Alfred Charles Woodsford, Oral History

Alfred Charles Woodsford, Oral History

Analog Cassette Tape

1:28:48

Churchill County Oral History Project
an interview with
ALFRED CHARLES WOODSFORD
Fallon, Nevada
conducted by
ANITA ERQUIAGA
May 8, 1998

This interview was transcribed by Glenda Price; edited by Norma Morgan; final by Pat Boden; index by Gracie Viera; supervised by Myrl Nygren, Director of the Oral History Project, Churchill County Museum.
Preface
Mr. Woodsford's quick alert manner belies his age of 89. He wears glasses only to read, and, although, he wears a hearing aid, he understands everything clearly, and he is very articulate. He has lived a very interesting life, and he likes to talk about all the things he has done.
He talks often about how much he misses his wife, Charlotte. He says he doesn't stay at home very much because of that. Although he has lived twenty years in Fallon, he seems to be more interested in talking about the things that happened before he came here. Those were his glory days.
Interview with Alfred Charles Woodsford
ERQUIAGA: This is Anita Erquiaga of the Churchill County Museum Oral History Program. Today is May 8, 1998, and I am interviewing Mr. Al Woodsford at his home at 160 Serpa Place, apartment number 11
ERQUIAGA: First of all, I want to thank you for taking the time to do this, and I would like you to tell me your full name, your place of birth, and your date of birth.
WOODSFORD: My full name is Alfred Charles Woodsford, and I was born in San Francisco in 1909. That's where my folks came when they came here from England. They're British. My birthday's on the third of February, and right now I'm 89 years old (laughing)
ERQUIAGA: What was your parents’ names?
WOODSFORD: Dad's name was Robert John Woodsford. My dad was in the United States in 1906 before the big earthquake down there because he was a specialized plasterer. My mother was in South Africa, this was just before they were married. Her name was Florence Alberta Kessel. They were both born on the island of Jersey. That's an island in the English Channel. There's a bunch of them. There’s the Jersey, where the Jersey cattle come from. There’s Guernsey, Alderney, Sark, Herman, Jetto, and they’re just islands. Jersey is twenty miles from the coast of France, and you can see it all the time.
My dad was working in San Francisco on the Palace of Fine Arts in the exhibition there in San Francisco before the earthquake. You know, the World's Fair was there. He left San Francisco and went back to England to Jersey, where he married my mother. I’ve got their birth certificates, and I've got their marriage licenses. Then he brought her back out here to San Francisco, where I was born later on.
My dad had a trade that was called plastering. He used to do fancy work like run cornice molds in the corners. You know, all the old houses had all that fancy stuff in plaster, well, he was an expert in that. When he went to England they sent for him from the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco and asked if he would come back to the United States. That's why he came back. He was what they called a master man in England, too.
Half my schooling was done in the United States, and half of it was done in England. The first time I went to England was 1919 directly after World War 1. I went with my mother. We only stayed there a short time, and then we came back to the United States to my dad. In 1918 1 was in El Paso, Texas. I was just a kid, and that's when the big flu epidemic come on. You remember when that flu epidemic come on?
ERQUIAGA: Yes.
WOODSFORD: W , I don't know. I 've taken you back, maybe, too far.
ERQUIAGA: I had a brother that died at that time, so I heard about it.
WOODSFORD: We were living, in El Paso and he was plastering. He had some fancy plastering at Fort Bliss. He was doing some work there for the United States Army at the base. But, with the flu epidemic, my mother caught it, my dad caught it, and my brother caught it. We couldn't get a doctor. There was one doctor that said he would phone me every other morning from El Paso and tell me what to do with them because he said he didn’t have the time to come out there. It was a case of I would just let them die. So he told me every second or third morning what I had to do, and I fed them. We used to trap ‘cause in 1918 it was pretty wild out there. We used to trap pigeons, I used to feed them pigeon soup and squabs.
ERQUTAGA: How old were you then?
WOODSFORD: I was only [nine] So, I brought them through the flu epidemic. Then we left there and began plastering in other parts of California ‘cause my dad was in demand because he was what they called a staff hand. Then, of course, I did my schooling. Half the time in England and half the time in the United States. I was between the two countries. When I finished my schooling we were in England at the time. In 1924, there was big earthquake in Santa Barbara [California], and it demolished the city of Santa Barbara. My dad was needed immediately, they said, back in California and to bring me with him because I was learning the trade. So we went back to Santa Barbara in 1924. We stayed there through 1925, and rebuilt the old mission after the earthquake. Do you know the mission in Santa Barbara?
ERQUIAGA: I have seen it, yes.
WOODSFORD: Well, we rebuilt it after the earthquake. My dad and I and one other fella. We were working for a contractor. I was just a kid.
ERQUIAGA: You probably weren't even twenty yet, were you, at that time?
WOODSFORD: No, I wasn't. 1 was only sixteen, so we worked on the Santa Barbara Mission and completed, and it’s a beautiful place now. There’s a little plaque inside that says who did the work in there. We did the cement work. Soon as we got through with that job--it was during the Depression then---I went to work with Santa Barbara Telephone Company. The job I got, was what they called a hospital man -job on the machinery like the switchboards and stuff. Santa Barbara was still getting earthquakes, so 1 worked with them. Although, I was only seventeen I was working with the Santa Barbara Telephone Company, they give me charge of it and I had twenty-one operators I had to look after. I had to be on duty all night because if there was a little earthquake or something in Santa Barbara I was the one that would get the main fuses in and keep the electric going and make sure all the girls were in safe places. Then the board of education found out I was working for the Santa Barbara Telephone Company and that I was only seventeen years old, so right away they come down. The first thing they said was that I 'd have to quit the job there in the Santa Barbara Telephone Company and go back to school till 1 was eighteen here. I had already finished seven x in England, and I had already taught a first -grade class at one time, so I said I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't go back to school in the United States. "Well, " they said, "you either got to go back to school in the United States or go back to England where you were. " So, I said, "No, I won't do it. " so, the vice -president of the Santa Barbara Telephone Company said, 'l We ‘re not going to lose this young man. We need him here bad, and he's an expert at everything he does. We want him to stay on, and we're going to keep him on. " So, the board of education said, 'l Well, the only way we can do it is, will he take up a night school course and try and get a diploma for it? " So, I said, yes, 1 would do that. I would take a night school course. What I took was mechanical engineering and shop which was two hard courses, but I still worked for the telephone company. When I finished my two classes, I got very high standards of what I can do, so they said that on account of being so good at it I could stay working for the telephone company.
Well, then I quit the telephone company ‘cause they were only paying me fifty dollars a month, and I had that responsible job. I went to work as a machinist in California, but I still had the trade of plastering. From that job in there, why, I worked in Santa Barbara for a while, and my dad worked there. We stayed in Santa Barbara and worked around Santa Barbara and in California and those places.
Then I made two or three more trips with my mother when she went to see her mother when she was dying in England, and came back. When I came back I went back plastering with my dad, and I plastered with him for quite a while then. I was a full-fledged plasterer then. When we left that Dad was getting pretty old. He couldn't work as hard as he used to, but they still wanted him to do all the plastering that we did there, and I just worked with him until I got older. Then we went back to Santa Barbara, and I was still plastering. And the state didn't bother me anymore about my age. That was during the Depression then. That was in the twenties. I was working on two other jobs. I was trying to keep down two other j obs. They were j ust little jobs, and the Depression was so bad that you couldn't get a job. It was just one of those things. You just had to do the best you can, so I used to work part-time for different people because I could always get a job. So when it got 1929, I was still working in Santa Barbara, but the Depression was still on. I wanted to learn to dance. So I went to a dancing class in Santa Barbara, and I got along so good in that dancing dance that they hired me for a dancing instructor. That was 1929. Well, it was just before New Year's Day. I used to ride with the girls on the floats and dance with the one on the float. 1 've got pictures of them all here that I danced with on the float.
I went to the dance every Saturday night, and I was supposed to be teaching the girls, but I never had a girlfriend. I never looked for a girlfriend, and I got to be eighteen then or nineteen. I went ahead and was the dancing instructor there. This one night I came to the dance and instead of going to the girls like I usually did, I happened to sit down, and one of the old operators that I used to know in the telephone company, came over to me. 1 had a nickname of Scottie. Everybody called me Scottie. Even the Santa Barbara Telephone people did. She come to me, and she says, Scottie, we have a young lady here that’s a telephone operator, and she doesn't know anybody in Santa Barbara, and she's eighteen years old. Would you help her dance tonight so that she'd have somebody to dance with? “I said, “Yes, I'd be glad to." Well, that was my mistake. I sat down on the side, and she come over, introduced herself to me, and sat down beside me. When the first dance come, why, I got up and danced with her, but I danced with her all night. I kept every dance with her. I couldn't get away from her. I stayed with her all the time, and like I said, I didn't have any girlfriends, and I knew hundreds of them with the telephone company. When it come the end of the evening, why, Betty, who introduced us, says to me, " What happened to you tonight, Al? You never danced with any of your classmates that you always do. Are you falling in love with this girl, Charlotte? " I said, don't think so. But, anyway, when she come over, I asked her if I could take her home, and she said, "No, because my mother and dad would be mad as heck if I come home with a strange boy. I can't let you. You know, in them days you just didn't grab a girl like whatever you wanted. So, I said,
Okay. She says, "But, I will make a date with you for Sunday, " -and I got pictures of it here for Sunday morning, and we’11 go on a picnic. 1 said, "That's great! 'l But, she says, "I’ll tell my folks tonight when I go home that I met you here, and I found out that you were English. My stepdad is English. "
The next morning when I got there, why, her folks were waiting. Her dad was editor of the San ta Barbara Daily News, and her mother was a writer, so they were very powerful. Both of them. They could get any information they wanted. When took her to the picnic on Sunday, they phoned up the telephone company and got my record of what kind of a guy I was, and they said at the Santa Barbara Telephone Company, l ‘He is one of the best we've got, and he doesn't work for us now, but he was working for us, and they said he's one of the best we had there. He's really a nice fellow. You can depend on him.
So, they let me take the girl out on a date, and I took her out. I've got the pictures there where I took her on the date. That was in 1929 just before New Year’s. So, I took her home that night after Sunday, and on the way home, her and I happened to pass a jeweler's shop, and there was a ring in the jewelry window. A very beautiful ring. I've got it. It's over my head. I have it over my head all night, and she said, Gee that’s a beautiful ring. and 1 just says, "Well I'll buy it for you I ‘ve only known her one day, so I bought the ring for her. This was the first night, and when we got home that night she showed it to her mother. Her mother says, " You can’t become engaged like that. You 've only known him a few hours. You don't know this boy at all. But, she didn't want to take it off, so her mother turned around to me, and she says, “I'm going to let Charlotte wear it, but don’t take it any further. " So, I said, "Okay. I promised her I wouldn't do that, so she put the ring on. Now, this is only the second day. Well, that night I kissed her good night. I kissed her good night then for the next sixty-two years because just a week later we run away. We were both underage. We run away and got married.
ERQUIAGA: Just a week.
WOODSFORD: Just a week, and I'd only known her. So, then, that was almost New Year's Eve. We had a nice New Year's together, and I was sitting out in the car, and I turned around to her. We were in Santa Barbara then, and the car we headed up in the hill because the Graf Zeppelin was going to fly over Santa Barbara that night, and we wanted to see it. I turned around to her, and just out of nowhere, I says, "Will you marry, sweetheart?" Oh, yes, she says, will.
ERQUIAGA:
So how did her mother take that?
WOODSFORD: Well, her mother didn't know about it. So what we did, we managed to get her to tell her friend she was going to stay at a girl's house on the Friday and Saturday and come home Sunday, and she asked her mother if it was all right if she did that, so she said yes, and she said, "You be sure and bring her home safe. " But, that was all right. I did, but in the meantime, Charlotte and I went to Ventura, and we applied for a marriage license. We gave the wrong age, the wrong address, everything so we got the marriage license, so that Saturday night instead of her going to the girlfriend’s house, we went to Ventura. That’s just up the coast from Santa Barbara. We went up to Ventura, and we went to the preacher’s place that night at the church ‘cause I didn't want to be married by a justice of the peace, I wanted to be married by a minister. We went to the church that night. He looked at her and I, and he said, "Are you two a runaway couple? " And we said no, we weren’t a runaway couple, and we had one of Charlotte’s girlfriends with her, and I had a friend of mine that was going to act as witnesses, so he married us. So, we were married that night, so that night later we left there and drove to Santa Monica. Of course, Charlotte had been dancing with me quite a while then, and when we got there, we got there at Santa Monica just before the final dance at the Argonne Ballroom in Santa Monica. It was quite a little trip up the coast, almost into Los Angeles. But as we went through the door, the guy that was at the door tapped me on the back, I thought. I turned around and laughed and I said to Charlotte, " You know, Sweetheart, what did he do to my back? And she looked on there, and she says, "We've got a number on it. 1 forgot tonight's the night of the California state championship. So, I laughed, too. We won the championship for the whole year. Charlotte and I won the championship that night.
ERQUIAGA: That's pretty good.
WOODSFORD: We danced against three hundred other couples.
ERQUIAGA: Oh, my.
WOODSFORD: So, then we went home, and, of course, we were married. We went back and stayed in the hotel. Everything went fine for two weeks. I seen her every night. I seen her every day, and her mother and I were getting along great. Then all of a sudden, my mother turned around to me. We’d sat down on a Sunday morning to have breakfast, and she turned around to me, and she looked at me, and then she looked at my dad, and she said to my dad, "Do you know that your son is a married man?" Well, I was still a way underage, too, and he said, "He is? Il I says, "Well, how did you find that out?" Well, she says, 'l You left a diary on the table this morning, and when I picked it up, I seen it. Does Charlotte’s mother know she’s a married lady? I said, "No. Gee whiz, no. " She says, "Well, are you going to phone her right away, or do you want me to go up and see I says, "No, I'll go see her. " So, I drove up to the house up there. 1 had phoned Charlotte, and I said, "We got trouble. "Yeah, " she said, t’I figured it was about time to come up. So I drove to her house, and boy! the minute I told her we were married, she showed her hand then with the wedding ring on. Oh! she was going to kill me, and if she caught me in that district, why, then she'd have me shot, and she was going to have me arrested and everything else, and she said, l’You get out of here. l’Well, I left. But there was one way I could stay up by the house, so I stayed below the house. But she said she was going to have it annulled right away. I knew her mother had to go to work that next morning and so did her stepdad. Her stepdad had tuberculosis. He was kind of sick. I stayed at the bottom of the hill, and as soon as the mother and father left, I come up to the house, and I was with her all the rest of the day till they got back. I knew they were coming back from work. 1 didn't have a job anyway then because the Depression was on, so this was 1930. I had a good New Year's Day with her, and this was 1930, but I kept away from her. Some friends of mine, Don’t worry. We 've got a house picked for you in the mountains that they’11 never find, so you two will never be caught. "
But, we didn't have to do it because late that afternoon she phoned me, and she said, "You know, Mom's changed her mind about the annulment. "Oh, I said, " that's great! What happened? she says, Charlotte’S stepdad has got tuberculosis. You knew that. " I said, "Yes.
"Well, they've got to leave here next week for a job in California. He's going to be editor of the newspaper in Tucson, but it’s down where the tuberculosis people live. So, she phoned me back, and she said, "It's fine. They’re going to leave if we’11 give them the money for the rent for the house so that they don’t have to stay another month. That’11 release them so they can get away and take him right away to the tuberculosis place, but you and I will be married. We’11 have the house. So, from that day on we were married. We were man and wife.
ERQUIAGA: That turned out very well, didn't it?
WOODSFORD: Yeah. And it worked out fine because we enjoyed it. We had a good year being a winner of the California state championship.
ERQUIAGA: Did you ever do anything like that again? A contest?
WOODSFORD: We stayed dancing all the time. We didn't enter any more contests then because Charlotte and I were married then--I've got the pictures here- -and we stayed in Santa Barbara, and things got worse and worse in Santa Barbara because the Depression was on then. That was 1930 then.
Then they decided and to go to Wickenburg and try and save him, but they couldn't save him. When he died, of course we invited her mother to come and live with us. So she came and 1ived with us. Her mother turned out to be a wonderful mother-in-law. So, that's how 1 met my wife and got married. was just a case of out of nowhere. Well, I had a job. I was working for a chiropractor, an elderly lady in Santa Barbara in 1930. Charlotte's uncle was head of the police department down in Hollywood ‘cause we moved then to Los Angeles, and he was down in Hollywood, so he came to me one day, and he said to me, Al, you’ve got my granddaughter [niece] and I know from the way you’re doing you’re having a hard time trying to pay rent and try to get things. “But we managed always to find a house, and we managed to find a job somewhere.”
So he says, "I've got two jobs to offer you.” So, I said, “All right. What were they? " So, he said that one of them is to work for the fire department at Griffith’s Park in Los Angeles. That’s the first job. "Now, he said, " the other one is a little tougher. Would you be a gangster?" Well, of course, I knew all about the gangsters there because they were running pretty wild in that time, you know, around 1931, the thirties. So, Charlotte and I began talking it over, and she was scared to death, but he says, " 1’11 guarantee that you’11 never get shot, that you’re perfectly safe because the one I'm going to introduce you to is a man that nobody can do anything to. I mean, he’s just one of these guys. Originally he was one of the men that was on the police force along with his being a private detective that he knew, so he says to me, l’Which do you want to take? l’Well, being a fireman, I made fifty dollars a month the same as in 1930, but if I went to work as a gangster, I could make as much as two hundred a month, three hundred. Just depends on what I did. So, I turned around to him--I was just twenty then. He said, "Which one do you want?" Well, of course, Charlie didn't want me to take the job—that's like I wrote the story in the paper for them. You seen the paper here. You know that I wrote the story. Did you read the paper?
ERQUIAGA: Yes, I did.
WOODSFORD: And she said, "What's the other job? Is being a gangster what you want. 'l So, I was a kid. I was really a kid. I thought, Il Jeez, that'd be great. That'd be lots of fun being a gangster. I'd be making good money.
ERQUIAGA: A lot of money during the Depression.
WOODSFORD: Oh, gee, that was big money then! So, he says to me, "Okay. You go to this place, and you tell them you’re going to work. The superintendent and all of them don't know you’re going to work, but you’re going to work. Just tell him you come to start the job. Ask for Bob Ganns. He's the man that's our king, leader of the gangsters. " So, I said, "All so I did that. It's a good thing I didn't take the job as a fireman. Two months after they started there, all those firemen died in one fire.
ERQUIAGA: Oh, my!
WOODSFORD: What happened was they had a fire chief there, but he didn't know how to fight a forest fire, and when the fire came over the hill, there was a gully there, kind of deep, and it had water in the bottom. He took his crew down there. Well, of course, when the waves from the forest fire went over, they took all the oxygen. So, all the guys died. The whole group died. Killed the whole bunch of them, so it was a good job I didn't take that. So then I worked as a gangster for three and a half years. Of course, I made good money, but if I didn't like you, all I had to say, "Well, there's a lady, and I don't care much for her, and they say, "Do you want to get rid of her?" And I would say, "Yes, you'd be killed.
ERQUIAGA: Is this part of the Mafia?
WOODSFORD: No, it wasn't the Mafia. I didn’t work for the Mafia. The Mafia was a different thing altogether. The Mafia was a thing that was run by Italians. and it was a pretty hard thing to get into. I was definitely just a gangster, and they knew then that I had taken this course as a machinist, so I was handy to them for the slot machines because there was the speakeasies and there was the Club Royal in Hollywood where they had all five-dollar machines and stuff like that, you know. And me being a machinist, I could make parts for these machines, so I've got a letter that was given to me by Bob Ganns. There was two of them. There was Bob Ganns and Major Beline. They were my bosses. I shouldn't be giving you these names because there might be some of those guys alive. So, I went to work as a gangster.
ERQUIAGA: How long did you do that?
WOODSFORD: I was three and a half years with the gangsters. 1 knew what they did. When there was a raid, I would always know ahead, and every time there was raid, it would be federal men or the local police. Well, I had to stand like I told you in there with my hands wide open and stand just stiff, dead still, because if I moved I was liable to be shot. I had some bullets that passed me pretty close. But nobody ever shot at me because if I reported them, they’d kill them because they just told me, "Anybody you want killed, just tell us, and we’ll kill them. 'l And they couldn't do anything to me.
ERQUIAGA: Did they always get away with this? Killing people with no reason.
WOODSFORD: Oh, yes, because these guys knew- -the cops were paid off, is what happened. A lot of them were paid off. so, in them days, the cop wasn’t somebody you could say you'd really depend on. If anybody did anything to me, I never used to report it. I didn’t want anybody killed on my part, so after I once knew what they were doing, I never would tell anybody. If one of them hurt me or anything during the raid, I wouldn't say anything, but I was in a lot of raids. They used to raid the speakeasies. And the Club Royal in Hollywood which was a big club, that was for millionaires. Well, I used to go down there quite often because they wanted their machines running all the time, but I was really a machine man is what I was. 1 wasn't really a gangster that went around shooting people. My only thing was really I worked in the clubs. Sometimes I'd be in as many as maybe three raids in a week, and I always had to stand the same. This is a little different telling this thing where you’re going to let it out. Like the other one I told, I kept all the names away. But, this really doesn't have anything to do with that thing they want me to do in the museum, does it?
ERQUIAGA: Well, this is where it will be when they type up your story from here, it'll be stored at the museum. Someday maybe one of your great grandchildren’11 come around and want to know about you and research it. We’11 start with you telling how you got into driving that MG around the country? How did that come about?
WOODSFORD: That was done because we told Sir Malcolm Campbell that we would drive the car all around the United States on different roads and stuff so that it would make the car acquainted in the United States. They wanted to sell this model in the United States. We traveled all the different cities in the United States. Thirteen thousand miles, and all along the coasts of Canada.
ERQUIAGA: And this was just something that you and your wife wanted to do?
WOODSFORD: We did it for ourselves.
ERQUIAGA: You weren't getting paid to drive?
WOODSFORD: No, we weren't getting paid a dime for it.
ERQUIAGA: And where was your son while you were doing this?
WOODSFORD: He was in the back seat all the time. He rode in the back because we weren't making a record with time, but we had driven the longest ride for one drive—thirteen thousand miles, so it was really a record, too. But, war was already started, so, we didn't know it, but Abbington on Thames were going to close. They were going to make a munitions plant out of it, so they weren't going to make any more of these.
ERQUIAGA: That was the place where they had made these cars?
WOODSFORD: That's where this one was made, yeah, so we took this back to Jersey. My brother took it back to Jersey, and when we got it back in Jersey, why, we found out that the Germans were beginning to occupy France with the war. But England hadn't declared war against Germany or Germany otherwise, so they were not fighting, yet.
But, in the meantime before we got the car back there, why, it came over that England and Germany were going to go to war, so what they did, they made Jersey an open town to the German high command so that the Germans could occupy the city without blasting it. A certain amount of people had to get off the island of Jersey. If they didn't, it was likely that they would be sent to Dirtchslough, the concentration camp, because that’s where they would have sent us if we hadn't got off it. They were going to send Charlotte and I to Dirtchslough the concentration camp and they were going to send Alfred to the Hitler Youth. When we got to Jersey there, we come out of the theater the next night, but the car hadn't got back yet ‘cause my brother hadn't got back yet. We come out of the theater, and here out in front of the building is a big plaque: mobilization of the British fleet, and my age was in it, and I was a British subject ‘cause 1 was born of English parents. We had come to England on a British passport. Our American passport we hid it so they wouldn't know we had an American one. We came in, so that made me a British subj ect. So then Charlotte and I had to get started right away. How the hell we were going to get off that island right away?
ERQUIAGA: Why didn’t you want them to know about your American passport?
WOODSFORD: Well, because we wanted to go back to America. We wanted to turn around. The business we had in England, the bank said they would take all our assets and clean up and we wouldn't owe any money. But we could go back to America before the war started because we didn't want to be a prisoner on the island of Jersey or we didn't want to go to the Dirtchslough concentration camp. So when my brother brought the car back, it was put in the Cleveland Garage in Jersey and that’s where the Germans found it. They found the car there and they confiscated it, but the Germans took over the island in 1940. What we did, we got out. We said we wanted to go back to America right away. Athough we were contractors there and had quite a bit of money and stuff like that, in Jersey you can’t go bankrupt on the island. If you do, you can't leave, and we couldn't go into debt because if you don't pay your bills, they won't let you leave the island. So we had to make arrangements with the bank and the insurance company to buy all the property we had and give us what was left because we had to have some money when we got back to America.
So, what we did, we hid our English passport in the suitcase by sewing it in the lining because we didn't want to throw them away, and we used the American passport and got in touch with the American consulate and asked them if they would please let us know if we could get to London to get to America before Germany occupied the islands, and Germany was already coming down the coast of France, so they said yes. The American consulate office told us to go to Swiss Cottage in London. That's territory that's protected by American laws because we showed them the American passport and they said, "You’re an American citizen. You’re not a British subject. Well, when we see the British, they said, "You’re not an American citizen. Each one wanted us. My brother and his wife when he come back, we all got to Swiss Cottage in London, and we were in London for the first blackouts when the French bombers came over. We couldn't get on the first ship that went out from South Hampton because that was the Athenia, and the Athenia was torpedoed, and she went down with passengers on. So that left the Empress of Britain for us. That was the next one leaving, so we came back to America. They got in touch with us there, and they told us that they had a ship to take us out, and she was loaded mostly with American citizens, so we said we'd take the chance to go because England had already declared war then, and the ships were coming out. The U-boats were in the ocean.
We had two calls on the Empress. One was that they give you a life boat drill when you get out of the harbor and get in the ocean. We took the first life boat drill the first day, and the alarm came over the loudspeaker on the ship. This is only a training alarm, but a couple of nights later when we got about mid-Atlantic it came over the thing at midnight, and it says, l’This is an emergency call to get you up right away. Get your life j ackets. Come to the main deck up top. This is an emergency call. Bring your life j ackets, your gas masks, and your blankets. 'l Well, we had the boy. They had to go somewhere else. They wouldn't allow us to go where my wife was because women and children are first, and they'd kill you if you did that, so I was by myself with my brother, and my wife and the kids, Alfred and Charles were on the other side. We were loaded up. The lifeboats were ready to put out because they said German U-boats had been following us, and this was around midnight. Then, all of a sudden, it came back, it says, "German Uboats not following any more, so return to your staterooms. So whether it was just something they were kidding us with or what it was, I don't know, but it scared us anyway because we did have to get up there, and we figured if they sunk the other one, there was a good chance they'd sink this one, so the Empress of Britain took us on into Canada.
We arrived in Canada and the Empress of Britain turned right around and loaded with passengers to go back to England. When she got in the North Seas, they bombed her, and she went down with a heavy loss of life, so that ship that we came home on was sunk before it got back home, so we were just lucky.
ERQUIAGA: Wasn't your time.
WOODSFORD: No, So, then we were back in America, and then, of course, that's when we came down here to Fallon. We contracted in California first. We had some big contracts in California.
ERQUIAGA: What kind of contracts?
WOODSFORD: Building contracts because we had a California contractor's license. It wasn't no job for us to get a license because of our English master license which they knew we knew the trades.
ERQUIAGA: Was your brother
WOODSFORD: Him and I were together. We used to do all our own architecture work and everything. Everything we did when we built a house, like we built a cottage for the Scarettes. They were multi-millionaires, and we built an $81, 000--that was a lot of money in the Depression. That would have been in 1938, almost 1939, and the contract price for it was $81, 000. We built that house for the Scarettes, and then we got the contract to build 125 homes which we didn't finish because we closed up in Santa Barbara and came to Fallon. We were having trouble in Santa Barbara because we were trying to beat the big guys there, and we were getting all the work, my brother and I because we were the ones that were making the first modular homes.
ERQUIAGA: Is that right?
WOODSFORD: We can build houses for a thousand dollars cheaper than the rest of them, so, of course, the City of Santa Barbara was mad. That was something that we shouldn’t have done. We shouldn't have tried to beat the others. What we did, see, we didn't buy anything locally. We used to come here with our trucks and pick up stuff in [Las] Vegas. We used to pick up sheet rock and stuff like that and nails. We wouldn't buy it from the local man.
That was our California license. What they did, they took us to court, and they brought a charge against us. They were going to take the license away because we didn't pay our wages, so they had a court case for us. But when we used to pay our wages to our men in Santa Barbara, we used to make them sign our slip that they received their wages. So when the law came up, I've got a letter from the head one of the State of California Public Works which is a relative of ours that we were defrauded out of our stuff in San Francisco. They said that we were defrauded all of our stuff in California on account of that because they had to throw the wage thing out because every man had signed for his wages so they had to call that off so we weren’t picked up because we had didn't pay our wages. We did pay our wages. We paid all our bills. We didn't owe anything.
ERQUIAGA: What year did you come to Fallon?
WOODSFORD: 1946.
ERQUIAGA: And did you build your store right away?
WOODSFORD: That's when we built the store, 1946. Helped them build their house and their store.
ERQUIAGA: Who is them?
WOODSFORD: That was my mother- in-law and my father- in-law. They came up here to start their business, but we still had work down in California yet. We worked part-time down there and part-time up here, but we had a license for Nevada, too, so it was all right.
ERQUIAGA: Where was their store?
WOODSFORD: Right down by the museum. That store, the Stop and Shop. We were the ones that built the Stop and Shop.
ERQUIAGA: And that was called right at first Stop and Shop?
WOODSFORD: No, it was Walker's Grocery at first. It was Walker's Grocery, and then it turned to Stop and Shop when we took it over because it was sold a couple of times, and then we took it over as Stop and Shop.
ERQUIAGA: That was you and Charlotte?
WOODSFORD: Yeah. Charlotte and I had it as Stop and Shop. We had two. That's when we started the second one.
ERQUIAGA: In Fallon?
WOODSFORD: In Fallon, yeah. We give Fallon its first chain stores, and it's in the paper. We only kept one open a year because we were having trouble with the two.
ERQUIAGA: Where was the second one?
WOODSFORD: The second one was out on the highway. It was the old Farmer’s Market. It's out there on Highway 50. The highway going to Reno on Williams Avenue. We were going to open four of them. We were going to open one in each entrance of the city, but it was too much for my wife, so we sold out here in Fallon, and then I went to California.
ERQUIAGA: How long was it before you went?
WOODSFORD: We went to California around 1961 because I had my California thing going good there. We were asked by the Bank of San Francisco- -they knew us, and they wanted me to come up there and finish a contract that had been half done by a contractor, and he went bankrupt. They wanted Charlotte and I to take over. I've got the references for that. We stayed in California for three or four years, and then we took care of 1800 Pacific Avenue. That was a thirteen-story building. As soon as it was built, why, Charlotte and I went in. I worked there as maintenance man, and she rented apartments. Then, in Salinas, we did the big motel in Salinas. The big bankruptcy place in Salinas we did that with 180 -some units. We did that one, and then we did one more. We went to work for in Stockton for a big motel. The motel had been taken over as a bankruptcy, but they said if we would take it over, we could bring it out of bankruptcy for the owners, so we went down there and brought it out of bankruptcy for the owners. It took us three months to bring it back from a place that was in bankruptcy, and we had a hundred percent occupancy only in three months. It was 180 -some unit motel. It was a big motel.
ERQUIAGA: When you were in Fallon, did you work in the store, or did you continue with your stone masonry?
WOODSFORD: No, no, I quit. I worked in the store with them. I did plastering on the side if they weren't too busy, but I didn't do much more plastering. For a while here I did all the plastering that was in Fallon because the two contractors, they wouldn’t have anybody else do it. Must have been for two or three years, any plastering that was done here in Fallon, I did. Plastering and stone masonry. built three fireplaces here. They wouldn’t have nobody else build them because I was the only one that could build a fireplace that didn't smoke. know how to build in the smoke shelves, so I was well-known here in Fallon because after the earthquake, my brother and I did a lot of work here. We put in a lot of glass windows on Maine Street.
ERQUIAGA: The earthquake in 1954?
WOODSFORD: That was that one, and then there was one nearly a year later. The only building that I had to go back and do again was the Allen Hotel.
ERQUIAGA: Oh, really?
WOODSFORD: That one it cracked it pretty bad again, so I had to go do that one, so I did that one twice.
ERQUIAGA: What were some of the other buildings that you worked on?
WOODSFORD: When the general contract was let for the hospital for the new addition with the solar room, Earl Bliss had it, and I got the subcontract. 1 did all the plastering. I was the one that contracted the unit. I got all the plastering in the hospital and tile setting. I used to do all the tile setting, and my older son used to work with me.
I worked for Andy Drumm quite a while. You know, the big man here that worked on the highways. I used to fly quite a bit with him. He'd fly to the places and I'd bring back heavy equipment. fly to the places.
I did a lot of other jobs here in Fallon besides, but nobody else’d let anybody plaster but me. Anybody that Bliss got or Paul Prudler got, they used to say, "Woodsford has to do the plastering, " so I would do it. Then I did some jobs out at the base, contracts for them, but I quit them because it took you too long to get your money. I did a lot of things here in Fallon over the years. The last plastering job that I had trouble doing was in later years when I got so that I got dizzy on a big scaffold high up. And yet I worked on the Santa Barbara hospital. The big Santa Barbara hospital the Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, one of the finest in the world. I wished I could have got my wife there. I'm pretty sure I could have saved her, but I worked on that, and I worked on the Dr. Samson clinic in Santa Barbara.
My dad and I brought back quite a few old buildings that had been wrecked, and they wanted to bring them back so the kids could see what they looked like in the olden days. Like I wanted to work at Fort Churchill but I haven't had occasion to talk to them. I wanted to help them bring back the Fort, but I can't get any sense out of them, so I give that up. I was going to help them build it back. They don't want to build it back like it was before it was wrecked.
But here in Fallon I did a lot of repair work on Maine Street. A lot of repair work there, and then once in a while I worked on some of their slot machines for them in the old days when the clubs were down there. I used to do them well so I used to do their machines for them. I did a lot of different work here. You know, I'm the type, I don't believe in the word, impossible. That word I don't believe in because if you want something bad enough, you can do it. I’11 show you something here that they claim I saved a lot of pilots’ lives because when I got out of the gangster stuff when I come back from Mexico, and when we came back to America I was out of the gangsters completely then. I had no damn gangsters bother me. Not until just lately I had one or two ex-ones, but no one bothered me then at all, so I went in as a machinist in Los Angeles first. During the War I worked down from 1942 till I came up here I worked as a machinist at Kenner Aircraft in Los Angeles, and I was a specialist. I got one of these awards. I was the only man that got it, and I got a special award from the War Manpower Board as doing the impossible. They wanted me to help save more things from being wasted, and we needed parts, in some of the islands. We were fighting Japan then, and I was working for Kenner as a machinist, specialist, and they came up to me, and they said, "Woodsford seems to be the only one that can do the impossible. So they said they wanted to raise the output so that they would have more parts, and they wanted to raise the r-part about ten or fifteen percent. I raised it thirty percent, so I got an outstanding award from the War Manpower Board, and they say I saved a lot of pilots’ lives, and I hope I did. I'm glad, but it cost them.
When the War ended, that's when I got out of the I've got mixed up here a couple of times with this story here because there's so much to tell of different things that I did. Some parts of this I'm telling ahead of the other because when I left England and come back to America I was completely out of the gangster stuff. I had been given a complete release from them. I never went back to them, and the only reason I wrote this story here for the paper was to try help these kids that were getting taken on this gangster stuff they were trying here in Fallon. I wanted these kids to know that it wasn't the great job they thought it was. To me the word "gangsters" is " cowards" because all gangsters travel together, and that’s the way they were doing it here with the kids. Two or three mothers that told me that I stopped their kids from being gangsters here, and I told the sheriff here, and I also told what's their names that I had the story, and the story was in the paper. You said you read it. I have it here. Amy wrote the story for me, but I laugh because everybody calls me the gangster man. (laughing) But I never hurt anybody.
The only funny part of it is I was glad that I had known how--I was a marksman with a revolver. I got a ninety-something out of a possible hundred on a target, but it saved me twice. One time just before I left Vegas and come here, I was held up by one of these car thieves in Las Vegas. I went to get my car, and when I went to get it, this guy grabbed my arms and pulled it back, and he said, "I'm taking this car. " Now, this was only last year. I says, “That car you're not taking. That's my car. Il You can't take it, and you can't stop me. "Try me. " He says, "Well, I got a gun." I said, ”I got a gun, too." I said, "I'm an expert marksman. Do you want to see who can fire the first shot? " I didn’t have a gun because I give up my gun a long time ago, but he went for his gun and it was in his pocket. The minute he did that, I had him because you can’t take a gun out your pocket fast. You have to look. The gun I used to carry was right here. I had him anyway because all I had to do was do that with a gun and hold it on you, but he couldn't do it. As he went to get it, I hit him in the mouth with my elbow, and I knocked out two of his teeth. Well, they were bleeding bad, so he looked up at me and he says, "You shot me.” So by that time, the security guards had heard the rumpus, and they came over and asked what was going on. Then they arrested him, and they said to me then, Il Did you shoot him? I said, "1 don't have a gun. And they said, "You’re eighty-eight years old, aren’t you? I said, "Yes. He made a mistake when he said he had a gun because I knew damn well he was never going to be able to use it. I knew he didn't have chance. Not the way he had it. But he thought I'd shot him. I didn't shoot him. 1 didn't have a gun to shoot him with. His gun was on the ground.
ERQUIAGA: That was in Las Vegas?
WOODSFORD: That was in Las Vegas year before last.
ERQUIAGA: Did you move from here to Las Vegas after your wife died?
WOODSFORD: No, we left here in 1988. I built a house for Charlotte. I built a new home up on Casey Road. It was what she wanted. A brand-new home, and, of course, I built four or five homes for myself as it was anyway, and I built this new home. We paid $30, 000 for it, and we sold it for $65, 000. My other son wanted me to come to Vegas.
ERQUIAGA: What's his name?
WOODSFORD: His name is Bob Woodsford, and he is the head man of Friendly Ford in San Francisco, and he also races cars for them, and right now he's holding a good record with his car. He left for London just yesterday.
ERQUIAGA: Is he going to race over there?
WOODSFORD: No, he won't race. He's just going on a cruise with his wife. The other boy used to race at Rattlesnake Hill and all over, but Bobby is going to race here. He’s going to race out at the Thunderbolt track out here, and he's also going to race at Rattlesnake Hill because he's racing one of the new cars. That other car up there is his car. The little 1977. He races those, but he's well up in the point period. He’s doing pretty good. There’s so many things that I've done, and I 've always had the feeling that I have to have proof of what I've done. I can't come to you, and say I did this and I did that. I have to show you something because I 'm giving you from memory. I just want to show you a few things here before you leave so that it tells you how I'm doing it. There's lot of things in a thing like this where you get all mixed up when you got so much you’re tell in’ and I'm trying to get it out for you, and I can’t. But 1 don’t really think that I can help the museum because they never seemed to be interested in me every time I went down. When I first talked to the museum they say we’re interested in it. There was a girl came here to the house, and she spent quite a while here with me and wanted to know if I did it. That was before I moved here from Vegas. That was a year ago. She told me, "We're going to make candles from the old style like they used in the old days. Will you help us?" So, I said, 'I Yes. 1 don’t know how to make candles, but I will help you. She said, "All right. " I said, 'I l ‘11 go to the library and learn how to make them. Then never seen anybody anymore, and I told them I was getting everything out. I was getting all the dates and stuff like that. They said, 'l Yes, when you get out of the hospital. When I got here I got strangulation hernia. They didn’t think I was going to live because I was eighty-eight years old, and my heart wasn't beating exactly right, so they wanted my sons here. That was last year I had that. My doctor says to me, You ‘re not from this planet, and he laughs
"Because, he says, "you’re the gangster man, too. " But there's lots of other things in there. It's kind of hard, and now that I don't have the dates and stuff like that, it's hard. What I 've done and that I'm giving you an account of really don't go with the museum stuff.
ERQUIAGA: Well, if you have more memories about Fallon in the time when you had the stores, and, also, I wanted to ask you, did you ever do any more of that dancing?
WOODSFORD: Oh, we taught the high school kids here how to dance the square dances.
ERQUIAGA: Is that right?
WOODSFORD: Yeah, the doctor's wife, Mrs. Wray, and Charlotte and I and another lady, Huanna, we used to teach the square dance kids here. We used to go to Carson City and all those places and have shows and win prizes. Charlotte used to have the Cub Scouts. They used to go on trips. We used to go out on hayrides, but nobody does that anymore. That’s just something of the past.
ERQUIAGA: That's why we like to have it down for the record, though, because they don't do it anymore.
WOODSFORD: The square dancing we started, we got the kids to form their own square dance groups. There was only about five of us here that went into that. We taught it for two years. We gave them their own club. We showed the kids how to be the president of the club, the treasurer of the club, and we broke them in. We used to hold our meetings for a while at the old churches like the Union church out here and the others all around, and then they just disappeared. There’s a church over here, and we used to use their hall for it, and we’d give potluck dinners, and we used to get all the kids to do the same thing. And some people one time said we were going to have a lot of trouble if we did things like that with kids bringing liquor and stuff like that. Those kids never give us a bit of trouble, and we danced in the high school and stuff like that. We had one boy that came once with liquor, and we just told him, "Don't do it again, and he never did it again. We used to have a wonderful time with those kids.
ERQUIAGA: That’s good. Who supplied the music for the dances?
WOODSFORD:
We’d have the phonograph or have somebody come up and do it. We used to have the square dances on the phonograph records. I think I 've got some records left here. I'm not sure. We used to do that, and we used to go the veterans’ building and have potluck suppers. All square dance stuff. Then they used to have hayrides here, and, of course, like my wife she belonged to the Oddfellows. They had parties and things.
And this old school that they just overhauled now for a big place, I was the one that did the plastering downstairs in that after the earthquake, and I was the one that said that I wouldn't anymore but I wanted to cancel the contract because I said, "I'm afraid of the building, and I'm still afraid of the building.
ERQUIAGA: Is that Oats Park?
WOODSFORD: Yeah. I was the first one to go through those rooms after the quake to try to save the building, and I got to a point I said "It's so far gone. It's too dangerous. If I was you I would never use it again, and they took my word for it. Now we didn’t have any more big quakes after that so it didn't destroy it, but you're never going to get me in it. The Lawana Theater the same. It was in terrible shape. But they might have done it now. This new contractor I talked to him and told him that I was the one that plastered those walls after, and from what he told me, he said it’11 be perfectly safe, so I'm not running down his work. I don't know. I'm not sure. An earthquake can do a lot of damage quick. It used to shake the water out of the irrigation ditches when we'd have it.
ERQUIAGA: Where were you when the first earthquake happened?
WOODSFORD: I was living over on Highway 50. We'd just built a house. We were living over there, and it hit us at six o’clock in the morning, and our two boys run from the bedroom into our bedroom right away. We came up good. The place down there where the electric wires are where they come out there down by the fairgrounds, all those things were on fire. And my mother-in-law's store the stuff was running out of the doors, the broken bottles. You couldn't walk down Maine Street very good. It was in a mess, and the place on the end was all in pieces. The hotel was in trouble. Everybody was in trouble, and all the glass was broken. All those places. We brought a lot of that glass back from San Francisco. We used to have our own trucks.
ERQUIAGA: How long did it take you to get all that repaired?
WOODSFORD: Oh, we worked on it quite a while. But there was quite a few other guys came in after the earthquake and worked on it, too. I guess most of the houses, the people that had just rooms like Mrs. Dodge’s house- -you know, she was the [Senator Carl Dodge’s] mother. Her house used to be on [Williams Ave.] When we first moved here and had no place to stay after we stayed up here by the Stop and Shop, we rented a building over there, but I replastered that house for Mrs. [Dodge]. I plastered the whole house. I did one room at a time for her, and she didn't even have to get out of it. She was tickled to death. They said that when they moved that building from there to the nurse’s [office] thing out here, they didn’t have any cracks in the plastering. All my plaster didn't crack.
ERQUIAGA: When they moved it, it didn't crack?
WOODSFORD: No, it didn't crack. Another guy used to live next door to us. He was head of the contractors’ board. Murphy or some name like that, and he liked us pretty well because we sold part of our land to him when he wanted it. The other guy wouldn't when he had it. When we bought the Pagni property, why, we said, "Yeah, we’11 sell you a bit more on yours so you’11 have a better arrangement" He was a good one to stay in good with because he was quite a pie on the contractors’ board.
But in the olden days, I used to be a rum runner, too. You know what a rum runner is. Well I used to do that, too, and I'd be stopped by the police and by the federal what’s it names with a load of liquor in my car, and they wouldn't touch me. All they'd do is say, "Get the hell out of here. They wouldn't touch me.
ERQUIAGA: Did they know you had the liquor?
WOODSFORD: Oh, yes, they knew I had the liquor. That’s why they stopped me. I'd carry as much as fifty and a hundred gallons sometimes. Carry it all the way up to Sacramento, and they'd catch me on the way and they'd look at my registration and then he'd say to his partner, " Come on, let’s get out of here. Let's get away from this guy. " And he'd tell us to get the hell out of here. We were paying them off. I helped pay them off, too. Oh, I was a rum runner. I always made my own liquor, but it was all good. It was a hundred proof alcohol, and it was grain alcohol I made champagne, high grade alcohol, and beer. I made all my dad used, and I made all the beer he wanted and all that stuff. helped the with gang who did that for years. I had my own stills in Patagonia. I had two in Patagonia, and that was when I used to supply alcohol all around Tucson and them places.
ERQUIAGA: Where is Patagonia?
WOODSFORD: That’s in Arizona down around Nogales.
ERQUIAGA: Was this during the Prohibition time?
WOODSFORD: Yes. It was during Prohibition time. I made a lot of liquor down there. They couldn't do anything to me.
ERQUIAGA: There isn't much you haven't worked at, is there?
WOODSFORD: No. To tell you the truth, God has given me a life of - -well, he gave me my wife. That's the first thing he did because no other way would I have met that girl and fall in love with her in a few hours and marry her in a couple of weeks. That was something because I never had a girlfriend before. I had no girlfriends. I didn't want girls. 1 never took any out in a car, and I danced with all kinds of them and things like that, but girlfriends I wasn't interested in and yet all of a sudden one night and I'm hooked, so I figure God gave me the girl, and I feel that she's an angel. I class her as an angel.
And for my mother, she was the same, and her mother, Lottie here, when she got over me stealing her daughter, I couldn't wish for finer people in her family. They treated me and Charlotte just wonderful. My in-laws were the best in the world, so I figure my mother, my wife, and my mother-in-law were angels. The three of them, and I kiss all of them goodnight, and I kiss them every morning when I waken. I've done that for seven years now. I lost her seven years ago, and lots of time I wake up in the middle of the night and I been crying. I can tell because my pillow's wet. I have trouble sleeping, and the doctor says it's not good for me to do this thing with my wife like I'm doing because I'm tearing myself apart. He says, "You’11 kill yourself if you keep it up. I was going to commit suicide. When I thought about that, I thought well, I got two boys. That would be bad. My two sons would have to live with that on their conscience of me being a suicide. But when I lost her, I really lost my life. My life isn't anything like it was before.
ERQUIAGA: Do you have any grandchildren?
WOODSFORD: Oh, I got dozens of grandchildren. Great grandchildren, grandchildren, and I got one ex-daughter-in-law in San Diego, and she won't give up her name. She still goes under the name of Woodsford. She's divorced from my son, but she’s the twelfth richest person in San Diego, too, and she calls herself Woodsford.
My life was just a different life because like my dad, he always used to say, When I tell you something, it gets in your brain. It sticks there. 'l That's why he used to say I didn't believe in the impossible. He always told me when I was a kid, 1’He says you’re going to school. You take care of yourself. ‘Cause he was in South Africa and belonged to the South African police force. He was a really heavy man and a good strong man, and he said, "My son, don’t run away from anybody. When you go to school, you take care of yourself. You understand it? Don't come home crying. that was all right, but when I got into a fight with the teacher and gave him a bloody nose and a black eye, that was different. They expelled me from school.
ERQUIAGA: (laughing) I can see why.
WOODSFORD: (laughing) I never forgot that. That was just before I quit school all together. I had passed the 7 X when I was thirteen years old, so in England I was out of school when I was fourteen so I had a year there that I had to make up, so they put me as a teacher. I helped a teach first-grade class and did other things for them for a year. Of course, when I come to America I was out of school and I had to go back, but they didn't make me go back to school after I took up the course, and I got such a good record that they said that with the town the way it was and from the vice-president of the telephone company giving me such a wonderful reputation with those girls because the girls never had to worry with me.
I had nineteen girls working for me at Kenner one time. They were working for me. I was just the superintendent, and they were working on dangerous machines. They were all dangerous drill machines and stuff like that, but that was my crew. That was before I got to be one of the outstanding ones, and I used to get the girls and when they'd start for me, I had four things I used to tell them. I used to say, "The first thing is, you must dress as I tell you. The second thing is, you must wear your hair tightly around your head, not loose because if you do you’re going to lose it because the drill presses give off static electricity, and I seen one girl scalped. The next thing is, don't come and give me anything special or make any funny moves or give me things that you want to give me and think you’re going to get a better job because that won't get you nowhere. My wife, I love her. I would not cheat on her. If you think you’re going to gain a better job by offering me things that you’re doing to a lot of them around here, forget it. And do you know that I brought every one of those girls through there without an accident on those machines? Not one girl was injured, and I had more friends with those girls telling them that in the start. They dressed exactly as I told them, and they had funny habit they used to do. We used to walk out at night time. They used to hold their hands up like this to show me they hadn't lost a finger. I did that on purpose. I wanted them to fully to know because we didn't have very many men in this country, and these girls were all running around lookin’ for husbands. I seen some cases there that I didn’t want to be involved in.
I was the only one that was allowed to bring a camera in a munitions plant during the War. I was allowed to take my moving picture camera in. I was considered one million percent American especially after I was getting the awards. I could do things there. One trip alone one time I did almost as much by myself one night as the day crew did the whole crew, and I did it all by myself. It was something that I invented. I invented three or four things, but, of course, I couldn't get paid for them because I got one thing here that I invented. I don't know whether it's ever invented since I Here, I invented this. It don't look like much, but I invented it.
ERQUIAGA: Okay, what is it?
WOODSFORD: Well, there’s a machine that has a table that’s magnetic that you put the stuff and it sticks to it like that, but everything you make you have to fasten it in here because the magnetism won't go through it, but this one it will go through it. You can put this one on, and by me building it like I did, now that was all put together by me. the brass in there? Now, they don't have to do that with that. They can put this on like that and no matter what you put in here, it’ll stay. Well that saved me taking a part off of something and puttin’it back on, so look how much time I saved.
ERQUIGA: Oh, it’s something you used when you were working on a machine?
WOODSFORD: I brought this one home with me. I do a lot. I'm a certified machinist to the highest degree. I worked on some of the parts for this Constellation. That was the big ship that, the big bomber that America was having trouble building. I was the only one they'd let work on some parts. They used to say, " Give it to Woodsford. He’11 never spoil it. I never spoiled a part. Once I took it, and that was a complete different trade for me.
See all the picture frames? I make them. I'll show you them, too. They were costing me a fortune buying them, so I make them. I've sold over a hundred of them, and I could do all those things. In Vegas a job come up. They were looking for a man to take care... I passed civil service test for building inspector, so I'm eligible for that if I want to. Not now because it's years ago. But I've still got the test, but it's years ago. This job came up, and the first thing she says to me, "Oh, you’re over-qualified. 'l I said, l’How can I be over- qualified? I'm going to be the one that's responsible for this work that they want done. " "Yeah, but, " she says, l’we couldn’t use you. You’re over-qualified, " so I couldn't get the job. I get mad at the government because I feel, they won't treat me good. I have a lot of trouble with them every once in a while over something.
Yet, during my wartime life I did more than anybody else did to save men's lives and to do other things because I'm also a fire marshall. The fire marshall down here was standing there one day, and I walked up to him, and I gave him this. This is one of the ways that I prove that I tell the truth. I'm also a fire marshal 1.
ERQUIAGA: Yeah, California State Fire Marshalls.
WOODSFORD: Yes, and this is out of Los Angeles fire marshal Is, not this little town, and I gave that to him here, and he looked at me and he says, "Gee, that's the first one I've saw for years. "
ERQUIAGA: It's dated August 1, 1942. You've had that a long time.
WOODSFORD: Yeah, that's when I got my outstanding whats-it name here. What I did, I changed a lot of things. When I got to be fire marshall, I made them all do what I wanted them to do like I did with the girls. I told the guys, "When I give you an order, I don’t want you to do it some other way. I want you to do it exactly like I tell you to do it, " and that’s why mine were turned out so good. Because I always figured that if anything was worth doing it was worth doing good. Charlotte and I used to run those big motels and all that down there in California. One was thirteen stories high, and I was the one that did all the maintenance on it by myself, and I'll tell you where you can see it, in a moving picture. Do you remember Vic Damone in Wine and Roses? That movie?
ERQUIAGA: Um-m no. I've heard of it.
WOODSFORD: That was part of it taken there. I was the guy that took care of the electric for them because I wouldn't let nobody else touch the electric wires there. Everything that I ever got out of it and Charlotte got out of it was proven good. We had no trouble.
I built four houses, I think, for my wife. She loved that, and I was the one that built the ones out here. I used to buy her things all the time. If I won at bingo or something like that she always knew I'd buy her something. I built this house out here for her out here on Highway 50, and she wanted a Youngstown kitchen. Well, they cost money, so I happened to win a big keno ticket. As a joke I didn't tell her everything. I went right down and bought everything for the Youngstown thing. dishwasher, the stove, all the cabinets, and I had them hidden. One day she come home, and I was working in the kitchen and I was putting all Youngstown kitchen in there. Oh, she was so happy! Every time I used to win anything, I'd get somebody in the family something. I don't think her and I ever had a bad word between us. We kissed each other before we went to sleep every night. We never missed a night, and very few nights I missed being home with her, and that was if I was like making a trip here from Sacramento or some place. I'd be driving a truck so she wouldn't be with me. Sometimes she used to come, but her and I never had no trouble at all. We went through life as if it was, well, all the trips I took her on and all the things we did, it seemed like everything went our way. It seemed like as if she was an angel or something. None of the things went bad for me. Playing down there, I was playing one of the keno games, and I won ten thousand dollars. Five weeks later she won ten thousand dollars.
ERQUIAGA: Was that here in Fallon?
WOODSFORD: No, that was in Vegas
ERQUIAGA: How did you happen to come back to Fallon from Vegas?
WOODSFORD: Well, we came back to Fallon when we came back from being down in California. That was in 1946. That's when we came back to Fallon.
ERQUIAGA: I mean now.
WOODSFORD: Oh, this time? I've got a daughter-in-law. The one that went to London with Bob. Her and I don't get along too good, and when my wife was real sick, they said if I would help them build their house up- -they bought a nice house there, and I helped them get the down payment for it- -they would let my wife and I stay there. Well, that's fine, but my wife died before the apartment was built, and I didn't need it, so I didn't want to pay them any more money on it. The daughter- in- law down there got furious, and I told her, 'l Now, all her things are in the house that you’re selling" - -for me, my house that we bought there, and I said, "Don't give anything away there until I'm here, and I put a lot of it in the garage. What does she do? She gave it all to the Goodwill before I come back. She gave away a two-thousand-dollar diamond ring, my wife's engagement ring that my mother had, and she gave away about five thousand dollars of my stuff, so I blew up I went to jump off the scaffold, and she thought I was going to hit her, I think, and she dived back, and she's never talked to me since.
My son, Bobby, helped us many times when we really needed help, but she’s the only daughter- in- law that I ever had that I had any trouble with, and she still won't forgive me. She won't talk to me. So I was living there, and it bothered her, me living there. That's when I got a hold of the museum and a couple of these places here and asked them if they could put me to work volunteer. would come down, and it was through them I came down. But, now my son out here, they won't let me work on the house out there because they said if I get hurt in the daytime it'd be nobody to help me and at my age I'm liable to be hurt any time. Unluckily when I went to help them the last time I fell and got hurt, and they had to take me to the hospital. The time before that I fell off of a 1adder, so I can't blame them for not wanting me on the house when they’re not there.
ERQUIAGA: You have to be careful.
WOODSFORD: I have one granddaughter. She is a wonderful granddaughter. She is the best in the world. She wants me to eat with her every Sunday ‘cause she says she doesn't like to see me eating alone all the time.
ERQUIAGA: Does she live here in Fallon?
WOODSFORD: Yes, she lives here in Fallon. She’s my sweetheart, so I help her every once in a while. They want me to go to California to an anniversary, and I think I can make it this time. I feel like I don’t have anybody. Nobody else invites me. I very seldom get telephone calls and nobody invites me over except this granddaughter. She does it all the time, and she's offered to help me time and time again with things. I don’t think the kids take care of their grandparents anymore.
This old lady down here, she's eighty- seven years old, and she doesn't have anybody to take care of her very much, and I talked to her all the time. 1 go down there and sit with her for hours talking because she can’t do anything but ride on a wheelchair, and I go down and talk to her all the time rather than have her sit alone, but I won’t have anybody sleep with me here. No woman sleep with me here in the house, in my apartment. I said, If you want to come in the daytime or if you want to come at dinnertime or something like that, why you’re welcome, but don't come with the idea you’re going to sleep because there is no other lady gonna sleep as the same house in me since I lost my wife. She's the only one I’11 ever have. I will never look for another lady, and there’11 be no other lady. We were both virgins when we got married. I had never slept with a lady in my life, and she had never slept with anybody, and how many will you find like that now? Not very many.
ERQUIAGA: Not very many. Well, I think that we've pretty well covered your story here. It's noon.
WOODSFORD: Well, you want to look at some of this stuff here first?
ERQUIAGA: Yes, I'm going to wind this up, and then I’11 look at it.

Anita Erquiaga

Alfred Charles Woodsford

160 Serpa Place Apt. 11, Fallon, NV 89406