: Oh, there's more now. (laughing) Well, don't let's detail family rivalries.
DOUGLAS: No, no, we got along good, and we helped Mama with the littler kids. In fact, my brother, Dick, my sister-in-law, Grace, or Betty Paul's mother, and I gave Dick his first bath.
JACOBSEN: Oh, my. He was one of the younger ones?
DOUGLAS: He's the youngest. He's a year older than David, my son.
JACOBSEN: Well, do you think we've covered things pretty well? Tell you if you have any additions you'd like to make or if you think of things you might have missed or anything we can get together again. And I want to thank you on behalf of the Oral History Project in Churchill County. And you’ll have a chance to see these in print after it’s been gone through and all and make any comments. I don’t know if they’ll…
DOUGLAS: Accept them or not?
JACOBSEN: No, they’ll accept them. I don’t know if they’ll make any changes or anything because I’m not into that part of it, but you’ll be hearing more from me. Okay? And thank you so very much. Really appreciate it.
DOUGLAS: Oh David he thought I’d enjoy it. “I wondered,” he said, “why they didn’t ask you to do this” ‘Cause I had my 86th birthday in April
JACOBSEN: I should have asked you something about your days as an aid at the schools, too
DOUGLAS: Oh, you know all that.
JACOBSEN: But I think we’ll let that go for the time being.
DOUGLAS: You know, speaking of that, I went to that McFarlane [inaudible] wedding on the 10th and it was something different. The groom’s attendants all came in on horseback and the bride’s bunch came in a carriage. Beautiful horses. And they had an old building that I understood they had gotten up in Battle Mountain. You see on TV just the front of these old buildings with that little smoke roof down in front. Well that’s what this little old building looked like up there. And that’s where the minister was and the whole thing for the wedding. It was really… a different. Something different.
JACOBSEN: A movie set almost, huh?
DOUGLAS: Well, yeah. But I was gonna tell you, there were several people taking pictures that day, and somebody said to me, “well you know who that is taking pictures, don’t you?” and I said, “no I don’t.” They said it’s Harold Ludwig. And I said it doesn’t look like the Harold Ludwig I worked with. He had the grey whiskers and beard. And, you know, after a while he got down in front where it was very close to me and I hollered at him. And he stepped up and we visited but I don’t know.
JACOBSEN: Wasn’t the Harold Ludwig you knew at school? Well people change, I think. Don’t they?
DOUGLAS: Yeah, I think so.
JACOBSEN: Well, I’m gonna switch this [off]
Interviewer
Ces Jacobsen
Interviewee
Edna Erb Douglas
Location
1025 Taylor Place, Fallon, NV
Files
Collection
Citation
Churchill County Museum Association , “Edna Erb Douglas Oral History,” Churchill County Museum Digital Archive: Fallon, Nevada, accessed April 23, 2024, https://ccmuseum.omeka.net/items/show/211.
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