Elsie Jane Sloan Lohse Oral History
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CHURCHILL COUNTY MUSEUM & ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
an interview with
Elsie Jane Sloan Lohse
June 8, 1993
This interview was conducted by Anita Erquiaga; transcribed by Glenda Price; edited by Norine Arciniega; final by Pat Bogen; index by Gracie Viera; supervised by Myrl Nygren, Director of Oral History Project, Churchill County Museum.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this interview 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
I met with Elsie Lohse at her home on Hillsboro Drive. It is a very nice home, and she is quite proud of the fact that she and her husband built it. She has a sharp mind and is surprisingly active for a lady who is going to be eighty-eight years old in two weeks. There are flowers, shrubs, evergreen and deciduous trees in abundance and a good sized lawn. She does not mow the lawn because it is too hard for her to pull the rope to start the lawn mower. But she gets up early and pulls weeds every day in the yard and in the large garden. She has three chickens and two geese because they help keep the weeds down.
She has five acres of grass pasture and Diane Koepke pastures some cattle there. Elsie keeps a sharp eye on the cattle and makes sure the electric fence is working. When I arrived, she and Diane were just returning from the pasture, and they were having a lively conversation about a certain gate post that needed to be replaced and some other minor repairs that needed to be taken care of. Diane was going to see to those things, and I wouldn't be surprised if Elsie is right at her side overseeing the work.
We had our interview in the morning, and she was soaking some dried beans. After lunch she planned to show her friend Cindy Kent Dillon (Bob and Muriel Kent's daughter) how to cook beans with a ham hock and onion and garlic. Cindy's husband Eric was going to mow the lawn and get rid of the big weeds under the electric fence because "Even a blade of grass touching the electric fence will short it out," Elsie said. She was looking forward to seeing Cindy and Eric's small children.
She drives herself around Fallon and visits her sister-in-law, Florence Sloan, and other friends.
Elsie had called the Churchill County Museum and expressed an interest in being interviewed. I was hoping she had some knowledge of the differences in irrigating before and after Lahontan Dam was built, but she was very young and really didn't know about it. I guess with five brothers she didn't have to be concerned with irrigating at the time and, therefore, doesn't remember it.
She has very strong recollections of how hard they all had to work to keep things going. She mentioned that her mother had to stay home and work while her father went to town every Saturday. Because she learned to work hard when she was young, she finds it easy to keep busy now. She appears to be in very good health and has a variety of interests which keeps her mentally alert and youthful. I left her home feeling very pleased that I had this opportunity to get acquainted with her and I feel that she is a remarkable, friendly lady.
Interview with Elsie Jane Sloan Lohse
ERQUIAGA: This is Anita Erquiaga of the Churchill County Museum Oral History Program. Today is June 8, 1993, and I am interviewing Elsie Lohse at her home at 1675 Hillsboro Drive. Well, Elsie, I want to thank you for taking this time to do this interview, and the first thing I'd like to ask you is your full name and your date of birth.
LOHSE: Elsie Jane Sloan Lohse, and the date of birth June 21, 1905.
ERQUIAGA: And where was your place of birth?
LOHSE: Roanoke, Virginia.
ERQUIAGA: Now, the way I figure that, you're going to be eighty eight in about two weeks, and you still do all your own housework?
LOHSE: Yes, I do. (laughing)
ERQUIAGA: And you do a lot of yard work.
LOHSE: Too much.
ERQUIAGA: And you drive yourself wherever you want to go. Right?
LOHSE: Yes. Yes, I do.
ERQUIAGA: Well, that's pretty good, I think.
LOHSE: No, I don't drive to Reno. I'm not a good enough driver.
ERQUIAGA: But around Fallon you do.
LOHSE: Yes.
ERQUIAGA: Well, you obviously are in pretty good health, and that's wonderful. Now, would you tell me your parents' names.
LOHSE: My dad's name was Elmer Sloan, and my mother's name was Sarah Bell Smith. Maiden name.
ERQUIAGA: And where were they born?
LOHSE: In Roanoke, Virginia.
ERQUIAGA: Well, how did they happen to know about Fallon for them to decide to come out here?
LOHSE: Well, evidently there was someone here that told them about the Homestead Act, oh … and it was a ranch. They needed somebody to help them on what they call the Hepner Ranch or now it's Sagouspe. Everybody in my time called it Sagouspe, and so they had a house and the job so he decided to come west.
ERQUTAGA: How did you make that trip across the country?
LOHSE: On the train.
ERQUIAGA: And how many children were there at that time?
LOHSE: There was three of us. Myself and two boys. Oscar and Louis.
ERQUIAGA: When you got to Fallon, then did you go to this Sagouspe place?
LOHSE: Yes, we did.
ERQUIAGA: And there was a house there for you to live in?
LOHSE: Yes.
ERQUIAGA: What kind of work did your father do?
LOHSE: Whatever there was to do.
ERQUIAGA: Farm work mostly?
LOHSE: Uh-huh.
ERQUIAGA: And then when did he homestead the place?
LOHSE: In 1912. I had a brother born then, Edward, 1912.
ERQUIAGA: And homesteading, what really does that mean? Did you have to pay anything for that land?
LOHSE: Oh, yes, he did. There was some kind of an application you had to make out.
ERQUIAGA: It wasn't just free land.
LOHSE: No, it wasn't. You had to get a patent on the land.
ERQUIAGA: Did he choose the spot that he wanted to buy?
LOHSE: There was a man, an old fellow by the name of Frank Huff and his mother had that. He homesteaded it and he wanted to get rid of it, so my dad bought it.
ERQUIAGA: How many acres did he get?
LOHSE: I think it was eighty acres in the Homestead Act thing he had to start with.
ERQUIAGA: Was there a house on the land?
LOHSE: Oh, yes. One little house, but the family was kind of small then (laughing) but my dad added rooms onto it.
ERQUIAGA: Now, at this time, that would be on Tarzyn Road where your brother James lived for many years?
LOHSE: Uh-huh. Yeah, James was born there. He lived there always 'til he passed away.
ERQUIAGA: And is the house that's there now the same house?
LOHSE: Well, it's done over, and he got several rooms added to it, and Florence is a good housekeeper so everything is changed in it. It's real homelike.
ERQUIAGA: Were there any crops growing at that time?
LOHSE: Oh, yeah. It had some alfalfa. Some of the fields was in pasture of alfalfa, so this fellow had a horse or something on it, you know, a cow, so he had started, but my dad fed horses or something in the wintertime so he could use them and plow up the sagebrush and stuff and level some land. He'd do a little bit at a time, but he didn't get too much because he had to work somewhere else to make a little money. …That was really tough times.
ERQUIAGA: Yes. Well, at that time, did they irrigate out of the river down there?
LOHSE: No, it was a canal.
ERQUIAGA: The dam and the Newlands Project was already in effect?
LOHSE: Oh, yes, it was.
ERQUIAGA: But, did you ever have occasion when the river went over its banks down there in the spring?
LOHSE: Well, not where we lived 'cause we was quite a little ways from it. There was sloughs and what have you between us and Sagouspe Dam. It's what they call Sagouspe Dam now. It didn't do any flooding, but the sloughs would keep full and you could go cat fishing over there.
ERQUIAGA: Did your dad buy machinery and horses and cattle to farm?
LOHSE: Yeah, he had a few. He had to have a mowing machine and a rake, old-fashioned rake, horses pulling it, of course, and they had a few cows.
ERQUIAGA: Did they milk cows?
LOHSE: Um-hum. They had, oh, I think, five or six cows to milk. Anyway, you'd take the five-gallon can of cream to the creamery once in awhile. Brought them in a little money that way. (laughing)
ERQUIAGA: Did you have someone from the creamery that came and picked up your cream?
LOHSE: They had one in town right by the railroad track there. Near where they had an alfalfa mill, I think.
ERQUIAGA: But did your father have to take the cream in there?
LOHSE: Um-hum. When he went to town on Saturday, why he'd take it if they had can of cream.
ERQUIAGA: What kind of crops did you raise?
LOHSE: We had a big garden. (laughing) Raised everything. Potatoes.
ERQUIAGA: That's where you got your food. From the garden. Did you raise alfalfa?
LOHSE: Yeah, they had some alfalfa.
ERQUIAGA: And was there any pasture for the cattle?
LOHSE: All the kids were herding the cows all the time out on the ditch, canal, and all. All the kids did that. Everybody's kids did that.
ERQUIAGA: How many more children were born after you settled here?
LOHSE: Oh, it was Edward. That was in 1912, and then Thomas came in 1914, and James came in 1916, and that was the end of it.
ERQUIAGA: Well, that's a total of six children, then, and you were the oldest. Did you have to help take care of the little ones?
LOHSE: Oh, yeah. I had to do that.
ERQUIAGA: You helped with the housework?
LOHSE: Washed dishes for that many of them when they got to be six kids. (laughing)
ERQUIAGA: Did you ever work out in the field?
LOHSE: Oh, yes, I'd go out and help.
ERQUIAGA: What did you do?
LOHSE: Oh, I bunched the hay. We bunched it then.
ERQUIAGA: By hand?
LOHSE: Uh-huh. By hand. And then finally my dad got a derrick to stack it when we got a little more hay. I was a derrick driver. I got a dollar a day.
ERQUIAGA: Well, that was pretty good.
LOHSE: (laughing) Well, it wasn't a bad job if you had the same team all the time, but sometimes if you were short of horses you'd have to take that team off of the wagon and put it on your derrick cart, and, oh boy, that wasn't very good to do that 'cause they're not used to going forward and coming back. If you have that one team they just get used to what they're supposed to do and it made it easy. They'd back up when they got to a certain point. My dad was always stacker. He wouldn't let me go anywhere else. He would have to be the stacker because he was kind of fussy about that.
ERQUIAGA: Well, that was kind of special job, wasn't it? The stacking had to be done just right.
LOHSE: Oh, yeah. He was a good stacker. He wanted to have a good derrick driver, too. (laughing)
ERQUIAGA: Right. Well, did you have playmates that lived nearby? Any neighbor children?
LOHSE: Well… we didn't have much time to play. We had to work in the garden and all that kind of stuff. Go out and pull the foxtail in the fields. Nowadays, they don't do anything like that. But that's what you had to do. We were busy.
ERQUIAGA: Did you have any toys that you played with?
LOHSE: Oh, yeah. The kids, after they got a little older, they'd get an old bicycle or a couple of them and make a good one out of it so they could ride, but I never did ride a bicycle. I couldn't swim 'cause they wouldn't let me go swimming with them. They went swimming in their overalls or in their birthday suits, (laughing) so I couldn't do that. That would be tomboyish.
ERQUIAGA: Did you ride a horse?
LOHSE: I could ride, but I didn't ride very much. Oh, yes, we did. We had a white horse. His name was Slocum. Our names were Sloan, (laughing) and we rode it from down there where we lived up to Old River. Three of us on a horse.
ERQUIAGA: Where did you go to school?
LOHSE: In Old River.
ERQUIAGA: At the Old River School?
LOHSE: Uh-huh, but we lived in the Mills District. See, the Peraldos over there, it was people named Mills, and there was a Mills District. I guess they somehow had enough kids to create a district. You had to have five kids, I think, even then. They do now, yet. You have to have five to have a school district. So they had a Mills District, and three of us were using money at the Old River District when they needed us down in the Mills District so they got busy and made a swinging bridge across the river. At one time that school building was on this side of the river, but wasn't very many kids on this side so they . . . I don't know how they got it moved across the river, but they did.
ERQUIAGA: Now, this is the Old River School you're talking about?
LOHSE: No, that's that Mills. A lot of people don't know about the Mills District, but they had one.
ERQUIAGA: And that school was .
LOHSE: We lived in the Mills District so they fixed a swinging bridge and we went across to school there for, well, I think, I was in about fifth and sixth grade 'cause I was in the seventh when we were transferred to the school in town.
ERQUIAGA: And where was this swinging bridge?
LOHSE: Right there by Sagouspe's place where their cattle were, that was a narrow place in the river to put it. We had to go through a cattle corral. It wasn't very nice. You had to be told, "Don't fool around in there with those cattle." Sometimes, it'd be a big log hanging on the bridge when they had a lot of water in the river. You couldn't go across it with a log hanging on, so my dad would have go and take a saw and cut it loose so that the bridge could be level.
ERQUIAGA: And that bridge was built just so you could go to the school?
LOHSE: Um-hum, and then there's another family came on this side. Bought a place right near us, and they had three boys that went to school. We all walked.
ERQUIAGA: How far was that that you walked?
LOHSE: Well, I'd say about three miles.
ERQUIAGA: Every day? You didn't ride the horse to school?
LOHSE: No, well, we'd have to go across the river 'cause they put the school quite a ways from above where the bridge was. You had to find a place to put the schoolhouse.
ERQUIAGA: Where would that be now? This spot where the schoolhouse was?
LOHSE: Let's see, what is over there now? It's not very far from where the Sagouspe Dam is. It's where that school used to be 'cause they had to have a piece of ground, you know, to set it there.
ERQUIAGA: And it was called the Mills School.
LOHSE: Mills School District, yeah, and the teacher stayed over at Millses.
ERQUIAGA: Now, which Mills family would that be? Anybody that's still around?
LOHSE: No. Well, Robin Mills was one of them. I don't know if you know Robin Mills. I don't mean the one that's my age. He was a year or two older than me. Robin was. They were three Mills kids going to school over there when we got sent back over there.
ERQUIAGA: And did you say they lived on the Peraldo place?
LOHSE: Um-hum. They owned that.
ERQUIAGA: Well, then, when you were in the seventh grade is when you started coming into town to school?
LOHSE: Um-hum.
ERQUIAGA: And how did you get there?
LOHSE: Well, a bus came down as far as . . . they didn't come clear to our house at first. Turned around somewhere up there by Lattins.
ERQUIAGA: And they started the bus system that early?
LOHSE: Um-hum. Well, at first, they didn't let the high school kids ride that bus. I don't know why 'cause I had to drive a horse and buggy to high school when I was starting.
ERQUIAGA: Oh, did you? Even though you had ridden the bus to the seventh and eighth grade?
LOHSE: Let's see. How did that work? How did we get there? It must have been the bus. I guess we had to walk. They never did come clear to our house until my brother got old enough to drive a bus and then he drove the bus for a couple of years.
ERQUIAGA: But, you did drive a buggy to high school?
LOHSE: Yeah. (laughing) An old slow mustang. One time I came so late, about an hour late 'cause it was so icy that morning. You had to go to the office and tell Mr. McCracken why you were late, and he said, "Well, you'll just have to start earlier." (laughing) That's all the sympathy I got.
ERQUIAGA: Did very many students drive horses to school or ride horses?
LOHSE: Yeah, some of them did. We had quite a few. 'Course that Old River, you know, they all had to have a horse. The Lammels rode a donkey. Three of them rode one donkey. (laughing) So that was old times.
ERQUIAGA: Very different from now.
LOHSE: Um-hum. And then that's what we did. We walked through the brush to meet the bus. You know what Hans did when he first came here? Somewhere up there where Herbert lives, they first got a bad piece of ground. Everybody told them, "That ground isn't any good," but they thought, oh well, they'd try it. They found out it wasn't any good, you know, alkali and greasewood. That's a sign land is too alkalized. They had to get another piece of ground where Mr. Travis lives. That's where their home was. They built an adobe house.
ERQUIAGA: Was the first place they got close to Herb's place?
LOHSE: Somewhere in there. 'Cause you see his is mostly sand hills that he's got there.
ERQUIAGA: Well, did Hans go to the Old River School?
LOHSE: He walked down hill to that Mills School all by himself. Six years old.
ERQUIAGA: Were you going there at the same time?
LOHSE: Oh, no. He was six years and three months older than me, so he wasn't even going to Old River. He was going to high school by the time I got to seventh grade. So I went seventh and eighth at Oats Park.
ERQUIAGA: So, where did you meet him?
LOHSE: Oh, we knew all the Lohses going to school on the school bus. You know everybody.
ERQUIAGA: Did your father have a car at this time?
LOHSE: No, he didn't have that car until I was out of school. I know he had a job at the sugar factory, and he had a night time job all night, and he'd ride that horse. (laughing)
ERQUIAGA: To the sugar factory.
LOHSE: To the sugar factory. When it was going, he was a boiler man. He was real good at that. Then, lately, talking to different ones, that's what he used to do back in Virginia. I know Hans' brother said he worked at the sugar factory, too, but I don't know what he did. But, he said, "Boy, I'll tell you. That fellow is a A-one man for that job. That thing just stays where it's supposed to stay. He watches it all the time."
ERQUIAGA: That would be a gauge of some sort?
LOHSE: Yeah. And he said, "Boy, he's sure made for that job," and he liked it, too. It was kind of hard to work at night.
ERQUIAGA: And then he farmed during the day?
LOHSE: Well, there wasn't so much farming. The kids, we all worked, and we pulled weeds and stuff like that, fed the animals.
ERQUIAGA: Well, how far was that from your house to the sugar factory?
LOHSE: It was about where that gate is that goes into, I think.
ERQUIAGA: That would be about four or five miles from your house.
LOHSE: Must be. Now, they say it's seven miles, but it seems, I walked it one time. I missed the school bus, but I walked down the canal because I was afraid of the coyotes and so I walked along the canal bank, but I didn't do that again (laughing) 'cause I was afraid of the coyotes. We all were. See, they had the rabies about that time. We were scared to death of the things. They wouldn't bother you if they were okay, but if they had something wrong with them why they weren't afraid of you. They'd just come right into your place. Look in the door.
ERQUIAGA: And they would bite the animals, people or whatever.
LOHSE: Yeah. My dad saw this thing, and he knew what was wrong with it, so he went out and shot it and instead of doing something with it so the other dogs couldn't get to it, why, this was before breakfast and then he took care of it afterwards, but Puffy went in there and evidently licked around it and got the saliva or something, you know, they're frothing at the mouth when they got that, and that Puffy, they shut it up when they saw it was acting peculiar and that's what it had. It got the rabies, too.
ERQUIAGA: Puffy was your dog?
LOHSE: Um-huh. But the older dogs, evidently they didn't get it. They didn't go around the net fence to get it. But puppies, you know, have to . . .
ERQUIAGA: And I suppose you had to kill Puffy?
LOHSE: Well, they shut it up and I think my dad finally had to kill it because it's a terrible .
ERQUIAGA: They really don't get over that, I guess.
LOHSE: No, never. It kills them.
ERQUIAGA: What was your mother's life like out there?
LOHSE: (laughing) That was workin' all the time.
ERQUIAGA: Did she ever learn to drive a car?
LOHSE: No.
ERQUIAGA: How did she go into town?
LOHSE: Well, the boys would get stuff for her from the store, and my dad would go every Saturday, but she didn't get to go.
ERQUIAGA: Oh, she didn't go.
LOHSE: Hum-um. There was always something to do at home. Wash clothes on a washboard.
ERQUIAGA: Did she bake bread and all that?
LOHSE: Yeah.
ERQUIAGA: Where did you cross the river when you went into town?
LOHSE: We didn't have to cross the river. We were on this side of the river, It's the same road, except down there now, you know all those houses on both sides of that road? When I go down there I say, "Oh, if my folks were here to see this now, they'd just be lost with all those houses along," you know where they are. They've been there quite a while.
ERQUIAGA: Did your folks raise turkeys?
LOHSE: Yeah, they did. That brought in some money. Say, if we have good luck, we'd have fifteen or twenty, but that was a bad job. We had to help pick them, too. (laughing) Out at nighttime in a chicken house.
ERQUIAGA: Now, why did you pick them at nighttime?
LOHSE: 'Cause my dad could help. He was the one that knew how to kill them, so he'd help do it.
ERQUIAGA: Now, you mentioned in your questionnaire that on July 4, 1910, you went to Reno to see the first airplane. Can you tell me about that?
LOHSE: Oh, yeah, that was something. I can't remember them telling about planning on going, but I remember the part. I guess we went on a train. How else would you get there? But I remember seeing the plane fly along the river right by Virginia Street. My dad wanted to do that. He said, "Well, we'll just have to go." So, we took the trip in by the train.
ERQUIAGA: Was that the first time a plane had flown in that area around Reno?
LOHSE: Um-hum. That was the first plane that flew in Reno. 1910.
ERQUIAGA: Can you actually remember it, or do you…
LOHSE: Um-hum. Yeah, I do.
ERQUIAGA: Well, that was kind of interesting.
LOHSE: Yeah.
ERQUIAGA: When did you graduate from high school?
LOHSE: 1924.
ERQUIAGA: And did your brothers all go to high school and graduate?
LOHSE: Yes, they all did. No, I don't think Louis did. No, he didn't. He liked to go play ball. He didn't care about anything else much.
ERQUIAGA: Well, after graduation tell me what you did.
LOHSE: Oh, I used to work for a lady. Her name was Vencil--the Vencil ranch. Maybe you heard people talk about her, and she was a good cook, and when she'd have cantaloupe crew and a hay crew, why, she had to have somebody help her pick the vegetables and do things, so I was the one she had do that. Then her sister [Mante Thorpe] married R. L. Douglass, [Dec. 26, 1918] when he built that house. When it was seventy-five years [old], not long ago, they [Douglass and Frey families] had that party. [May 1, 1993] Well, I was cooking out there for the family. [Douglass] I said, "Oh, gee, I'm not a very good cook." She said, "Yes, but my sister's a good cook, and she'll teach you how to do it."
ERQUIAGA: That was at the Douglass ranch.
LOHSE: Mm-hmm that was at the Douglass ranch. So she did.
ERQUIAGA: How did you get down there, or did you live there?
LOHSE: Oh, I lived there. It was a big house, so I had a room in their house. They had the cook house in another house where the men had their eats.
ERQUIAGA: How many people did you cook for?
LOHSE: Well, they just had one man there to feed the horses or the cows and milk a cow if they wanted the milk.
ERQUIAGA: But, weren't there more in the summertime when the harvesting was . . .
LOHSE: No, I think the Renfroes took care of that.
ERQUIAGA: So, you didn't have a big crew?
LOHSE: No, I just cooked for the family and this one man.
ERQUIAGA: Did you cook on a woodburning stove?
LOHSE: Um-hum.
ERQUIAGA: And how did you manage the oven?
LOHSE: Oh, it worked. It had to work okay. It had a lot of wood.
ERQUIAGA: So how could you tell when the temperature was right to put something in it?
LOHSE: It must have had something on it to tell 'cause I imagine it was a nice big stove.
ERQUIAGA: Did you bake bread when you were cooking down there?
LOHSE: Yeah, Yeah, if we going so it after I learned how, I did. I baked bread. Yeah, she was a real good cook, and we worked together had company or they went somewhere or if I wasn't somewhere. If I did, why, she'd do the cooking, worked out real good.
ERQUIAGA: Did you have a day off, or did you work every day?
LOHSE: Well, I worked every day. It was kind of bad if you'd go to a dance and stay out late, why you'd be kind of sleepy the next day, but Mr. Douglass had to have his breakfast early every morning. (laughing)
ERQUIAGA: What was the salary for doing that?
LOHSE: Quite a bit for those days. Two dollars a day, sixty dollars a month, so I thought I was doing pretty good.
ERQUIAGA: Were you able to keep that money, or did you have to help your parents out with it?
LOHSE: Oh, I'd buy them like I bought my dad a sheepskin coat. I'd buy them stuff like that if they'd need it.
ERQUIAGA: Did you do the cleanup as well as the cooking, or did you have help?
LOHSE: Well, I just kept the room where the man ate his dinner 'cause he didn't eat with the family, and then they had the table and the kitchen all together there in that bunkhouse or cook house.
ERQUIAGA: Was their daughter a friend of yours in school? Did you know her in school?
LOHSE: Eleanor and Mary? Yeah, I knew them, and I knew the boy, too. And I ate with them, too, if they didn't have . . . 'course you know how kids are. This one would come and that one would come. You didn't know any of them?
ERQUIAGA: No.
LOHSE: I know Eleanor, the one that was there at that seventy-fifth anniversary, why, she was the one that, I guess, I don't know, every time I'd ask her, "Well, what do you want for dessert?"--I didn't ask anybody else (laughing)--she'd say, "Brown velvet cake." Finally, somebody said, "Well, gosh, we're getting tired of brown velvet cake." (laughing)
ERQUIAGA: So, you had to figure out a different dessert.
LOHSE: Yeah, I didn't ask her if she remembered that that day. It was so many people there. I wouldn't have known her 'cause it's been a long time since I saw her. 1927.
ERQUIAGA: Had the house been changed very much between that time?
LOHSE: Oh, my! Just the outside part looks the same. Inside it's completely done over.
ERQUIAGA: It's all modern.
LOHSE: Oh, it's beautiful.
ERQUIAGA: Now, did you have indoor plumbing and running water and all that when you worked there?
LOHSE: Uh-huh. Yeah, we had all that. Had a wood or coal furnace down in the basement. That was mean thing to start if you didn't have experience. Several times I'd start it if they weren't there to do it. You had to know how to do it.
ERQUIAGA: What did young people do for entertainment at that time?
LOHSE: Oh, we'd go to dances on Saturday to the different schools. Oh, I guess some of the people that lived in town, I don't know what they did 'cause kids out in the country didn't get to . . . [End of side A]
ERQUIAGA: Did you ever go on picnics to Lahontan Dam?
LOHSE: Oh, no. That was too far away. (laughing) We did have a couple of years, I remember we had birthdays for people who had birthdays in June, there was a big crowd on the river over there by Sagouspe Dam. There was a place to have a picnic and I guess they had picnics for the school, too, but sometimes you lived out there in the country with horse and buggy you didn't get to go every time. Somebody's got to go along and drive the team if you don't know to do it.
ERQUIAGA: Did they have rodeos like they do now?
LOHSE: Not so much. Oh, they had fairgrounds. I remember we all went in this wagon. It was a spring wagon with two seats on it. Oh, we did have a surrey once, too.
ERQUIAGA: This was your family that had this.
LOHSE: Uh-huh. With the fringe on top.
ERQUIAGA: Well, in the meantime, while you were doing this work, where was Hans? Was he going to the University?
LOHSE: Yeah, and he worked with his brother up there on the old place, homesteading I guess is what you'd call it. Yeah, he worked there in the summertime. That's how he made his money to go to college.
ERQUIAGA: Did he go to school in Reno?
LOHSE: Um-hum.
ERQUIAGA: And did you know him at that time?
LOHSE: Oh, not very well. They used to put on plays at the Old River School, and I wasn't very old then. Anyway, I wasn't going to school, yet. I didn't get to go until I was seven 'cause, well, you had to walk by yourself and they didn't want that. So, it was all right. It's just the idea they had, you know, walking alone. 'Course maybe it wasn't as dangerous as it is now, I don't think. (laughing)
ERQUIAGA: Probably not. So, when did you get married?
LOHSE: 1927.
ERQUIAGA: And were you still working at the Douglass Ranch?
LOHSE: Yeah, they said they expected me to stay there for quite a while. I'd been going with Hans off and on for five years, so we thought now that he had a job, why .
ERQUIAGA: And where did he have this job?
LOHSE: Paradise Valley [Nevada]. The first year he had a Bench Creek out there. There was a Danberg family that, I think, they had four boys, and they had the school right in their home, and this deputy came along and he said, "Hey, Lohse, you don't have a job?" And the Hicks gal was a teacher out there, but when Christmas came, she says, "I'm not going back to that place. I don't care if they're never going to have a teacher," but she wasn't going back. She couldn't make them do anything. 'Course the mother was there, too, you know, but, oh, I don't know whether she was such a good teacher, but he talked Hans into going out there take that job, that deputy did. He says it'll be some money coming in, anyway. It'll be a job. So, he took it. He and I bought a car together. Model T. 'Cause he had to have a way to get out there and a way to come back once in a while. He liked it out there. He got along with the kids okay. They did real good. Then when summertime came why here comes this deputy again. He says, "Come on, Lohse, you haven't got a job yet as a chemist, and I don't think you're going . . ." (laughing) It wouldn't last very long. Like he went to work at the Nightingale Mine as a chemist out there for a while, but it lasted a couple of months. It would close up or whatever, and he went to California, but he didn't find anything down there. So he said there's a fellow came from the east as a teacher, an older man, and he came there and he visited and looked around, and he said, "I want to tell you something. I wouldn't teach in this place for love nor money," he said. "I'm going home." So he left.
ERQUIAGA: Now, this is Bench Creek that you're talking about?
LOHSE: No, that's up at Paradise Valley. No, that family moved to town. The Danbergs moved to town. Their kids were getting old enough to go to high school pretty quick.
ERQUIAGA: Well, after you were married, then, you moved to Paradise right away?
LOHSE: Oh, yes. It was in August around the first of August, and he said, "Boy, it's going to be hard to find a teacher this late in the day with this old fellow taking off." And so he said, well, he'd go see what it was like. So, he went. He came back, he had the job, so we decided to get married and move up there.
ERQUIAGA: Where did you get married?
LOHSE: In Reno.
ERQUIAGA: Did you have a very big wedding?
LOHSE: No, the deputy, this fellow, and his wife were witnesses at the office where we went. Justice of the Peace, I guess. And then he wanted to take me to San Francisco, so we went to San Francisco for a few days, 'cause he had to be back up there about the middle of August.
ERQUIAGA: Now, what was it like living in Paradise? Did you live in town?
LOHSE: Oh, yes, right in town. They got big ranches up there and they had to bring their kids in from those ranches that went to school. And I think it was about fifteen kids in school. See, they had grammar school, first grade through eighth grade, and two rooms for the grammar school and one room for the high school.
ERQUIAGA: And what grade did your husband teach?
LOHSE: First two years of high school, and when we went there that day, he said in town there were some pigs rolling in kind of mud hole on Main Street. "Boy!" he says, "This is an awful place to bring somebody." (laughing) "Well," he said, "we'll stay here a couple years until we get ahead a little bit and then we'll go somewhere else." We moved out of there twenty-seven years later.
ERQUIAGA: Turned out to be a pretty good place evidently.
LOHSE: Well, yes, it was. He got along with everybody. Even the kids today some of them that went to school to him said, "Boy, sure glad Mr. Lohse was up here in that school when we went there." 'Cause one was a lady that grew up and she had her beauty parlor in Sparks and now she's got a home up at Lake Tahoe and she came to my birthday party last year, and she said, "Oh, boy, we're sure glad he was there because we really learned a lot."
ERQUIAGA: Well, that's pretty good. Did you shop in Winnemucca, or did they have a store there?
LOHSE: They had two stores at Paradise.
ERQUIAGA: You didn't have to go into Winnemucca very much.
LOHSE: No, not very much. One store had a big truck. They have a couple of little stores started there now, but it was kind of hard when you didn't have a store there. Oh, they sold gasoline, had a bar. That was all that was needed. (laughing) If you wanted groceries, you had to go to Winnemucca or you'd have your friend bring you something you needed if you couldn't get up there, but you get most of the things from there.
ERQUIAGA: Did you have a job away from your home at any time?
LOHSE: No, only time I'd have a job I didn't get paid for that. I was a dummy. I should have got a teacher's certificate so I could substitute when one of the teachers couldn't go to school.
ERQUIAGA: But, you didn't do that.
LOHSE: But, I didn't do that, but I would go and substitute, but I wouldn't get any pay for it. You have to have a certificate to do that.
ERQUIAGA: You did help them out quite a bit, but you didn't get paid.
LOHSE: Oh, no, not too often. I didn't do it in the high school. There was only a couple of times that he missed school. He got spotted fever and he missed two weeks. The last two weeks of school, but the kids he had them right up to snuff, you know. He expected them to have their lessons every day and all that, so they weren't behind. They had to go somewhere else to third and fourth year high school. Winnemucca or trade school. Some of the boys went to trade school in California.
ERQUIAGA: They just had two years of high school. I see.
LOHSE: Well, and then they come along towards the last, why, they run out of high school kids.
ERQUIAGA: Well, tell me more about this spotted fever.
LOHSE: Mmmm, that was a bad deal. He got that the second year that we were there. In the spring. They used to tell us about it. "Better watch out for those ticks going fishing up there." Sure enough, second year he came down with it. Was a bad deal, but everybody was nice, and the doctor did know how to handle spotted fever. He knew what to do.
ERQUIAGA: They had medication, something for it?
LOHSE: Yeah, there was a doctor there right in Paradise. They had three girls and they went to school there, and they finally moved away so that took three kids out of school.
ERQUIAGA: And you have one daughter?
LOHSE: Um-hum.
ERQUIAGA: And when was she born?
LOHSE: She was born May 15, 1932, in Fallon.
ERQUIAGA: In Fallon. You were living in Paradise, but she was born in Fallon.
LOHSE: Yeah, because I had an old doctor in Winnemucca and all, and I used to come down and help my mother can for a couple of weeks in the fall and then I'd take some cans up home, so he had to batch or go to somebody's house to eat if he wanted to, but I guess he got invited out quite a bit.
ERQUIAGA: What did you name your daughter?
LOHSE: Emma Mae.
ERQUIAGA: And was she born in a hospital here?
LOHSE: Yeah, a little hospital. One lady had a hospital right beside the other one there. Mrs. Steinbrook had a hospital.
ERQUIAGA: Now, where was her hospital? Can you remember?
LOHSE: Somewhere in there where that fellow that's got a car repair place on East Williams. Right in there there was a hospital, and then there was some other place. That woman had another hospital. But, this one just had herself in this place and one girl that went to school so I came down and stayed two weeks.
ERQUIAGA: And your daughter was born in this hospital.
LOHSE: Uh-huh. She kept us two weeks. Gosh, nowadays they have them out the next day or even that day, and, finally, I said to her, "Gee whiz! When am I going to get out of here because they're going to have a picnic at school, and I want to go to the picnic." So by that time I was kind of dizzy from just lying around and eating and having her take care of the baby. (laughing)
ERQUIAGA: You probably got weak lying around.
LOHSE: I did! And I said, "Well, gee, you know, it's two hundred miles up there and not any of the road is oiled either." So that was quite a trip. Two hundred miles from here to there. All rough road. Almost wear a set of tires out. Anyway, he said, "I think you'd better go down there and then you got your relatives. It'll be better than going to Winnemucca. I'd have to go every day and that would be quite a chore." It's forty-five miles. 'Course in the summer it wasn't bad. The fifteenth of May it was warm enough.
ERQUIAGA: Where did your daughter go to school? In Paradise?
LOHSE: She went to Paradise. Even went to three years of high school. That was our trouble. She got good grades and all that. She told me, she says, "You know what? I know Daddy makes me work harder than those other kids. Just 'cause he's my daddy he makes me work harder." I said, "Well, I don't know what you're going to do about that. I don't know if I can do anything about it." (laughing) But anyway, it didn't hurt her. But, just the last time--see, I went to Miami. I was down there four months with her. It was a good thing. The weather was kind of cold here, but the house was warm. Mr. Harmsworth took care of it, my neighbor up here. He said, "Oh, you wouldn't get cold in that house. You'd of been all right.' I got a stove, and I got a furnace, but going to town and stuff like that they said it wasn't very good doing that.
ERQUIAGA: Well, where did your daughter graduate from high school?
LOHSE: Right there.
ERQUIAGA: Right there in Paradise.
LOHSE: Um-hum. Yeah, she got a diploma. Well, that happened one time up at Wendover. There was a girl that graduated from there that went to school, and I wish I'd of kept the story and sent it to her. She said, "I wish you had." Because he gave second-year typing and she was good at typing and the kind of a job she has now why she even teaches computer stuff to the other people.
ERQUIAGA: After she graduated from high school, did she go to the University?
LOHSE: She went to Reno, yeah.
ERQUTAGA: Did she graduate up there?
LOHSE: No, she didn't. She got married. She got a job as a dental technician. I can’t even think of the dentist’s name. About the time she got to be where she could be helping him she wants to get married, so she married Sam Coppori [?]And everyone knows who they were. He got his [inaudible] I guess about now. And he was in the service in Albuquerque. They got married and away they went. [laughs] I said, “yeah, but that poor dentist! He just learned some good help for him, and now you’re gonna take off!” Well, they didn’t see anything wrong with that. So that’s what they did. Then she finished college down- he had a job at Douglas, down in California. What was the name of the place… I can’t say it now. But everybody knows about the Douglas aircraft.
ERQUIAGA: So that’s probably in southern California?
LOHSE: Yeah. Well, let’s see. I should have a map. No it’s not… it’s quite a ways from…
ERQUIAGA: Oh, I see. Well, do you have grandchildren?
LOHSE: No. She couldn’t carry. She tried three times. Couldn’t do that anymore. I think she could have if she’d gone to bed like some people we know. She needed to go and take it easy part of the day. You don’t have to stay in bed all of the time. We had a woman who went to school with Hans, and she has one girl, and that’s because she went to bed and stayed half a day in order to…
ERQUIAGA: So how did she end up in Florida?
LOHSE: Well, Sam was an engineer when he went to Douglas – He went to University of Nevada too and he graduated as an engineer. He’s pretty good with – he’s a good worker, you know. They can depend on him and everything. And they would always promote him and anything in personal, but he didn’t like that part. He’s one of these people that if he ate his breakfast at home or he might have a drink of coffee or something sometime, but he wanted to take their time out for, what is it, ten minutes or something like that and they’d say “come on, we’re gonna have our break now” and he said “I don’t want to, I just had my coffee for breakfast. I wanna finish my job before I take a break.” Oh, the rest of them didn’t like those kind of people, you know. [chuckles] But that’s the way he was, he didn’t like it at all, but his dad thought it was something. He was getting these raises, but it wasn’t any good because… He didn’t say there too long, I forgot when they went. It must be almost 20 years since they were in Miami, but the reason they went there is because he didn’t like cold weather.
ERQUIAGA: I see.
LOHSE: And he took a camera course. Camera repair course. He could have had a job in Salt Lake [City, Utah] but he didn’t want that. That’s still cold weather there in the winter time. So they went to Miami.
ERQUIAGA: And are they retired now, or are they still working?
LOHSE: No, she was 61 May 15th, but she’s decided she’s going to keep on working until she’s 65. They got divorced when they were married 32 years. She’s married to a guy who works at that water plant over there and she got a job there. So that’s where she works. She wanted a job where you had to work all day on the job and get good money, good pay, so she’s’ got that. Sometimes I think it’s too much of a job, but you can’t be too choosy when you’ve got a job like that. That’s the way it’s got to be. But she says she wants to stay on until she’s 65, because it’s good retirement. They’ve got all that.
ERQUIAGA: Where did you go from Paradise Valley when you left there?
LOHSE: Well, we went to Fernley.
ERQUIAGA: And your husband was a teacher there?
LOHSE: He was the principal of the school.
ERQUIAGA: Principal of the high school?
LOHSE: Uh-huh. The man from the University of Nevada--'course with him up there he knew the professors and so on, kept in contact and would go sometime in the summertime to summer school. Fernley was in a bad shape. Said it was terrible.
ERQUIAGA: You mean the school?
LOHSE: Schools. Terrible. People… It was rundown, so this guy recommended that Lohse take the job 'cause he didn't have job. They didn't have enough kids at the high school in Fernley. We even took a … Joyce Belaustegui went up there. She was in the first year or second year. She went and stayed with us that last year to make enough kids, and she needed extra help, too. Hans was her uncle so it made it work out okay. Anyway, he got the job. By fall we came down to Fernley. Had new trustees and everything. So, anyway, they thought he was the man for the job, and he said, "Well, I’ll tell you, it'll work out okay if the new trustees and I get along. I get along with your idea and you with me, it'll work out. Otherwise it won't." Pretty strong. He didn't want anybody else. He wanted this other guy. You probably would know or heard about him or so. Maybe you did. I can't remember his name anymore. Well, I didn't have to anyway. (laughing)
ERQUIAGA: How long did you live in Fernley then?
LOHSE: Ten years.
ERQUIAGA: Well, it must have worked out between Hans and the school board.
LOHSE: It did because there was some people there from Elko, the Bankofiers. They were an old family from Elko and he used to eat over there. Well, he didn't like some of the rules that Lohse had and he was too strict and this, and they had PTA [Parents Teacher Organization], and they dumped these things over. He said, "Well, I taught school, too. I know something about it." He says, "I know you did, but I'm teaching here and I'm doing it my way and the way the trustees want me to do it." That's the way he talked back. He didn't take a back seat for anybody. You gotta be that way when you're teaching. They got a man up here now, Don Dallas. He went four years in Fernley over there. I haven't heard any complaints about him here, but I see he's retiring.
ERQUIAGA: When did you come back to Fallon?
LOHSE: After he retired over there.
ERQUIAGA: And that was what year?
LOHSE: 1964. We went to Fernley in 1954 and 1964 we came over here.
ERQUIAGA: And you bought this place in the country?
LOHSE: Bought this place here and was alfalfa fields. This was plowed up like I told you already. Some man had bought it, but after it got plowed he said he can't. Clyde said, "Well, he came back and said he didn't want it. He'd changed his mind." Said, "Yes, you can buy it."
ERQUIAGA: So you bought this from Clyde Gummow. And you have seven acres, did you say?
LOHSE: Um-hum. Seven acres.
ERQUIAGA: Do you do most of this outside work yourself?
LOHSE: Well, at first, it was in all alfalfa and we had to hire somebody that came along and did the hay 'cause we didn't have any idea about buying anything to cut it with. (laughing) And then he wanted to build a house and that took five years.
ERQUIAGA: And where did you live while you were building the house?
LOHSE: Well, we were lucky. We found a little trailer that couple of people had and they wanted to sell it and here we came along, so we bought it. Came over here. Just big enough to eat and sleep and that was all we were going to do anyway. We were going to build a house. I know I told him, I said, "Oh, golly, you don't want to build a house. That's a lot of work. don't know if you know how to build a house." He said, "Well, I sure learned something. I saw three schools built in my life and I should have learned something about it."
ERQUIAGA: So, he did all the work himself?
LOHSE: Oh, no, I helped him. (laughing)
ERQUIAGA: But, I mean, you didn't have a contractor that did all the designing.
LOHSE: Oh, no. My brother, Thomas, he was quite a builder and he built his house in Reno. I think he built several others, so he had some suggestions about help, so we'd do them. We built the store room and the garage first to learn how.
ERQUIAGA: Well, that was a good idea. And your house was cement block.
LOHSE: Yeah. Well, that first summer in the summertime we'd come down here and we'd work like up at the Belausteguis. They had a ranch up there by Lahontan Dam. We'd come and I'd help in the garden and Hans helped with the hay. He did both of the Wallaces. Mrs. Wallace was his sister, you know. She had a couple of trees by her garden that she wanted cut. He cut those down, and we had to have the wood, so she said, "You can have the wood if you'll cut those trees down 'cause my garden isn't growing in the shade." They had some hay, too, and they worked in the hay there. I helped in the garden, helped them can, so we got down here every summer. I came back home again.
ERQUIAGA: Well, then, when did your husband pass away?
LOHSE: He got a stroke in 1981. He had twenty years of retirement. That's more than a lot of them would get. Some teachers didn't even get one year. They'd get a heart attack or some darn thing, so I think he did pretty good. He was seventy years old when we moved in here. It took us five years to build this house. That's what I told him. 'Course we didn't work all the time. If we wanted to go fishing, why, he had a fishing boat so we'd go fishing. And then in the summertime we used to go to Miami, too. Not in the summertime. In January and February is when it's a good month to go over there. They took us on a sailing trip once for two weeks down at the Carribbean Islands. They were the sailors. They had a sailboat in California and they sailed through the [Panama] Canal.
ERQUIAGA: And now you've been a widow for nine years, did you say?
LOHSE: Um-hum. He got stroke in July 15, 1981, and then he passed away. [1984] Oh, he stayed a month in a convalescent home because he wanted to try to see if they couldn't give him therapy and get him to walking again.
ERQUIAGA: Well, Elsie, this concludes our interview. On behalf of the Churchill County Oral History Program I want to thank you for taking time to tell us about your memories of early Churchill County.
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