William "Bill" Alfred Lee Oral History
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CHURCHILL COUNTY MUSEUM & ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
an interview with
WILLIAM [BILL] ALFRED LEE
July 12, 1990
This interview was conducted by Bill Davis; transcribed by Jennie Mader; computerized by Pat Baden; edited by Sylvia Arden, Norma Morgan and Myrl Nygren; final typed by Glenda Price; index by Gracie Viera; 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
Bill Lee, who is seventy-seven years old, tells of his early memories of his father's first residence in the east part of the city of Fallon and in the Beach District. He describes the location of the toll bridge east of the present south gate of the Naval Air Station. He tells of the moving of the original Beach school to another location and recalls driving the school bus and the many students he picked up.
Mr. Lee also tells of his memories of the Government Pasture before it was fenced and of the workmen, and their horses and Fresno scrapers building the irrigation canal around the south rim of it. He was fascinated with the "big dragline that walked like a man" that dug drain ditches in the Beach District. He remembers his first trip in a Model T Ford to see Lahontan Dam.
He mentions his parents' memories of early floods in the valley.
Bill relates his various working experiences. He worked as a sack sewer and later as foreman at the flour mill on North Maine Street for twelve years. He drove truck hauling ore and also worked for a construction company. He tells of getting into local politics as a County Commissioner. He also relates how his present knee problems began when as a boy he had an accident on homemade stilts.
INTERVIEW WITH BILL LEE
DAVIS: This is Bill Davis with the Churchill County Museum Oral History Program. The date is July 12, 1990. I'm going to be interviewing Bill Lee. We are at 4195 St. Clair Road, and we are sitting in the dining room at his residence. Okay, Bill, why don't we start out with your early memories and tell us a little bit about your grandparents, and your dad.
LEE: Well, of my grandparents, I don't know much. They passed away shortly after I was born. In fact, the grandfather was just one week. I was born and the next week he was coming up to see me and he died before he got there. And my grandmother, I don't really know just what day she died, I was about ten. But, the first that I can remember of ever being around here was when I was maybe three years old and we lived on the southeast corner of town. My dad had a corral where presently there's homes built there now.
DAVIS: What part of town was that?
LEE: Down on McLean Street. Right on the corner. I don’t know who lives there now. It’s still there. And the corral is over on the east. Henry Fallon moved to Fallon, which had nothing to do with the name of Fallon, he lived kind of around the corner and the street started at Front Street on out east. He built a house there, that was my neighbors right there.
DAVIS: What did your dad tell you about your grandparents? What do you know about them?
LEE: I got names of all them. They'd been around the Bishop Country [California] and in Yerington. They had a ranch in Yerington. Somewhere in the museum they got a picture of the Lee farm in Yerington. I think they came over here and built the flour mill, and they had all that land where the flour mill was, where Bob Hyde lives now. He sold it recently. Used to be the two-story house there and they all got clear over on Union Lane, clear up to where Freddie Facha lives now, they had all that country in there.
DAVIS: Your dad was farming that area?
LEE: No, my grandfather had all this property when they were kids. That two-story house was there. I think they've taken the top off now, I'm not sure. But they had school upstairs. The kids got too smart with the teacher, then Grandad would come tearing upstairs and straighten them out. (laughter)
DAVIS: Was that the family home then?
LEE That was the family home. They farmed all that, they cut hay and…
DAVIS: Your dad was part of the farming
LEE: Yeah, he was part of it as he was growing up.
DAVIS: So when you were telling about your property there, your dad's property in Fallon, you were farming that a little bit, or was he working out?
LEE: Well, see that's before he was married. He was freightin' into Fairview, Wonder, and Rawhide.
DAVIS: Your dad or your grandfather?
LEE: My dad did. My granddad just farmed there.
DAVIS: Well, now freighting was from where to where then?
LEE: Well, they'd pick up in Wadsworth or Fernley . . uh, Hazen. A lot of it would come right out of Wadsworth. And then they got the railroad going here. They'd load team after team in Hazen and they'd have problem with hobos. They'd have to sleep on the ground. That was before they had the hotels and things, but they had their teams, they'd tied to the feed wagons. But that's where their main base was, Hazen, when they worked. Out there at that ranch, they had all the horses there. I ran into a fellah one time that said he'd come to Fallon with his horse and buggy, come in from the eastern part of the country. He come by that place and he said, "Your dad, when he was living at home with his folks, was the first man that I talked to when I come to Churchill County." And he said he had a horse tied up to a wagon wheel, a big wagon, high wagon, which he always did. If he could, he'd tie a horse to a wagon wheel, 'cuz he couldn't hurt himself. And he said, "Every time I saw that man afterwards, he was doing something with a horse." Of course, he was always breaking a team of horses for his freight wagon and things. Uncle Bob, he was in the freightin' in Fairview.
DAVIS: Food stuffs and mining stuff out for Fairview?
LEE: Oh, everything in Fairview, Wonder, and Rawhide. And going across to Rawhide they went out south of the flats, south of Salt Wells and along on that flat out there. They used to catch sagebrush all along and lay it in the road to keep from sinking down. And going the other way to Fairview, they went across the flats at a certain time of the year, but then, I think in August, they had to take the sand road along the outside on account they said the tide come in and they were sinking. That was around the turn of the century or before.
DAVIS: There was water down in that area then?
LEE: Um hum. Well, it wasn't really water, just got wet. Just like it is today yet. You go out there at certain times and you'll sink. Of course, that was about the time that the county seat was at La Plata. And, finally one night they loaded the little courthouse on a wagon and hauled it down to Stillwater. When they got up the next morning in La Plata, the courthouse was gone. (laughter) Gone into Stillwater. They used to throw all their parties and dances over in Stillwater.
DAVIS: Your first memories then were where?
LEE: When we lived there in the corner of town, and then in 1919 we moved out to the ranch in the Beach District. The place right on the end of Beach Road, right in against the Government pasture.
DAVIS: How old were you then?
LEE: Five. Went down the road, by where Tom Ormachea's place is now [4700 Testolin Rd.], and the old slough channel come down through there. Now, I don't really know why, but when you went down the road, you had to go through where it made a little elbow, and you went through the water and up the other side. Moved down there in 1919 with the team and wagons and a few things, and he went out there an built a little old shack. We led the cows we had in town, two cows and a calf.
DAVIS: Now, there was no building there, but he built .
LEE: He built the house, he used to homestead that piece of ground--eighty acres on the south end of the Sam Frank place. That's where the Gary Snow's feed yard is today [3500 Cushman Rd.]. It joined that right on the south end against the Government pasture, community pasture.
DAVIS: What kind of ground was that down there?
LEE: Just raw ground. All real good land, but, as time went on for some reason that whole country along there, where those ranches are, they all went bad... And. Old Man Pierson had the eighty acres across the road, where we went. We had to cross a little old drain ditch right down there to take the lumber over there for the house. I remember going riding on that and it seemed to me like we was a week going down there. It was all one day, but it seemed like we was a week going down there, but-
DAVIS: From Fallon, out there?
LEE: From Fallon, out there. Being a little kid, riding on that wagon. Old Man Pierson had my dad level up that land for him and level up ours.
DAVIS: That was all horse leveling?
LEE: All horse leveling.
DAVIS: A tailboard?
LEE: A tailboard. That was a Churchill County invention, the tailboard. Old Spryer [George Spryer] used to have the blacksmith's shop about where the Uptown Motel is now, right west of the Telephone Office. He got a patent on it.
DAVIS: I didn't know that.
LEE: Spryer got the patent on the tailboard, but that was a Churchill County invention, here, the tailboard. I have an old replica of a tailboard out there yet.
DAVIS: Now, let's see, you would have started to school what, six years old?
LEE: Yeah, when I was six. I was six in April and I started that fall.
DAVIS: Where did you go to school?
LEE: What they called the Beach School, and it was down on what they call Macari Road now.
DAVIS: I never knew where that school house was.
LEE: On Beach Road, turn off, go down to Macari Road. It was half a mile down the road on the corner of the place, at Ed Johnson's.
DAVIS: What was the school house like?
LEE: Oh, it was just a little old building. I don't know, really, whether they built it or where it came from. It seemed like it was an older building when we started school there; maybe they moved it there from whereabouts, I couldn't swear to that.
DAVIS: Had it been there awhile?
LEE: Well, no. It might have been about a year or two before I started. Mrs. Allen Rice had a row of places down there which now is where Thelma Snodgrass and her husband lived [7205 Schaffer Lane]. He still lives there, she's passed away. That was known as the Charlie Fisk place. The next eighty, south of that, was the Riley Rice place. That was north of what is Macari Lane now, and across the road. Going down the drain toward the Government pasture, was the Grant Rice place. Now, that was the father Rice. And the eighty acres south of that was the Alvin Rice, and that's where Mrs. Rice lived. She was a school teacher there.
DAVIS: What did they raise down there in those days?
LEE: Well, they had alfalfa and grain and most of them had cows for separating the cream when we milked, for cream and stuff.
DAVIS: Now, the school then, what do you remember about the classes and how many kids and things like that?
LEE: Well, when it first started, most of them was the smaller kids, but as they got older they went out. About 1923, I think that's about when it was, there was four or five kids from town schools that didn't get along in town schools. They would have just about gotten out of the eighth grade, but they got kicked out of school. Somehow or another they come down there. Now that was Lance Ferguson, Sam Beeghly, Roy Swain, and Fats Yarbrough. I can't even remember what Fats' first name was. But they was the ones that raised heck with baseball for me. 'Cuz being just a little kid, about eight, nine, something like that, they would throw the ball; course they was the pitcher and the catcher, you know. They'd throw the ball so close to us little kids they'd make us run back. They pretty near run us off the school ground, pitching so close to us. They spoiled baseball for me. But then they graduated and went on. Lance Ferguson, Sam Beeghly they both passed away, Roy Swain and Fats Yarbrough was cousins. They lived on which was the Yarbrough place [6950 Pasture Road]. Now, that's where the big white house is today, right south of the checkerboard building on Pasture Road. That's where they come to school.
DAVIS: Now, you must have been about how old, when they graduated?
LEE: Probably eight, something like that. And, about the year after they left there, Thorne Springer, who lived up there right across the road from where the Navy Housing is now, came to school there for what reason I never did know. But he rode a horse clear down to the Beach School, which is four and a half miles, anyway.
DAVIS: That would be close to where Anne Berlin lives now, wouldn't it?
LEE: Yeah, well, Anne Berlin is up the road. It was right across from where Cape Hart [military housing], is. Straight across from where you drive in, look the other way, in those trees right there.
DAVIS: Now, the school would have been about straight south from there, or more south and west?
LEE: South and east. Way east. See, if you take that road --Pasture Road, is what they call it now--you'd have had to go from Pasture Road over to Beach Road and a half a mile farther on down, but it's a mile, two, three. You'd have had to go at least three and half probably to four miles to ride there.
DAVIS: Was there a toll bridge there?
LEE: No. The toll bridge was where the old highway 50--we called it Lincoln Highway then--went out, but then they changed it and made it straight. But it used to swing around to where the two-story Grimes' Ranch house was, where that channel went through. That's where the toll bridge was. That would be out there still, oh, from Beach Road, would have been a good mile straight east of where the south gate of the base is now. There used to be the abutments for the bridge, but I haven't been there for years and years. And I told Melba Aldridge about all this--to both commissioners.
DAVIS: Who was that?
LEE: Melba Aldridge. Her husband had been the Commander of the Base. And she said, "I didn't know that." And I said, "Have you got any strings that you can pull? Maybe we can get in and get a look and maybe we can see about that." Arid she looked at me like she thought I was giving her a line of B.S. But, I would've liked to and I'd still like to go see if that abutment is still there. The old road went out and there was a big gate in the cornfield across the field where that east ditch goes down into the community pasture down there. And you come right up there and about a quarter mile, that's where the old bridge was. We used to cross there.
DAVIS: Okay, so what happened at school and at home and so forth?
LEE: Yeah, well, anyway, 1924, they wouldn't let us have a school down there. We had to come in town to school. Well, you know--a little kid that far from school--so I didn't go to school. Well, none of them kids down there went to school. We had about a month or so of school in the fall, and they tore our school down. Then, we had no school until they finally went around and got signatures all over the county to open a school down there. So then they did, and we had one year in the old school building. Ed Johnson got that homestead there. He said that he would rather that his little old road would come out through there. He wanted to drive up north through there off what is Macari Lane now. Up on the upper corner was a sandy hill, and with a team he couldn't level it, so he could irrigate. He would trade that corner up there for the corner down there with the schoolhouse. So they built a new school there.
DAVIS: On his place?
LEE: Up on the upper corner of it. I don't remember whatever become of that old schoolhouse but they moved it up there with a team of horses on skids and it sat out there on the corner of the property, but they built a new school there. And, I graduated from that school in '29. No, '28 [1928]. 'Cuz in '29 I didn't go to school. So that makes two years I didn't go to school. Missing the one in grammar school, when they didn't have a school, then I didn't go to school. I started high school in September in 1930. All of my family graduated from that school; the new building that was there.
DAVIS: What do you remember about the teachers?
LEE: Well, Rose Chiara from Battle Mountain taught in 1924. Remember the Chiara that taught school, Herb Chiara? That's the same family.
DAVIS: Really?
LEE: Yup, and she's really crippled up now. She married into the ranch of Filipini. Hank Filipini and that bunch, I don't remember just who all they are but she's still alive, but they say she's real crippled up. She's mother to this Hank Filipini; the kids all come down here.
DAVIS: Where is she?
LEE: They're around Battle Mountain some place. That's where she was raised, and married, and still lives in that country. They've got several ranches down through the valley clear down toward Austin. Then, Mrs. Walter Phillips, Alice Phillips, taught there two or three years; then, Louvena Chapman. Course you don't know her. (laughter) Louvena Chapman, she was there and that's the year I graduated from school. Then after that, they had a gal there, I think she was there for two years; was Betty [Hammond] from Ursine, Nevada.
DAVIS: I never heard of Ursine.
LEE: (Laughter) Then after she was there, was Marion Andreason, from Virginia City. I think she was there one year or two. But that was about the time they closed the school; that was the last teacher they had there.
DAVIS: After you graduated, then what happened?
LEE: I worked around different places. And it didn't look like I was going to go to school. That year I was working at the Yarbrough Ranch. In tough times, California Lands, the Bank of America, but they called it the California Lands, had so many of these ranches like the Yarbrough Ranch, the Freeman Ranch in Stillwater . . .
DAVIS: They had mortgages on them?
LEE: Yeah, mortgages on them, and they wound up with them. And, Mr. Hubbard was the honcho for them. He looked over them, but he managed that place down there. That's where they lived in the big white house. And, so Ray Downs was on the other side of the road. Part of the Yarbrough Ranch was in the Beach District outside the Con-B, of Fallon. And Ray Downs was on the other side of the road, which was where the Yarbrough house was, that was in Con-B, and Ray Downs and on down, the Art Downs place, they combined the Downs Ranch. He called up one night--and we was haying at the Yarbrough Ranch and we were short of horses. I had a team over there and I was a workin' there, was haying, and I went home at night, which most of the guys didn't, but I was close enough, a mile and a half, I could ride horseback back and forth -- and he called up and wanted to know, he said, "If I got you a driving job, driving school bus, would you go to school?" I said, "You get the job and see what happens." He said, "You've got the job, I just want to know if you want to go to school." And, I said, "You're darn well right I want to go to school." And he said, "Okay." But, see I'd keep the bus at his place, which was a mile and a quarter from our place. Back right straight through the field. So the next morning I went over to work and I said, "Mr. Hubbard, what would you say if I told you I was going to quit and go to school?" "Well, if you got a chance to go to school and don't quit, I'll fire you." So I went to school, and I had to walk that mile and a quarter, mile and three quarters it was, to drive that school bus.
DAVIS: What kind of a school bus was that?
LEE: That was a Chevrolet that had curtains on it; it wasn't curtains like most of the old school buses had, they had kinda a slideway that you snapped on top. Slide them up . . .
DAVIS: How many kids did you take in?
LEE: Well, I was hauling from there, right about twenty-five, I would say. Come up from Downses and up through Dwight Cushman's, and there was the Harrigans, and the Pomeroys lived over there where the old mill was. Two Harrigans, I guess, Ed and Skip; Whitey [Harrigan] was between them, he was at the Dodge Ranch. And you got there right by the old Union School house, there was two or three there, got up by the Hanford girls, and what is, they call it, the lane goes down there and comes off right over here by where Bob Johnson and them all live?
DAVIS: Lazy Heart?
LEE: Lazy Heart Lane, now. Georgia Grey lived down a quarter mile down there, and she was always heftering just about late enough, she had to run all that distance to get the bus clear up the road there, old highway 50 or Lincoln Highway, whatever you want to call it. Then there's the Hanford girls, and I kinda forgot who was some of the last riders up there.
DAVIS: So you drove a bus for about four years?
LEE: Four years. The second year they bought a brand new bus. They got two new Dodges and I got one of them that year. But down in that slickery, slippery mud, one thing or another, that was about time the high school consolidated with the grammar schools, so then I could take the bus home. So I went on down what is the Depp Road, they call it now, go to the feed yard, clear on down by Percy Schaefer's around and back up Macari Lane over to our house. And I picked up my sisters, Bob and Dolly Norcutt, Schaffers, and then I had to go pick up the three Downses, come back out to the Yarbrough Ranch, the Hubbards' and on up to Cushman's, Berney's, Harrigan's, and the Matheson kids, and the Rubianes. And I was hauling probably forty to forty five then. A good share of the time they were sitting on one another's laps 'cuz there wasn't room enough for them all. Same route, but in the winter time they were feeding cattle at the Yarbrough Ranch and they had hay down on the east side of the road, just about where you drove over to the Downs', and hauled it with wagons. They had a lot of wet weather and they had ruts in that road when it got cold, and you'd hear those chunks hitting on the differential. And it seemed like tie rod would thump in the old steering wheel on that new truck. I figured I'd tear that out, and it finally thawed out and everything smoothed out. (laughter) Then, the other thing that always stuck in my mind about driving bus, I hauled Johnny Achurra to school his first day. And Johnny never forgot it. And, he didn't talk too good English, he being of the Baskos [Basques]. And one morning his mother come out, she rushed up to the door of the bus and she is just bawlin' me out and she talked such broken English, all I could do was sit there with my mouth open. I didn't' know what it was all about, what'd took place, why she was gettin' all over me. And the last thing that really struck me, I did get it, she shook her finger at me and she said, "Da bigga da boy, dey da worst!" And I could never figure what the heck happened.
DAVIS: Now what did she say?
LEE: "Da bigga da boy, dey da worst!" The big boys.
DAVIS: Oh, I see. The bigger the boys, the worse.
LEE: Yeah, da bigga da boy, dey da worst! (Laughter). And now that's about the only thing I actually got out of that whole bawlin' out I got. And, come to find out, the day before he had a little jar of milk and he got on the bus and they was scufflin' and broke his jar of milk.
DAVIS: Oh, okay.
LEE: Johnny when he sees me yet, he'll say, "Da bigga da boy, dey da worst!" That's one of the things that really stuck in my mind while driving school bus. To get bawled out and didn't even know what's goin' on.
DAVIS: He ended up driving bus too.
LEE: Maybe he did, when they was over on this other side, over here. They lived on what was known as the Volkert's place. That's part of the property that my granddad owned too, see, that was all that stretch of country right through there. Don Travis owns that property now.
DAVIS: Now, our Oral History Project is Lahontan Dam and the changes it produced in the valley. What do you remember about Lahontan Dam and the irrigation district and the things that went on?
LEE: See, that was built about the time that I was born And about the only thing I really know about the building of the project is that being as we lived down in the lower part of the valley – horse and buggy days so we wasn’t too far from home at any given time. But I can remember when we still lived in town and I was just a little kid, my mother’s oldest sister was married to Casey [?], Wild Horse Casey
DAVIS: Now that was Frank Casey?
LEE: Jim. He was the oldest one. Frank was the one they always figured was the Wild Horse Casey, because he lived out in Salt Wells [?] most of the time. But they had that country together. But Jim and his mother homesteaded this place that we have now, as well as this other [place]. Now that had nothing to do with me getting a home of this property in the long run, but it just wound up that way. The T.C.I.D. or whatever they called it at the time, they were building all these ditches and things out here, clear out there in the brush. My dad hauled hay to those fellahs with the teams out there, building those ditches. But one thing I can remember most about the real early times is my aunt, which is Mrs. Ferguson, my dad's sister, just older than him, lived here where [Rob] Davis lives now, that Oats place right here, they call it Oats now. That's where they lived and my mother and a couple of other relations of some kind took a team and wagon and we come over here. They had an orchard, and we got fruit, and I was just a little bitty guy, I remember riding on that wagon. All the way from town out to that place, five or six miles on a wagon. Then another time we did the same thing. We loaded up there and went fishing. Down, we called it, to the Government pasture, or the pasture, that was before it was fenced, it was open country then. We went down in there and this road went around where the Grimes' Slough. That channel run out and went to Stillwater. There was quite a cove back there, little sand hill and we used to catch a lot of catfish. Well, we went down there. They were building that east ditch, that comes down on the east side of the valley and runs down into the Government pasture, clear down the ditch, and they got it cleared off out there, and T.C.I.D. team -- like you had a team and you was working there, and their corrals is where Percy Schaffer lives now. The old building there was the granary, and they put oats in there and you'd go draw out for your horses. Well, we went down by that and they was just going to work, them guys had to come in there for dinner and go clear back out there where they're building that ditch. And those guys on their horses, four horses for their Fresnos, went out and we went down--that's where we went fishin'. You know for a little kid like that, that's pretty monotonous, I'll tell you, sitting there all day, waiting for them fish to bite. That was about 1918, somewhere along in there.
DAVIS: The Fresno of course was hand-powered, uh, horse-powered. Was there one man on a Fresno?
LEE: One man on a Fresno, most usually. In a lot of places they'd use a loader. But I can remember them horses; we went ridin' one of their horses, going on back out there to work.
DAVIS: Four-horse team?
LEE: Four-horse team. And they were working at that time from where we was fishin'. You could see them workin' over there, but it's probably less than half a mile, and they come around the sand hill and was goin' on down there where they was building that ditch. That's some of the very first that I can remember of this country.
DAVIS: And that ditch was for drainage?
LEE: No. That was water that went down there, irrigation for the pasture, then; they still use it the same way, but the fence is set further toward the hills, now. That ditch used to run, and the fence come right up along just like a driveway down along side that ditch for a couple, three miles. Well, you can still go see it yet, it's the same ditch yet today. But the next thing I can remember about building ditches was they come down there with a big dragline, a monstrous looking thing to a little kid, you know, it was a terrible big thing, and it walked like a man.
DAVIS: Oh, it had-
LEE: It had feet on it.
DAVIS: It had two feet or four feet?
LEE: I don't remember, but I just see that thing and get it kinda like it was just loafin' along, had a guy to grease it while it was pickin' up its feet. You know, that's the first that I can remember of mechanical equipment.
DAVIS: Now, were they digging drain ditches?
LEE: Drain ditches. They was going down there and I think it was what they called Rice drain, which went from the Rice places which I mentioned a while ago.
DAVIS: Now, that big dragline was probably a motored, or powered with . . .?
LEE: With gas or fuel of some kind, I don't know. And, Frank Hill was the operator. Frank Hill had a ranch over here on what is Sheckler cut-off. Anyway that's the first mechanized outfit that I can remember ever. And just being a little kid that sure got to me how them feet worked. And then they came out with the different ones, the bigger ones-
DAVIS: That was before they had tracks or . .
LEE: Yeah, well, I don't know. That was the first I'd ever got into something like that but that just fascinated me, being a little kid like that I guess my eyes stuck out about a foot looking at it.
DAVIS: How about automobiles?
LEE: There was very few. The first automobile I rode, I was still living on the edge of town there. My dad was the foreman down at the feedlot with Sam Frank. Used to be Phillips, Gibbs, and Robinson. Henry Phillips had the place over there just east of where the feed yard is, I think the house is all gone now. The place went right along Beach Road towards the base. It was from the ditch there that goes by the feed yard. And that’s where I lived when I first got married right there. Lived there a couple years, couple, three years. Anyway, then another thing that happened in the district was the different drains and the way they went in. I must of been ten years old or more before I was ever up to the Dam [Lahontan Dam]. We went up there in an old Model-T pickup. Mr. Pierson had it; the guy lived across the road from us, and his boy Pete, as we called him, his name is Ernest, he finally wound up J.P. [Justice of the Peace] here for a long time. But we went up there fishin', my dad, him, a couple other three of us in back of that old Model-T pickup went up fishin'. That was the first time I'd ever seen Lahontan Dam. I had my pole and I rushed down there. Seemed like we went way around the other side from the Dam, rocks everywhere, stumblin' down through the rocks to get to the water right quick. He said, "Teddy, stop, stop, stop!" I was anxious to get in there but I stopped and there was a big rattlesnake on one of those rocks, and he was just singing, but I hadn't even heard that. I was interested in getting to the water. And that was my first rattlesnake.
DAVIS: You remember that one.
LEE: Yeah. Didn't nobody have to tell me afterwards about a rattlesnake; I could hear him a hundred yards away. Then, that's about all I can tell you.
DAVIS: In the old days, did they have lights across the Dam?
LEE: Well, we was up there in daytime and I don't know. I don't remember. But, then later on I was up there and they had the lights across there. The only thing I thought about the lights is they was always replacing, somebody'd go along and break one off. I see they're kinda talkin' about that now. That's just what the wife said, "How long will they stay there?" Just the other night we read that. How long would they stay there. "Cuz there's more families today than there was then.
DAVIS: How about the production of electricity up there, you know, the power house down below?
LEE: We always had plenty of power far as I knew, I don't know . .
DAVIS: But it was in effect then?
LEE: Well, I guess because they had power in town, I don't really know where that come from. But then I don't' remember just what year they brought it down there, in the Beach District. The only thing I can really remember about that, Ernest Lattin, Mark Lattin's boy was just a little fellah, Austins lived on down further, east of the Rice's, and they was puttin' that power in there. And "Hap" Lattin, he was just a little guy, course Austins raised him, the three Lattins, but Ernie Lattin was Mark's boy, the old man Austin was English and he used to talk English. He used to say 'Ap, he didn't say Hap, he'd say 'Ap. They had a mule they called Eddie, the old man would say "'Ap, go out there and catch Heddie for me." He'd leave the H off of Hap, and put it on Eddie. But, anyway, they put the power down there and they were gettin' it pretty well done, and I can remember Ernest, "Shorty", that's what we called him--"Shorty"--said, "Granddad," he said, "We're going to have power before you." and Grandpa says, "Well, how come, Shorty?" "Well, it's got to run down the line, and we're up there. It'll get to our place before it gets to yours." These other drag lines come down was diggin' drains and one thing or other. And from our place over to where Charlie Frey's place is [1045 Dodge Lane], they had big Caterpillars, Holts. That was the name, it was Holts Caterpillars. You could hear them things over there which is two miles, or two and a half miles, hear them things early in the morning just a-purrin' so nice, you know. If it would miss a beat, it would make a difference in the echoing.
DAVIS: Now, they were leveling or digging?
LEE: Leveling and plowing and gettin' ready for farmin'. That was Bob Douglas' then. You could hear him out trying to start his car when he went to town. Getting back to cars, there was very few, see. Very few.
DAVIS: No muffler?
LEE: Well, I didn't know what a muffler was. But then you could hear him -- time to go to town.
DAVIS: What kind of automobile, do you remember?
LEE: Seemed to me that somebody talked about a Hupmobile, but I couldn't tell you. Before we left town, there was a few cars around town. We left in like, I say, 1919. But the one that kinda was still in my mind was Jess Baker. He lived right on the corner over there where Harrigan Road and Wildes cross now. They was on the upside of the canal. That's where they lived, and you could hear them when they took off. One time we had two cows there, and had one with a crippled horn they called it. And had another cow that sucked herself and they put a yoke on her, and that crooked horn got in that halter on that cow and my mother and Mrs. Fallon tried to get it loose, and they heard Jess crank up his car. And he had to come in up that street, and they said, "Well, Jess is comin' to town, and we'll stop him." So they got over there to the road and he come running up and got that horn off . . that's the way cars was, see. Now that Ford that I said awhile ago, was the first I ever rode in, was down there at the Sam Frank ranch, and my Dad come to town in it. We was living there, and he took us downtown. Now that was my first car ride. There was only four or five around here at that time.
DAVIS: So, the roads of course, were all dirt?
LEE: Yeah, if there was any place to flatten the road, they was runnin' on it.
DAVIS: Do you remember any droughts, especially, or floods?
LEE: No, no floods that I can remember. The flood that I know of came, before my dad and mother was married. She was workin' part-time at the post office, and she was a telephone operator, in a little two-by-four building right where the telephone [building] is today [50 W. Williams Avenue]. The flood was comin' in, so they took boards and everything and put around the telephone office to guide the water on around so it wouldn't get in the telephone office, and she was just a girl then. That's about the only thing I could tell you about a flood--until they had the one in '83, the big one. Well, there'd been times when the Dam run over there before, but it was no big flood like we had that time. My mother's brother drowned in the river when they had the full river one spring. Oh, back over in behind Venturacci's, the old Williams estate then [437 Venturacci Lane]. Him and a couple of kids went out there and whether he fell in or he went swimming, he was having trouble and one of the other kids threw a log in, so he could get ahold of it, and I think they hit him on the head with that log. And he drowned there.
DAVIS: When you got married, how did you meet your wife?
LEE: When I was driving school bus. She got on the bus in front of me. She used to get on the bus right in there close to where Huckaby Salt is now. And Melvin Raffetto, that's one I didn't mention, that I picked up. Him and his sister. And somehow or other I was always watchin' her, and I had to drive up there and I couldn't pass [End of tape 1 side A] when she'd get on the bus Melvin would say, "There she is, Bill, there she is, honk at her." Then it was several years after that her and I got married.
DAVIS: Where did you move?
LEE: I was working for the Gun Club then, the Green Head Club [9165 Pasture Road] down when we got married. That was where we spent the first night or two up there together, in a little old cabin about as big as a regular outhouse and she went and stayed with her folks till I got through with the job, then we moved out to there a couple three years. Then we moved from there up to the Percy Mills'. Percy Mills moved out of his house and went down to the Sagouspi place down the river. We was there a couple of years. Then we moved into town. Mr. Schank built the house across from the museum there. Ellis Lewis owned that, and Mills was coming back from the Sagouspi place, they moved out to the McLean place where he is today, Ellis did. Was moving out there so, in the three-way move we got in that house, moved him out of there and moved us so Percy Mills could move back to his place, then we lived there for a year.
DAVIS: Now, where was that?
LEE: That was the place that Mr. Schank built, that building right across from the museum.
DAVIS: Caddy-cornered from the museum, yeah.
LEE: We lived there a year. Then, her dad had bought this place from Casey. He bought this place, this piece and that piece over there which they cut off the place and all of a sudden he takes a trip to visit his girls up in Salmon, Idaho. Then they went out the hills huntin' one thing or another, fell onto a trail and they got into a little mining problem, and he decided he was going to be a miner. And he said to me, "Would you like to buy that place?" And I said, "Yup, I'd like to have it. But, as old as you are, you've never made a million, you haven't got a million and I think it's a little too late to try and make one now." So he kinda backed out. Then he went down to see me in the mill. I was workin' for the flour mill there in Fallon. I was there and I was sewing sacks. He come in and he said, " You want to buy that place, 'cuz I'm going to sell, I'm going to go, I'm going to go minin'." "Well, if you're really going, I guess I'll do it, I haven't got too much money, but I think we can rig up some kind of a deal." So that's how come I got this place, and I got that in 1944.
DAVIS: What were you doing at the flour mill?
LEE: Well, just whatever had to be done in there, piling grain, sewing sacks, or, we was rollin' barley, grinding grain, making mash. They had closed the flour mill part of it before I got in there. The old guy that made the flour was still working there. The only time that I ever seen that machinery turn over, I sent a guy in there, -Go kick the motor on there." There was two big motors in there. And he went in there and a guy in there, "Go kick the motor on there." There was two big motors in there. And he went in there and kicked that motor on and he turn around and ran out of that motor room. He couldn't see where to go, and he said, "I knew I done something wrong," all that dust on all them belts and everything, turned around. He shut it off and said, "I knew I'd done something wrong." They was side by side, and he just kicked the wrong motor on. All them belts, and you couldn't see for fifteen minutes in that building. Dust flew out of that thing, them elevators and one thing or other. I went back there to see what was wrong and he come out, "Well, I hit that motor, but I found out I did the wrong one." Then, that's where I was working. Of course I drove truck for Ivan Lewis before, I've been game warden a while and then I went to work in there, for one day. Sewing sacks and unloading grain out of a cart. I always prided myself that I'd got to be a pretty good sack sewer. I'd sewn a lot of them. So, when they wanted somebody to sew sacks, it'd take two of them to take care of the outfit the way they were running. Next day they had other carloads coming in and finally got all done and they wanted to know if I wanted to work there steady. Yeah, I'd take that, I was there three or four years and Silvio Moiola was the foreman in there, he wanted to get out. So, he wanted to know if I'd take the foreman job. So, in the summertime, there was about sixteen men working in there . .
DAVIS: What were you making the sacks for?
LEE: Well, they'd be like for barley, or anything that we processed would be put in the sacks. And they had to be sewed up.
DAVIS: What kind of wages did you make?
LEE: Four dollars a day. I was there twelve years before I got out of there. Then I got up to sixteen dollars a day. Then I went back to driving truck again.
DAVIS: Who was that for?
LEE: Ivan Lewis.
DAVIS: That was hauling what?
LEE: Ore, anything we had.
DAVIS: Everything?
LEE: Everything. But mostly ore, stuff like that.
DAVIS: From where to where?
LEE: From out of Gabbs, the fluorspar mine, over to Wonder, Rawhide. We took stuff out there and hauled the ore back. I got where I was drivin', haulin' stuff, my dad was haulin' with a team, I was on truck, into the same areas.
DAVIS: Now, you were bringing it to…?
LEE: Well, the ore loaded on cars at the gondolas here [Fallon] off the ramp, there's one down there by Kent's alfalfa, and one of them right over there by where the Richfield bulk plant is. And, we'd haul stuff out there to 'em. Then we'd haul lumber and stuff into Hawthorne. I hauled the first load of lumber that went into Hawthorne for Dinwiddie Construction. They told me there'd be a place for me to dump it, and if I didn't see where it was then go over to J. P. Neil's office, they was on it. So, heck, I couldn't see no place, no mark to unload a load of lumber, couldn't see nothing, so I walked over to J. P. Neil's "Oh, yeah, it's marked over there.' "I don't see no mark over there," "Well, I'll go show you." And it was a piece of a shingle. About that wide and about that high was stuck in the ground.
DAVIS: Two inches wide, and a foot tall, huh?
LEE: Yeah, with part of it shoved in the ground.
DAVIS: That was it.
LEE: That was the mark that was there, and the brush had that covered up. That's where I hauled their first load of lumber in there. The guy that worked there had an Italian name, a long one like . . . Largomasino or something like that. And he said, "I think I oughta have you as a carpenter down here," and I said, "Well, I couldn't drive a nail in a board in a week." "Well, you don't need no driving board." he said. "You need a crescent wrench and a ball peen hammer." And I couldn't figure out what it was, so finally I did quit driving truck and went down there and he couldn't use me, got a full crew there. And, "Doggone," he said, "I coulda used you." So I got on there, and not being a carpenter I was lucky to get on. That's when they made the basement for the grocery store in Babbitt, and I got on that. One night they laid off sixty-nine carpenters, and I was one of them.
DAVIS: Was the job finished?
LEE: No, no, they was waitin' for this and waitin' for that. When they were making the basement part of that, they was using a vibrator in the forms and it was pretty high, pretty deep, and I noticed that, it seemed like that cement was going down and the form down in the bottom was broken, was running out in there. They was sending it right on out in there, and I said to the foreman, "Hey, look down here." So they got down there right quick, they stopped vibrating, they got down there and put some boards and that kind of braced it. And, that was when they laid us off, and I never did know what they done with that down there in the bottom of that basement (laughter.)
DAVIS: A whole lot of extra cement . .
LEE: (Laughter) Yep. Then they run out there and made a big bow in the whole thing. That's when I went back to drivin' truck, I got scared to go downhill for some reason. Well, like we'd come out of places out of these mines where you'd go down, heck, you could put the brake on and if it held it, it might even slide a little bit, it was so steep. I got scared to go downhill a lot of times when we'd go and have to take a load over hill somewhere, my stomach kinda went haywire, and I quit drivin' truck. I was drivin' truck then when they was building Herlong. Hauling cement over there, semi, with the three guardrail on it. That's when I quit drivin' truck. Coming out I was gettin' thirteen dollars a day, board and room. I quit there and went back to sewing sacks on a harvester for seven dollars. Then I never went back and did that at all. Then I got in the flour mill. I was there, would have been twelve years if I'd have stayed there till the first of the year but I got out of there November 1. Then I had a knee operation, one that I bumped up when I was a kid. I had that done Monday after Christmas and they said, "Well, you'll be back to work in a week," and when I got here and come back I had a big cast on. They said it wasn't what it was supposed to be; we had to take part of your knee out. So I went to work on the twenty-sixth of July, on the road that they put through the base, on Berney Road, that went on through. It come through and connected over here to Schurz highway. I worked on that; now that was the construction work that I had then.
DAVIS: How did you bung your knee up when you were young?
LEE: Well, I had stilts about ceiling high, and I was pretty clever on them, I was running races with this Pete Pierson I was telling about, back there when we went to the lake. He was on foot and we was running a race and we went up over a bridge and one of them broke and I stuck that knee in the ground. Mashed up the knee cap. And then when I got older, it got so bad that I finally got a bump on there; they took that all off. Then I worked out there on that and that's the only construction work I did. What really buggered up that, when I left the mill I was going to try to go out with a little rockin' chair money, well, I did. I finally drawed a little bit, thirty-eight dollars. That's the rockin' chair you're on. But, then, they needed somebody to help do a roofing job on the Carl Dodge house, which the County has now, over there by the hospital [85 N. Taylor]. They was puttin' new shingles on that, so they had sent me out on that. Well they kept lookin' for me for a job and sending me over there. We was taking the gutter off the edge of the roof and the contractor, didn't want to bring the gutter down on the street. He had a hold of the end up there and I was backin' down and it was all full of leaves and bird manure and everything. Backin' down I slid off a rung and hit the next rung with my knee and lifted that knee cap up. That's why I had to go have that fixed. Back again, I got in over at the flour mill at that time, then when I left there I worked at the operation, on the job out there, I was still a cripple. And I went out to work for Johnny Miller at the Government pasture, when they set the fence clear out to the hills, and I helped put that nineteen miles of fence in there. I'd run the patrol around there, which I'd never done before but I managed to scrape a road around there.
DAVIS: A road scraper then?
LEE: Yeah. Fixin' a place--there was a lot of places knocked down. They got little old sand hills, -- so a post wouldn't be on top of a pole and one thing or other.
DAVIS: When was it that you got into the local politics?
LEE: Well, first off, before that, after that summer there in 1956, 1957 I left down there at the pasture; we got that done. I was going to work for the T.C.I.D. And, Warren Whitehead was the honcho for T.C.I.D. then. "Yeah," he said, "I could sure use you, like you to join. Be there Monday morning." "Okay, I'll be there." Well, that was middle of the week or something like that. So, Mrs. C. H. Davis called up and wanted me to come in and help in the lumber yard for tomorrow. They was trying to get it arranged so another guy was going to take over and run the thing for them. So, I went in, to get a day's pay. "Well, we're doing it tomorrow too." So I went in tomorrow. So she paid me off. They paid Friday nights, what they've done. So that was Thursday and Friday I worked. So, I got home and she calls and wanted to know if I'd come in Saturday. "Yeah, I'll come in." So, the next day they was having a Little League bean feed which they still have today and my wife was working in there, she and Mrs. Davis were. They didn't have no kids, but she always helped out at the kids' deal. So, C. H. come down there, my wife was in there helpin', "Well, where's Bill?" "He and the kids'll be here pretty soon." "I want to talk to him." I don't know, I must have smelt bad or something, cuz I drove up around the other side of the building, that's where the school administration building is down there on Richards Street, that's where they was servin' their beans. I drove up there and he came around the corner of the building and he walked up there and opened the door and said, "I didn't know you wasn't goin' to stay with us." "Well, I'm supposed to go to work for T.C.I.D. in the morning." "Well, when you come down, I thought you was going to stay there." "Well, see, she wanted me to come in the Thursday and Friday and then she wanted me to come Saturday." "Well, I though she hired you to stay there." "No." Then he said, "If you'll stay with me I know you'll be a lot better off than going to T.C.I.D. and I'll make a better offer."
DAVIS: Good.
LEE: So, I said, "Gee. I'll have to call him up, cuz he figures on me in the morning." "Well, I don't care about him, I want you." "Okay, fine," I said, "That's what we'll do." Then I got in there and I worked there, oh, maybe five, six months and he said, "Would you like to run this outfit?" and I said, "If you think I can," and he said, "Well, you're practically doin' it now." They had another fellah in there then -- he was a moody fellah, this guy. So I said, "Okay," so C. H. called this guy and said, "Well, Bill's goin' to be the honcho here now." "Oh?" Next morning, I come in and he went in and told Mrs. Davis, she was the bookkeeper, and said, "Well, tonight will be my last." He wasn't goin' to work for me. So, then I had to wrestle help. So one week after I took it on, it was Christmas. Christmas come on Thursday, if I remember right. Davis said, "Well, let's shut her down for the holidays, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, let's just shut her down. Well, that's when they were going into the roll-away homes. See, Davis' contracting office was the back part of the little office that was by the door there. Well, the people coming in, they was going all the time and Al Davis, he stayed here, so we was down some. Somehow, Friday, somebody called up said they needed something bad. So, well, I'll meet you in there and get it. I went in and unlocked the doors, and went in and papers all over the floor and I said, "Well, who kicked the darn wastebasket all over?" So, I had to go out in the yard and get something for him, come back in, and I got in and I thought of something else, so back out we go, and there's glass all over there, and thought "What was that?" So when we come back, I looked the situation over and they'd broke that glass out of that door, just the upper section of the glass and got in there. And I looked around and they had robbed the place. They used our own tools to break the safe open.
DAVIS: Good grief.
LEE: So, I gathered things up. I called Al and told him. He said, "Well, I wondered who'd had some people come in to see about a home and I wondered who'd kicked the wastebasket over, and I just kicked it out of my way so I could walk through there." And I said, "Well, they broke the safe open and the tools are here; they had a pan, a new punch that they bent getting at it. They got out in the safe." Didn't know exactly how much money they could've gotten, but in the meantime they had sold the house and Union Federal is financing the house and wondered why they didn't get the five thousand dollar check from the Union Federal. Well, the gal that was bookkeeping then was Al's sister-in-law. They had a little wooden box about so long and so big, like your bills and things would fit right in there, and then, put the money on top of it, put it away. Well, that's where it was, in the safe. Well, they couldn't figure why they didn't get that check afterwards, the way it added up was about five thousand dollars they lost. Checks and all. But, anyway, Bill Garnick was loading some cattle over to the railroad yards. He saw this little box down under the chute there and here's all of our checks and in that box was the five thousand dollar check for that house. It'd come that day and Rea had put it in with the rest of them, and all our checks. We lost all the cash, but we got all our checks back. In the meantime, most of the people we could think of who would give us a check, we had called them, and they made up for it.
DAVIS: How long had it been?
LEE: About, oh, I'd say, two to three weeks after that he'd found them. And they'd put a rock on all them checks in that little box so they'd be there anyway. Then, I thought I'd take that over a week and the first thing I'd do I get robbed. Of course, it was their money, but then--they traded the lumber yard and took a ranch in Paradise Valley, by payment, that's when the Ansoteguis took it. One time, I took a hitch to see about [running for] County Assessor, against Lew Downs. Well, I had that primary thing, and flew through that. Then a couple of salesmen come in there. "Well, I guess you won't be with us after awhile." "Well, what makes you think so?" I said. "Well, you went through it and the talk of the town says you've got that hands down." And I thought, "I wouldn't say that, Lew's hard to beat," Well, the way they talked, these salesmen come out of Reno and different places, hear about it, different stories in town, it sounded like I was going to have a chance, and I said, "Well, I wouldn't bet my lunch on it, that's for darn sure." Of course, I lost it. Not big, but it was a good loss. Anyway, then Ansotegui got the place and I worked there with them. I had a lot of trouble with my feet. Oh, they was giving me a bad time. When, I don't remember just when--oh, '81, '83--'76 is when I run for Commissioner. But I was having so much trouble with my feet. Vic Ansotegui was there, and I was on the little fork lift, just hating to step off onto the ground. And his cousin come out, he'd retired from logging over in Burney, California, and he come in there and was monkeying around, and come down there for somethin' to do, -- he finally got on pretty steady -- he was down there, most of the time they were talking to me and I was sitting on that forklift -- just hating to step off on the ground. I knew my feet would hurt. I says, "By golly, old John Hannifan isn't going to run this year. I think I ought to run for County Commissioner and get that job, then I'd put my butt in the chair and my feet on the desk and I wouldn't have to worry about 'em hurtin'." Well, Joe Alcort said "I don't see a thing wrong with that, Bill." So I never thought anything more about it. "When are you going to file for commissioner?" "Well, the last day.", I said.
DAVIS: That was about when?
LEE: That was in '76. So, I took over in '71 then went to '80, and then '81 to '85. That's the way it was. Well, anyway, Alcort kept dingin', kept dingin', said I was telling some wild tale about something. "I don't know why you can lie so much all the time, you just keep lying about everything." So, it was gettin' along up to the time of the filing. "When you gonna file?" "Oh, the last day." He said, "You know somethin'? The wife and I went down and registered Republican so we could help you in the primary. And, all you do is lie to us. You didn't have no intention of . . ." I said, "Joe [Alcort], I want to tell you somethin', I never even have mentioned that to my wife." "Oh sure, sure, you just lie to us all the time. You had no intentions." "Well, that's the story, I'll have to talk to her about it." I come home and I said to her, "What would you say if I was going to run for Commissioner?" She said, "Well, let your conscience be your guide." So the next day I went down and filed. They come over, took my picture and got everything for the paper and went back out. He was just roasting heck out of me in the lumber yard. "The wife and I was going to help and you do a trick like that." "Joe [Alcort], my picture will be in the paper tomorrow?" "Tell us another one," he said. (laughter) If it hadn't been for him dingin' me, I'd never done that. So, well, then I won it pretty easily, and I run a second time, well after I got in, they put me on the state--retirement. And Mrs. Hanks was in there, so, it was coming up, the second month coming up, I thought I don't know why I should have got into that retirement. I got four years that's all and you had to be in ten in order to get it, you know. So I went into Mrs. Hanks and I said, "You know, I signed up for that retirement, I think that was the wrong thing to do, stupid." And she said, "I seen that thing come through and I wondered about that." She said, "I'm not on the retirement either, 'cuz I'm too old and I don't expect to be here that long.' I took it off. Well, then, the next time I got elected, so that made eight years, and then I wasn't going to run no more. I thought to myself, "If I would've been in the retirement, I'd have run a third time, which everybody said "Ain't you goin' to run?" "No, no, not again," "Well, you got a cinch on it." If I'd have wanted to get out after ten years, I could have got out and had my retirement, but I didn’t do it. Course the thing was I had been depositing money the whole time I got into these ten time certificates and I was making good money on them, but it would have been nice to have that retirement at that.
DAVIS: What were some of the things that happened while you were Commissioner?
LEE: Well, we had the fairgrounds, that was the big go then.
DAVIS: Oh, boy. Yeah.
LEE: That was the big go then. When I went in there they had made an application to the Fleischman Foundation, for eight hundred and eighty thousand to build rodeo grounds and things and it didn't come through, and it never came through. Finally, it looked like it was gonna go, and the City wanted to build the convention center, so they made applications. Then, right shortly, it all came through. They give us four hundred and eighty and give the City four hundred. In the meantime, the price of the swimming pool went up to over a million and a quarter. And we got four hundred and forty. Well, that was when they had the 'in lieu of taxes', PLT [payment in lieu of taxes] they call it. That came through and they had enough. We got up to about a million. But when they was started with it, it wound up it was gonna de short twenty-eight thousand dollars, and no place to pick it up. That's when the people all got together "Oh, we got to have a swimming pool," couldn't get them all into the meeting. They was about to chop our heads off cuz we was about to drop the idea. Larry -- can't say his name now, but he was in, it was just before then that he was goin' to have handball, it was three hundred thousand to build a handball. I don't know nothing about handball, I still don't know nothing about handball, I don't even know what they do. Well, he said, "We could go out here and get donations and build that." Three hundred thousand dollars is big money for this valley.
DAVIS: Was it Frank?
LEE: No, he owned this place right over here behind us. Well, anyway, I think he found right quick that three hundred thousand would have been an awful thing here to have it fall through. Well, then when he was on the board he got right up going big and handsome there when they wanted this meeting and, they said they'd go out and get subscriptions or pledges. Well, I've never been one for pledges. You could pledge the money but how are you gonna to pay off. So, they got the pledges, they got plenty of pledges, but, Rex Workman-he was with T.C.I.D. then--said, "I think we need it, band I'll pledge a thousand dollars." Larry said, "I'll do the same." John Serpa [County Commissioner] said, "Well, I'll pledge, but I can't go no thousand dollars, like that, I'm just a working guy too." But, he said, "I'll go for two hundred and fifty." And I said, "I think all three of us could go two-fifty, we can hack that." Well, I don't know how many pledged. Some never even pledged a dime, paid a dime you know, but this Larry -- his name escapes me -- but anyway he said, he'd come to the meeting there one time, thinks they done pretty well. They had around, oh, twenty-two, twenty-three thousand dollars, collected in. They showed who'd paid and this, and oh, Rex, he paid six hundred and he told me he paid six hundred. But he said, "I'm giving my money that I get for being a board member at T.C.I.D., that's what I'm paying that with," He said, "That's kinda on the side and it don't bother me a bit." So he paid six hundred and some of them paid what they bid, and a lot of them pledged ten dollars, and paid it in. So, when we had this meeting, all of this was going real good, so we started with that deal, and got it going to have a ground breaking. But, anyway, we were having this meeting about ground breaking and Larry was there. He got up and he said, "Well, I knew it wouldn't be too hard to raise," you know, and out he left, he left right quick, went out 'cuz I was going to ask him a question. Well, I never saw him anymore till they had the ground breaking, Gary Moore and what was the movie star woman, the girl was here and had the same name was the Churchill County queen or Fallon queen.
DAVIS: I can't think of who it was.
LEE: Oh, doggone, I can't -- but there was Gary Moore and this girl come up both of them movie star names. Well, anyway, Larry was over there and he had some women and oh, he was just a raising heck there, and I walked up and said, "Larry, there's something I want to ask you." "What is it, Bill?" I said, "On the list of the people that paid, and some that didn't, on the bottom see where you have paid -- you pledged a thousand dollars, that's it -- and I see on the bottom you have paid one thousand pennies, ten dollars." And I mean to tell you if you ever see a guy turn around and leave, with that bunch of women, you ain't never seen anyone move like that. That was the end of that. That was what I wanted to ask him in that meeting. Did you mean a thousand pennies (laughter)? You know a guy ought to pledge a thousand, along when you're trying to get twenty-eight thousand, and that makes quite a difference right quick. Now as I say I never was much for pledges, like these big telethons and one thing or other. Well, I'll pledge so and so. I'd like to know exactly how many pay off.
DAVIS: Be interesting.
LEE: Be very interesting. Now that was one of the stickers of that whole thing, was that swimming pool. And I'm still gettin' a flack over that swimming pool. Some of the guys said, "Well, a pink elephant, you got there." Here we had people you couldn't even get into the meeting, was there to put the clamps on us to keep us from dropping that swimming pool. And, I think some of them guys at that meeting was still the guys squawking about that swimming pool, I'm not sure. But we have a few around here that really a lot of the rodeo guys including one of my own boys, is talking about that pink elephant over there. That's the thing that raises heck with a whole deal out there, spend more money trying to keep that going than anything we got. But, there was one guy down here that's really against it. Always been against it. A guy told me that, he's a business man here, has kids, and he said, "I don't care what he says, that's the greatest thing that Churchill County's got, that swimming pool." There's the difference right there see?
DAVIS: Yeah, there's always two sides to everything.
LEE: Yeah. They jump on me and I said, "Fellahs, I have nothing doing with it. It was while we was in there, and that's what they wanted and that's what they got. That's all I can tell you." Then I got out of here in '85, and even today I hear about it every once in a while.
DAVIS: Oh, I'll bet.
LEE: Guys that didn't like it.
DAVIS: What departments were you overseeing?
LEE: I had the Dixie Valley Soil Conservation, had the Road Department, Welfare, and I enjoyed all of them. The Welfare was an eye opener, I'll tell ya, cuz I had nothing to do with Welfare. The only thing I ever done was kind of a joke, "Well, I got to go down to the welfare office to see how I’m standing today.” [laughing] That’s about the only thing that I could say. A lot of people had to laugh like [inaudible] go down to the welfare office. And then Koz Nojima[?] was there, and I’ll tell you, there was the sweetest little old gal in the world. When I was in the hospital having these knee operations she'd have to bring papers clear to Reno, so I could sign them. I think one of the other Commissioners could've done it but she’d come clear to Reno. This fella they got now, I just seen him, but my wife’s mixed up with him a bit on account of my cousin that’s in the rest home. Any time she’s got any questions about what’s going on, I tell her go see Zip and he’ll check it out and see what it is. Because the county pays part of it, she got quite the retirement when you take all of that across.
DAVIS: Yeah
LEE: Somehow or other they finally got- she’s gonna have me for power of attorney. “Yeah okay,” I got it all made up and ready to go and she backed out. Her mind wasn’t that bad. She thought I was gonna do something I guess. My wife has kinda taken after. Mike got her to go in and “Oh yes, everything is lovely. We’ll get power of attorney done so if anything comes up”… Dixie Valley Conservation was quite a deal. There was quite a bit of dissension out there and I didn't agree on how the machinery should be run. That's the way it worked out there.
DAVIS: What was your involvement or what do you remember about World War II and starting up the air base?
LEE: Oh, when they opened the base, I thought that was pretty nice thing. Then they closed it down. I thought that base was really good, you know, they trained here. It was just a small base, but today I've got a lot of reservations about the base. I think that in time, Fallon is no more, it'll be the air base. It's comin' more all the time. I don't back off for it when I see the guy they got there now is one of the worse we've ever had in Fallon. And, I got a name for him that isn't Rakowitz. It starts with an "L". But then maybe I'm wrong, that's my opinion, and a lot of other people. I think it should be kinda an entity of itself, not Fallon trying to run it, or them trying to run Fallon. Everything they do, they go there to get the base interested in it- I guess it's all right, but I don't quite see it that way. Well, this water question we got, I'm against Reid's [U. S. Senator Harry Reid] idea, I don't like that at all, what he's doing. Givin' that amount of water that the base has to the Indians over there [Pyramid Lake Indian Tribe]. I don't like that. We've got the water here, we need it down there [Stillwater Wildlife Refuge]. They don't want it on that base. They don't need that. They talk about it's supposed to keep the dust down. Where the base is, they ain't got no water, they don't have it. They got a few ranches around there, I imagine they lease them out. Sometimes they are leased continuously. If they would take that water, that they got there--the government owns it anyway, it's on government ground now--take that off and give it to the wildlife [Stillwater Wildlife Refuge] down there. Why bring it clear down the country here, and then cut it off down here [the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District] and stick it up there [Pyramid Lake] That's my idea, I been against that all the time. I'd like to see that water go to the wildlife [Stillwater Wildlife Refuge], 'cuz I seen that when it was a great country down there.
DAVIS: What changes have you seen down there?
LEE: Well, I have not too much to say about that because I don't really know. I don't know where their boundaries are, or what they've done, but when they first went down there and they put that dike across there, where they cut off all the nut grass down below,--see that was the greatest thing they had down there,--but I guess it was good afterwards because it dried up and fixed them too so there wouldn't be any water at the other end too. I can't say too much about it cuz my boy's got a job out there, he's kinda a honcho out there. He's had two hitches. He went out there and he didn't last too long. He got the heck out of there. Then they finally got him to go back. Now they've sent him off to school and he has to go here and there and train some other guy. But that's my idea; that they need the water and I can't understand where they get the idea of the base [Fallon Naval Air Station] water going to there [Pyramid Lake], because the way I look at it . . .how much of the water we get comes down the Truckee [River], and what comes off the Carson? If they're going to take that, the part comes off the Truckee well, that would be different, that percentage, that would be different. But they don't say there's ten thousand acre feet or whatever, just send it over there [Pyramid Lake] but most of that comes down off the Carson [River] and that's our water. So, that's my idea. Course, like I say, I don't have much to say I just gripe all I want, whether anybody listens to me, well, if they don't there's nothing I can do about it.
DAVIS: Well, I think we've pretty well covered most of the things. Anymore you'd like to say?
LEE: Well, the only thing I would say is a lot of these people hollering about the way things is done here in Nevada, in the county, and what they're doin' they just need about four years as County Commissioner. I say everybody should have one hitch at it. There'd be a lot of different attitudes in the country.
DAVIS: Front line duty.
LEE: They'd find out what they can do and can't do. You'd be saying, "Why don't you do this?" There's a law that says you can't or you can. You can't just (say), "Oh, yeah, we'll do that." It don't work that way, and there's a lot of people that's got the idea that's just what happens. I got a lot of education when I went in there. There was things that I knew a lot about but I didn't know how you got around to do it, and you had to learn that. It'd sure be nice, if a lot of these guys doin' the yipin' would have a hitch of it- Some guys, "Oh, you can't do that." "No, no, back off right there." They might get mad but they'd better back off 'cuz they couldn't do it anyway. But as a whole I think things is goin' real good, I think they got two or three good guys in there now. I'm definitely against a five man commission for the reason, our deal [community] is right here [Fallon]. I said, "Well, look at Yerington, they got five, look at Gardnerville [Douglas County], they got five. Yerington has Smith Valley, they've got Yerington, Silver Springs, they've got Fernley, they got Dayton. They got five or six different, complete different deals [communities], but we're all right here in one little old county. Hazen is the furtherest thing we got. We did have Dixie Valley but the Navy's got that now so we don't have to worry about that. I'd say three is good enough. They put two more on, it'll cost ya another thirty thousand or something like that, which is not a lot of money when you get talking about millions but, we don't have millions.
DAVIS: No. But Fallon's growing.
LEE: Yeah. But we're right here in one little old county. And do you know something else? You could have three County Commissioners sitting up here in their county offices and live within the city -- living in the city and never be a block apart. Well, you say like for instance, Domonoske [Merton Domonoske], or around the other corner, was Dingacci [Dr, A. J. Dingacci] over on the other corner we'll just use for instance, Miller [Mark S. Miller], the real estate, right on that corner. You'd have three commissioners right there. They would be County Commissioners and they'd be right there within one block. Three of them -- would be different blocks but you could call it a block. That's the way it's set up and, I think they're going to make a little change because it's gettin' lopsided. But that's what it's been. You could have them right there within throwing distance to one another.
DAVIS: I didn't know that. Bill, you got a story to tell us about the Beach Schools?
LEE: The school that they built there, that I graduated from, and all of my family, after they closed it down and put it all into Con-B, they moved that school into West End. That was the building that when I was a little kid they had me nailing the ceiling in there. I was kinda up on a chair. I was doin' too much hittin' the boards and makin' them all out a shape, so they put me puttin' shingles on, showed me how to put shingles on. That would put me along about the fourth grade. I worked down there. But anyway, after they moved, they shut down the school then moved into West End. Had it there for awhile, then they moved it over at Oats Park in that little fence on the north of the gymnasium at the Oats Park School and they had it there for quite awhile. That's where the bus sheds were when I was driving, but they moved them to where they are across the street. Now they put the new one across the street, but, they was havin' trouble out at Dixie Valley at the little old school there, that was about big enough to have one foot in for each one of the kids that went there. So they moved it to Dixie Valley, and they put it out there and put a nice little addition on it and a bigger anteroom and put a place where they could cook their meals. And, I had lost track of it. When I got to be County Commissioner I went out there and who was at the meeting, but Tharon Turley. She had gone to school in Beach District for a little while, and then was out there and went to school. We got to talking and I said, "This is the old Beach School, where we went to school, wasn't it?" "Yup, they moved it out here." And, on various times and occasions that's where they'd have their Soil Conservation meetings. Various occasions, I 'd come back out there to go to school. All this and that. But here when the Navy bought it out they burnt that schoolhouse up. That was a real nice building. It looked like a new building, but they burnt it up. [End of tape 1]
DAVIS: Tell us what finally happened to that schoolhouse.
LEE: They wasn't using it when they moved the kids to Fallon. Tharon hauled them in from Fallon school bus. She drove school bus for years in Dixie Valley, hauled all them kids in. They finally got down to five or six, and, so the school district didn't want any of the responsibility of the school. So the Navy, being as the Navy got that country, just burnt the schoolhouse down, like they did other buildings there. Talking about the reason that the Navy got a hold of that and they fightin' the Navy so hard, they [the Navy] said those people just bought that ground out there so they could sell it to the Navy. Well, there's people there at the turn of the century lived in Dixie Valley, and Tharon Turley was raised there and she's just a little bit younger than me. She went to school there, and several of the kids. Her granddad, old Bill Spencer, that's when I was a little kid, he wouldn't live anyplace else but Dixie Valley 'cuz he run mustangs and that was his main project. He raised horses, and chased mustangs. Then there was several of the older people, I kinda forgot their names, Landis' kids was raised out there, local kids now. There was a movie star that lived out there, her and her husband. Pilson was their name. They had a little ranch out there and they'd mine around different places. We could talk about all the old times when Dixie Valley was goin' and a lot them fellahs worked in the mines in Rawhide and Wonder, that lived down there. That was when Fallon was a mighty small place. I know there was some people bought later on out there but they bought some of them old farms and, then, they split them up and sold them to retirees, which was a comin' out there. That was the thing I couldn't understand, even when I was Commissioner, is why them old people would go out there with no facilities. If something happened they'd have to drive the ambulance out there, which would take an hour and a half, or more, or they'd have to fly. That kinda bothered me a lot. I couldn't quite see it, but you'd be surprised how happy those people were out there. Some of 'em, they were figgerin' on livin' there but they [the Navy] thought they was planning to sell their property, two or three of 'em in there. That's the thing that kinda got me. It always tore me up to hear people say that the only reason people was there was that they was goin' to sell to the Navy. And Dixie Valley was a goin' before the Navy knew there was a place like Fallon, Nevada, or Churchill County (laughter).
DAVIS: Yeah. Well, thanks a million, Bill, and we'll sign it off now.
LEE: Okay.
DAVIS: And call it quits for the day.
LEE: Okay.
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