Clyde Hiibel Oral History

Clyde Hiibel Oral History

Clyde Hiibel Oral History

Churchill County Museum Association

Churchill County Museum Association

July 9 and 10, 1990

Analog Cassette Tape, Text File, Mp3 Audio

English

Audio Cassette

1:02:18, 1:01:55, 35:05

CHURCHILL COUNTY MUSEUM & ARCHIVES

ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

an interview with

CLYDE HIIBEL

July 9 and 10, 1990

This interview was conducted by Bill Davis; transcribed by Pat Baden; edited by Myrl Nygren; first draft typed by Pat Boden; final typed by Pat Boden; index by Gracie Viera; supervised by Sylvia Arden, Humanist-in-Residence: and Myrl Nygren, Director of Oral History Project/Assistant Curator Churchill County Museum.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this interview 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

Clyde's wife, Amelia, or "Dutch," was in their yard pulling garden weeds the hot July morning when I arrived. She took me into their modestly furnished ranch house.         Clyde was asleep in his favorite chair. She awoke him and he appeared sincerely pleased to be interviewed and was compliant in moving to the couch to obtain a better recording.

He is greatly disabled due to his stroke several years ago and has difficulty in slowly rising from the chair and moving across the room. He does both with much determination and it is obvious he has been sturdy and hardworking all of his life. His left side, hand, and arm and leg, are virtually useless to him and he frequently massaged his left hand and fingers with his good stung right hand as we talked.

He freely and carefully discussed his early life in Kansas, the family's trip to Nevada and the life he has led in the Harmon district where his father had become a member of the Socialist Colony. He related his memories of the Colony and its dissolution, his schooling at the Harmon School, the death of his father when he was fourteen and how he and his brothers "worked out" to help their mother and their siblings. He described he and his brothers hauling fallen pinon logs for winter firewood from the Stillwater mountains. Raising turkeys, hogs, picking cantaloupes, hauling gravel with team and wagon for two years, planting corn by hand, losing he and his bride's home by fire and helping his brother build their present home were all described.

He expressed negative feelings with regard to the Navy Base and its dealings with local residents and the deterioration of the Stillwater wildlife area.

To complete the interview, he fondly told of his several much-loved horses and how he really loved the "cowboying" caring for his cattle in the Carson Sink area. He also explained how he, with his horse, caught, vaccinated, branded and worked calves by himself.

CLYDE HIIBEL INTERVIEW

DAVIS:  This is Bill Davis and I'm going to be interviewing Clyde Hiibel at 4805 Kirn Road, Fallon, Nevada, and this is for the Churchill County Museum Oral History [Project.] Today is July 9th, 1990, and it is approximately 9:30 a.m. We are sitting in the living room with Mr. Hiibel. I'd like to ask you, Clyde, what are your earliest memories of coming to Fallon and how old were you?

HIIBEL:  I was nine years old and my earliest memory is the hotel of the Nevada Colony corporation.

DAVIS:  And that was close by the ranch here?

HIIBEL:  Yes, it was over here about three miles.

DAVIS:  Where did your parents come from?

HIIBEL:  Kansas.

DAVIS:  What do you know about your grandparents?

HIIBEL:  Well, on my father's side I don't know anything other than history. My grandfather Hiibel immigrated to this country to fight in the civil war.

DAVIS:  Uh huh.

HIIBEL:  My mother's father, I remember him well because, like myself, he had a stroke in his later years and they brought him to my mother's house and she took care of him.

DAVIS:  And where was this?

HIIBEL:  That was in Kansas too. See, my dad had a farm there which was mostly buffalo grass and they raised cows, raised some corn, and raised some hogs. He always had horses and mules (laughter). I'll never forget that one little ole mule that kicked me right in the chest with both feet (laughter), boy, I laid flat for awhile.

DAVIS:  That was after you came to Fallon here?

HIIBEL:  No, that was in Kansas.

DAVIS:  Oh, you remember back then?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, I remember that country, I never had no inclination to go back because the snow got too deep in the winter time.

DAVIS:  Now, you had five brothers?

HIIBEL:  Five brothers, and one sister.

DAVIS:  And a sister, okay. How come you decided to come to Nevada, or your folks decided to come…?

HIIBEL:  Was publicity of this Colony. My dad thought that would be a good place to live, it was a so-called socialist colony, and everybody was supposed to be equal, but it turned out that it was just a "skin game." One of my dearest friends and our neighbor at that time, I heard him talking to another person and he told this other person, he says, "I don't say that can't be done, but" he said, "I do say that that colony was never intended to be done." That all that was for was to make Eggleston a million dollars, and when he got his million dollars in memberships, he pulled out with the money and left the people sittin' there holding the bag.

DAVIS:  Now, your dad, how did he learn about it?

HIIBEL:  Oh, it was advertising, I think.

DAVIS:  Newspapers?

HIIBEL:  Yeah. Newspapers or what do they call 'em, brochures that they send out.

DAVIS:  Clyde, what was your first memories of arriving in Nevada and, especially, here in Fallon?

HIIBEL:  Well, we came in on the train and I remember waiting at the depot for the Colony bus to come and pick us up.

DAVIS:  That would be here in Fallon?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, that was here in Fallon.

DAVIS:  You came through Hazen to Fallon.

HIIBEL:  We came through Hazen, yeah.

DAVIS:  The whole family was there at this time?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, the whole family, and this guy took us in the bus out to the Colony and they had a big building there that they called the hotel and that's where we spent our first night, was in that hotel.

DAVIS:  Do you know what your dad's involvement money-wise or do you remember what was involved from that aspect?

HIIBEL:  Well, he, I think, it went according to the size of family, and he needed to put in two thousand dollars, which he did with cattle. He put in two thousand dollars worth of cattle, and then he put in two hundred and fifty dollars on top of that for a house, and they built this house of 'dobe brick, and that was supposed to be his.

DAVIS:  Was that sort of a community project?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  Yeah, and you had brought the cattle with you?

HIIBEL:  No, he brought 'em out before. And then came back and got his family and . .

DAVIS:  How many cattle, do you remember?

HIIBEL:  Seems to me like they was eighteen head of two year old heifers.

DAVIS:  Uh huh. What was the living like, I mean, how long did it take 'em to get you into a house?

HIIBEL:  Oh, we was in three or four houses before we got into the one that was supposed to be ours.

DAVIS:  That might have been what, several months, or…?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  Okay, what were you, the boys and your dad doing at that time?

HIIBEL:  Well, he worked as a hand in the Colony, you know, If there was hayin' to be done, why he helped with the hayin' or whatever, and us kids we just kinda played around 'til we got big enough to handle a pitch fork.

DAVIS:  What was the schooling like, I mean did they have schools set up?

HIIBEL:  They didn't have any schools in the Colony. No, we went to the Harmon school and, I remember, us kids, we got to shock hay. In those days they shocked the hay by hand. They raked it into windrows and then we took a pitch fork and went out and built the shocks and that's the first thing I remember doin' because why I remember it so well, my brother younger than me, Phil, he was busy pitching up this hay and he stuck a pitch fork tine through the ball of his big toe (laughter). Of course, I had to help him get that outa there and then he hobbled to the house, my mother poured turpentine in the hole and wrapped it up, that was the hospital in those days. Didn't go to the hospital when you skinned your finger or somethin'.

DAVIS:  What did the Colony -involve, I mean, you said the hotel and several adobe buildings or . . .?

HIIBEL:  Yeah. At one time I think there was about twenty families there and they had a big dairy, I remember that.

DAVIS:  They were mainly dairy cattle?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, they had a big dairy and they had lotsa horses.

DAVIS:  Holstein?

HIIBEL:  Yeah . .

DAVIS:  Jersey, or . . ?

HIIBEL:  They was a mix, some Jerseys and some Holsteins.

DAVIS:  What was involved at that time that you can remember concerning farming or irrigating or things like that? Was the system pretty well set up then?

HIIBEL:  Well, there was a lot of alfalfa hay grown, I remember that, and that's about all I can say. . .

DAVIS:  Did they have a garden?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, they had a garden. This colony had a pretty good sized garden that they . . . and they had a gardener, I remember him too. Old man Beecher. He was their gardener.

DAVIS:  They had pretty good ground there at the colony?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, some of it was and some of it wouldn't raise a good dust cloud.

DAVIS:  What kind of soil was it?

HIIBEL:  It's sandy loam mostly.

DAVIS:  Yeah., Well the bad ground then was what, clay or alkali or what?

HIIBEL:  Mostly clay and alkali and hard soil that the water wouldn't penetrate.

DAVIS:  They did all the work with horses?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  Were there any tractors at all in those days?

HIIBEL:  No, not for a while, I think along towards the last there was a guy came in that had a tractor. As I remember, after the colony broke up they used this tractor to run the bailer with. Several members of the Colony got together and they'd taken this bailer and go 'round and do custom bailing. That's the way they got a little money to eat on.

DAVIS:  What was the first inclination, that you can remember, that things weren't going well as far as the Colony was concerned.

HIIBEL:  Well, my dad come home with what he was allotted out of the Colony. They gave him two cows and one horse and a buggy and I think that's all that he got outta there with.

DAVIS:  What happened at that time?

HIIBEL:  Well, that's what they done, they just divided up what was there amongst the members and then they went out on their own.

DAVIS:  About how old were you then?

HIIBEL:  Oh, I was only about ten, eleven.

DAVIS:  Okay, what do you remember about going to school down here?

HIIBEL:  Oh, that was another thing. The Colony, they built what they called a school bus. They'd taken the running gears of a wagon and built a bed on it where there was seats along both sides and they hauled the kids to school in this, with this team and school bus they called it.

DAVIS:  How many kids came in from the Colony approximately?

HIIBEL:  They was a lot of 'em.

DAVIS:  Ten, twenty?

HIIBEL:  They musta been fifteen or twenty that rode that bus.

DAVIS:  They bussed you each way then?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  Took you that way. Do you remember the teachers?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, I remember my first teacher was a Miss Johnson, I was in the fourth grade. See, this school had two rooms; what we called the little room and the big room and the little room was from first through fourth, and the big room was fifth through eighth. And this Miss Johnson she taught the little room. I'll always remember her. I thought she was such a pretty woman.

DAVIS:  What were the classes like? What do you remember that she did in the classes?

HIIBEL:  Well, about like any school, I guess.

DAVIS:  Did you have good books?

HIIBEL:  Had readin', writin', and arithmetic, and history, and language and I don't think we had current events the first year I was in school but we got them eventually.

DAVIS:  How many, I mean, were there any Indian children in those days, at the school?

HIIBEL:  No, they wouldn't allow the Indian kids to come here, I don't know why but . . .

DAVIS:  That came later probably, huh?

HIIBEL:  I don't think they ever did have any Indian kids in the Harmon School. I remember one guy doin' a lot of campaigning to keep 'em out.

DAVIS:  What did he say and do?

HIIBEL:  Well, he came over to the fellow that I was a workin' for and who had just got elected trustee, and told him he said, "So far we've kept 'em out" and he said, "I want you to try to keep 'em out."

DAVIS:  How did you feel about it in those days?

HIIBEL:  Well, I didn't think about it. I played baseball with the Indians I thought they was all right.

DAVIS:  That was later on, huh?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  So the irrigation was pretty well under way then?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  How did they control the water, was there somebody in charge of it in those days or . . .?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, they had ditch riders then just the same as they do now only they didn't ride around in pick-ups they rode around in a horse and cart.

DAVIS:  The headgates were probably wooden, or dirt.

HIIBEL:  Yeah, they were wooden. A whole lot like they are now, you know, the structure was concrete and they had flash boards, ditches.

DAVIS:  How about drainage?

HIIBEL:  Well, they built the drains while I was still in school, I remember that. They got those big drag lines in here and dug those drains.

DAVIS:  What were they, steam engines, or gas engines or what?

HIIBEL:  No, they were, I think they burnt, not diesel, it was kinda like diesel, what--distillate.

DAVIS:  Distillate.

HIIBEL:  Distillate, that was the fuel that they burned in those.

DAVIS:  They'd surveyed it out, I suppose, and they just

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  Did it go through the Colony or, I imagine, that must have been kind of exciting for the kids to watch?

HIIBEL:  Well, the Colony was done with before they dug the drains.

DAVIS:  How long did the Colony last?

HIIBEL:  Well it was only a few years after we got here, maybe two, not over three.

DAVIS:  So then after the Colony folded and, what, you had two, three cows and a buggy?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  What did your dad do?

HIIBEL:  Well, he went to work as a laborer and eventually accumulated another horse to go with this one that he had, and then he would go out on jobs where he could work his team. They paid a dollar a day for his team in those days, which was pert near as much as a man could make single handed. I think he got a dollar and a half a day for the man and two and a half if you had a team.

DAVIS:  Yeah, well now, the family was still living in one of the Colony houses or . . .?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, we stayed there. See, when the Colony broke up Scott Harmon got the place back, it was his originally. And he thought the houses was all his and my dad thought that house was his because he paid for it. As long as dad was alive he wouldn't let Scott take that house, he stayed there and lived there.

DAVIS:  Well, he had a pretty good sized family he needed a house, right?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  Now, as you grew up how did things change?

HIIBEL:  Well, after dad died . .

DAVIS:  When was that and how old were you?

HIIBEL:  I was fourteen. I just finished out my term in school, I was in the eighth grade, so I finished that out and then I went to work for Reed Jones driving an eight horse team.

DAVIS:  What part of the valley was that?

HIIBEL:  That was right here in the Harmon District. That's when they was a building that gravel road to Stillwater. And he had the team on there hauling gravel and I drove that team for, well, as long as they hauled gravel. I think it took 'em two years to get that road through.

DAVIS:  Where was the gravel pit?

HIIBEL:  It was in town, it was out there where the county road yards is now.

DAVIS:  Oh, okay.

HIIBEL:  They'd ship it in on cars and elevate it up into these bunkers then, we'd drive under the chute with the wagons and open the bunker gate and it'd come down the chute into the wagon.

DAVIS:  They brought the gravel in by rail?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  Okay. I'd supposed  they'd have local gravel but no?

HIIBEL:  No.

DAVIS:  Where were they getting it, do you know?

HIIBEL:  I'm not sure, but I believe it was around Lahontan Dam someplace.

DAVIS:  Oh. Now, the Dam was all operating by then?

HIIBEL:  Oh yeah.

DAVIS:  How about electricity?

HIIBEL:  Well, that didn't come in for quite awhile afterwards.

DAVIS:  Okay, now what was the circumstances concerning your dads passing away?

HIIBEL:  Oh, the only thing I can remember about that was my mother talking to a neighbor. And I remember that she said that he got the flu and it settled in his kidneys, and he was only in bed seven days and he died. It took him pretty quick.

DAVIS:  Well, that left the family pretty--suddenly--I mean it all happened pretty suddenly.

HIIBEL:  Yeah, right.

DAVIS:  How did it change the family life?

HIIBEL:  Well, it give us more work to do. We had to help support, my oldest brother and I, we both went to work; and dad did have a small insurance, I think mother got ten dollars a month out of that insurance. And with that and what us kids could earn . .

DAVIS:  Now, your brother John and you did most of the work out then, when you were old enough to do that?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  Was John doing similar work as you?

HIIBEL:  No, he went to work over at the Danielson ranch for Charlie Bailey, and his was mostly chore boy work.

DAVIS:  Now, that would be what, feeding cows, and...?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, he had to make sure that the mangers was full of hay at night.

DAVIS:  Okay, how long did you boys work out, or you know?

HIIBEL:  Well, 'til I got married.

DAVIS:  That was about when?

HIIBEL:  That was in '36.

DAVIS:  '36. Okay, how did you meet your wife?

HIIBEL:  Oh, she was workin' at the same place I was. She was a cook's helper.

DAVIS:  Was this at the Jones' place?

HIIBEL:  No, that was at a place in Stillwater that they called the Sifford Ranch, I think Walt Winder was operating it at that time.

DAVIS:  What were you doing down there?

HIIBEL:  Oh, I done everythin' from running a tail board to a harvester.

DAVIS:  That was behind, a tail board behind horses right?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  The harvester was probably horse pulled or?

HIIBEL:  No, the harvester had a four wheel drive tractor pulling it.

DAVIS:  Was that barley, wheat, or what?

HIIBEL:  Both.

DAVIS:  Both. What was the main, I suppose they raised hay too?

HIIBEL:  Very little hay in Stillwater. I don't know, in them days they didn't think it would grow hay. Something, pert near all the places in Stillwater they rotated; they plowed to grain one year and let it lay idle the next.

DAVIS:  Uh huh, and most of the grain, I mean, what were the grains that they raised?

HIIBEL:  Wheat and barley.

DAVIS:  They didn't go into oats or rye or anything like that?

HIIBEL:  Not very much, there might have been some oats but I don't remember any rye.

DAVIS:  Now, what did they do with the straw?

HIIBEL:  Burned it.

DAVIS:  Burned it. They didn't use it for feed or plowing under or anything? How did they work the soil?

HIIBEL:  With horses.

DAVIS:  All the plowing and the leveling and everything.

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  During this time your mom was probably the main person in the family. How did she handle things?

HIIBEL:  Well, I remember she raised turkeys.

DAVIS:  Lots of them?

HIIBEL:  Lots of 'em.

DAVIS:  That involved a lot of work.

HIIBEL:  That did. They talk about sheep being stupid, the sheep is smart along side of a turkey.

DAVIS:  [laughs] How is that?

HIIBEL:  Those turkeys is the dumbest thing that ever was.

DAVIS:  How did she raise them by, with eggs? Setting hen?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, she set her turkey hens on turkey eggs. When they hatched she let them raise 'em more or less. Course she fed 'em but I remember them old turkey hens a wandering around with a brood of twelve or fifteen little ones tagging along.

DAVIS:  Did she have 'em under fence?

HIIBEL:  No. She just had a big pen that she put 'em in at night.

DAVIS:  How did she sell them?

HIIBEL:  Well, she sold 'em dressed here in town. There was two outfits that bought 'em. Kents bought 'em and uh--what used to be the Consolidated Warehouse over by the depot, they bought 'em.

DAVIS:  Uh huh, and they shipped 'em out by rail, did they or ...?

HIIBEL:  Yeah. Course we had to dress them and take 'em in there and we got . . .

DAVIS:  What did that involve?

HIIBEL:  Well, (laughing) it was kind of brutal in a way, you hung the old turkey up by his feet then you stuck a knife in the top of his head and cut his jugular, let him hang there and bleed to death. And they had an iron weight on a hook that you hooked into the bottom part of his beak, and that kept him from flopping around and scattering blood all over ya (laughter).

DAVIS:  And then what?

HIIBEL:  Well, soon as they quit flopping you went to pulling feathers off and you had to pick 'em pretty clean too, you couldn't leave a lot of pin feathers or you got docked on 'em.

DAVIS:  Now what did she feed these turkeys?

HIIBEL:  Oh, she built up a charge account there at the Consolidated Warehouse and she'd go down there and get the grain that she needed. And she fed 'em wheat, and of course, we milked cows and she soured the milk and fed them the curd off that sour milk.

DAVIS:  Pretty good feed then?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  How many cows were you milking in those days?

HIIBEL:  Oh, we was milking eight or nine cows then.

DAVIS:  And that milk was sold?

HIIBEL:  We separated it and sold the cream.

DAVIS:  Hand separator?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  Who was buying the . .

HIIBEL:  Well, the main outfit in those days was the Modesto Creamery. They set up a creamery here in town and they'd come out. They had their own trucks and their own cans, they'd come out twice a week and pick up the cream that we had, you know.

DAVIS:  How did you keep the cream in those days?

HIIBEL:  Just let it set there.

DAVIS:  Didn't matter if it got a little warm?

HIIBEL:  No, it got awful sour but didn't seem to matter too much.

DAVIS:  Well, they probably made, what, cheese or butter out of it?

HIIBEL:  They made butter mostly.

DAVIS:  Where was that located?

HIIBEL:  The old creamery was oh, down there where,  I think where [tape cuts out end of side A. Transcript says “,the Devine moving company was where North Maine crosses the railroad tracks,” though it is not present on the tape]

DAVIS:  -Meeting your wife and the courting days and then maybe starting a family, you said you met her while she was working down at the Sifford place?

HIIBEL:  Yeah. Walt Winder was operating it at that time. I don't know whether he put up enough hay to feed his horses there.

MRS. HIIBEL:  I thought they had hay, I don’t know. [inaudible] Of course, they raise a lot of grain in Stillwater now, and hay also. Stillwater’s the main grain, I guess.

DAVIS:  How long had you known your wife before you would think about marriage?

HIIBEL:  Oh, a long time. It was hard to get her into the notion.

DAVIS:  When did you get married?

HIIBEL:  We got married in '36 and I know I went with her for ten years before we got married (laughing).

MRS. HIIBEL: No, it wasn’t that long. Well, it was quite a while.

DAVIS:  Where, what kind a marriage did you have?

HIIBEL:  Married life, you mean?

DAVIS:  Well, the marriage ceremony is what I'm talking about?

HIIBEL:  Oh, it was a J.P. [Justice of the Peace]. We didn't have a church wedding. We was too poor.

MRS. HIIBEL: Well we were [inaudible] is what we were. All my sisters and brothers didn’t have a church wedding, but they had a wedding whereas we were [inaudible] mom and dad were [inaudible]. That’s one thing I always regret, we went to Carson City and got married. We could have had a little wedding just like the rest of them.

DAVIS:  Where did you establish your home?

HIIBEL:  Over here where Hendrix lives now [570 N. Downs Lane]. The lady that owned that, she was generous enough to let me lease it from her when I got married so I'd have something to start on.

DAVIS:  How big a place or what did that involve?

HIIBEL:  It was just forty acres.

DAVIS:  Was it leveled?

HIIBEL:  Mostly leveled, yeah. Her late husband, he had a dairy that--he thought he couldn't milk cows without ensilage so he rotated his crops. He plowed up five acres of alfalfa every year and put it in corn and then the next year he put it in grain and back into alfalfa.

DAVIS:  How long did he leave it in alfalfa? Three years or maybe?

HIIBEL:  About eight years, I think, because he had forty acres and he'd plow up five acres every year.

DAVIS:  Do you remember what varieties of alfalfa they were planting then?

HIIBEL:  Oh, I think it was mostly Argentine.

DAVIS:  And they used, probably, open pollinated corn in those days?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  I mean there was no hybrids then, I suppose.

HIIBEL:  No. And they didn't have planters . .

DAVIS:  How did you get it planted?

HIIBEL:  Only hand planters, we planted it by hand.

DAVIS:  What kind of a process was that to plant it by hand?

HIIBEL:  Well, it was a funny little gizmo that you used two hands and it had a hopper on the side, yeah . .

DAVIS:  You pulled it apart . .

HIIBEL:  Pulled it apart and that put the grain down in

DAVIS:  . . put it together and tamped it down.

HIIBEL:  . . . the point, and you jammed it in the ground and pushed it together and that left the grain there and you pulled it up and done the same thing again for the next one.

DAVIS:  Pretty hard labor (laughing). How did they cultivate in those days, horses?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, we used horses.

DAVIS:  Riding cultivator?

HIIBEL:  Riding cultivators. Carried a broom stick along in one hand so if you covered up a hill of corn you reached down with that broom

stick and pulled it out from under the dirt (laughing).

DAVIS:  Did they do much fertilizing or anything in those days?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, this fellow did. He had a manure spreader and he put all of his manure out on that corn ground.

DAVIS:  In the fall or in the spring?

HIIBEL:  In the fall, during the winter. That's when they didn't have nothing else to do only cut wood, so they hauled manure.

DAVIS:  Okay when you got married what kind of transportation did you have?

HIIBEL:  I had an old '32 Chevrolet pick-up I think that's what we had. Yeah.

DAVIS:  What was Fallon like in those days?

HIIBEL:  Well, it was a nice town. I could go to town and say "hello" to pert near everybody I met on the street and knew who I was saying "hello" to. Now, I can't go to town and say "hello" [to] anybody on the street because I don't know 'em.

DAVIS:  Did you ever get into Reno or long distance traveling or ?

HIIBEL:  Oh, yeah.

DAVIS:  How often did you go up there?

HIIBEL:  See, I raised hogs for several years after we was married, after we moved onto this place, and I used to truck those hogs to Reno to the, what was it, Humphrey Supply Company up there. I think the other one was Moffit's.

DAVIS:  How many hogs did you raise?

HHIBEL:                Oh I had, I think I had fifteen sows at one time and. .

DAVIS:  Raised a lot of little pigs.

HIIBEL:  Raised a lot of pigs.

DAVIS:  When was it that you moved to this place? What was the name of the place that you were at?

HIIBEL:  That's where Hendrix lives now.

DAVIS:  Hendrix. Okay, when did you move; how long were you there?

HIIBEL:  We was there four years, wasn't it, three?

DAVIS:  When did the family start arriving?

HIIBEL:  Well, the little girl, she was born the same year we was married. We was married in February and she was born in December. Then the oldest boy he came four years later.

DAVIS:  That about the time you moved down here?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

MRS. HIIBEL: He was three months old.

DAVIS:  He was three months old then. What was here at this place at that time? I mean was there a house and was the fields in?

HIIBEL:  Well, there was fields, but they were poorly leveled and there was a house. They wouldn't call it a house now, it'd just been a shack.

DAVIS:  Describe it, tell me about it.

HIIBEL:  Well, it was one big room on one side and the other side was a screen porch . .

DAVIS:  About how big, do you suppose?

HIIBEL:  Oh, it was about twenty by thirty.

DAVIS:  And what was in the house?

HIIBEL:  In the big room it consisted of the bedroom and the kitchen and the dining room all in there.

DAVIS:  Now, was there electricity by that time?

HIIBEL:  No, electricity didn't come for .

DAVIS:  What did you do for heat and light?

MRS.:    There was electricity when we moved over there, of course we did.

DAVIS:  Did you add on to the old one or did .

HIIBEL:  No, the old one burned, so we built this one from scratch.

DAVIS:  When did it burn? How old were the kids at that time?

MRS. HIIBEL: Gerald's sixth birthday. So you were sixty and Babe was about nine.

DAVIS:  Gerald was six and the girl was nine? Okay. How did that come about, the fire?

HIIBEL:  (Laughter) She [Hiibel's wife "Dutch"] was building the fire in the cook stove. We used to use stove oil to start the fire with, and evidently the guy that delivered the stove oil didn't clean the gas out of his hose, because that was really explosive stuff and she--I'd get a gallon of it out of the heatin' stove tank to start fires with, I done it all the time--and so when she poured that stuff in on her fire it just exploded.

DAVIS:  Anybody hurt?

HIIBEL:  No, luckily nobody was hurt. Sure scared her. I wasn't home. I was over at that place Louis Guazzini's got now [formerly the Will Danielson ranch, on N. Downs Lane, then Enlow ranch, in 1990 owned by Louis Guazzini] doing some scrapin' for old Will Danielson.

DAVIS:  So what did you do at that point?

HIIBEL:  Well, we went and got a little trailer house from her brother-in-law and moved into that. We got by until we got this one built.

DAVIS:  Did you have help with this house?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, my oldest brother done most of the carpenter work on this.

DAVIS:  You told us about your first automobile. How long did it last?

HIIBEL:  It lasted quite awhile. Then I got the smart idea that I could get rich ahaulin' grain with a truck, so I traded that little pick-up for ton Ford, and I don't know for some reason the name of Ford never did agree with me, I never did . . . But anyway .

DAVIS:  What kind of luck did you have with it?

HIIBEL:  I didn't have very good luck and didn't get rich haulin' grain, I finally traded it for an old Model B Ford pick-up and that thing, I don't know, it would start when you didn't need it but when you needed it, it wouldn't start. I remember we had it when the girl was a baby and we'd get ready to take her into her doctor's appointment, I'd have to go harness a horse and hook him on to the front of it and drive him around and around the yard towing that thing to get it to go.

DAVIS:  Did it have a crank or battery start or . .

HIIBEL:  It probably had a crank and a battery too, but it didn't work when I needed it. I don't know what I did with that. I finally got rid of it and got me another Chevrolet.

DAVIS:  Well, I'm sure there were good times and bad times. What do you remember was the worst part of, like growing up at that time?

HIIBEL:  Oh, I don't know. There wasn't no really bad times that I can think of, what I call bad times. We never had a lot of money but I was always contented with what I was doin'. I'll always remember when I went into the hog business, that was due to old Charlie Cress. I was talkin' to him one day and he recited me a little poem. He says, "A cow is man's foster mother and a man's best friend is his dog, but when he wants to lift a mortgage he turns to the lowly hog." (laughter). So I went to raising hogs 'course I had the dairy cows and I fed them all of the milk. It was the skimmed milk. We separated the cream and sold it and then, like mother raised the turkeys, I had a barrel out there that I dumped the milk in and when it soured I fed it to the pigs.

DAVIS:  Did you have chickens and poultry and raised your eggs and things like that?

HIIBEL:  Oh, we had chickens for awhile, but for some reason we didn't keep chickens very long...

DAVIS:  How about other farm animals?

HIIBEL:  Couldn't keep 'em out of the garden or somethin' I don't know.

DAVIS:  You kept a garden growing, huh?

HIIBEL:  Yeah. Then I went into sheep, I had registered Hampshire sheep here for awhile.

DAVIS:  How did you get into them?

HIIBEL:  Oh, this guy had 'em down at Stillwater. He was a neighbor of her brother's, and they took him to the Army. So his wife couldn't handle the sheep and they decided to sell 'em and her [Mrs. Hiibel’s] brother thought it was a good buy, so I bought 'em.

DAVIS:  How did the sheep turn out, sheep venture turn out?

HIIBEL:  Well, it was fun for awhile I don't know, I didn't keep the sheep very long either, three or four years.

DAVIS:  What were some of the best times that you remember?

HIIBEL:  Well, I guess you'd say when I was out there gatherin' my cows. I went into the range cow business after I sold the dairy

DAVIS:  When was that, when did you sell the dairy?

HIIBEL:  God, I don't know.

DAVIS:  How old were the kids, about then?

MRS.:    That's before Les was born.

DAVIS:  Okay, Les was born in '50, so it was before then. What about the range cattle? Where did they range and how many did you have?

HIIBEL:  Well, they ranged out north here in the desert, between here and the Carson Sink.

DAVIS:  Open range?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  Were there other people running cattle out that way?

HIIBEL:  Oh, yeah, there's a lot of people had cattle out there and it was all free. Ed Waite, he had the most I think. Then there's Sloan had cattle out there, and Serpa had cattle, and Vaughns had cattle.

DAVIS:  How did you keep them apart or what did you do?

HIIBEL:  They just all run together and come brandin' time we all gathered together and branded.

DAVIS:  Where and how did you do that branding?

HIIBEL:  Well, we had built corrals down there and we'd corral 'em

DAVIS:  Where was those corrals then?

HIIBEL:  Well, one 'em, the first one I remember was right there in the Carson Sink just at the end of the river, and then later on we built another one up in what they called the reservoir. That was south and west of Timber lake.

DAVIS:  Well, those round-up sessions must have been quite a project?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, it was. We didn't have trucks to haul our horses in, in them days, you got up early and saddled up and took off.

DAVIS:  How many horses did you have?

HIIBEL:  Oh, I only had one to start with.

DAVIS:  Good cow horse or . .

HIIBEL:  Yeah, he was a pretty good cow horse.

DAVIS:  Can you tell me about him, what was he like? What was his name?

HIIBEL:  Well, I got him from old Tobe Smith so I called him Toby, and I broke him myself. . .

DAVIS:  He was a young horse at that time?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, he was just a weaner colt when l Tobe give him to me.

DAVIS:  Was he a sorrel?

HIIBEL:  He was a black.

DAVIS:  What blood line, was he a mustang or .

HIIBEL:  Well, they was just horses, I don't know. I think the sire was a Morgan. Old Clem Webb had a Morgan horse down there and I think that was the sire of this colt. Old Tobe Smith and Clem Webb they had about twenty mares apiece they run out down there. Every once in awhile, Tobe'd have a big horse round up and ship them horses back to St. Louis.

DAVIS:  How many miles was the ride from your place here down to where you gathered the cattle?

HIIBEL:  Well, its twenty miles I think to the end of the river down there.

DAVIS:  Would this be a one day project, or several days?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, we'd be late gettin' home. We always come home at night.

DAVIS:  Well, you drove the cattle back then or did you . .

HIIBEL:  No, we just gathered them and they had a pretty large area fenced off for a holdin' field and we held them in there at night. And then the next day we'd go down and vaccinate--we always had to vaccinate for anthrax--brand the calves. . .

DAVIS:  The cattle did pretty good?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, they done all right.

DAVIS:  What were the cattle problems in those days, I mean, if they didn't do well?

HIIBEL:  Well, anthrax would hit 'em every once in awhile if you didn't keep 'em vaccinated. That was deadly.

DAVIS:  But the vaccine held in check then?

HIIBEL:  The vaccine was pretty good remedy, yeah.

DAVIS:  And everybody had their brands, did they ear mark, dew lap?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, whatever marks they had, some of 'em had dew laps, I never did. All I ever used was just the ear mark and the brand.

DAVIS:  What was your ear mark?

HIIBEL:  Had an underbitten the left ear to start with and a brand on the left hip.

DAVIS:  What was your brand?

HIIBEL:  They called it a bar "J" bar. It was a bar and then a J and then a bar under the "J".

DAVIS:  You had to register them in those days?

HIIBEL:  Oh, yeah, you had to register in those days, and then I got the h bench, it was an h on a bench, and I had to write split ear marks but that was the kids', that was Barbara and Les or Ike's.

DAVIS:  So how many cattle was your herd, the numbers of them?

HIIBEL:  Oh, they increased as time went by, I had three hundred head on the books when I moved out of down there and went to the gun club, but I never did get the three hundred. I think I only got two hundred and forty or something like that.

DAVIS:  What was the difference, what happened to the others or do you know?

HIIBEL:  I don't know, I think somebody else appropriated a lot of 'em. Of course, some of 'em could have died but I don't think that many of 'em could have died without me finding 'em 'cause I rode there pert near all the time.

DAVIS:  You said you enjoyed that part of . .

HIIBEL:  Yeah. I was like old Charlie Russell I thought if a man could make a livin' doin' what he liked to do he was lucky, and I was a makin' a livin' doin' what I liked to do. Not totally I took other jobs to go with it. You know, I worked for three or four years for the Fish and Wildlife down there in the refuge and then I worked for Kaiser Mill out here until they closed down; I think I was there two years.

DAVIS:  What type of work did you do down at the Fish and Wildlife?

HIIBEL:  Oh, I learned to run a cat 'n can, and heavy equipment. .

DAVIS:  Now, this was quite a bit later, what years or how long ago was this?

HIIBEL:  Gee, I don't remember that. Les was a pretty small potato then, must have been the late forties.

DAVIS:  You built dikes and one thing and another down there?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  And then, what type of work did you do for Kaiser?

HIIBEL:  Well, I took care of the settling tank and kiln dryer. See, they run this stuff through the crusher and then the stuff that they took off from it to make aluminum went into the settlin' tank and then we pumped it outa there and down into this great big cylinder that turned all the time and there was a fire in the bottom end of it that dried it.

DAVIS:  Well what was the end product out there? What did they produce?

HIIBEL:  Oh, I forget what they called that stuff. Anyway they made aluminum out of it, they said.

DAVIS:  And where did that ore come from, do you remember?

HIIBEL:  It come from out around Austin there somewhere, I don't remember just where but . . .

DAVIS:  That must have been in what, the sixties?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  Going back a little bit, what was your memories of the second world war? How did that impact the family?

HIIBEL:  Well, I was a married man and farmin' so I wasn't called on to go but I had two brothers in it, three in fact. John served in Panama and Riley served in the European area.

DAVIS:  Then John was in what service?

HIIBEL:  Army. Yeah, they were both in the army. Riley was an engineer.

DAVIS:  Well, how long were they gone, about four years or so?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, Riley was in there until it ended, from start to finish. He never even took a furlough. He had a funny philosophy. If he had a job to do, he wanted to do it and get it over with before he ever quit; and he had that same philosophy in the Army. He wanted to be done with it when he took his leave. Porky was in, that's Wayne, but he never left the states.

DAVIS:  He was in the Army?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  Where was he stationed?

HIIBEL:  I don't know, one place was in Kentucky wasn't it? I know he said the humidity pert near killed him wherever it was.

DAVIS:  What I want to do is go back to Harmon school since you live right next door and you went there; you graduated or you went through all the grades in Harmon.

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  You mentioned Miss Johnson, what were some of your other teachers that you remember?

HIIBEL:  Well, my next teacher was a Mrs. Hughes. She was a little Irish lady and she was a real good teacher, and I was lucky enough to have her through all four of my upper grades.

DAVIS:  That would be . .

HIIBEL:  Fifth through eighth.

DAVIS:  How did the school change, in those days it was in real good condition wasn't it?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, I don't know, I always will think that kids got a better education over there than they're gettin' now.

DAVIS:  They had two teachers?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  And two class rooms.

HIIBEL:  Two teachers and two class rooms. Each teacher had four grades and I don't remember how many kids. I think there was twenty-four desks in each room, course they didn't have all those desks full all the time.

DAVIS:  How many kids do you remember being in your classes?

HIIBEL:  Well, in my class there was just the two of us. The first year there was four of us in the fourth grade and two of 'em skipped the fifth grade. It was Alan Odell and Eldred Downs they skipped the fifth grade; but Curtis Kirn and I, we weren't that smart so we had to take the fifth grade (laughter). But there was just the two of us from then on, and never did anybody else come in that was in our grade. There was new kids come in but none of 'em was in our grade. [end of tape 1]

DAVIS:  This is Bill Davis and this is the second day of interview with Clyde Hiibel. The date is 7 [July] 10, 1990. And we are sitting again in the Living room of the Hiibel Residence.  This morning, Clyde, maybe we could talk about some of the changes that you've seen in Fallon. What do you remember about down town when you were young. You talked about the Colony but what was Maine Street, what was down town in those days?

HIIBEL:  It was a horse town. I remember, first, they used to have a fountain down there in the intersection of Maine Street and Williams. . .

DAVIS:  Kind of by the Courthouse?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, always had water in it and people would drive up to that and let their horses drink.

DAVIS:  Where'd that water come from?

HIIBEL:  The same place as City water, I guess.

DAVIS:  Out by Rattlesnake Hill probably. Were there lots of stores or what did Maine Street consist of?

HIIBEL:  No. There was Kent's. Kent's had everything, they had grocery and clothing and hardware. And then there was a clothing store, Gray Reid and Wright.

DAVIS:  Where was that?

HIIBEL:  It was across from Kent's to the south. And then there's, over on the other side there was a store, I guess it was a hardware store, run by a guy named Hi Shellard. That's where we went to get our shells and our guns and things like that. And then later, Jake Bible and--what the devil was his name--anyway they set up this mercantile store. It was hardware and then they sold refrigerators. . .

DAVIS:  Where was it located?

HIIBEL:  It was where Palludan's store is now. South Maine, there.

DAVIS:  The Courthouse was already there?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, it was always there. Just across from this mercantile, about where the Comfort West is now, in there someplace, there was a furniture store run by a fellow by the name of Frazzini.

DAVIS:  That was pretty early then?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, he was the only furniture store in town.

DAVIS:  What were the early produce stores or, like local produce, was probably Kent's then?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  How about the meat markets?

HIIBEL:  Well, there was a meat market across, right straight across west from Kent's. It was--I can't remember for sure--if it was Fallon Meats or what it was but it was run by two people--my memories not good this morning--. . .

DAVIS:  Was that Henry Berryman?

HIIBEL:  Either one of 'em.

DAVIS:  Was that Henry Berryman?

HIIBEL:  No. Berryman worked for 'em but he wasn't in the partnership.. One of 'em was Berryman's brother-in-law, Dexter, Walter Dexter. Dexter and Callahan, that was the names of the people that owned the. . .

DAVIS:  Was Dexter a sheriff or something once, Walter Dexter, or am I thinking of somebody else?

HIIBEL:  No, he was, I don't know whether he ever was a marshal or not or whether he was just mayor of the town.

DAVIS:  I remember the name somewhat.

HIIBEL:  I'll never forget one time I went to town with some friends in a Model T Ford and we left it way down on the north end of Maine Street, and we decided we was goin' home. So, I hustled down and got in the Ford and brought it up and I went to park it right in front of Dexter's meat shop and (laughing),--those Fords, you pushed the low peddle in so far and it was in neutral and if you pushed it too far you was in low,--and what I did I pushed it too far and that little old Ford climbed up on the sidewalk and started right in the door (laughing). The hub caps caught on both sides and stopped it. I never will forget some wise guy was standing there and he says, "How do you want him, Walt, on foot or dressed?"

DAVIS:  When did they get the sidewalks in Fallon?

HIIBEL:  Oh, I don't really remember that. .

MRS. HIIBEL: It was before our time.

DAVIS:  Oh, it was?

MRS. HIIBEL: I think so.

HIIBEL:  We had a printin' office, it was right on the corner where Bob's Chevron Station is now. I think that was the Fallon Eagle, and then later there was another one and his office, I think it was the same place where the Lahontan Valley News has been for these last ten years or so. It was the Fallon Standard.

DAVIS:  Now, they call the Elk's Building the old post office, do you remember that?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, that used to be the post office, I remember that.

DAVIS:  What do you remember about the early advent of the air base out here, that would have been, what the, second world war probably?

HIIBEL:  I'm fully prejudiced against that air base and its been a curse to me ever since it came here. The first thing they did was, during the war, they came in here and they wanted the Carson Sink for a playground so they go down there and fence it off: from thirty-one across to the Dutch Bill in Stillwater and they wouldn't let us go down below that fence, and that was the best cow feed there was down there on the Sink.

DAVIS:  Now when was that?

HIIBEL:  That was during World War II.

DAVIS:  In the forties?

HIIBEL:  Then, when the War got over they abandoned it and we went back to our normal way of living which was fine I really enjoyed, and then they decided they needed another air base out here, so they got these noisy jets in to where you can't think without them disrupting you. And I don't like that, I never did like noise, and I sure don't like those noisy jets.

DAVIS:  You're right in the flight pattern then?

HIIBEL:  Yeah. They don't live up to their agreements. There agreement in the first place was they was not to fly north of the Austin Highway which is south of us by two miles. Well if they turn on the Austin Highway or beyond it, the noise wouldn't bother us so much, but they come right over our house, and I don't know what they do to them things but they just rattle the windows and the doors in this house, when they go over with that noise. I don't like it.

DAVIS:  I want to go back to the water now. What has been your feeling about how the water situations been? I mean we've had some real dry years in the past and we may be looking at another one. What do you remember about the early water problems?

HIIBEL:  Well, I don't know. The Wildlife [U. S. and Wildlife Service which operates the Stillwater Wildlife Refuge] worries and worries and worries and wants us to give 'em more water, and I remember that first drought we had when there wasn't even any drinking water down there for the cattle--what they call the marsh area. It was completely dry.

DAVIS:  That must have been about when ?

HIIBEL:  Oh, it was in the early '30s sometime. I don't remember just where.

DAVIS:  Was there several dry years in a row?

HIIBEL:  No, there was just the one bad, really bad, year. To tell you how generous they was, people didn't have no feed for their cattle at home so they took 'em down there and there was drain water then that ended up in the Freeman Ranch, or went through the Freeman Ranch, and that ornery old bugger that had the Freeman Ranch, he went out and dammed that drain ditch off so they couldn't get any water through to the stock. And I know a couple of old hardheaded guys that has stock down there and they decided they needed stock, so they took a two inch pipe down and drove it through the bottom of that dam and that let enough water come through so the cattle could drink (laughing). The old guy that run the Freeman Ranch, he never did find out about that I don't think.

DAVIS:  How many cattle did you have running down there in those days?

HIIBEL:  Well, I didn't have any cattle in those days, I was still pretty young.

DAVIS:  What about the supply of water from year to year?

HIIBEL:  Well, I don't know, seems like we always had plenty of water until the Bureau of Reclamation [U.S. Bureau of Reclamation] decided they ought to come back and run the outfit. And they've been chopping it up so awful, wantin' to give it back to Pyramid Lake which evaporates more water than we ever run into the swamp, I think. …I don't know. When I get into politics I get so disgusted that I can't talk straight. I remember when they first started this Wildlife down here, some guy was talkin' to old Chub Huff and he was telling Chub how nice that was goin' to be for our kids; that we'd have ducks here for our kids to hunt and all that. Course that was their theory too--the Wildlife's propaganda but old Chub, Chub Huff, he says, "Pardon my English," but he said, "Like Hell, they've got some of those biologists a running it now and by the time our kids are big enough to hunt they won't be any ducks." And that's just about the way it's turned out.

DAVIS:  What kind of changes have you seen down there, you worked down there for awhile?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, they've stopped the natural flow of water down there and built ponds and all that does is bring the poison up out of the ground, the alkali and all that stuff. If they'd let that water flow through there like it did naturally I think we'd still have ducks and duck ponds.

DAVIS:  How about the high water years, there were some years there was more water than they could almost handle wasn't it?

HIIBEL:  Oh, yeah. I remember we had floods here when the people that lived along the river there north of town was kinda worried about whether they was goin' to stay dry or not. The river got up to where it overflowed the banks along there. They had flood way back too, I remember this old Tobe Smith that I used to go see every once in awhile . .

DAVIS:  Where did he live?

HIIBEL:  He lived down on Timber Lake, what some people call the government well, it was an artesian well there. And he had a little cabin there and he run horses, and he was tellin' me that he worked hard all summer long cuttin' hay down there on the meadows in the Sink and stackin' it up and in the spring we got this big flood (laughing), and he said after the flood his haystacks was settin' way down in the middle of the Sink.

DAVIS:  Is there still any residents down in that area?

HIIBEL:  No. No, Tobe just had a squatters right there and he, oh wait a minute I'll take that back, I don't know if any people live there but there's two privately owned places down there, one of 'em they call the Lower Leader, it’s just about due west from Timber Lake and the other one joins Timber Lake on the south. It’s a section of ground they call the thirty-one because it's section thirty-one. And I think young Jim Sloan owns that now. That's about all there is down there.

DAVIS:  My, course my mother's folks were in the Old River District that leads away off down there so they knew all those people. You said you worked for Ole Shepard at one time?

HIIBEL:  Yeah. I worked several short sessions. He never did have a long job, but in hayin' or in the spring when he was a wantin' to get his crops in. . .

DAVIS:  Well, had he homesteaded out there?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  Ole's pond is close to his…

HIIBEL:  That's where it got the name. It was --his place was up on the bench and these ponds were caused from his irrigation, the water drew down and sub out in and made those ponds.

DAVIS:  What did he have at the time out there?

HIIBEL:  When I worked for him, he milked cows, and then later he got a bunch of sheep, not too many, but he had sheep.

DAVIS:  I think he had a windmill and a pump house out there, didn't he?

HIIBEL:  (Laughing) what he had was a horse power outfit he pumped water with.

DAVIS:  How did that work?

HIIBEL:  Well, he hooked this old horse on it and he went around and around and as he went around he pumped water. It was quite a thing. Yeah, I think Ole had chickens too, at one time. Produced eggs.

DAVIS:  Do you remember anything about the Old River Schoolhouse?

HIIBEL:  Other than I went to dances over there after I got older, that's about all I remember about it.

DAVIS:  Can you tell me something about those dances?

HIIBEL:  Oh, they's like all of 'em, those country dances were . .

DAVIS:  Where were the places in the valley that they had dances?

HIIBEL:  Well, all those old schoolhouses, Old River and Sheckler and St. Clair and Harmon, Stillwater.

DAVIS:  Did they have dances here at Harmon?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, I used to go to dances . .

DAVIS:  Who sponsored them, were they school or what?

HIIBEL:  Well, the Harmony Social Club usually.

DAVIS:  How about the other places?

HIIBEL:  Oh, I don't know who [was] sponsoring those others. I just know that anytime you went to one of them dances you could get all the moonshine you wanted to drink. Somewhere along the line I got the idea that was a sign of manhood if you could drink a lot of whiskey.

DAVIS:  Was this in prohibition days then?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  Where did the moonshine show up from? Everywhere?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, there's a lot of guys made moonshine, some of it was pretty good and some of it wasn't so good. I don't know, they just-people needed money they turned to the still.

DAVIS:  Do you remember how expensive it was?

HIIBEL:  Well, it wasn't too expensive, seems like to was about four or five dollars a quart, somethin' like that (laughing).

DAVIS:  Did there seem to be a lot of drinking in those days?

HIIBEL:  Oh, yeah. Everybody drank it seemed to me, except the women. The women didn't drink in those days like they do now, not very many of 'em, a few did, but . . .

DAVIS:  Was that the main social activity around or what other things happened, were there any big community events?

HIIBEL:  No, that was about all there was that I remember, the dances, and the clubs. The women, like the Harmony Social Club, they had their meeting every month or so.

DAVIS:  How about any farmer groups?

HIIBEL:  Well, they had the Farm Bureau but I don't know, I don't remember too much activity in that.

DAVIS:  Were you ever active in it?

HIIBEL:  No.

DAVIS:  They had some state fairs here at one time . . ?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, they used to have a state fair every year. People'd take their produce and their livestock in and display 'em, and they had prizes for whoever had the best and everything. That's where I was when I listened in on Mr. Moody's conversation

DAVIS:  Can you tell me about that?

HIIBEL:  That conversation?

DAVIS:  Yeah.

HIIBEL:  Well, I was just settin' there, a spectator like, and Mr. Moody was talkin' to this fellow right close to me where I could hear him good, and he was tellin' him about usin' too much water. He says, "Science tells us that it takes so much water to produce a plant," he said, "anytime you put more water than that on that plant all you're doing is souring your ground." And I think the man had an awful good idea. I think that's just what's happened, too many people have used too much water. I was just readin' an article the other day where it says "Too much water poisons the ground with alkali and stuff like that."

DAVIS:  What have you raised mainly on your ranch here, how many acres do you have here?

HIIBEL:  This is just a small ranch, it only had forty-eight acres of water right to start with, now the Bureau of Reclamation's whittled that down to forty-six.

DAVIS:  How many acres in it all?

HIIBEL:  It's all in alfalfa, it's a seventy acre unit but the ground on the back end is too high and it's not very good ground anyway, if it could get water on it it wouldn't produce anything, I don't think.

DAVIS:  What did you raise to begin with out here?

HIIBEL:  I raised alfalfa since I came here. Put in grain enough for a cover crop for the alfalfa, then whenever I have to plow up a piece of alfalfa I grain in for two years. I grain it straight grain the first year and the next year grain and back to alfalfa, use the grain for a cover crop. 'Cause I got to where I use oat because oats is a hay crop, you can cut it a little early and make hay out of it and makes good hay. And wheat, if you don't irrigate it just right you shrivel it, and when you shrivel it you don't have nothin' but straw, and I, I never was smart enough to irrigate wheat just right, I always shriveled it. Irrigated it at the wrong time when it was fillin' or somethin'.

DAVIS:  Has there been any change in the varieties of alfalfa that you've…

HIIBEL:  Oh, yeah. The last . .

DAVIS:  You said a lot of them in the early days used Argentine?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  Then what came in?

HIIBEL:  They only had two kinds of alfalfa then. It was the Argentine and the Peruvian, and the Peruvian wasn't very good it didn't have the tap root that the Argentine did, but since then I don't know, I can't think of the names of all the different alfalfas they've got, but they've got a lot of them and they’re supposed to be really good. I haven't tried any. Well, I have tried some too, but I can't recall the names of 'em now, because the Peruvian and the Argentine they discontinued a long time ago.

DAVIS:  At one time, Fallon raised a lot of cantaloupes as well as turkeys. Was there any of that raised down here, in this area?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, over here on this place that Hendrix is on. I was tellin' you that Jack Shepard used to live there? He raised cantaloupes one time. I got the honor of helpin' him pick them, we'd go out there early in the mornin' when it was cool, pick cantaloupes . .

DAVIS:  What was the process of picking them?

HIIBEL:  Well, you hung a sack on yourself some way, I don't know just how, then you walked down the row and looked at the cantaloupes and you could always tell if they was ready to pick because the stem would be about ready to come off, all you had to do was press it a little bit and it slipped.

DAVIS:  Show a little crack around the stem?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, and that melon was ripe enough to pick and firm enough to ship. Sometimes they would grow too fast and they'd crack. Jack had lots of "cracks" that he gave away to the neighbors' kids and things like that.

DAVIS:  How did they handle those, put them in- [cuts out, end of side A. Transcript continues “crates?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.”]

DAVIS:  Do you remember how many acres Jack had?

HIIBEL:  He had four or five acres of 'em. Pretty good size patch.

DAVIS:  And there were other people in the area that raised 'em?

HIIBEL:  I think there was, I don't think he was the only one. I can't remember who they were now.

DAVIS:  Where did they sell those?

HIIBEL:  Well, they went through Kents, I think. They'd take 'em to Kents and they shipped 'em out, they shipped 'em east, I think mostly.

DAVIS:  Probably pretty good money in those . .

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  What kind of a crew of pickers did they have in those days?

HIIBEL:  Well, just Jack and me and sometimes he'd have another kid help him, that took care of 'em pretty well.

DAVIS:  What do you remember about the local officials down town, or were you much concerned with them? We were talking about sheriffs and…

HIIBEL:  Oh, I got along with 'em good really, 'cause I was always gettin' in trouble like drivin' that Ford into the meat market (laughing).

DAVIS:  Well, that didn't happen too often, did it?

HIIBEL:  No. No, it never did, whatever I did it just happened the one time, usually. I remember one time a bunch of us kids a goin' into the show. We went a horse back and all the way to town these kids and me was a bickerin' about who had the fastest horse. So, we came up Center Street and turned the corner there at Kent's store and I said, "I'll just beat you to the fountain." and away we went right down Maine Street in a horse race, and when we got to the fountain we stopped and was lettin' our horses drink and pretty soon I heard somebody say, "You kids want to run around here into the jail?" (Laughter). And of course, we said, "No." and he said, "Well, you try that once more and that's just where you're going."

DAVIS:  How old were you then?

HIIBEL:  Oh, we was, I dunno, fourteen, fifteen, somethin' like that. But anyway, the old guy, was old Jim Smitten. He says, "You kids know better than that." And we did. But he didn't take us to jail or to see the judge or anything, he just give us a talkin' to, he knew we'd behave afterwards and let it go at that.

DAVIS:  I suppose there were some real wild characters, around though, from time to time?

HIIBEL:  Oh, yeah. Yeah, they had their troubles but, I dunno, with us kids they seemed to treat us right. Seemed to realize we was kids or somethin' and I remember they had a Marshal in there by the name of Bill Stewart. Arid Ramon Arrizabalaga tells me this story, on him and another kid that got to be his brother-in-law afterwards, Louie Moiola. Anyway, he said down at the flour mill Tom Kendrick had this great big eagle sittin' out there--was an emblem of the Case machinery (laughing)--and old Ramon said him and Louie went down and got that eagle one night and took it down and. set in on the high school steps (laughing), and he said he thought they'd got away with that pretty slick. He said the next day he was walkin' down town and old Bill stopped him, and he said, "Say, I want you and your partner to go get that eagle and take it back where it belongs." Ramon, of course, he denied it, they didn't have nothin' to do with that and old Bill said, "Don't try to kid me," he says, "there's only one kid in town that's big enough to handle that, and there's only one other kid in town that's got brains enough to figure out somethin' like that. Now," he said, "you go get that and put it back where it belongs." And that's all there was to it. They went and got it and put it back where it belonged and they didn't have no fines or probations or anything like that like they do now. [Interrupted by the arrival of his grandchildren]

DAVIS:  We were just talking about a picture that was taken out at Desert Wells? Now, where is Desert Wells and what was the situation?

HIIBEL:  It's, it was at that time, way out next to the foothills. We used to go to the mountains and get dead pinion wood.

DAVIS:  For heating?

HIIBEL:  For heating and cooking, everything was wood in those days. That was the last water goin' out to the mountains and also the last water cumin' in from the mountains.

DAVIS:  Now the mountains you're talking about are the Stillwater Range?

HIIBEL:  Yeah. Cox's Canyon and Fondaway. And I think that's all we ever got wood out of.

DAVIS:  Now you took a wagon or cart or . .

HIIBEL:  Wagon.

DAVIS:  Wagon and horses out there. Was it a one day trip or a couple day trip or what?

HIIBEL:  Oh it was sometimes two or three day's trip.

DAVIS:  You went out and picked the wood up or gathered it?

HIIBEL:  I remember one time my oldest brother and I went out. We just took the two horses, 'cause we didn't want to haul hay out there for all of 'em for that long. We drug the wood down, and then we give our younger brother, I think it was three days, to get there with the team so we could haul it back. . .

DAVIS:  Now that was who?

HIIBEL:  Sam, he come out . .

DAVIS:  That was Sam, your older brother is John?

HHIBEL:                Older brother is John. He and I went out and snaked the wood down, and we always had a place you could pull it down into the wash and the bank was high enough so we could just roll it off the bank onto the wagon.

DAVIS:  Didn't have to lift it up.

HIIBEL:  No. We'd just take one horse and a singletree and go up there and when we'd find a likely log we'd throw a chain around it and hook this one horse on it and he'd bring it down.

DAVIS:  Who all was in a party like that?

HIIBEL:  Most of the time it was just my brothers and me that went out. The first time I went out, I went out with my dad, I remember that.

DAVIS:  That was how many miles out there?

HIIBEL:  Oh, I don't remember, must be about twenty miles. Oh, it's more than that, gee whiz, it's twenty miles to the refuge [Stillwater Wildlife Refuge]. Must a been thirty-five at least.

DAVIS:  You went out there with your dad, you said . .

HIIBEL:  Yeah. We camped there at Desert Wells that night and it snowed on us (laughing.)

DAVIS:  What time of the year was this?

HIIBEL:  It was in the winter time.

DAVIS:  Now, this picture that was taken, who all was involved in that?

HIIBEL:  That was my older brother and me and, I guess Sam was there too, I dunno, now.

DAVIS:  Did any of the women go out with you?

HIIBEL:  No.

DAVIS:  How much wood would you bring back?

HIIBEL:  Oh, I dunno, several cords. Bring two wagon loads and six horses. Sometimes we wouldn't take such a big outfit, sometimes we'd take just one wagon and four horses.

DAVIS:  How often did you do that?

HIIBEL:  About once a year.

DAVIS:  Was there any deer hunting, and one thing and another, out that way then?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, there was lots of deer hunting in that country at that time during deer season; but we never hunted deer while we was gettin' wood 'cause we was too busy gettin' wood.

DAVIS:  Did you see wildlife and one thing and another out there?

HIIBEL:  Once in awhile.

DAVIS:  What would that be?

HIIBEL:  Not too much, there would be deer or mustangs.

DAVIS:  Were there quite a few mustangs in those days?

HIIBEL:  Oh, yeah. Not quite as many as there are now, but they was mustangs around.

DAVIS:  How about the birds there, that was before they brought in chukars wasn't it?

HIIBEL:  Yeah. There was sagehens out there then, but we never did see any, they wasn't that plentiful. But all I can remember is the jays, the jays then was always a flying around and scoldin'; they thought we was gettin' their pine nuts, I guess.

DAVIS:  Were people interested in pine nuts in those days?

HIIBEL:  Oh, yeah, we'd go gather pine nuts. This wood was dead wood. They won't let you get it now for some reason, I don't know why. Like a lot of other things that the government's taken over, they stopped the good part of it and let the bad part go on. That was good wood for anybody that wanted to put out the energy and the effort to go get it, you know, and it wasn't doin' any good out there, just layin' there a rotten'. It looks to me like that anybody that could use it should be allowed to use it.

DAVIS:  Were there cattle ranging out that far in those days?

HIIBEL:  Yeah. The Freeman Ranch and Charlie Kent had cattle out in that part of the country at that time.

DAVIS:  Was that pretty good range or not?

HIIBEL:  Well, it was mediocre I guess you'd call it. Kent's has developed theirs to a pretty good range, but the Freeman Ranch range, nobody's been interested in developin' that. You know. It's just about like it always was. They dug a few wells out there for water but . . . Kent's seems to me like they've rotated theirs to where they've got a lot more feed out there than they used to have.

DAVIS:  What does one of these wells consist of out there?

HIIBEL:  Well, they just take a well rig out there and dig it down until they find water. Sometimes, it’s quite a job, they've got to drill through a lot of rock and things. After they get water, then they put a pump on it with a windmill and a tank, and this windmill, when the wind blows, it pumps the water into that tank. Some of 'em have a storage tank but not many, most of 'em is just a watering tank or maybe they have two watering tanks connected.

DAVIS:  How far would the cattle roam to get their water?

HIIBEL:  Oh, three or four miles probably. Freeman Ranch, they used to have sheep, I don't know whether they're still there or not but the last time I was up in Poco Canyon they still had the shearin' sheds and sheep corrals up there where they sheared the sheep.

DAVIS:  What canyon was this?

HIIBEL:  Poco.

DAVIS:  "P O C O"?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  What was that camp like?

HIIBEL:  Well, there was a cabin there and then there was these shearin' sheds and pens where they held the sheep and water. There was a little creek runnin' by there, through the pens, so the sheep could have water.

DAVIS:  Now, they had sheepherders out there?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  Did they bring the sheep in, in the winter time or...?

HIIBEL   I think they did, I'm not too familiar with that. [tape cuts]

DAVIS:  Yesterday, when you were telling me about the early memories, I asked you what you remembered about Fallon when you first arrived, but we didn't really touch about what your life was like back in Kansas and what you remember there. Where was this in Kansas?

HIIBEL:  Was in the northwestern part up in Graham County. The county seat was Hill City.

DAVIS:  And your dad had been there quite awhile?

HIIBEL:  Yeah. I think he had. I'm not too familiar with that either, but it seems to me like he and his brother got what their dad left. See, he was allowed to homestead because he served in the Civil War.

DAVIS:  Your grandad?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  What do you know about him serving in the Civil War, much of anything?

HIIBEL:  No.

DAVIS:  But he homesteaded in that area of Kansas. And you had some stepbrothers and step-sisters?

HIIBEL:  I had one step-brother and one step-sister. My mother had the two children when she married dad. She'd been married before and divorced.

DAVIS:  So what kind of a place did you grow up on back there?

HIIBEL:  Well, it was prairie, buffalo grass, and then occasionally they'd go in and break out fifteen or twenty acres of this buffalo grass and plant it to crops. They raised corn and wheat.

DAVIS:  There was no real irrigation back there was there?

HIIBEL:  No. There was no irrigation, it was all rain. Believe me, it could rain back there sometimes when it took a notion.

DAVIS:  What do you remember about school back there?

HIIBEL:  Well, it was a little country school and, I don't know, there weren't very many kids, twelve, maybe fifteen.

DAVIS:  Now, you said your dad came out with some stock before you came to Fallon. Do you remember about him leaving and then coming back to get you, gettin' the family?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, I remember that. He took these heifers to where he could load 'em on the train and, course, when they shipped on the train in those days, anyway, they always somebody went with them. To make sure they got watered and fed at night, once a day . . .

DAVIS:  Did the feed kind of go with them?

HIIBEL:  So he went with them and brought 'em out here. And I can remember him a planting a field to corn, and then, in the fall after he'd picked the corn--that was all done by hand, team and wagon--then they had these little one horse drills that'd fit right in between those rows of corn, and he'd go in there and drill his wheat between those rows of corn (laughing). Course, the disposition I had, I always wanted to be in on everything, and I remember Dad telling my mother that mornin' to have John come over right after school, so he could take this other mule and drill wheat; and I was in the first grade and I got out at the last recess to go home, and I jumped the gun and 'stead of waiting 'tit recess, I thought noon was a recess, so I left and I went over where dad was drilling this corn and I got to drive that old mule all afternoon on that drill (laughing).

DAVIS:  You must have been about six then?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, six or seven somethin' like that. I think probably seven.

DAVIS:  Do you remember when your dad was gone, how long was he gone coming to Nevada?

HIIBEL:  I don't remember just how long, don't seem like too long, maybe a week.

DAVIS:  And the family was getting ready to travel then. What do you remember about the trip out?

HIIBEL:  Well, the main thing I remember about that is I got seasick crossing Salt Lake (laughing).

DAVIS:  Oh, in the train?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  What was Salt Lake like?

HIIBEL:  It was just a big bunch of water, looked like that was all I could see was water. I remember my mother telling me to lay down where you don't look at it. So, finally I laid down on the floor where I couldn't see the water and got over the seasickness.

DAVIS:  Do you remember crossing any mountains?

HIIBEL:  No, I don't. Can't remember crossing any mountains, but I know we crossed some. Had to cross the Rockies.

DAVIS:  How about food, did you carry your meals?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, we brought the food along. Mother fixed up food in big baskets--fried chicken, and I don't know what else, she must have had some pork too.

DAVIS:  And then you came right into Hazen, you didn't have to go into Reno?

HIIBEL:  No. Hazen was the turnin' point.

DAVIS:  What was Hazen like?

HIIBEL:  I don't remember too much about it. It seems to me like there was just a depot and one or two houses there, at the time.

DAVIS:  Do you remember your first visit to the Lahontan Dam?

HIIBEL:  Well, I don't know as it was the first one, but I remember one very distinctly. A bunch of the Colony kids, they took 'em up there on a picnic, and somewhere, in the construction of that dam, there's an overflow chute and this water comes down that chute. Boy it really travels, its got a lot of velocity. And some of us would get in that chute and see if we could withstand that velocity. And I remember with one kid that jerked his feet out from under him and down the chute he went. He ended up down in the pool below and everybody was a runnin' around there screamin' and a hollerin', they thought he was going to drown but he didn't, he finally, he said he got a hold of this root off this bush and pulled himself up and he come a crawlin' out of there. Boy, he sure had people worried for a little bit.

DAVIS:  Those days you traveled up there by horse and buggy then?

HIIBEL:  I'm not so sure about that, they had cars at that time, we might have went in a car.

DAVIS:  There was probably what, fifteen to twenty kids?

HIIBEL:  Oh, it wouldn't have been over twenty, I don't think. It seems as though they'd take kids of a certain age, or somethin' like that.

DAVIS:  Did they have anything like a church or religious services or activities at the Colony, for the kids?

HIIBEL:  No, not that I recall. There was a lot of people in that Colony that went to church, but the church wasn't there. . .

DAVIS:  It was in town, or somewhere else . .

HIIBEL:  They went to town or wherever the church might be.

DAVIS:  Well, it was not a religious organization anyway.

HIIBEL:  No.

DAVIS:  What was your dad's attitude after the break-up?

HIIBEL:  Well, I don't remember him bein' bitter but he lost all his interest in politics. He just went on raisin' his family, he was a good father--thought a lot of his kids.

DAVIS:  Yesterday while we were talking, your wife mentioned that your grandmother lived out here at one time?

HIIBEL:  Not my grandmother.

DAVIS:  Then it was your mother, that she was referring to?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  She lived with one of the boys for quite awhile?

HIIBEL:  Oh, yeah.

DAVIS:  She must have been well thought of.

HIIBEL:  After the kids, the rest of us all grew up and left, why Sam stayed there and took care of the place and she stayed with him until he married. And then when he married, they built her a little home up in the corner, which she lived in until she got sick and had to leave.

DAVIS:  Well, she had her hands full, didn't she?

HIIBEL:  Oh, yeah.

DAVIS:  What do you remember about her?

HIIBEL:  Well, she was a really industrious person. She always had a garden, and there was an orchard on the place. And, I don't know, it seems like, she thought it was a necessity or somethin' to always make a crock of sauerkraut and then the apples--we'd pick the apples and we had an underground cellar. We'd store the apples in that cellar and I remember pulling the carrots out of the garden and taking them up to the cellar and she had a tub up there with dirt in it--she put these carrots down in that dirt in that tub, and we had carrots all winter long, and apples, potatoes. We had a bin of potatoes in that cellar, course she had to buy the potatoes she didn't raise them, but she raised pert near everything else. She'd raise tomatoes and can 'em. She canned a lot of the apples. Like I say, she made that big crock of sauerkraut.

DAVIS:  How big was the crock?

HIIBEL:  (Laughing) Oh, it was pretty good sized, I don't know, I imagine about eighteen to twenty gallons.

DAVIS:  That's a lot of cabbage.

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  Did she raise the cabbage?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, she raised the cabbage. She had a slicing board, she sliced it all and then she put it in that crock. She had a board to fit in there that she put on top of it, and then she put a rock on top of the board to keep it pressed down in the juice.

DAVIS:  How did she make this kraut? I mean did she add anything to it?

HIIBEL:  I think it was just cabbage and salt, now I'm not sure about [End of tape 2]

DAVIS:  You mentioned having an underground cellar?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  Do you remember making that and what it was like?

HIIBEL:  No, it was there on the place when we bought it.

DAVIS:  What was it like?

HIIBEL:  Well, it was just this room under ground and covered over with, I don't know, two three feet deep of dirt.

DAVIS:  What was the ceiling, how did they ….

HIIBEL:  Well, that was the ceiling, they put timbers up there for a roof. It had double doors, it had one door on the outside and you had to lay that back then you went down the stairs, and this other door, it opened in. It was, I don't know, two or three thickness of boards, it was a heavy door.

DAVIS:  Did it have shelves, bins?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, there was bins and we put the potatoes and the apples in on each side and above the bins was the shelves where she placed her canned goods, you know.

DAVIS:  Did she or your neighbors do any curing of pork, bacon or ham?

HIIBEL:  No, no she never did cure pork. She always lamented about us kids she said in Kansas she couldn't get us to eat beef and after we come out here she couldn't get us to eat pork (laughing).

DAVIS:  Well, you must have had a good diet anyway.

HIIBEL:  Yeah, she had everything, you know. She canned string beans and she made pickles and canned them. She canned some peas, and then she had a way of curing corn. She'd slice it off the cob and leave it lay out in the sun on this sheet, or whatever it was, and let it dry. Boy, that had a good taste to it when she took that off.

DAVIS:  How did she cook that then?

HIIBEL:  Just, boil it like you would other corn.

DAVIS:  It was hard, after it was dried?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, you had to cook it in order to eat it, but it was awful good eatin'.

DAVIS:  Did she ever dry apples?

HIIBEL:  No, I don't think she ever dried any fruit.

DAVIS:  Canned it?

HIIBEL:  She canned that, then she made applesauce and apple butter.

DAVIS:  How about bread in those days?

HIIBEL:  She made her own bread.

DAVIS:  She had to buy that flour in town?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, she'd get the flour and bakin' powder, and whatever. I remember she'd always pinch off a little piece and put it in the cupboard, in a cup, and set it on top of the stove, and that was where she started her next batch of bread.

DAVIS:  For the yeast, or was it sourdough? Must have been sourdough?

HIIBEL:  I guess it was, I don't know.

DAVIS:  That was her yeast anyway.

HIIBEL:  That's what she called her "starter".

DAVIS:  Had she brought that with her, from Kansas, do you know?

HIIBEL:  No, I don't hardly think so, she might have, I don't know about that. But, I know that after I got big enough to watch her that that's what she had, the way she'd get started. Then she'd mix it up, and set that on top of the stove over night for it to rise, and the next day she had a kneading board, she'd pinch off about what she needed for a loaf and she'd knead that and knead it and knead it, and knead it. She'd make about nine loaves at a time, when she'd bake bread.

DAVIS:  How long would that last?

HIIBEL:  Oh, maybe a week, maybe not that long, I don't know.

DAVIS:  Those early days, what did they do to keep things cool?

HIIBEL:  Well, after we moved up on the hill, 'Dobe town they called it, some guy with a lot of ingenuity, he made what he called a "cooler." He just made this frame out of two by two's and put shelves in it. Then he covered that with burlap, and he had a top on it, of course, and on this top he placed a pan of water and then he had material about like this that he'd put in that water and drape it down over the side of this burlap, the water would syphon through this, out onto the burlap and it kept that burlap wet and that's what kept it cool.

DAVIS:  Had to keep water in the top.

HIIBEL:  Yeah, you had to keep water in the top. She kept her milk in there and her butter and everything. She used to, before she got her first separator, she used to put her milk in pans and put it in there, and then skim the cream off with a spoon. She made butter out of the cream and we took that to town and sold it; had two or three customers in town that would take a pound of butter every week.

DAVIS:  When did ice come in? I mean did they have an ice refrigerator later on?

HIIBEL:  No, she never did have one of those ice boxes. Her first refrigerator was an electric one. They had ice, in those days, if you wanted to go to town and get it, but she never did; she just used that cooler. [tape cuts out. There is a long section where they are going over photographs that was not transcribed, but is not particularly useful without the photographs]

DAVIS:  When did you have your stroke?

HIIBEL:  In 1980, Thanksgiving Day.

DAVIS:  Well, you're doing pretty good considering.

HIIBEL:  Yeah, I've got no complaints, the last few months I can feel myself going down hill, but I've had it pretty good up until then. I've always felt good, that's the part that I like, you know if felt good just like I did twenty years ago, no sickness inside, not too many aches and pains.

MRS:     The secret is just to keep goin' you know. He's slowin' down, I keep naggin' at him and naggin' at him, you know, to keep him from slowin' down because, like I say, I worked for almost nineteen years with older people and I know just how it goes.

DAVIS:  Well, I certainly appreciate ...

HIIBEL:  What'd you do with them pictures you had out here the other day?

MRS:     What pictures?

DAVIS:  We just found a more recent picture, you said it was taken after your stroke?

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  And where are you?

HIIBEL:  Right out here in the yard.

DAVIS:  Okay and you're sitting on, what's her name?

HIIBEL:  Rosie.

DAVIS:  Tell me about Rosie.

HIIBEL:  Rosie that's an old horse that a friend of mine found for me to ride after I had this stroke, and at first they didn't think she would do because she's a kind of a high strung mare, but that only applies to certain things. Now with me she's almost human, she seems to know what I need and she knows what I tell her and I can tell her "just a half a step" and she'll take just a half a step. I tell her "just a little closer" and she'll move a little closer. I don't know, like I say, she's just seems like she's almost human. She knows what I need and she does it.

DAVIS:  Describe her for us.

HIIBEL:  Well, she's a strawberry roan mare, she's not too big, she can get in the trailer with the saddle on, that's another wonderful thing. So many horses, they put a saddle on 'em, they're too tall they can't get into the trailer. And the only way I can saddle her is to lead her up in front of the tack shed and I've got a step out there that's about a foot and a half high, well maybe not that must, maybe fifteen inches probably. But it elevates me up, you see I couldn't get the saddle on her if I was on the ground level with her, but I lead her up along side this step and tell just where to get to stand and then I can get that saddle on her.

DAVIS:  Is that your old saddle or a special one?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, that's the same old saddle that I was a ridin' when I had the stroke.

DAVIS:  How old is that saddle?

HIIBEL:  Oh, it's not too old, I bought that new here, not too long ago after I quit ridin' rough horses. I've got a swell fork saddle out there that I rode all the time, when I was ridin' colts, horses that other people didn't think they could ride and I don't know why they didn't.

DAVIS:  Well, you were quite a horseman?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, her [his wife] brother used to like to go into the bars and tell people that I take horses that other couldn't ride and make one-man horses out of 'em.

DAVIS:  Now what's his name, which brother?

HIIBEL:  That's Rosie. Her brother was John.

DAVIS:  John de Braga. Well, you had a pretty good reputation then for handling horses. [tape cuts out] What did you say about horses? You said "You never had a bad horse?"

HIIBEL:  I never had a bad horse. I've had horses that I've rode and used that other people thought I should've chicken feed but I couldn't see it. Anytime I could get on a horse and go do what I wanted to do on that horse, he was a good horse. An this was a little bay horse, he crippled my brother up pretty badly one time, but if you'll talk to Sam today he'll tell you that it was his own fault. And that little horse, if I wanted to part a cow out of the herd I parted her out on him and he done it. If I needed to rope a calf I roped a calf and he done it. Just whatever needed to be done, he was the best mustanging horse I ever had, 'cause I could take the lead with these horses comin' in and he would never let one of 'em go by him. If they got too close behind he'd turn around and lay his ears back and I guess he talked to 'em, anyway, that ended it they never went by, they just followed him along (laughing).

DAVIS:  Well, you used to mustang then?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, gatherin' our own horses, our brood mares that we had, you know.

DAVIS:  What kind of a process was that?

HIIBEL:  Well, we run 'em down on the sink and we'd go down there and gather 'em and bring up and put 'em in the corrals there at Timber Lake, and for a long time that's where we branded the colts.

DAVIS:  Were these regular mustangs or were they…?

HIIBEL:  Oh, they were just range horses, they run out there free. They always had a stud or two with 'em, we'd brand the colts and then

DAVIS:  You say we, would that be ...

HIIBEL:  My brother and me.

DAVIS:  Where did you or how did you pick out your studs?

HIIBEL:  Oh, we'd buy 'em, we had one stud that came from Lem Allen's, he was about three-quarter thoroughbred. And then they had an Appaloosa stud, him and Mickey Freeman went up into Oregon to get and, I don't know, we'd find somebody that had somethin' pretty much thoroughbred. Sam got one horse that was standard bred and used him for a stud.

DAVIS:  They gave him pretty good colts then?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, we'd wean them colts in the fall and bring 'em in and pick out what we thought we wanted to keep to use and the rest of 'em we'd sell. We had a pretty good market there.

DAVIS:  Where were they sold?

HIIBEL:  Well, we had an Indian that used to come here and get a bunch of 'em and take 'em to Schurz and then there was another old guy that used to come and get 'em and take 'em over to California. . .

DAVIS:  These were probably going to be cattle horses or …

HIIBEL:  Yeah.

DAVIS:  . . pleasure horses, maybe or whatever, pack horses?

HIIBEL:  They'd keep 'em until they got big enough to break, you know, and they'd break 'em to ride, whatever, whether it was a cow outfit or a dude outfit, that's where they sold 'em after they got 'em broke.

DAVIS:  Were you ever involved in any rodeo type activities or mainly just ranch . . .?

HHIBEL:                No, not rodeo, I was just a ranch cowboy. All my horses, they weren't rodeo horses, they were what I call cowboy horses. Like I told my son-in-law, I said, "These are", I gave him the names of all the horses I ever had and rode, and I told him I said, "They're not rodeo horses but then I'm not a rodeo cowboy."

DAVIS:  Would he have a list of those horses?

HIIBEL:  I don't know whether he still got it or not, I give him the list. It started with this big old gray horse here, the next one I had was a little black horse that I got from old Tobe Smith when he was a colt, and then I added on horses, colts that I kept out of what we raised. And then I had a couple of horses that, one of 'em I called "Sergeant", I got him from old Lowell York 'cause Lowell couldn't ride him. He'd buck old Lowell off all the time. So he brought him to me and I traded him a couple of unbroke two year olds from him. He was a good horse, he'd work a cow, he was big and stout you could rope a brahma bull on him, I think, and he'd handle him. But to me I always knew when he had something in his mind besides work and he was an easy horse to control, you just tightened up on the reins he'd forget it. Then I had another big horse, a big bay horse, he bucked with Sam, up here, and split his pelvis. But that horse never did buck with me because I, like I say, I always knew when he was figuring on something and I'd get a hold of him and I could control him, and I rode him until he died. Of course, he died kind of early I guess, he had something wrong, probably botts [larvae of gadfly/botfly]. I was working at the auction yard at the time and I didn't take him that mornin' because he acted like he was sick. So when I come home, I unloaded the other horse out of the truck and he was standing there by the gate, and he nickered at the other horse and acted like he felt pretty good, so I thought well, gee, that's good and I unsaddled the other horse and turned him in the corral. And my son-in-law was down from Sparks--him and my daughter, they lived in Sparks at that time--so I come in and visited with them until it was time to go do chores. I went out to do chores and this old bay horse was layin' over agin the fence dead. He was a good old horse. I'd ride him and if I had a baby calf in the bunch that got tired of travelin' and wanted to lay down, I'd pick him up and lay him across the old horses neck in front of the saddle and pack him along and he'd get to kickin' and a wigglin' and a squirmin' around, the old horse he just cock one ear back at him, kinda acted like he wanted to know what was the matter with him and go on, he never caused a bit of trouble, and he was another horse that whenever I wanted to do anything I done it. I could rope calves, or pull cows out of the mud, anything, I rode him a lot of miles.

DAVIS:  Sounds like you had a lot of good horses.

HIIBEL:  I did, I had a lot of horses that I could brand calves on by myself. You know, I never was a good roper, instead of robin' by the hind feet which most people do, I roped 'em by the neck and then I'd get a fairly short hold and I'd get down and I'd throw the calf and hold him down, and I'd coax that old horse up to where I could get slack enough and take the rope off his head and put it on his hind feet, and I'd flip my rope at that old horse and he'd back up, and I was close enough so that I held his feet up off the ground, and he would keep that calf down while I'd go get the vaccinating gun and vaccinate it. Then I'd put that away and get the brandin' iron and come back and brand him and then I'd put the iron back in the fire, and if he was a bull calf I'd cut him. If it was a heifer calf I just went back and turned it loose, if it was a bull calf I'd cut him and then turn him loose. I branded a lot of calves all by myself, just me and my horse.

DAVIS:  Well, we're pretty well wound up on this side of the tape and as I said, we've got a lot of good memories down here. So unless you got some more to add I sure want to thank you again.

HIIBEL:  That's about all I can think of now. If she [Mrs. Hilbel] finds that picture I'd like for you to take it because I'm sittin' on a little brown horse. That was after I got to where I thought I was too old to ride him, so I'd take two, take out the one I wanted.

DAVIS:  And then you'd have a choice of 'em?

HIIBEL:  And this little brown horse was one that I kept and I gave him the other one. He wanted the brown horse he didn't, I don't think he ever did break the other one, he said he just got so obnoxious he just sold him to the chicken feed outfit.                But this little brown horse, what I started to tell you, was I rode him for a long time before he ever got to like me. He just tolerated me, I remember one day I was down the Canvasback [Canvasback Gun Club near Stillwater] and he got a notion that every time I'd get on dry ground why he'd tuck his tail and away we'd go and I just run him around in a circle and run him back out in the mud, long as I stayed in the mud he'd behave himself. And I rode him pert near all day that way. He got to be a real good little horse. He never did like me to rope, if I was out in the open when I first tried to rope off of him he'd run off. When I'd start swingin' that rope, why he'd take off. I remember one day I went over here to the other place and corralled a little bunch of cattle I had there. I think I had five calves and I branded those calves on him, just him and me, I done 'em like I told you . I'd rope the calf, and sometimes I'd catch 'em by the hind feet but I always'd get up close so that when the horse backed up he'd raise those hind feet plumb off the ground, that way they never got away from him. This little brown horse, he was pretty cagey, he never give chance to get their feet under 'em. They'd start wigglin' he'd start backin' up (laughing).

DAVIS:  Sounds like you were a good team.

HIIBEL: Yep, I remember a neighbor of ours come by over there that day, I don't know where he'd been, but he'd been out back there somewhere with his tractor, I think the first thing he done he went over and told Sam, he says, "That dumb Clyde's out there brandin' calves all by himself."

DAVIS:  Is that the horse that you rode before Rosie, here?

HIIBEL:  Yeah, he was one of the last ones, I had three of 'em, I had him and a roan horse and an Appaloosie [Appaloosa] horse.

DAVIS:  It used to be, like you said, little horse racin' goin' on from time to time, among kids and others. Lem Allen had horses, I guess, a lot of 'em.

HIIBEL:  Yeah, Lem raised thoroughbred horses, race horses.

DAVIS: This is the end of the interview with Clyde Hiibel, the date is 7 [july] 10, 1990.

Bill Davis

Clyde Hiibel

4805 Kirn Road, Fallon, Nevada