Elmer Huckaby Oral History
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CHURCHILL COUNTY MUSEUM & ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
an interview with
ELMER J. HUCKABY
July 6, 1990
and
July 24, 1990
This interview was conducted by Elaine Hesselgesser; transcribed and first draft by Pat Boden; edited by Norma Morgan; indexed by Grace Viera; final typed by Glenda Price; supervised by 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
Elmer Huckaby was interviewed in his home on Harrigan Road in Fallon, Nevada. This house was his parents' home, which they bought in 1930 upon arrival in Fallon from the Owen's Valley in California. It is a small, old fashioned farm house filled with many family pictures, trophies, and memorabilia. He has both an antique upright piano and an electric organ. (He played the organ for me after the interview.)
As he stated in the first part of the interview, Elmer has been undergoing treatment for cancer. He has lost all his thick, salt and pepper hair and his complexion is pale. He is still a large man, at least six feet tall and weighing one hundred eighty pounds. Elmer was dressed in bib overalls, flannel shirt, and work boots with a "Huckaby Salt - Since 1938" cap on his head. He was very tired, and before the interview mentioned a headache. Throughout the interview, he was seated in his recliner chair with special foam padding, often rubbing the "burns" received during his treatments.
His humor and good spirit remains, which is evident in the interview. Elmer is a happy man, very proud of his family and business and content with his life, giving much credit for all this to "the good Lord."
ELMER J. HUCKABY INTERVIEW
ELAINE: This interview is with Elmer J. Huckaby at his residence at 895 Harrigan Road in Fallon, Nevada. It is the morning of July 6, 1990. It is being done for the oral history project at the Churchill County Museum. I will be interviewing Elmer on his early childhood and his purchase of the salt works eight miles east of Fallon. This is tape 1. Okay, Elmer, when did you move to Fallon?
HUCKABY: On the tenth of May, 1931.
ELAINE: And did you come here by yourself? Or with your family?
HUCKABY: No, I come with my folks. They had a dairy business. We took a lease on the Moiola ranch out next to the cemetery. That was our first home here and my Dad had a partner down in the Owens Valley, and they didn't get along so we moved to where I live now in 1931. And Dad took a lease on the Dodge Ranch south of here where George Pomeroy lives. And we were there for about three years, and then we moved up the river to Bango, Nick Jesch's ranch and then we got together with Louis Moiola and we moved back to the Moiola ranch about 1935. And sure enough I got married in 1936, but in the meantime I'd been baling hay for a living. Oh, we worked hard, in other words it was tough going. We baled hay out of the stack, It'd take six men and myself. I had the first pickup baler in Fallon, yes, and we could bale hay with three men and myself then, oh man, so much easier. You know...and oh, came into 1938 and I had a chance to lease the salt flat from a guy name of Quinn and sure enough, in 1940 Leslie Salt called me and said "Elmer, are you the man with the salt bin in your backyard?" and I said "Yes." and they said "Well, we've had an investigation in Fallon and there's four other people besides you that's interested in the salt flat, and we find that you have the best record for honesty." Well, the truth of the matter was about three out of the four guys had spent time in Leavenworth, Kansas. (laughter) A federal penitentiary so I've always said I was the least of the crooks. (laughter) But it has been a wonderful, wonderful thing for us. I remember our first load that I got out of there was, I borrowed a wheel barrow from my Father, and sure enough, the road was washed away down to the plant area where we are now. So I backed this old '36 Chevy-oh-for a quarter of a mile and got as close as I could down to the salt flat itself. Then there was what we called drift salt that gathers on the side of the road and, sure enough, I had some two by twelve's or the old company did, they were twenty four foot long and had been soaking in water, I imagine they weighed 250 pounds, but I was young and strong, I packed and dragged them damn things down to the truck, made a ramp into the truck out of a couple of them. And then I got a couple more and made a catwalk out into the flat. So I take this old wheelbarrow, go out there and I had a number two scoop and I scooped the wheelbarrow full and run it down the catwalk, got kind of a running start at this ramp and was strong enough to push this wheelbarrow up there. It took me two days to get six ton, and the third day I brought it into the MPA Creamery north of town. Otto Scholz was the manager, and sure enough, I hand mucked that stuff into a place, and they give me seven dollars a ton. I made forty-two dollars there in three days, which was big money back in 1938 (laughter).
HUCKABY: It went on in 1940 then Leslie called me from Reno and said to me "We'd like to have you take over the flat directly from us." So, that was the way it went. Then we leased the ground, paid royalty two dollars a ton for years and years until....up until 1983 it was, and sure enough, in the meantime we'd been sold. Leslie sold out to Cargill Company from Indianapolis and we'd been sold for a year and didn't know it (laughter). We had a horrible lot of water out there, oh, and it rained in 1982 something fierce. All the people here, their hay was rotten, they'd keep turning it over, it just had to burn it practically, in other words. But we got so much water on the flat the wind blew it and it blew right over the road and washed away at least a quarter of a mile of road. There was just room for us to get our trucks down there to start overhauling it. By the time we got through buying a bunch of coarse rock to keep the place from washing away, we was in it about.. . I don't know, about six or seven thousand dollars. So I told the Leslie people, I said, "Could you come up with maybe four or five thousand to help us because it's your property?" and they said " Well, Huck, instead of us giving you five or six thousand, would you give us a dollar for the whole thing,' because they said "You've earned it." So, sure enough, I gave 'em a dollar and I was seventy- five years old at the time, so I said, "Don't make no deeds out to me, you make it out to my sons, Jim and John, and my daughter, Joyce. Make them the owners of it." And then I'll turn around and lease from them and give them two dollars a ton or a dollar a ton..." I still do. So that's the way it’s been.
HUCKABY: Now, of course, I'm getting onto eighty years old, I've had cancer in my rib and lung and spots in my liver. So I spent most of this last winter in Reno in St. Mary's Hospital. They said I'm in remission and so, oh, I'm doing good, I've started to pick up weight and my cancer doctor said "Huck, you should take twenty shots of radiation, so this thing don't wind up in your brain. So here I am with my forehead all burnt and my ears ready to fall off. I'm still in remission so thank the Lord for that.
ELAINE: What made you interested in buying the salt works, or leasing the salt works?
HUCKABY: To make a living, to make money. I thought, man, in other words, the salt in 1938 was beautiful, in other words they had another tough winter. The more water that you get on the flat the bigger the crystals will grow. Now, I've seen a lot of them an inch square. Perfectly square. Yeah, In other words I just thought to myself. Man, an area maybe five thousand acres out there salt.
ELAINE: That large?
HUCKABY: Yeah.
ELAINE: And this is pure salt?
HUCKABY: Yeah, most of the time. We have, oh, 99% or better. We have had it up to 99.85 pure, fifteen hundredths of one percent and then that's six different things, like, we do have a little sodium sulphate-- that's another word for alkali. We get that in the salt. And we get carbonates, sodium carbonates. . baking soda. Aluminum, there's a little aluminum in the salt, just traces of it. Thousandths of a part. We usually have Leslie test it and they would give us a complete analysis of all the elements in it, maybe six or seven different things.
ELAINE: Now, you test it every year?
HUCKABY: In other words it's tested for dirt, sediment if you got it, and most of the time it's nil, none, the way our invented harvester picks it up.
ELAINE: And that was something else I wanted to ask you about, was the equipment you used out there.
HUCKABY: Oh, yeah, we got away from that wheelbarrow. In 1940 Myrlin and I we built a little side delivery bucket line that raised the salt up, gravity flow into an old hand operated hoist, three ton. Your hands would smoke on that handle after you raised that three ton up (laughter). In 1941 Leslie asked us if we could ship two hundred car loads out of there, and I said, "By God, we'll sure give her a try." So we had this side bucket line affair and we built a ramp so that we could back up the ramp and dump it where it would fall through these holes when you opened the traps, into these old Chevy trucks that we had. If you didn't lose a minute you could get maybe fifty ton in eight, ten hours. We had to windrow the salt up ahead of it, in other words, we'd windrow the salt. We had an old horse blade and we'd pull it with our trucks. Windrow the salt up and then this bucket line would come down those windrows and pick up the salt. Then we had an outfit, you know, the buckets that kind of scattered. We had an outfit behind that we kind of bladed back up again, ha, ha, and sure enough we'd just get our men hired and get going, had a couple of dump trucks and here'd come a rain and our windrows would all disappear just like sugar, you know they'd melt. So, nothing to do, we just laid the crew off and wait until the flat went dry again, then we could go out and harvest again. We could windrow it, well, this rain happened, oh, or four times that summer of 1941, and I said, "There's got to be a machine that'll come out here and windrow, blade this stuff, elevate it and bunker it, all in one operation. Sure enough, I was wracking my brain, I was playing this old piano of ours, and about ten o'clock at night I got this vision of this machine and before I forgot what I'd looked at, it was Heaven sent, the good Lord sent it down, I got up and got an old piece of meat wrapping paper and I drew it out, a design. The next day I asked my wife, Vera, and our son John was only two months at the time, I said, "You get them kids ready, we're heading for Frisco. We're going to see if we can get money enough to build this harvester."
HUCKABY: So, sure enough, we got down to Newark. We had to go to Newark for the meeting and I showed this piece of meat wrapping paper around and it was pretty discouraging to watch the expressions on these guys faces as they looked at this (laughing). Anyway, one guy said, "That don't look practical to me. What you gonna do if you hit one them soppen places out there on the flat"? They said, "You gonna have salt up there fourteen foot high," said that machine will tip over. I said, "No, I don't show it here on these drawings but we're going to put outriggers on it, you know. South Sea Island canoes have them." "Oh, okay." So old man Hewitt, the President of Leslie Salt Company at that time, he said, "Elmer, you think that" and the words were s. o. b. "will work?" and I said, " Mr. Hewitt, she's gotta work or you're not going to get your two hundred car loads." He said "How much money you gotta have?" I said, "Two thousand bucks to build it." He said to his secretary, "Wilbur, make out this boy a check for two thousand dollars payable a two bits a ton, when he gets it built."
HUCKABY: Oh, boy, did I sign that slip. Sure enough I got the two thousand bucks, made a down payment on another truck coming through Reno, brought it home and Myrlin Plummer and I went to work on this thing. He done most of the work. Nine weeks later at a cost of $1165.00 for nine weeks of work of lathing, and cutting and welding, making bearings, and we took it out to the flat and it worked just like we thought it was going to work. Beautiful, you know, we were picking up a ton a minute, which beat that wheelbarrow all to pieces (laughter). It's been there ever since; this last year we've had to redo the bunker on it, the old used iron that we got from Dodge's and Drumm and anybody else that would sell us anything cheap, you know. In fact, the bucket line and all the head and tail pulleys, countershafts, big shafts like that, I paid thirty-five dollars for up there at Smith Peterson, the gravel company in Reno. They'd stacked it out and was gonna sell it for scrap iron. The bucket line, the kind of a joint, knuckle affair, and those knuckles were worn until you could see the half-inch bolts. And that old bucket line lasted until last year. We just bought a new chain for it and new buckets.
ELAINE: That's pretty good.
HUCKABY: All that time, in other words, well it was forty-six, forty-seven years that original old stuff was on there. We just replaced it last year, and we replaced the bunker with stainless steel. We spent, oh, seven or eight thousand bucks for stainless steel alone, four, six, seven times more than we paid for the whole machine in 1941.
ELAINE: Okay, you mentioned crew, how many people usually work out there?
HUCKABY: Oh, it takes three of us, two truck drivers, the trucks make a trip about every four minutes when the harvester's going good and a harvester will pick that bunker full, four ton in less than four minutes. We got a good crop this year.. you only have to go maybe seventy-five feet and you got a load. And then just as slow as you can go, it's only going maybe a mile an hour at the most, the machine itself. See, it's picking up a swath six feet wide of salt, if it's an inch deep it really goes a fogging in there, no kidding.
ELAINE: Let’s make sure I’m getting this on tape. Who were some of your first customers?
HUCKABY: Day and Annette over in Smith Valley, and of course they had big holdings up there in Twin Lakes, Bridgeport country. They had sheep and beings they owned part of Twin Lakes up there, they turned it into a spa, and have a motel and a store. They give up the sheep business, but they're making a good living, rent boats and stuff like that. Our next was Fred Fulstone, over at Smith Valley and they still buy salt from us. Old Fred died. He was over ninety years old. Young Freddy we just went to see him here about a month ago and Richard, he's quite a goer, he took over People's Pack in Yerington. In other words multimillion dollar deals, those Fulstones. Yeah, we've kept them old customers all these years I'm getting more, in other words, we could sell a lot more bags if we wanted to, but in the winter time it's almost impossible because we get state contracts for Western Nevada. Sometimes we go as far as Beatty, South and we go North, oh, Quinn River country and Orovada. Pretty close to the Oregon border. Of course all of Fallon and Carson and Reno and City of Reno, Washoe County, Douglas County, City of Carson City, City of Sparks, and Pershing County all come with their trucks and we load them up at the salt flat. We have two big trucks of our own and they're busy with the State, usually. Last winter we was a thousand ton behind most of the time. Our trucks were delivering a hundred ton or better to Reno a day, and Carson and still. . .in other words, we sell the salt out there for sixteen and a half a ton f.o.b. or truck, into Reno, around twenty-five most of the time, for ten dollars for delivery or nine and a half or whatever it amounts to.
ELAINE: Now this is used mostly to de-ice the roads and stuff?
HUCKABY: Yeah, de-ice the roads. The environmentalists are trying to stop all salt use. In fact, they don't want no more salt in the Tahoe Basin. We've been accused of killing all the trees up there which is not the truth at all. It's the pine beetles and last winter we had thirty below. It killed a lot of trees. It killed all my rose bushes practically, I've had to cut them all back. Killed a lot of trees here in Fallon. Of course, this Sue Del Papa, she's on the highway board so it might be they're going to outlaw salt everywhere for poisoning the environment or something. In other words, the stuff that they used up at the Lake instead of salt, last year they tried it, costs more than all of our bids for just thirteen miles and we de-iced the rest of the state for less than what it cost, and this stuff that they use ..you gotta have special clothes. You can't breathe it too good, so instead of killing pine trees they're gonna be killing human beings and it leaves a residue. It's almost as slick as the ice itself. It's made by Chevron, I think they bought that Board out really. I hate to say that but Chevron has that kind of money that they can buy people out, you know. Of course, the state highway, they hate to use it, they have to put sand on it immediately or it blows away, (laughter). In other words, they get some screwy ideas. These environmentalists don't tell the truth all the time. Sometimes I think they're a bunch of reds.
ELAINE: Well, how much of your business still goes for livestock feeding and stuff?
HUCKABY: Oh, maybe, fifteen percent, twenty percent. We have Nevada Supplement up at Lovelock. They make all kinds of pellets and all kind of animal feed. They use our salt. In other words, you can control what an animal eats by the amount of salt you put in their alfalfa or whatever. If you want, you can make them eat just exactly what you want by the amount of salt you put in their food. It's highly technical stuff. They go to college to learn it, you know. They can board, I don't know, twenty thousand head of sheep, enormous amounts of cattle up in Lovelock area. They had to buy out-I don't know- five or six ranches up there to be sure that they had plenty of feed, you know. Boy, they spent millions, guy by the name of McDougal, he spent millions setting up this plant. It's north of Lovelock there about three miles. Really they've been one of our bigger customers besides the State. And of course, we deal with John Ascuaga over at Smith Valley. He has his fattening pens over there. He has a ranch at Bridgeport, summer range, then he drives them down to Smith Valley to fatten them. And then they are transported to Sacramento for slaughter. That's why John Ascuaga has such good meat all the time. They're . . . scientifically fed.
ELAINE: How long do you take to harvest it?
HUCKABY: Oh, last year we was, oh, we was months. In other words we put about five thousand ton in a pile and then we'd get rain. We found it's better to just let the salt flat rest, and make salt again, rather than to go out and keep stirring the . . . you know, stir up the silt if you keep it working, and the silt will form back into crystal, makes the salt look tan, so we just pull the equipment out until it goes dry again. Last year it took three crops to get fifteen thousand ton in the pile.
ELAINE: So it's pretty seasonal? Do you do it mostly in the summer?
HUCKABY: Oh, yeah. Well, when the salt flat goes dry, usually we have water until oh, maybe March, April. We went out in April this year, and the kids got, I don't know, five or six hundred ton. Sure enough, got rained out, and we've been waiting for it to dry up for nearly two months. It had a lot of water, so that's what made our big crop this year. The kids are out there right now. Too bad you can't come out and see it.
ELAINE: I'm going to some day.
HUCKABY: Yeah, Elaine, it would be something that you wouldn't forget. It's no ordinary thing. Had an old fellow from Dow Chemical come up during the war and he said "Huck, I've been around the world three or four times." He said, "You've got the most economical salt operation I ever saw." You know, a lot of places they do it by hand, China, you know, and then there's places where they'll make fifteen million ton of salt in one year. In Baja California. The Gulf of California? Natural salt pans practically, very little diking was necessary; and they make fifteen million ton a year and they still run out of salt. They ship it out there by the boat load, ten or twelve thousand ton at a time. It's terrific, it's a German owned company. They really have a big operation. They sent boat loads to New York. Boat loads of salt. They thought they could get by without salt, and hell, they had nothing but wrecks, accidents. They went back to the use of salt. They found out it was the cheapest.
ELAINE: When you first leased it out there, how much equipment was left?
HUCKABY: Oh, there was a couple of old duplex trucks left. Guy by the name of Heward, he finally wrecked out the whole thing. They had a big long kiln dryer, sixty feet long, and it must have been four feet in diameter, at least. Huge. During the first part of World War II they were so anxious to get things going out in Gabbs, they had magnesite out there, that they needed. And this old kiln dryer at the salt flat wound up as a culvert in that road going to Gabbs (laughter). No kidding, that's the truth. Old Elmer Heward he hauled it away. So we built our own stainless steel kiln dryer about, 1980 I guess. So, we get going out there we can kiln dry about eight tons per hour that we bag up and the fines we use for this Nevada Supplement, like I was saying awhile ago. In other words, it's what we call a three-thirty second fine, screened and they sort of take it loose, which is handy, you know. We don't have to bag it or anything.
We start out with the bags, I think they were four or five cents apiece and now they're forty cents apiece. Sixteen dollars a ton for bags alone. That's what it amounts to, forty bags to a ton, fifty pound. So, in other words, we have to charge like the devil, seventy-six dollars a ton, bags up. After we get through paying now we thought we could heat the thing with oil but it didn't atomize like it should. In other words, when you've got the salt out you can still smell stove oil in it, it wasn't completely burning so we was afraid it would make cattle sick, or sheep, so we had to go to Petrolane. Petrolane at that time, I think, was about eighteen to twenty cents a gallon. Now it's a dollar, a dollar and some cents sometime. So, in other words, by the time you pay the guys to bag it, you just about break even. Boy, it's just a service is all. I'll show you, Elaine, I'll show the bags after awhile, when we get through here.
ELAINE: What was some of the funniest experiences you've had out there?
HUCKABY: Well, there's been some dandies. I've come close to being killed three or four times. This old harvester we built had an old five ton Dodge rear end in it, what they called spike axles at the time. The axle took the weight of the machine, and old Myrlin and I had put triple tires on to keep it up in the soft places. But this axle broke and we couldn't get it out, we couldn't get it out, we beat on it with sledge hammers. So I said, "Well, we'll get it out of there." I had dynamite. So we rolled a barrel up there and it seemed like it took the cast iron bung to hold the dynamite in the right place; and sure enough I lit the fuse and I backed off there, oh, a hundred feet and "Boom" that went off. That cast iron bung come right through the barrel and it actually pert near burnt my ear. That's how close I come to getting my head tore off, no kidding.
Elaine: Wow!
HUCKABY: Yeah, and, oh, it wasn't funny. We was trying to get an axle out and we had a ball peen hammer and I hit on that ball peen hammer and this old Tom Jones, running the harvester, the piece hit his thumb on the inside of the palm and you could see it trying to come out over here. [Elmer pointed to the back of his hand by the base of the thumb.] Oh, he was hurting, I said, "Now, Tom, you just hang tough here for a minute." So I got my knife, I cut the skin and then cut the piece of ball peen hammer out of his hand (laughter). Old Tom, he was a wonderful old fellow. He come from Texas, he said, "Boy," he'd been picking cotton down there. He said, "This is the best job in the country." (laughter). Oh, dear, old fellow, I was a pallbearer for him. He died, he got cancer. Old Sophie's still going, she's celebrated her ninetieth birthday and I went, Mary and I went. Oh, so many of my old pals are out at the graveyard. Actually, I think there's more out there than I got running around here in Fallon (laughter). I tell you, people have been real nice to me since my sickness, no kidding. People in St Mary's, the nurses, dang near fall in love with them all, they just sure treated me nice. No kidding, and the doctors, same way over at radiation. . . it seemed like I'd get there and maybe my appointment be for 11:30, if I'd get there at 11:00, "go on in."
ELAINE: That's pretty good.
HUCKABY: Oh, yeah. Of course some of them just absolutely, you know, beautiful, no kidding. Of course, when you're sick every girl looks like a queen.
ELAINE: Yeah, our Daddy met an awful lot of nice people.
HUCKABY: Oh, your Dad, he was great, I'll tell you. I'll never forget we went to a dance out at the Half Way House. That was before prohibition, you know, the Ferguson boys had a big jug of whiskey and damn, I got into that and the next thing you know we were heading for home in my old 1928 Chevy coupe and, sure enough, it was winter, my damn radiator froze up, so I stopped at the river and got your Dad's hat, it was a new Stetson hat, and that was the only thing I could get water in (laughing), and thawed that damn thing out and took old Phil on home. He'd passed out cold. Oh, boy. He was great. I tell you this District hasn't been right since old Phil Hiibel passed away, or quit the job. I tell you it's getting worse all the time. So much, the Government backing those Indians up over there at Pyramid Lake. Man, when you get to fighting the Government you'll have a hell of a time. I know your Dad had to go back to Washington two or three times to see if he couldn't straighten the thing out. Of course, Reno and Sparks wants water, Carson wants water. This water is getting to be quite a problem. I hope and pray that this valley don't turn out like Owens Valley did, the water all going to L.A. That's the reason why I'm in Fallon. Yeah, we was trying to lease ground from the city down there and, oh, we had about a thirty cow dairy. Dad just got through leveling a hundred acres of ground, getting it all seeded, coming up and the city refused to give him water for it. That's when he said, "By God, I'm going to get out of here. I'm going to go north. I'm not going to get any closer to the city of Los Angeles than I am right now." And that's when we come to Fallon.
ELAINE: Well, is there anything else you'd like to add about the salt works?
HUCKABY: We just keep making it easier. We had an old, let's see what they call it, it's like a Barber Green loader, Leslie had it, we used it for loading out of stock piles for years. It'd load a ton a minute, and now we've got skip loaders, we have a Terex, that's a two and a half, three yard , we have a 1955 Caterpillar, and we have a 1933 Caterpillar, track layers. We got three skip loaders out to the flat. Something we never had before. We've had to buy trucks, Peterbilts, have a Freightliner and then we have an International, all capable of twenty-five tons.
ELAINE: And your son, John, helps you?
HUCKABY: My son, John, is running it right now, and his two boys. He got three boys, I think he'll have all three of them out there. It takes, like I said awhile ago, it takes a man to run the harvester, a man on each truck, you gotta have two trucks. And that's the efficiency that puts sixty ton an hour in the pot.
ELAINE: Well, I guess that's the end of the interview then.
HUCKABY: Okay, honey, it's been fun.
ELAINE: I thank you.
HUCKABY: Okay, dear. [end of tape 1]
ELAINE: This is the second interview with Elmer J. Huckaby. It is being done at his residence on Harrigan Road in Fallon, Nevada. It is the morning of July 24th, 1990. This interview is being done for the Churchill County Museum Oral History Project. The interviewer is Elaine Hesselgesser. Well, Elmer, I have been out and I've seen the salt works, and I've got a lot more questions I want to ask you.
HUCKABY: Okay.
ELAINE: It is beautiful, it really is beautiful out there. You mentioned before I started taping that the first time you went out there was in 1931?
HUCKABY: Yeah, I went out there with this Huckstep fella and that's when I said, "Boy, if I never see this place again it'll be quick enough!" Spent two-thirds of my life out there.
ELAINE: Who was out there then? Who was operating the salt flats?
HUCKABY: Really, no one. It was just a bunch of old pound and twelve ounce cartons of salt, a whole bunch of those left, and I think there was still some fifty pound bricks, if I remember right, that this old Huckstep would bring to town and sell.
ELAINE: Your son, John, told us when we were out there that one of the salt companies out there had a regular mill set up where they did all, made the blocks . . .
HUCKABY: Oh, yes.
ELAINE: . . and packaged it.
HUCKABY: I think it was a four story plant, they had.
ELAINE: Was it right there on the salt flats?
HUCKABY: Oh, yeah. In other words, they had that big kiln and all that stuff. They had everything but salt in the pile (laughing). If they'd of had our harvester it still might be a home owned thing. Leslie come along, I think in about--oh, musta been 1932 or along through there that Leslie bought out the Pure Salt Company. Fifty thousand dollars. A man by the name of Boden was the superintendent out there and he took the fifty thousand and left all the stock holders a holding the bag.
ELAINE: That's Boden B-O-D-E-N?
HUCKABY: Not any relation to the Bodens here in Fallon. And then it fell in the hands of junkers. They was junkin' out all the equipment, the trucks. Oh, they spent a quarter of a million bucks out there.
ELAINE: That was a lot of money back then.
HUCKABY: Yeah, they gathered stock from all over Nevada and eastern California, sold stock. During the war when we was shipping that salt out of there guys would come and say, "Hey I got a thousand dollars worth of stock in that place, I wonder if I can get my money back?" and I said, "Well, I tell you what I've just leased it from Leslie, you can call their lawyers in Sacramento, there's four of 'em, (laughing)" and it seemed like it was--but there was so many. I've seen the stock that was sold, a fellow by the name of Scatena over in Yerington bought some stock. He showed me. Little fella, Pure Salt Company.
ELAINE: Leslie didn't have to make any of this good after they bought Pure Salt out?
HUCKABY: Didn’t have to many any of this good?
ELAINE: Any of the stock, that was just Pure Salt's stock Leslie didn't have to back it?
HUCKABY: Well, I think they sold quite a bit down for fish canneries, down in Monterey. And Leslie, more or less, bought 'em to get 'em off the market I think. More than anything. Some silly guy like me come along and take care of it for 'em (laughing.)
ELAINE: (Laughing) How did the war affect the salt business?
HUCKABY: Oh, well, the summer of 1941 Leslie had a cloudburst come down Niles Canyon and come across the flats there. Run right through their stock pile area and took about sixty thousand ton of salt back into the San Francisco Bay and they were gettin' short of salt and that's when they asked if we could supply Dow Chemical in Pittsburgh with salt. That's what we was doin' at the time. It finally wound up we was shippin' salt clear into British Columbia and back to Lanae, Utah, across the biggest salt deposit in the world (laughing). But the way that come about--the S.P. Company would give a contract for salt, for their salting stations--they used to put salt in those refers where the ice was, you know--. So Leslie would get the contract and we'd fill 'em from Fallon here. So that's the way that--we had to invent a box car loader, old Myrlin and I, to load salt in the box cars. We did (laughing).
ELAINE: That's pretty good. You were telling me that the crew you had working for you when Pearl Harbor occurred, what were their names again?
HUCKABY: Oh, I had Harold Taylor, Freddie Anderson, Lynn Walker, Arly Baker from Kansas, and I had Neal Copenhaver to help me get started. And another guy, I forget his name, an Italian kid. But there was five of us, six of us. Old Baker and I was putting it in a pile and I had four transports on the road after Pearl Harbor.
ELAINE: And you said that you had to double production?
HUCKABY: Oh, yeah. Yeah we had to stay out there then. We'd stay out there until we couldn't see. Finally put a lantern on the bottom of the ramp (laughing), and a lamp on the old harvester and I tell you, we went through it. Of course, it was a lot better for us than dodging bullets, you know. So, if that's what was going to help win the war, we sure give her a good try.
ELAINE: What were they using the salt for?
HUCKABY: To make chlorine. They use enormous amounts of electricity to break the chlorine out of salt. In other words, when you buy this "made by electricity", Clorox, all it is, is electrocuted salt. Oh, man, you go in their plant and every other place "Danger High Voltage", and the place is just hummin' with this breaking the chlorine out. They got chlorine, caustic soda, and ammonia out of this salt. The Dow Chemical Company. Now they handle it by the boat load. Railroad cars are out, now they handle it, oh, maybe ten thousand ton at a time--boat loads come in there.
ELAINE: That many?
HUCKABY: Yeah, in other words, trucks--railroads is--they do it cheaper by boat loads. They have equipment there that loads thousands of tons per hour. Big old belts six feet wide, you know, just tons and tons per minute. Just no end to it.
ELAINE: Then after the war was over what did this do to your salt business?
HUCKABY: We got through I think in March of 1945 and the peace was declared in August of that year. But we were done before the war was over. In other words, the prices of everything was gettin' high, my wages had doubled, we were just skiddin' our wheels. They didn't see fit to give us a two bit a ton raise so we said, "To heck with it." I was having trouble getting men by the end, in other words, I'd have a crew maybe Saturday night and Monday morning maybe half of 'em would show up. I had a, practically a nervous break-down. Got the shingles. In other words, I just said, "To heck with it."
ELAINE: This is a family operation now, did Vera, you were married in what year?
HUCKABY: 1936.
ELAINE: 1936, and what part did she have in your business? Was she the bookkeeper?
HUCKABY: She was our bookkeeper and she drove truck. She even drove the harvester out there. My wife was a wonderful person, no kiddin'. She helped me in every way she could. She always had a lot of faith. Her old saying goes, "My Elmer can do anything (laughing)." She thought I gonna be president of Leslie Salt someday.
ELAINE: Oh, bless her heart. And she was a local girl, wasn't she?
HUCKABY: Well, she come from around Hayward, California. She was up here gettin' a divorce--she was married before-when I met her. I was talkin' to your mother on Maine Street right in front of the old bank, and Vera walked down the street with the Hiatt girls, and I was raisin' a half a beard for the whiskerino contest, I shaved this down along, this was standin' out here like this [pointing to his face] and she looked at me and said, "Well, what a funny lookin' fellow you are." (Laughing.) And I told your mother, I said, I looked at her and I said, "If that girl isn't married, there goes my wife." Your mother said, "Oh, could be." And sure enough, we was married three months later.
ELAINE: Fast. And her maiden name was Hattenhour.
HUCKABY: Hattenhour, Vera Vivian Hattenhour. She was just turned eighteen. She got her divorce from this old boy, an old kid from Arkansas, and sure enough, we was married on the ninth of December, 1936, and here come our oldest boy, Jim, December 9th, 1937. (Laughter.) Yeah, that's the truth. Then old John he come in '41 the 30th of June, Joycee come in '42 on the 24th of November. So we had quite a little old family. We enjoyed 'em, still do. Sure glad I got 'em.
ELAINE: They're a nice family. When you were working the salt flats, during the war then, that's when you lived on Front Street?
HUCKABY: Yeah. Next to the Bodens. One door east of Andy Drumm's shop. Old Andy Drumm, there was a character too. He had a brain. He was the one guy that figured out the gallons of water in Lahontan Dam after it got full.
ELAINE: Oh, was he really?
HUCKABY: Yeah. I forget what it was, but it was a hell of a lot of gallons (laughing.)
ELAINE: Yeah, I would imagine. I'd like to see it full again.
HUCKABY: Me too. I've said this I don't know how many times, Elaine, really maybe I shouldn't put this out on tape but it seems like this district hasn't run right since old Phil [Hiibel] left. No kiddin'. He was a good head. He had a good head, you know. Beautiful.
ELAINE: Well, after you shut down the salt works for awhile when the war was coming to an end what did you do then?
HUCKABY: Oh, I still put up salt. We had these old customers, you know, like these first ones. I went gold minin' up to Lovelock and went broke. Pert near lost the ranch here, for a twenty-two hundred dollar grocery bill-Kent's--we finally got it away from that. I said, "Bobber, the only way we're gain' to make it is you sign a note at the bank with me, I'll try and pay it off at a hundred a month." Boy, there was many a month we struggled for that hundred I'll tell you. Then in 1956, Leslie had a big strike and it was just about the time they were doin' all their cannin's, like making dill pickles, and cannin' tomatoes, like Heinz Fifty-seven Varieties. Leslie said, "Huck, can you start shippin' car loads?" Sure 'nough, they said, "Man, that salt worked great on dill pickles, cannin' tomatoes" So we sold thirty-one car loads it was, and I made twelve thousand dollars and that's what saved the ranch and paid all our bills, and I'll tell you, I never want to be in the hole again, because they start pickin' on you (laughing), there's no end to it. But it saved our neck and we haven't been in the hole since. In other words, kept it in the black, and as the years come along, why we got the bigger, better and faster equipment. These diesels can make two trips while we was makin' one with them old GMC's and Chevy. and haulin' three times as much. We haul twenty-five ton. In other words, we done real good the last ten years.
ELAINE: Now, John was telling us that he started out there, he can remember setting on your lap out there when he was seven or eight years old, how old. . .?
HUCKABY: Oh, yeah, hell, when he was only two or three (laughing). We'd have a load here and there and old John he liked to go with me, and sure enough, I'd put the little fellow on my lap and I'd say, "You drive, boy." Okay. He'd get over there and start lookin' off (Elmer turned his head to the side.) and I'd say, "You got to drive now, boy. Keep her down the road." Oh, he got the biggest kick out of that, settin' in my lap. No, I'll tell you, my boy John's a wonderful fellow. If I was going to go have a party somewhere I'd just as soon have John as anybody.
ELAINE: Yes, he is.
HUCKABY: They're workin' on rear ends now. Got one of the old swampers in here, got the rear ends a howlin' so we're going to fix it while we've got this lay-off. Till the flat goes dry. We've got about four or five of these old '49s, so we got parts. You see 'em out there (laughing). It's wonderful, in other words, parts for '49s are getting hard to get.
ELAINE: Oh,yes they are, besides now they're antiques so they charge you twice as much.
HUCKABY: Oh, hell, they want fifty, sixty dollars for an axle. I bought a hundred of 'em for seven and a half, ten dollars. Now this old truck that we got out there, we didn't pay too much for it, but if we'd had to go buy the parts and the housing and the whole bit, it'd be a thousand bucks alone. I don't know where this country's goin' along that line, in other words, there's got to be a ceiling some place. And then it's goin' to start down the other way. I'm afraid ... I'm scared for America the way we're goin'. Maybe I'm gettin' old and feeble. . . What else have we got on the agenda?
ELAINE: Well, just wondering how your family had helped you and how long they'd worked out there. Did Jim ever work out there?
HUCKABY: Yeah. Jim used to help us bag. I don't think Jim ever helped us harvest, but he used to help us bag salt, and Mother, you know, we'd have the gunny sacks, fifty pound sacks and she'd sew 'em, you know, like you'd do a grain sack, and where she'd pull it through this finger'd (pointing to the little finger) get to bleedin' so we'd put black tape around her hand (laughing). No kiddin'. God bless her, she'd sit down there and then oh, usually we had a half dozen of the neighbor kids with us, and they'd be stackin’ ‘em on the truck. The Boden kids, they'd stack 'em on the trucks, and sure enough, the big thrill of the day was stoppin' at Salt Wells and gettin' a big old Coke for the kids and a beer for me, boy. Oh, no, I stayed sober. Maybe some candy. Oh, the kids, they had more fun, they'd get up on this load of bags and they'd kinda make a little windshield out of bags and they'd lay behind it, comin' down the road, there'd be three, four kids up on that wagon and old Duke, the dog up on top the truck comin' home. I tell you it was--you look back on it--it was work at the time, but you look back at the fun we had too. We had work and fun.
ELAINE: And accomplishment.
HUCKABY: Yeah, we used to have kind of a storage bins there by the screenin' plant. Did you see the screenin' plant?
ELAINE: Uh huh.
HUCKABY: John, he was supposed to be keepin' the salt goin' down through to the people below there so they could weigh it and bag it, you know. Well, he got right over the hole where the salt was goin' down, and he got right up to his shoulders and I couldn't pull him outa there (laughing), so nothin' for him to do but stand right there until they drained the salt away from him. We've had a big time on that old flat. It's been an amazing thing, in other words, I don't think there's been any two seasons exactly alike.
ELAINE: I can see where it would be . .
HUCKABY: In other words, I guess you forget, but this year's different. The salt is just like a screen this year.
ELAINE: That was something else John was telling us when we were out there, is that the person on the harvester while they're harvesting, they'll notice the size of the crystals, there's hand signals they give each other on where to dump it.
HUCKABY: Oh, yeah, where to go. In other words, if we have a little dirt, if we see a little mud, why we put it in a separate pile. It doesn't make any difference if there's mud to the state, no, in other words, it's just a stain more than anything, but we do, for our kiln dryer, we separate it so it's all white. It goes in the bags. We keep it separate. Like this, is a kiln dryer.
ELAINE: This is a circle.
HUCKABY: A kiln dryer. A dirty load is like this.
ELAINE: You're just shaking your hand.
HUCKABY: (Laughing).
ELAINE: See if I can remember that. Another thing he was showing us was the open wells out there, the…
HUCKABY: . . . The open springs.
ELAINE: Springs, yeah. How many are out there?
HUCKABY: There's a dozen of 'em or more. Old Jasper Hall, he put my old '36 right into the head lights in one of the springs, right into the head lights. Man, the engine was full of salt water, everything was full of salt water.
ELAINE: How did you get it out?
HUCKABY: Finally had another truck, pulled it out and we didn't even try to start it. We pulled it in where we could drain the salt water out of the crankcase and dried it all out, rinsed it out with, I think they had some kerosene, rinsed the crank out with kerosene, started it, finally got the engine going. I put new oil in it, and sure enough, got it runnin' and about two weeks later the front wheel bearings went out (laughing). And I think I had to take the generator off, before it'd generate again, it'd gotten full of salt. Oh, man, that old Chevy was quite an old truck.
ELAINE: Is all the water that comes out of there, is it fresh water, or is it brine or?
HUCKABY: Those springs?
ELAINE: Yes.
HUCKABY: Well, its a fresh water to the point it just keeps those springs open. If, like during the earthquake in '54, there was a bunch of those springs that were closed, the water source was shut off, an underground disturbance. There was a spring there, straight south, oh, it was ten, twelve feet across and it healed up. It healed up, in other words it healed up with salt. Now we're going over it. We put seventy feet of wire down it and hit bottom down there--seventy foot.
ELAINE: Seventy feet.
HUCKABY: And then instead of just straight down like this, it looked like it went like this. (Pyramid shape or fanned out under the salt) Oh, they, the company before us had an old Holt and it went into one of those springs an they never did get it out. It's still down there.
ELAINE: A Holt, what is that?
HUCKABY: A Holt tractor.
ELAINE: A tractor.
HUCKABY: A track layer and a tractor. No, they said it's still down there, they never did get it out.
ELAINE: In a big hole.
HUCKABY: You know, really, if you knew what was under there it'd scare you to death. But apparently those springs, there's dozens of 'em out there. We mark 'em and stay away from 'em. We don't think anything about it (laughing).
ELAINE: You're used to them now, huh?
HUCKABY: Yeah. Just something you get used to I guess.
ELAINE: Getting back to your family. Now, when did John start working out there full time?
HUCKABY: Well, let's see, he was working before he got out of high school, helping me. I think, he graduated in 1960, that's when you graduated. [end of tape 2 side A]
ELAINE: And Jim he worked out there for awhile helping bag but then he left here didn't he?
HUCKABY: Yeah, he, see he graduated in '55 and he went into the Navy that fall.
ELAINE: That's right.
HUCKABY: Yeah. He was two years in the Navy. He was in Guam, he was in Alameda, that's where he met his wife--Oakland. She was a real estate appraiser, smart, gray, beautiful hair, her father was one of the heads of Peterson Caterpillar Company in San Leandro. He was with Caterpillar for thirty years, fine man, expert on hydraulics. We liked him, we liked the whole family. In fact, Marie is a computer expert now, she gives lessons. You know, you can get into computers so far, in other words, I think she went to school for ten years. University of Pennsylvania, come to think about it.
ELAINE: Now is that where they're at now, back in Pennsylvania?
HUCKABY: Yeah, they're back in a place called Clark Summit, it's out of Scranton about seven miles, up in the northeast corner of Pennsylvania--Pocono Mountains.
ELAINE: Jim is a minister now?
HUCKABY: Yeah, he's speaks with youth groups. Oh, he travels all over kinda recruits for basketball players, oh, he's way down south sometimes recruitin' guys. He'll see a good basketball player and he'll have a beard and he said, "If you play for us you gotta shave off your beard, get a good haircut." So many of 'em said, I'm not going to get rid of my beard." (laughing).
ELAINE: What college is it?
HUCKABY: It's Baptist Bible College. I think it had seven or eight hundred kids. A fine bunch of people, all nice, clean kids. I think Scotty, their boy, made All-American this year, of all the Baptist schools throughout America. They got a special deal for having such a good scholarship record too. In other words, one of the most outstanding boys, one of a hundred, the most outstanding kids in the nation, college wise. He got a special award when Joyce and I went back there last summer. Outstanding.
ELAINE: Well, that's very nice.
HUCKABY: He is a basketball player.
ELAINE: And what does Joycee do? Is she the bookkeeper now?
HUCKABY: Yeah, she's having a little struggle. Kinda wanted a leave of absence. Poor old John and I, we need her bad, you know. She's, I don't know, she doesn't feel like she's wanted or needed or something. In other words, we'll get it straightened out.
ELAINE: I'm sure you will.
HUCKABY: We need her too bad. There's so many things, new ones, new laws coming up every day governing this thing. And, of course, our insurance on the trucks tripled from five hundred to fifteen hundred, and road tax, diesel tax, my God, it's thirty cents a gallon for diesel tax. Thirty cents a gallon, and we used to buy diesel for eighteen cents a gallon. In other words, there's so many things, environmentalists are trying to stop us. They have stopped us up at the Lake. They don't want no more salt in the Tahoe Basin. They say we're killing all the trees. The trees are dying on top of the mountain where salt never gets. It's the beetles and that thirty below zero weather killed a bunch of trees. Killed all my rosebushes, killed some trees. In other words, we're gettin' blamed for something that's not our fault. So, KTVN is supposed to be down and give us a go, they was supposed to be down Friday and here we got rained out Thursday, so we had to head the old boy off coming down.
ELAINE: I understood they were coming out there.
HUCKABY: So, he's wanting to get an interview too, and take some pictures of the harvester when it's runnin'. What else have we got?
ELAINE: Well, that's about it, Elmer. Are you starting to get tired?
HUCKABY: Oh, I'm kind of running out of words here (laughing).
ELAINE: Okay. We'll bring this to a close then.
HUCKABY: Okay, dear.
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