Leonard Mackedon Oral History

Leonard Mackedon Oral History

Leonard Mackedon Oral History

Churchill County Museum Association

Churchill County Museum Association

September 12, 1994

Analog Cassette Tape, Text File, Mp3 Audio

English

Audio Cassette

59:10, 53:00

 

Churchill County Oral History Project

an interview with

LEONARD O. MACKEDON

Fallon, Nevada

conducted by

Sylvia Arden

September 12, 1994

This interview is part of the socioeconomic studies for Churchill County's Yucca Mountain Planning and Oversight Program.

© 1994

Preface

Leonard Mackedon's paternal grandfather, Joseph Mackedon, was only twenty when he came to Nevada from Milwaukee with his wife Mary and son John. There was a mining boom all over Nevada and as an engineer he knew he could find work. They first setted at Seven Troughs, about forty-seven miles north of Lovelock. Leonard's maternal grandmother, Roseanna, and his mother Hazel also came to Seven Troughs to run a boarding house in Jessup where John and Hazel met and married. They moved to Fanning, a big tungsten mill on the railroad, where John was mill foreman. Leonard, born in Fanning, was the youngest of three children.

When they heard about homesteading in Churchill County, the Mackedons homesteaded 160 acres in Dixie Valley. They couldn't make a go of it, sold it and moved into Fallon in 1924. Leonard's father went to work for the Bureau of Reclamation digging drain ditches for several years, then became the city engineer for the City of Fallon. They purchased part of the Warren Williams Estate and lived in tents until Leonard, his brother and father built a rustic house. Leonard describes the canals and ditches enabling them to irrigate vegetable 'gardens, have a few cows, a couple of pigs and a heifer.

From the time Leonard was twelve, he and his brother started working for Safeway store, first delivering handbills, then working in the store to help the family. When he was seventeen, he started working at a gold mine in Nye County for fifty cents an hour, seven days a week, living in a bunk house. After four years, he was working in the mill, then became a surveyor with the federal soil conservation project in Churchill County to improve farming practices. Leonard was twenty-one when he joined his brother who had a mining lease at Wonder, mining gold and silver. He describes their very rustic life and details of their mining and shipping.

Leonard married Julia Barkley in 1940, after a three year courtship. She followed him to all his mining jobs. During the war, all the family wound up in Hawthorne where a military base was built, living in a Navy housing project until Leonard was drafted, spending six months in Virginia when the war ended. While he was gone, their daughter Lenn was born.

Leonard describes a mining venture in Dixie Valley, living with his family in a run-down house at Curtis Ranch. When this venture failed, they moved to the family property in Fallon and gradually built their Ready Mix Concrete business, pouring concrete for the head gates and lining of the irrigation ditches and for TCLD all over the valley. Their youngest son, Jim and son-in-law John Dondero now own and run the business.

SYLVIA ARDEN: This is Sylvia Arden, interviewer for the Churchill County Oral History Project interviewing Leonard O. Mackedon at his home, 1235 Lovelock Highway, Fallon, Nevada, September 12, 1994. Good morning, Mr. Mackedon. I'm so pleased that you have agreed to be interviewed for the Churchill County Oral History Project. Will you first tell us your full name, where and when you were born?

LEONARD O. MACKEDON: Leonard Owen Mackedon, and I was born in Fanning, Nevada. That's on the railroad about thirty-five miles from here. It no longer exists.

SA:         And what date?

LM:        February 6, 1916.

SA:         Let's start with your father's parents. Can you tell me about your grandfather's name and where he was born?

LM:        My grandfather's name was Joseph Mackedon, and he was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1847.

SA:         And your grandmother?

LM:        Mary Reismeyer Mackedon. She was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, December 9, 1856.

SA:         Now tell me about your mother's parents, first your grandfather.

LM:        His name was Leonard Anderson and he was born in Pennsylvania-we don't have the town.

SA:         And your grandmother?

LM:        Roseanna Turner, and she was born in Crewe, England.

SA:         What is your father's name?

LM:        John Mackedon.

SA:         And where and when was he born?

LM:        He was born in Milwaukee on April 3, 1882.

SA:         And your mother?

LM:        My mother was Hazel Killen Anderson, and she was born in Finley, California, November 30, 1886.

SA:         We'll find out later how the two of them met. Now, I first want to find out, who were the family members who first came to Nevada?

LM:        The first ones would be Joseph and Mary, my grandparents--came from Milwaukee.

SA:         Do you know what brought them out here to the West?

LM:        Well, he was an engineer and the mining boom was going on all over Nevada, and he came here to Seven Troughs originally.

SA:         And where is that?

LM:        That's over north of Lovelock about forty-seven miles.

SA:         Do you know when they came, approximately?

LM:        Well, he was about twenty, so it must have been 1900, in the early 1900s.

SA:         So that was before he was married?

LM:        No, he brought Mary with him.

SA:         [This section has several areas of buzzing] And then tell me, did you know your grandparents? Did they ever talk to you about what it was like when they first came out here?

LM:        No, not really, no. They talked about normal shop talk, but nothing that I remember really.

SA:         Did they say how they travelled? Was it train?

LM:        They came to Lovelock on the train, yeah.

SA:         Did your mother's parents come out to Nevada too? Your other grandparents?

LM:        My mother's mother and her came to Seven Troughs to run a boarding house, and that's how she met my father.

SA:         Now you said your mother and your grandmother?

LM:        Right, my mother Hazel and Roseanna.

SA:         Where was grandfather?

LM:        By that time, Leonard Anderson was dead, and she'd married a man named Bennett.

SA:         I see. So did she come with her new husband? Or just the two women?

LM:        No, she came alone, the two women.

SA:         What courageous women! Do you know about when?

LM:        Weil, probably 1907-1908.

SA:         Did they ever say what brought them out here, how they had the courage?

LM:        Just a chance to open a boarding house in a thriving mining camp and make some money.

SA:         Now what was that mining camp again?

LM:        This they opened and started out in Jessup. That's where my brother and sister were born. And that's over there about 25 miles from Fanning where I was born.

SA:         What interesting women they must have been!

LM:        They were tough!

SA:         Did she marry there? Did she meet someone in the mining camp?

LM:        My dad met her there at the boarding house, and they were married in 1910,

SA:         I see, how interesting! So your mother met your father at the camp.

LM:        Right.

SA:         And then they married there, is that it?

LM:        Yeah, they took a buggy and went to Reno and got married. It's in the newspaper article in the Lovelock paper.

SA:         Oh, how fascinating! And how long did they stay there at that mine?

LM:        Well, Jessup was probably done by 1916, because they'd moved to Fanning. I was born in Fanning, so they probably stayed there about five, six years.

SA:         Now what was in Fanning?

LM:        It was a big tungsten mill on the railroad. Dad was mill foreman there, and they had tents along there for people to live in. Now all that remains is some concrete foundations. I can find the spot, but it's pretty hard to find.

SA:         How interesting! And that's where you were born?

LM:        Right.

SA:         Were there other brothers and sisters?

LM:        Roy and Dorothy, and they were both born in Jessup, before they moved.

SA:         So you were the baby of the family?

LM:        Right, the youngest.

SA:         I see, How many years between the three children?

LM:        Well, roughly two. My sister will be eighty-three. My brother is dead. He was two years older than I, so seventy-eight, he would be eighty-one now, and she's eighty-three. So roughly two years between each child.

SA:         How long did you live at Fanning?

LM:        You know, that's hard to pin down. I imagine they moved from there. . . . Well, the war was on, and the mill was shut down overnight because they found out that tungsten was going to Germany, and we were at war with Germany, so they just shut it down, and that was the end of that job.

SA:         So where did they go?

LM:        Well, now, let's see, Probably back to the house in Lovelock, and then probably the next place was Rochester. I was trying to think. Although I went to first grade in Rochester.

SA:         Rochester, what?

LM:        Nevada. That's over by Lovelock.

SA:         Oh, I don't know that little town.

LM:        Yeah, that's quite a town—it was.

SA:         What kind of work was your father doing?

LM:        Well, usually it was a mill man or work in the mines some way or another.

SA:         So there was something there. Now, what are your very, very earliest recollections? What do you remember?

LM:        Well, you know, I don't remember, like people claim they remember when they were four and three. I don't remember. I remember Rochester, I was six. I remember sliding down- We had a great sled. In the snow we'd slide down the mountain, and if we were lucky, we'd catch the mailman coming back up and get a ride back up. And so we moved before the school year was out, I'm sure, to Candelaria. I was also in the first grade at Candelaria.

SA:         Now where is Candelaria?

LM:        That's way down south of Hawthorne, about a hundred miles. That's a famous old town. There was quite a town there at that time.

SA:         What was going on there? Mining too?

LM:        Yeah, had a big mine there.

SA:         Now, during that period had your parents heard at all about the Newlands Project, that things were beginning to thrive in Churchill County?

LM:        They had heard and they'd come over here and looked at it. Then we were getting close to the time. . . He'd made some money in Seven Troughs and Jessup and they just mismanaged where it was gone. They filed on a homestead in Dixie Valley. That's right out here.

SA:         So that's here in Churchill County?

LM:        Yeah.

SA:         And that was part of the irrigation project?

LM:        No, they had artesian wells out there. And it was a big thing. You could homestead that land, and a lot of wild schemes. They were going to raise rice, and they were going to raise hay. Mostly it kind of disintegrated to where it was not much.

SA:         How many acres did they homestead?

LM:        Well, you know, the Homestead Act is… I don't know exactly.

SA:         They were allowed eighty acres each for husband and wife.

LM:        They homesteaded a hundred and sixty.

SA:         So you were old enough to remember.

LM:        I remember a little bit about that. I remember riding on the back of a mule, two or three of us, and her brothers and sisters were living there at the time, I can remember several of us on a mule. That's about the only thing I remember there, and playing in the water.

SA:         So you didn't stay there very long?

LM:        No, we moved from there into here, to Fallon.

SA:         Did they lose their homestead grounds?

LM:        They kept it and kept it until just before we moved out here they sold it to a man named Ellis. I think they sold it for $1,200, I can't remember.

SA:         Now what was the reason they couldn't make a go of it?

LM:        Well, I don't think anybody really made it--they just couldn't do it, really.

SA:         They weren't ranchers?

LM:        No, and they couldn't make it go.

SA:         Is Dixie Valley a different kind of a soil and was it different? Because the people I interview from the Newlands all seemed to be able to get their ranches going.

LM:        Well, yeah, they had a lot different problems in Dixie, They didn't have the method to irrigate with.

SA:         Oh, it wasn't year-round.

LM:        Although when they had the artesian water, they couldn't flood irrigate like they do in Fallon here.

SA:         I see. So then about how old were you when they moved into Fallon?

LM:        That must have been 1924. I'm sure it was 1924, because I started the fourth grade in Fallon and went through to the eighth at Oats Park.

SA:         Now tell me, what did you live in when you moved to Fallon? And where.

LM:        At first we were in a little house on Park Street, and we stayed there, I don't know how long, really. And then we moved to one on Nevada Street, and then from there out here to where we are now.

SA:         Now, when you first moved, did they rent these first places?

LM:        Rented them, yes.

SA:         What was your father working at when you moved here?

LM:        Well, he first went to work for the Bureau of Reclamation, digging drain ditches. See, it wasn't the TCID [Truckee-Carson Irrigation District] then, it was the Bureau of Reclamation. And he dug the drain ditches 'til that job actually disappeared--the drain ditches were finished.

SA:         So how long was that, about?

LM:        Well, that must have been a two- or three-year period. Then he went to work for the city. Then he worked for the City of Fallon for years and years.

SA:         Now when you say "City of Fallon," what job with the city?

LM:        Well, now they call it city engineer, although it's more complicated, more sophisticated now. But then city engineering took care of the water system and just a general purpose, different from now.

SA:         Let's move back to when you first moved here and he started with digging the ditches. Do you have any recollection, did he ever take you and show you what he was doing?

LM:        I went with him several times.

SA:         You were then fourth grade, so you were about ten or eleven?

LM:        Yeah, ten.

SA:         So now I want you to tell me whatever you can remember when you went with your father, where you went, what it was like, and what it was like to dig ditches.

LM:        Well mostly his work took him out in the Stillwater area. He ran what they called a Monaghan, a big drag line called a Monaghan, and it was a strange, strange animal. It didn't have tracks that moved, it had big tracks that picked up one leg after another. It picked up a great big leg and laid it down, and then picked up another one and then let that one down. And then they dug these big drain ditches eight hours, and then eight hours, day after day after day.

SA:         Where would those ditches be connected with to get the water?

LM:        Well, mainly they just were dug to drain groundwater out of the land. Flood irrigation, if they didn't have some way to drain it, the water table would raise to the point where they'd quit growing stuff.

SA:         Where would the water that drained off, where would that go?

LM:        Well, most of it, my feelings about it, most of 'em wound up in Stillwater area. That was the low part.

SA:         Was there some kind of a storage area there?

LM:        No, that was the sink, Stillwater.

SA:         That was the sink, so it went to that, it's still there.

LM:        Wildlife. . . . Yeah. So that's what those ditches were for, just to drain water off underneath.

SA:         When you went out there with him, what did it look like? What was the area like? Was it pretty much like now?

LM:        Oh, there were already several big ranches, and they weren't as nice as they are now, not near as much agricultural land in or showing. But there was quite a bit of green goin' too, you know. They were all building those ranches up--beautiful, beautiful places now where it took maybe three or four owners to get 'em there, with the exception of several there: Kent's and some of them.

SA:         When you were going there over that period, did you see more people coming in that were getting land or buying land or developing?

LM:        Oh, I didn't notice that. At that age, that probably didn't impress me, you know.

SA:         Sure. Then let's go back. You rented in two different places. And when did you move here to this place?

LM:        We moved out here in 1928 or 1929. I've got to research that. I'm pretty sure it was 1929.

SA:         Pretty early. So this is the family property here. I want to get pictures of it.

LM:        We've been here ever since.

SA:         Now, when they came out here, how old were you? about eleven, twelve?

LM:        Twelve, I think.

SA:         What did it look like then?

LM:        It was all trees and brush and buck brush and sage brush. And we moved into two tents. You came across a little bridge across this drainage coming in. There was no bridge. This was absolutely isolated.

SA:         What did you do?

LM:        Well, we built a bridge out of cottonwood trees.

SA:         Did you help build? When you say "we built."

LM:        I helped, yeah. A young fellah thinks he helps a lot, you know. You don't know how much, but I always helped.

SA:         Now, was this place for sale? Did they buy it?

LM:        Well, this was a part of the Williams Estate. All the land, prit near everything north of the tracks belonged to Williams Estate, clear to the other road, which was Warren Williams. And they'd sold off a piece at a time.

SA:         Oh, from the estate?

LM:        This was a fragment, a fraction that was left. Supposedly my dad picked up the last fraction there was to sell.

SA:         Oh, how lucky!

LM:        It turned out the surveyor made a mistake, there was another piece behind us. I've got a neighbor here that got that piece. But anyway, it was the last piece of the Williams Estate.

SA:         Now, was there a house on the property?

LM:        (laughs) No.

SA:         Oh that's right, you said you lived in tents at first.

LM:        We put in two tents out there, two white tents. And we lived there, oh, I think probably ninety days--probably three, four months--and then we built a house out here, a long house with a front porch the full length of it, twenty-four by thirty-six.

SA:         This house?

LM:        No, no, that house is gone, tore down.

SA:         Do you have pictures of that first house?

LM:        I think have one. I'll look.

SA:         I'd like to see that. So your mom was a pretty courageous lady, wasn't she?

LM:        Oh, yeah.

SA:         She just kind of flowed with whatever was.

LM:        And worked, you know, they worked so hard those days. She washed by hand. Where the tents were, I remember she had a stove outside.

SA:         Later you'll take me out and we'll take a picture of the place where the tents were.

LM:        (laughs) Well, it's junk now, it's bad. Later I had a gas pump there, and now it's a mess.

SA:         Did the family build the house yourselves, or did you get some contractors?

LM:        No, my brother and I and my father built the first house,

SA:         Was there plumbing?

LM:        No.

SA:         You had an outhouse?

LM:        Right.

SA:         Was there hot water?

LM:        Oh no. We had a big stove that had what they called a "water back" on it. On the far end of it was filled with water, and when you stuffed wood in, it finally filled that end. Then you could dip hot water out of it.

SA:         I see, so it was pretty rustic.

LM:        Oh, absolutely!

SA:         How did you get to school?

LM:        There was a bus came right out on the road.

SA:         Was that road paved yet?

LM:        No, it was gravel.

SA:         When your family moved here, your dad was working for the city?

LM:        Right.

SA:         Did you have an automobile?

LM:        We had an old four-cylinder Overland, a little touring car with no top on it, no sides.

SA:         And he drove that up and back to work?

LM:        Yeah. Except the city furnished him a Ford, a Model T pickup. He drove that home and back and we had the car.

SA:         Okay, so did you all start driving early?

LM:        Oh yes! Terrible early! I can't believe it now. My brother and I couldn't have been over fourteen. We drove from here to Reese River, fishing, you know.

SA:         [laughs] Now, when you were here, did you have any neighbors nearby?

LM:        Originally, in front there was an old house, right there where that one is now, where the trailer is. And that was a veterinarian, a Dr. Hoffman. He'd been here for years. In fact, the house we rented from in town, we rented from Hoffman. And I think that's where the deal came--he told us there was this land out here. That was the connection.

SA:         So that was luck, that was really good.

LM:        Yeah.

SA:         And was it nominal enough so that your dad could handle the payments and everything?

LM:        Oh yeah. He handled that alright.

SA:         Did your family start any gardening or any animals or anything?

LM:        From the time we moved out here, we had one cow, and then two cows. Then we had pigs- a couple of pigs. We had one heifer that I used to ride in the river. We always had a garden. The first garden was great, and then we put it in over next to the drain ditch, and we pumped out of the drain ditch--we had a gas pump.

SA:         Did you all have your responsibilities?

LM:        Oh yeah.

SA:         Was it an organized responsibility, or everyone pitched in? Who would tell you what to do? Who was in charge?

LM:        Well, there wasn't hardly any ordering done. We all seemed to do our work. I milked. My brother couldn't milk because he had asthma and it affected his breathing, so I milked and my mother milked and my dad milked, so the cow got milked. And then later on we had two cows, and most of the time I had to milk those, when we got two.

SA:         And who took care of the garden?

LM:        We all worked on that.

SA:         What would you raise in the garden?

LM:        Oh, we had everything--we had corn and beans and tomatoes and great tomatoes--oh, anything you can mention. In fact, one year I raised some peanuts.

SA:         You're kidding! You're the first one I've heard do that.

LM:        No, nobody believes that.

SA:         Why did you do that?

LM:        Well, I loved peanuts. I tried some, and I did get some. They weren't a real success, but I learned quite a bit.

SA:         Oh, how interesting. Now, then you were using the water from the ditches from the Newlands Project?

LM:        Right.

SA:         Were those ditches already here?

LM:        Well, there was a little place up here we could irrigate, yes.

SA:         Okay, so the ditches were in when you moved here?

LM:        The ditches were all here, yeah.

SA:         They were all here. So that was fortunate.

LM:        Right.

SA:         And was that one canal that I crossed over, was that here?

LM:        Yeah, we take out of it way up further.

SA:         So that enabled you to do that.

LM:        Right.

SA:         Was that for your family, the cream and vegetables and animals? Or did you sell anything?

LM:        We sold cream.

SA:         Oh, you had enough to sell?

LM:        Well, we had what they called a desert cooler. It's made out of screen and a water tank on top, and burlap comes out and drips down there--sort of an osmosis effect--and it keeps it cool. Any air travelling through it cools whatever's inside.

SA:         Now where was that?

LM:        We had it out in the back yard. She would skim cream, and we had a little cream can, and sometimes we'd put it on the highway. The man would pick it up and take it to the creamery. Once in a while we'd haul it in, and you know, it would be two or three or four dollars' worth of cream. It was quite a thing.

SA:         Now, by then, because you were the youngest in the family, were you all going to school at the same time? Would you all travel together to school on the bus?

LM:        Right, except by that time my sister had graduated from high school, so she was in California going to the University of California. She graduated from there.

SA:         What made her go to California?

LM:        Oh, she wanted to go to the University of California.

SA:         What did she study?

LM:        You know, I don't know what her major was, but she graduated and she was later head of the redevelopment agency in Los Angeles.

SA:         Oh my! So these were courageous women in your family. Strong women there, right?

LM:        Yeah! Now she's retired and she lives in a home in Stockton.

SA:         And your brother?

LM:        He worked with us in all our mining ventures. . . .

SA:         We have to get to that!

LM:        When the war came, why, he was drafted, but they turned him down. He was taken first and they turned him down. Then he wound up in Hawthorne. He worked at Hawthorne for years and years and years. And he died in Hawthorne.

SA:         Well, let's go back now, back again to those earlier years when you were here. Where did your family do all of their shopping for supplies or shoes? Were there enough stores in Fallon? What would you do?

LM:        Well, there were some. I.H. Kent was the source of everything. He had that big store. And Safeway's. In the late twenties there was also a Soule's or a Piggly-Wiggly's, but we went mostly to Safeway's, because at times I worked there.

SA:         Oh you did? When did you start working there?

LM:        Well, I must have been--about 1932 I worked in there off and on, because my brother and I already had, you might say, a contract with them. We delivered all their handbills all over town. We done that from the time we were little kids, twelve on.

SA:         Oh, what ambitious young people!

LM:        Yeah. And it was good pay--they paid real well.

SA:         Was that during high school?

LM:        Yes, and before.

SA:         And even before--so you always worked.

LM:        Oh yes.

SA:         So then you would get your groceries at Safeway, the one that's still there. Was it in the same location?

LM:        No, it was where the Nugget is now, downtown Nugget. It was in the north end of that--that was where it was.

SA:         And so when you worked you all helped the family?

LM:        Oh yes.

SA:         What happened to your family during the Depression years? Because I know so many people were affected during those thirties of the Depression.

LM:        The Depression in the East, you know, was 1929. Here it was in the thirties--1933 was the worst--1933-34-35--1936 started to come out. The worst of those years I worked at a mine out here, and my dad had his job.

SA:         Okay, your dad has his job all the time. Now, how old were you when you started with mining?

LM:        I must have been almost eighteen.

SA:         So young! How did you get started so young?

LM:        Well, there was no work to be had. I happened to get a job with the Penelas Mining Company, which is eighty miles east of here.

SA:         Had you just finished high school?

LM:        Yes. I finished high school, I was seventeen. I must have been right at eighteen when I went to work up there.

SA:         How did you hear about it?

LM:        Well, I knew they were in existence, of course. A friend of mine's dad was the engineer for the mine--mining superintendent, what would be proper. So I went down there. I went down fourteen mornings in a row at 6:30 in the morning and asked for work. In those days you didn't have a resume or write anything, you showed up. And the fifteenth morning, the gal had a note that said "Send Mackedon out."

SA: (laughs) They knew if you'd come that many mornings, you'd show up for work.

LM: Anyway, when it come time the next morning to go to work, why, the company truck was loaded and there was no room for me in the seat. So instead of waiting for the next truck--I was afraid that I wouldn't get the job--I rode out on top of a load of lumber. And with me on the lumber was a pig. I often tell the kids. . . .

SA:         I wish you had a picture of that!

LM:        The kids laugh about it. Butchers in those days would send a half-a-pig, or a full pig wrapped in cheesecloth. I don't know if you've ever seen them or not. You wrap them in a shroud. Well, I often laugh, me and the pig rode to Penelas. (laughter)

SA:         How far was Penelas?

LM:        It's eighty miles.

SA:         Eighty miles?!

LM:        Yeah, and part of that was highway, and thirty-five miles of it was dirt road.

SA:         That must have taken several hours.

LM:        Oh yeah, it used to take 'em three hours, I think.

SA:         Now, what did you do at the mine?

LM:        Well, I started out with sackin' ore.

SA:         What does that mean?

LM:        Well, they had terribly-rich ore, and instead of shipping it or milling it, they were sacking it into bags, and we'd sack it and stack it on a platform there, and then they'd haul it by truck. They were probably hauling it to Selby in 'Frisco.

SA:         What kind of ore?

LM:        Gold ore, real good gold.

SA:         Gold! Now, was that mine in Churchill County or a different county?

 LM:       I think it's Nye.

SA:         In Nye county, uh-huh [end of tape 1 side A] This was apparently a brand new experience, working in mines. How did you take to it? How did you like it?

LM:        Oh, I loved it. Anything that brought four dollars a day, I was entranced with it! (laughs)

SA:         That was wonderful. I wonder how many young kids today would work that hard.

LM:        Uh-huh.

SA:         How many people were there? Were there mainly young people like you working in the mine?

LM:        No, mostly older miners, older people, you know. They were thirty-five on. I thought they were over the hill, you know. I thought they were pone! I used to help 'em.

SA:         (laughs) So you were like the youngest?

LM:        No, there were two other boys there about my age. You know, it was quite an experience. They were all older people--forty, forty-five, fifty, old people.

SA:         How many hours a day would you work? And then the transportation?

LM:        Well, I lived right there. They had a bunk house. I had a cot in a room. There were twelve other men in the room.

SA:         Like a dorm situation?

LM:        Yeah.

SA:         You had your meals?

LM:        Yeah, they had a boarding house. It was a real experience for a young fellah.

SA:         Oh yeah! About how many hours of work in those days, before the labor laws?

LM:        Well, I worked eight for about two months, and then one of the foreman's names was McCudden, and McCudden told me one day that I could have all the hours I wanted at fifty cents an hour--all the overtime I wanted at fifty cents an hour.

SA:         What were you getting per hour?

LM:        Well, I'd be getting fifty cents.

SA:         That's what your pay was, fifty cents an hour?

LM:        Yeah, because I got four dollars a day. They just paid you by the day.

SA:         Oh, I see. Did you go home weekends?

LM:        If I came in, I went back in time to be at work at seven the next morning.

SA:         Did you work six days?

LM:        Seven days.

SA:         Seven days!

LM:        Yeah.

SA:         Unbelievable.

LM:        They never stopped. Then they built a cyanide mill after I'd been there a while. The big project was to build a mill, And they built a great mill. They built one of the most sophisticated mills ever built, cyanide mill. In fact, it's recovery was about 98 percent, where some mills only got 80, 81, and 85 [percent], and it was a great mill. So I was in on the building of the mill too.

SA:         Now, when you were working in the mine, wasn't that dangerous for the lungs?

LM:        Oh, I suppose, yeah.

SA:         Were you damaged?

LM:        I don't think I ever suffered from it.

SA:         Did you go underground?

LM:        Yes.

SA:         Because that was pretty dangerous, with the dust from it.

LM:        Oh, the dust was constant, yeah, but I don't think it ever. . . .

SA:         Did you cover your mouth?

LM:        They never did there. Years later we did, on our own, at Wonder.

SA:         Oh my! So how many years did you work there?

LM:        Four years. I left there in 1937. By that time I was working in the mill and I was getting $6.25 a day. I'd gone up.

SA:         A day?!

LM:        A day--big deal! I went to the mill foreman who was a great old gentleman named J.N. Davis, and I said, "Jack, there's no way I can get your job, is there?" He said, "No, Leonard, you have to have a lot of education to get my job." And I said, "Well, there's no way I can get Forrest's job, is there?" Forrest was the assayer. He said, "No, you have to have a lot of education to get that job." I said, "I quit." There was nothing more for me. . . .

SA:         What was Forrest's job?

LM:        He was the assayer. He was actually the metallurgist--a wonderful graduate of Cornell University and had all these degrees. Nice fellah. But there was nothing else, so I left. And I came to town, I was going to take two weeks off, and I came to town and went to work for Royal D. Crook at five dollars a day.

SA:         Now what's Royal D. Crook?

LM:        He was the extension agent. I don't know what the connection was, whether I had a reputation or what, but he came to get me and put me on as a surveyor. Not with a transit, with what they called an alidade and a plane table. At that time, the Soil Conservation was going big in the valley. They were surveying all the valley.

SA:         Was it a better pay?

LM:        (laughs) No, I lost $1.25 a day! I went to work for Crook for five dollars,

SA:         But it was easier, wasn't it, than the mining?

LM:        Oh yeah, it was nice.

SA:         Tell me what you did and where you did it.

LM:        Well, we just went to every rancher that would sign up for soil conservation practices, we'd survey their place.

SA:         Here in Churchill County?

LM:        Yeah. And write in the size of the field, and what was in it, and theditches and everything. It made a pretty complicated map.

SA:         Was this soil conservation part of the Project? Or was it a private business?

LM:        No, it was federal--still in existence.

SA:         And what year was this by now?

LM:        Well, it was 1937 when I left Penelas, and I worked for Soil Conservation for, oh, probably less than a year, probably five, six months.

SA:         But that's important, so I want to know more. What was the goal? Was this the start of it, or had it been going on?

LM:        Well, soil conservation had been going on, but this is the first time they'd surveyed and laid out all the information on each place.

SA:         Tell me what the goal was, because people who don't understand, like I don't, when you say "soil conservation," what does it mean and what did they want the ranchers to do?

LM:        Well, this was to establish a base for them to determine how many acres of wheat they could plant, or how they ran their ranch. And they would get payments from the government. Like at one time in the Midwest they paid 'em not to raise wheat. Well, here they were paying different practices. They'd pay so much an acre or so much for hay, and this laid out the entire ranch so they had a plan of what they were going to do.

SA:         So then you'd have a lot of cooperation, because this would help each rancher, right?

LM:        Oh yeah, the ranchers were really cooperative.

SA:         I know a little later, before the war, they needed to raise a lot more food to feed the armies and the military. Was part of it because they needed more food?

LM:        Well, I think mostly just to improve the practices in the valley.

SA:         How wonderful! Did it have an effect here?

LM:        Oh, it surely did.

SA:         Did it?

LM:        Oh, you bet.

SA:         Was it visible to you?

LM:        Yeah, it was. In the years following, you could see results.

SA:         And how long did that go on?

LM:        It still goes, of course, but they don't do the mapping any more. The original mapping is all done.

SA:         But do they still help them and pay them?

LM:        Oh yes.

SA:         I didn't hear that from anybody else.

LM:        They pay, for instance, to line a concrete ditch, they pay you part of the cost of the concrete.

SA:         Oh, that's good. And that conserves the soil because it isn't draining the water away.

LM:        Yeah. It saves water, their primary objective. It's just helped in many ways. Just many, many ways it helps.

SA:         What was your actual work in the surveying? What did you do?

LM:        Well, I had two boys--"chainmen" they called 'em--and you would establish a point that you started from, and then you'd have them walk and tell you how far it was to point "B" two hundred feet or something--they had a hundred-foot chain. Then you'd put "two hundred feet" down, establish that base. Then you walk to another point, and that was three hundred feet. Then if you had those two, you could triangulate and get the balance in between. You could lay out the whole place then.

SA:         And you had enough knowledge. . . .

LM:        Well, it was fairly basic to learn, and simple math--and what I'd had in school, I could handle it.

SA:         Why did you leave?

LM:        Well, I think I left that to go mining. I think I left them just--actually, they were running out of money, anyway, for this sort of work. They had a budget from the Department of Agriculture.

SA:         And what do you mean "go mining"?

LM:        Well, my brother had been working at Wonder, and he wound up with a lease at Wonder.

SA:         Now what does that mean?

LM:        Well, it means we had the right to mine Wonder, part of it.

SA:         Is that because he found something?

LM:        No. It was there, and he knew it was there, and the owner let him have a portion of it.

SA:         Oh, okay.

LM:        And by this time I'd made a friend in Penelas who came out from South Dakota, named Otis B. Shearer.

SA:         Was he someone who worked with you there when you were there?

LM:        At Penelas, yeah. And so my brother and I and Otis got a lease at Wonder. We had a great lease. We had everything south of the shaft to the three-hundred-foot level. Actually, to the seven [-hundred-foot level]. And we had good ore to work on and we done real well.

SA:         Now, was Wonder in Churchill County?

LM:        That was a camp fifty-four miles from here in Churchill County.

SA:         And was this gold?

LM:        Gold and silver.

SA:         And what year was this? How old were you?

LM:        Well, in 1937 I would have been twenty-one. We started there, and we stayed there 'til Pearl Harbor, off and on.

SA:         Oh my goodness. Did you commute? Did you come home?

LM:        No, we lived out there. We built a cabin. There was quite a bit of the town left then. It's now gone. There was a main street with two or three buildings on one side, and eight or ten on the other, and the evidence of a town. The town was actually there.

SA:         Oh, I'll have to get a picture of that to add to the transcript.

LM:        There's nothing there, nothing there.

SA:         There must be historic pictures.

LM:        They've got some of Wonder at the museum.

SA:         How many were living out there like you were?

LM:        Well, there was five sets of leasers on the hill, so there was probably, with the women that were there, there were probably twenty, twenty-five.

SA:         So you had a little community.

LM:        A real little community, yeah.

SA:         Did you have to bring your own food in?

LM:        Yeah, we hauled food from here, from Fallon--everything.

SA:         Hauled all your supplies?

LM:        And water--barrels of water.

SA:         Oh, my goodness! How often would you come in, once a week?

LM:        Oh, sometimes once every two weeks, but usually we tried to make a week.

SA:         And was that rustic living too?

LM:        Oh yeah, real, real basic. We moved into the jail: the first house we had, my brother and I and Shearer.

SA:         There had been a jail there?

LM:        The Wonder jail was still there. And we moved into the jail, that was our house. So we lived there 'til quite a long while. Then we moved into the main store on Main Street. And it was still a pretty good-sized building, plate glass windows. The windows looked right in on where we lived.

SA:         Did you get much gold?

LM:        Oh, we done real well.

SA:         And what did you do with it?

LM:        We shipped it [in] carload lots. It was hauled from there to Fallon and put on a rail car and shipped to Utah, to Tooele, Utah.

SA:         And then they'd send you a check?

LM:        Right.

SA:         Would you have to melt it?

LM:        No, they done it there.

SA:         You just sent it just the way you got it?

LM:        Yeah, crude ore.

SA:         How could you trust? How could you just send gold? How were you secured?

LM:        Well, it's in rock, you can't see it. It's shipped to their plant in Utah, and from there it's pretty safe.

SA:         How did you pack it?

LM:        It was hauled by trucks into Fallon.

SA:         I know, but the ore itself. In a big truck?

LM:        Just loose.

SA:         Just a loose truck that someone drove?

LM:        Yeah, just like a truckload of gravel.

SA:         So they'd cover the whole thing with a tarp, maybe?

LM:        No, it wouldn't blow, because it's all heavy rock.

SA:         And it wouldn't look like gold?

LM:        Oh, no.

SA:         Was it someone that you knew that drove the truck?

LM:        No. Jack M. Tedford hauled our ore for some time. And then Lowry, the present-day sheriff, his grandfather and father hauled all our ore. They hauled it all then, in later years. And then Pearl Harbor came and they couldn't haul ore any more. The government clamped down. You couldn't haul anything except strategic minerals.

SA:         Because of the gasoline and the truck tires?

LM:        Right, that would be one of the reasons. They didn't want any trucks to be used to haul something they don't need. They wanted them to haul manganese or iron.

SA:         Didn't you have to sell all your copper to the government at that time?

LM:        I guess.

SA:         So you were making a lot of money, more than you ever made?

LM:        Well, we done real well.

SA:         More than you made working for the mining company?

LM:        Oh yeah. You know, we weren't smart with it, but we were mining pillars. So my dad tried to wise us up. When the Wonder Mining Company mined their ore--it's hard to explain--but in order to hold the ground from closing in, they left a section. So we went up and took those out.

SA:         Oh, I see. Did you have any time for a social life or fun?

LM:        We came to town often--for every dance. The Fraternal Order had dances, we came to every dance, but we went back the same night, you know, Like when we were at Penelas, eighty miles, we came to town and we went back in time for work. We stayed up all night.

SA:         You have to have some fun! Now, you said you stayed there until the war broke out.

LM:        Pearl Harbor.

SA:         And then what did you do?

LM:        Well, then we just had to find work somewhere. We all split up, all went different directions. I first went to Reno and I got work for Peterson's Construction. It's just a series of jobs, and that would wind up, and I went to work for the Bureau of Mines. I got a job in the Bureau of Mines in Reno, and their budget run out. And then I went to work for Bressi Bevanda and A. Telchert Construction Company who were building ammunition depots in Honey Lake.

SA:         You're going to have to get those spellings to me.

LM:        Oh, not important, really. That name was a big contractor.

SA:         Were you worried about being drafted?

LM:        Well, by that time, Michael was born and I kept getting a deferment.

SA:         Now wait a minute, is that your son?

LM:        My oldest boy.

SA:         We've got to back up or someone will think you had a son without being married!

LM:        He was born in 1941.

SA:         Okay, we've got to back up. We've got to get you married if you're going to tell me about a son.

LM:        Yeah.

SA:         First give me your wife's name.

LM:        Julia.

SA:         What was her name before she married?

LM:        Julia Barkley.

SA:         Was that someone you knew all through the years?

LM:        Well, her brother was a great friend of mine in high school, and we'd been friends for years. I met her in 1937. I managed to get her married in 1940. We went together three years.

SA:         Now you met her in 1937.

LM:        When I left Penelas.

SA:         Was she living here in Fallon?

LM:        I'd drive to Sacramento quite often.

SA:         She lived in Sacramento?

LM:        Yeah, but she'd come to Fallon, or I'd go see her. She had folks here,

SA:         You said you were friends with her brother. Where was her brother living that you were friends?

LM:        Well, he was living in Fallon with his half-sister.

SA:         He was grown up by then.

LM:        Right. He and I were the same age.

SA:         So then you met his sister on a visit here?

LM:        Yeah, visiting him, and she was here.

SA:         So you liked her and you kept up with her.

LM:        Yeah, it was an instant thing--never stopped.

SA:         Really? That's wonderful.

LM:        Yeah, fifty-four years ago.

SA:         That's fabulous. So how old was she when you first met her and started to court her?

LM:        Oh, she was twenty-one. She was eighteen when I first met her.

SA:         So you married what year?

LM:        In 1940.

SA:         And that meant she came here.

LM:        Oh yes. We were married right here, right in front of that window.

SA:         Oh, I've got to get a picture of that. When you were married, were you still at the mine?

LM:        She followed me all over, all the mines, all my jobs.

SA:         She went to the mines with you?

LM:        Oh yeah.

SA:         Oh, wonderful.

LM:        I built a cabin out there.

SA:         Oh, that sounds like a good wife. So then you had your first son, Michael.

LM:        Right, and he was born here in town.

SA:         When you went to Reno, then your family went with you?

LM:        Michael and Julia, yeah.

SA:         So you weren't going to be drafted, you were a father.

LM:        I can't remember what the deferment was. I was a father, had a child. Then I went through a series of these jobs, but housing was tough to find.

SA:         Oh, that's right!

LM:        We had rented this to some people named Dinwitty, because that was our source of income.

SA:         Where were your parents? Were they dead by then?

LM:        No, they were both alive.

SA:         Where were they living?

LM:        They'd moved to Hawthorne, and we had this rented, because it was a source of income.

SA:         Your father was working at Hawthorne.

LM:        Right.

SA:         Was that because they were building the military base and getting busy out there in Hawthorne?

LM:        Yeah.

SA:         And what was he doing there?

LM:        Well, he was working in gun ammunition, in "hat filling" they called it--filling powder hats.

SA:         And the rest of the family were gone from here?

LM:        Right.

SA:         Where was your brother?

LM:        We all wound up in Hawthorne, because housing was a big thing, and they were furnishing houses over there in Babbitt. It was a housing project that the Navy furnished.

SA:         That way they could get workers to come.

LM:        Right.

SA:         How were you doing in Reno, all of you? I mean you and your wife and your son.

LM:        Well, (chuckles) that's another one. I was working finally at Bressi Bevanda and A. Telchert Construction Company, which was building ammunition bunkers in Honey Lake. And she was living in Reno in a basement apartment and I was living in a tent. They had tents out there for men to work, to live in.

SA:         Oh, you had to live where you were working.

LM:        Right. To commute to Reno was too far. It was seventy miles, I think,

SA:         And where was that?

LM:        Honey Lake [California]. It's the Sierra Army Depot in Heriong. So it was 1941--1916, in twenty-five years  I made it back to a tent! (laughter)

SA:         And there was a shortage of gasoline, so you couldn't commute.

LM:        Oh yeah, you had to have a tent.

SA:         You had rationing.

LM:        Rationing, yeah.

SA:         So then what?

LM:        Well, all this time I had the wheels turnin', tryin' to get a house in Hawthorne too. And my house came up and I left them and moved to Hawthorne.

SA:         And this was being rented?

LM:        Right. This was rented to man named Dinwitty, He had the prime contract building the naval air station out here.

SA:         Oh, for goodness sakes! So now by that time the airfield was being built, right?

LM:        Right.

SA:         So tell me what you can. Let's move to that, since that man is here and it's that time period that's so important to Fallon, of course, the air field. Tell me what you know about the development of that.

LM:        You know, I just didn't keep in touch with it at all. I was kind of isolated. I was in Hawthorne and we'd drive over here once in a while, and that's about all. I just knew it was going on, and would hear everything about it--hear what they were doing. They were building large hangars and a long runway and it was a big undertaking. That's the only thing I know about it.

SA:         Did you have any friends here who had varied opinions about that happening here? Did you talk to anyone who said, "Oh, I don't like this," or "I'm tickled, it's helping business," or "The noise is hurting my animals." Did you hear anything?

LM:        Most people I knew were glad to see it come.

SA:         Helped the economy.

LM:        Yeah, it was a source of jobs. They hired quite a few civilians early on. I heard some complaint from the ranchers about the noise and upsetting their cattle's feeding habits and stuff like that, but very little of it.

SA:         When you would come back occasionally, did you see changes here?

LM:        Steadily. Everything was changing.

SA:         Like with what?

LM:        Well, the streets were getting fixed and more cars, more people. It's just been a steady thing, never slowed up.

SA:         Tell me what you think caused that steady growth.

LM:        Well, the air base made a big difference. And then about that timeframe, maybe a little later, Kennametal began production.

SA:         What is that?

LM:        It's a company that makes hard surfacing materials out of tungsten ore. And they were using their own tungsten. And then they quit that in later years. They started importing it from China, I understand. That's something I wouldn't swear by. But it had a steady payroll, a constant payroll.

SA:         Is that kind of the same as barite?

LM:        No, it's different.

SA:         Because I know China shipped in barite. Lander County lost some business.

LM:        And then we had the Kaiser Mill out where the golf course is now, just alongside the river,

SA:         And what were they doing?

LM:        Well, they processed fluorspar.

SA:         What's that?

LM:        That's an ore that's used to make fluoric acid.

SA:         So new industries were coming in.

LM:        Yeah, and that was a steady payroll. The farms all improved, got bigger, and it was just a constant thing. Overnight there was a difference. If you went away for two weeks, you'd come back and notice.

SA:         I understand when the war was on that the economy picked up because beef prices went up, there was more of a demand for the food for the military. So that helped everyone?

LM:        Yeah.

SA:         Did it help your family, your dad, your mom?

LM:        Of course it made work at the Navy that we probably. . . I don't know whether we'd have done better or not, but we would have had to find work right here, and the work was pretty scarce, unless you worked for a defense industry.

SA:         So did you get to Hawthorne, did you say? You moved to Hawthorne with your family?

LM:        Yeah, when we got a house.

SA:         And how long did you stay in Hawthorne?

LM:        Well, I stayed in Hawthorne from about early 1942, 1 guess, 'til 1945.

SA:         And what were you doing there?

LM:        Well, I started as a "cribber" they called it. You build a blockage in cars. When they're shipping ammunition, they leave a space in the middle, and you have to block it so it won't move back and forth.

SA:         I see, they had like a factory there where you did this?

LM:        No, you carried carpenter's tools and lumber at every dock. And you just plugged those cars up with lumber, so the ammunition didn't shift back and forth.

SA:         Was that government work?

LM:        Right, for the U.S. Navy. By the time I left, I was a supervisor in gun ammunition.

SA:         And you stayed there how many years?

LM:        Three years plus.

SA:         Until the war ended?

LM:        No, the war was still going, and then they drafted me there. By that time I had two children, and they drafted me.

SA:         Was your other child born in Hawthorne?

LM:        No, she was born in Reno.

SA:         Oh, just because of the hospital, and then you came back to Hawthorne?

LM:        Yeah.

SA:         There was no medical care in Hawthorne?

LM:        Oh, there was a doctor and they had a Mt. Grant Hospital. That would have been alright, but she was born before we left Reno,

SA:         Oh, before you left, okay.

LM:        The Honey Lake job was to pay the hospital bill in Reno. (laughs) Really, you know.

SA:         So you had the two children and you were there until that job ended?

LM:        Oh no, the job went on forever, you know, at Hawthorne.

SA:         Okay, what did you do?

LM:        They drafted me from Hawthorne.

SA:         And why? Because the war was getting so bad they were getting desperate?

LM:        The newspaper said they needed 500,000 from essential industry, they were going to take them from places that they'd been essential to. And the naval air station ammunition was a place that had been essential work.

SA:         Why were they taking the essentials?

LM:        Well, they needed 500,000 more, which was a farce, really, because by that time they didn't need 'em. But anyway, I was drafted. I was given 1-A, and notice to report for induction in the same envelope. But my foreman, my supervisor, "Snapper," really, they called him, told me that he could keep me out. All I had to do is sign my name on the bulletin board. Sign my name, and he could keep me out. And I don't know how to call it, but I'd had a lot of friends here lost their lives, and I wouldn't sign. So I was gone. (laughs)

SA:         Oh, your wife must have felt horrible.

LM:        Oh yeah. But she didn't pressure me to sign either.

SA:         Did you stay in this country?

LM:        Yes, I never did go out.

SA:         Where did you go?

LM:        Of course I was inducted at Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City. That's where everyone went from here. And then they shipped me to Camp Lee, Virginia, to be what they called a combat engineer. My history—resume, you might say--what I'd done, the Army called me an engineer. They were going to make me an engineer.

SA:         I see. And how long did you stay there?

LM:        Well, I stayed there at Camp Lee, Virginia for--I think that was six weeks. Then they sent me to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, which is right outside of Washington, D.C., which is a finishing school for engineers.

SA:         Did you stay back East most of the time?

LM:        Oh yeah, I never got home 'til. . .

SA:         You didn't get home?

LM:        No. And while I was gone, my daughter Lenn was born,

SA:         Oh, in other words, your wife was pregnant when you left.

LM:        Yeah, I guess. (laughter) But anyway, I didn't see her until about-October, November, December--she was three months old before I saw her.

SA:         And with all those kids, your wife couldn't come visit you.

LM:        No.

SA:         So how long were you away?

LM:        I was away six months and two weeks--six-and-a-half months.

SA:         Did the war end then?

LM:        The war in Europe ended, and then Japan was still going. They dropped the bombs [August 1945], I was trying to think. . .                I'd have to check that out. I think the war in Japan was still going before I got out. [End of tape 1]

SA:         When we changed tapes, you were telling me that you were still in the military, the war wasn’t over yet, the bomb hadn’t been dropped, so pick up from there.

LM:        Well, then Japan surrendered, and we were confined to the company street. They were afraid that there would be riots. So then I was due to be shipped out as occupation duty. In fact, I was sitting on my bags on the dock, ready to leave, when someone called my name, and they said, "Mac"--and everybody called me "Mac," who I didn't know--just sounded like a normal call, and I never even looked around. And then the voice sounded like it was authority to it said, "Mackedon!" and I turned and looked and it was a major who told me I'd been cut, to take my bags and get on the truck. So when I got into the CO [commanding officer's] office, why, they told me that I'd been discharged. I forgot the name of the bill. A bill had passed Congress that anybody with three children was to be discharged.

SA:         That's right, your third child was born while you were away.

LM:        Yeah. So I was real happy to get on the train and come [home]. Julia met me in Reno.

SA:         And now how long had it been since you had seen each other?

LM:        It had been, let's see, six months.

SA:         And you hadn't seen your baby.

LM:        No. A beautiful baby--my God.

SA:         So you went back to Hawthorne? Were you in Hawthorne when you were drafted?

LM:        Right.

SA:         So you went back to Hawthorne?

LM:        But then I didn't go back to Hawthorne. See, I'd found a house for them at 410 East Fifth Street in Carson City, and they'd lived there while I was in the service.

SA:         Oh, I see! You moved them into Carson City during the war.

LM:        They had a neighbor named Dale Rose who had been real, real. . .

SA:         I know Dale Rose, and Grace.

LM:        Oh, Grace, yeah. And they'd been great to my wife and kids, and my mother lived with us then too.

SA:         Where was your father?

LM:        My father had died. That was in 1944. So this Dale. . . And I had a mining claim in Dixie Valley called Alameda that I wanted to go to. So I got out December 19, and of course I met Dale, and Julia told me what a wonderful person he'd been.

SA:         You didn't know them before?

LM:        No. He wanted to know what I was going to do, and I said well, I was going to go to my mine whenever the weather got better. It was terribly cold, a severe winter. And he said, "Well, why don't you work for the state until you go." And I said, "Is it that easy? Can you work for the state?" He said, "Yeah, I'm sure you could get work with the state. And I said, "Well, I'll try." He told me what to do, so I went down… You might have to cut this.

SA:         No, no, no, tell me.

LM:        This is the truth. I went down and Dale told me where to go, and there was an office there that's real archaic compared to nowadays, and there was a girl there and a swinging gate where you went in to see her. And I walked in and she said, "What can I do for you?" And I said, "Well, I'd like to apply for work." And she got me some paperwork to fill out. And I said, "Oh, I don't want to fill any paper out, I just want to apply for work." And the door opened to the office. It'd probably been partially opened. And Mr. Allen stepped out. The head of the highway department was Allen.

SA:         Who's Allen?

LM:        His last name was Allen, and I can't remember his first name.

SA:         Oh, okay. You knew him?

LM:        No! Never knew him at all. Then the gal told him, "This is a gentleman here applying for work." And he said, "Oh, come in." So I went in his office. And he said, "What's your name?" and I says, "Mackedon." He said, "Are you Catholic?" And I said, "No." He said, "Are you Irish?" and I said, "Yes." He said, "Are you a veteran?" I said, "I just got discharged the  19^th of December." He said, "Come to work Monday." (Arden laughs) You may have to cut that out.

SA:         No, that probably was fine then.

LM:        So that was that. And so I went to work and I plotted cross-sections. Surveyors bring in the information, and you plot cross-sections. Then I learned. And I worked 'til April, I think. The weather got better and better. Maybe it was the first part of May or along in there, and I decided to go to Dixie to Alameda.

SA:         To the mine.

LM:        So by that time, this place was available. I brought my mother over here, and Julia and I and the kids went to the mine.

SA:         Oh, there was enough room at the place for the whole family?

LM:        Yeah. Well, she could move into this house then, see. Before, we'd had it rented.

SA:         Oh, this house. Oh, you moved them here.

LM:        She stayed here.

SA:         I see, when you said "to Fallon," to this house, the whole family, the kids and your mom.

LM:        Yeah. And then all of us moved out to the Curtis Ranch in Dixie Valley, and the Curtis Ranch was the nearest ranch to the road. Years ago when you went out there, the first place you could see on your right was the Curtis Ranch.

SA:         And what was on the Curtis Ranch so you could stay there?

LM:        Well, it was a little run-down house that had been somebody's dream. It was a nice place, really--had trees and shade and water. By that time, the Curtises had sold to a fellow named Reynolds, a friend of mine named Tex Reynolds. And he let me have the house rent free, just to have somebody in it, because it's better to have an occupant than go empty.

SA:         Yes. And how far is that from Fallon?

LM:        It must be an even eighty miles to the Curtis Ranch.

SA:         Kind of far, kind of isolated out there?

LM:        Oh yeah, really.

SA:         What would you do, bring supplies in?

LM:        Haul from here, yeah.

SA:         It was good your mother was there with your wife, a couple of adults and the kids.

LM:        My property, my mine, was uphill from there, about three or four miles.

SA:         So you could stay at home, easy to come up and back.

LM:        Drive back and forth. But I did build a cabin up there, afterwards. We left the Curtis Ranch and moved to the cabin right on the hill. So then I had some good ore on top--it assayed real good.

SA:         And who was there working with you?

LM:        Well, then a fellah named Afton Derrick had originally owned the property, and he and my father had taken it together. So I moved up there, and I moved the cabin from Wonder that we'd had at Wonder, that we'd left at Wonder, and moved it over there, and then my mother stayed in that cabin and Julia and I stayed in the other cabin.

SA:         Oh, how wonderful! How many others were there at that time?

LM:        There was nobody.

SA:         Just your family?

LM:        Yeah, and Afton.

SA:         And no other workers?

LM:        No, no.

SA:         No, just the two of you.

LM:        (laughs) We done it alone. And then later, this friend of mine, Shearer, who had been drafted and went to Salt Lake the same time I did--in fact, we thought that we'd go to the same place when they split us up, and I went to Virginia and he went to Missouri, and it really broke our hearts.

SA:         (expressing concern) Oh!

LM:        But anyway, then he came out. He got out of the Army and he came out. They sent him to Panama, and then when he got out of the Army, he came out.

SA:         Oh, then he came. Okay, he didn't have three kids.

LM:        No, no. Then he and I worked, and then let's see, he left and eventually there was just Afton and I, and Afton wasn't well at all--he was not well. And so I had this ore and I decided that I'd drift--this is hard for you to understand, probably--I'd drift under it, like this, and run a tunnel like this.

SA:         They can't understand it, not seeing it. So you have to just describe verbally, or maybe draw a picture later.

LM:        Run a tunnel in like this to cut a vein that's coming down like this. And so I was running the tunnel. . . . The mine at Sand Springs was working at the same time. Summit King Mine was working, and that was managed by a man named Percy Dobson, and he was an expert metallurgist and geologist, and a mining engineer.

SA:         And how far was that mine from yours?

LM:        Well, that's right on top of Sand Springs Summit, so that's maybe thirty-two mile out. And it would be fifty miles from me. But anyway, at that time they thought they might take custom ore. They had to mill it. And he came over to visit, and he had all the instruments and everything, and he cut some samples and then he asked me what I was doing and I told him, and he run some surveys and hiked all over the property with me. He said, "Well, what you're doing is alright, it'll work. If you cut the ore there, you'll have about two hundred feet of backs." That means I would have two hundred feet above me of ore. And he says, "If you cut the ore, and it's as good as it is on top, phone--don't write--we'll buy it."

SA:         (expressing admiration) Oh!

LM:        Bralorm Mines Company.

SA:         What company?

LM:        Canadian people owned Summit King and Dobson, I think he was the principal stockholder or something. The company name was Bralorm Mines Company. So I thought I was really, you know, I thought I had the pork chop tree cut down (chuckles) you know. And he said, "You should cut the ore at two hundred feet," and exactly two hundred feet I done almost all alone. Exactly two hundred feet I hit granite, which is the worst possible thing that can happen to you. But then it was possible that the granite was an intrusion. That means come up like dough, like a loaf of bread, and your ore dropped over the side, one side or the other. If it dropped over the far side, away from me, why, I might catch it. I went forty-three feet further, 243 feet. I've got a log of the tunnel in there. And I never got out of the granite, and I run out of everything--money and leads and. . . . So that was the end of that.

SA:         Oh, how sad!

LM:        So that was the end of that mining venture.

SA:         How sad. So then what did you do?

LM:        Well, and then I came into town, we came into this place.

SA:         To here?

LM:        To here.

SA:         Were there renters in the house yet?

LM:        No, they were gone. In town here I got work with Boyce Miller, who was a contractor. I got temporary work with him--didn't last very long. And then some way or another, I had in the back of my mind I was convinced that building was going to be the big thing after the war--they were going to build houses and houses and houses. And so an old gentleman named Ed Frazzini had a block plant. He was making building blocks. So I paid $1,750 for a half-interest in the block plant.

SA:         In his block plant?

LM:        Yeah. And like Julia says, I paid $1,750 for a pile of sand. (laughter) We had one machine that made one block at a time, and we packed 'em by hand and we stacked 'em and cured 'em.

SA:         Now where was this?

LM: Well, this was right where Churchill Motors is now. And Churchill Motors isn't there now. It was right behind where Penney's is now, and Penney's is going to move.

SA: Okay, so right downtown.

LM:        Yeah. So then we moved that. We let that property go and we moved to a property that Ed owned where Napa Auto Parts Store is now, on Nevada. We moved there and we got to build a building and we got a better machine where we could make four blocks at a time.

SA:         Were you getting business yet?

LM:        We were selling stuff. We were still selling. The one behind Penney's was a mortarless type block--that is, you didn't use any mortar at all, they were interlocking. But the one that made the blocks where we moved to Napa Auto Parts was a block that used mortar. We were selling 'em, but the business was born dead, really. We could not possibly make it. We were competing with people that could make ten blocks at a time, and fifty, and Reno could make 10,000 blocks in a day where we'd make 400. But I stayed with it five years.

SA:         Did it eke out a living?

LM:        Just starving to death all the time. Five sufferin' years! But I paid all the bills.

SA:         Oh! And with three children!

LM:        Then I sold it and I came out with $6,000 clear. And I was still absolutely positive that building was going to be the thing. So the Tedford brothers had a ready-mix truck and a bin and a scale. And 1 bought that. And it was down on this end of Main Street, right where that work is there, right by the tracks. And I never looked back, (laughs) I failed at Alameda and I failed in the block plant, and I bought the ready-mix truck and the bin, and it was tough because everybody mixed their own--farmers mixed their own, and they didn't want to pay anything. They couldn't see that I could maybe compete. But it just grew and grew.

SA:         Were you by yourself now?

LM:        Right, I had one employee and myself.

SA:         But you were it, you were the owner, just you.

LM:        Right, just me. And I had one employee named Clinton Baglin, the greatest guy in the world. We poured concrete. During this time, in kind of something on the side, when I wanted to buy the ready-mix, I tried to borrow money from everybody I knew. I tried to borrow money from a fellah named Gus Martin, who I knew, and I knew he had it, supposedly. And I tried two or three others. Then I tried to borrow money from Andy Drumm and he wouldn't let me have money. The last time I went to see him, he said, "You'll be broke in six months." And six months later I was pouring concrete for him! (Arden laughs) I poured the South Main Street bridge.

SA:         How did it turn? How did things turn?

LM:        Well, it was just continual, continual growth. A little more every month, a little more every year.

SA:         How did you promote it, how did you do that?

LM:        I just don't know I just worked early and late, and credit is always a bad thing, but I would pour the concrete and Julia would be there with the tag to pick up the money. It was almost a COD deal. And when I got a little further along, why, I wrote tags and let 'em carry, and I carried 'em, you know.

SA:         Did you advertise?

LM:        Never did, no. And I never, never stalled. Every year we'd think-we'd talk and Julia would say or I'd say, "Weil, it's all poured, there's no more," And every year it'd get bigger!

SA:         What were some of the jobs?

LM:        Well, we were pouring a lot of head gates in ditches, and we'd go out into plowed fields and plow. It was difficult pouring, for the ranchers. Within a couple of years we poured concrete-lined ditches in what they called a "boat," and you could pour a good amount.

SA:         Is this when each rancher was busy?

LM:        Yes, started to line ditches.

SA:         Starting to line it, and getting some money from the conservation people?

LM:        Right, they were getting help.

SA:         Was it because you knew all the ranchers?

LM:        Well, I don't think it was because I knew them, really, except. . . .

SA:         Were you the only one doing this?

LM:        I was the only one.

SA:         Either they had to do it, or they had to get you.

LM:        Yeah. And I done right! Never fudged, never failed anybody.

SA:         I'm sure your reputation stayed so good. What else besides the ditches? What else did you do?

LM:        Well, then there was a house, a house, a house. They were building houses pretty steadily.

SA:         Get you to do the driveways and sidewalks?

LM:        And sidewalks. Finally I got to where I poured the concrete for the TCID, the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District.

SA:         Oh! Now, when was that?

LM:        That didn't get big until later years, but early on, like 1957, 1958, I started to pour them a little. They would always pour their own-they poured their own.

SA:         Then they contracted you?

LM:        Then they'd call me when they needed me.

SA:         Now, how wide an area? Where would it be?

LM:        I'd go all over the valley.

SA:         All over?

LM:        Yeah, everywhere.

SA:         Did you then have to hire some people, some helpers and truck drivers?

LM:        Well, it was a long while before I hired more than one. The two of us got it done.

SA:         If you had to pay too many salaries, you couldn't make it go.

LM:        Yeah, but we done it, for years, without any help.

SA:         Oh my! So you probably worked very long hours.

LM:        Yeah. And then I got bold and I ordered a plant from the Edward R. Bacon Company.

SA:         What does that mean, "ordered a plant"?

LM:        A ready-mix plant, a real sophisticated plant, one of the most sophisticated that was sold at the time.

SA:         Now what does that mean?

LM:        That's the place where you mix the concrete, where you pull the truck under and you drop everything in it. It's a big deal, and you have a cement silo. See, we had bag cement. We broke bags on everything.

SA:         Okay, so you ordered this?

LM:        I ordered the plant and Bob Kent--I was on his property right there across from the store, the place out here. And I tried to buy it from him. He said, "I can't sell it, I won't sell it," I think it was S.P. property. He didn't explain it to me until later.

SA:         What does "S.P. property" mean?

LM:        Southern Pacific [Railroad] tracks. So I had a plant on the way, and no place to put it.

SA:         Oh my gosh! What did you do?

LM:        Well, I went out by where. . . . You know where the Stockman's is?

SA:         Oh, sure.

LM:        Well, it'd be east of the Stockman's there's a farm equipment place. I went out there with Ed Venturacci, an old friend of mine--he owned it all. We drew things on the ground there with a stick in the sand, and I drew what I thought was about an acre and I said, "Can I buy this, Ed?" and he said, "Yeah." I said, "How much?" and he said, "A thousand dollars." I said, "I'll give you five hundred today, and then I'll give you five hundred sometime whenever I get it."

SA:         And that was fine?

LM:        And that was it, we shook hands, no paperwork. So I had a place to put it, and that's where I put it. It came in and I had a place to put it.

SA:         Did that stir up business?

LM:        Well, it made it so much better. And then I got so much more business coming in. Then I hired one more and two more. The most I ever had, I think, was five or six.

SA:         Now, tell me, as your business was growing, the town was obviously growing.

LM:        Growing right along!

SA:         Did you get to do the shopping center that Carl Dodge developed out of town?

LM:        Yeah.

SA:         Did you do the cement work for that?

LM:        I done all that, yeah.

SA:         So as shopping centers were coming, the road was widening, the new sidewalks.

LM:        Right, I was just going along with it.

SA:         Did you get most of that business?

LM:        All of it, yes.

SA:         All of it!

LM:        Yeah, I got both those shopping centers.

SA:         You don't have much competition?

LM:        I have good competition now: Hiskett and Son.

SA:         Are they locals?

LM:        Right.

SA:         Oh, they went into that same business?

LM:        Yeah, they've been in for some time.

SA:         And did you say you got some work out at the base?

LM:        Yeah, we'd get a lot of work out there. But anything huge, we couldn't get. They had equipment that would pour so much more than we could. In fact, they had a method of pouring with dump trucks, which was just beyond us.

SA:         Would you get like the housing they were putting up?

LM:        Yeah, we got housing, stuff like that, and buildings, yes.

SA:         Did you get anything outside of Fallon?

LM:        Oh, I went to Fernley a couple of times, but it was bad. It never really paid.

SA:         You mean your business didn't. . .

LM:        Well, you couldn't ask enough money to make it.

SA:         Oh, you were down in Fernley.

LM:        Yeah, to drive to Fernley and back--couldn't make it.

SA:         Okay, but you made it here. Did your business do good here in Fallon?

LM:        Oh yes! Fine!

SA:         Are you still in business?

LM:        Oh yes, my son had that, and my son-in-law, yes.

SA:         Oh, good, so your son and son-in-law. When did they start going in with you?

LM:        I think 1975.

SA:         How old were they then?

LM:        Oh, 1975? Let's see, probably forty, my son-in-law. And Jim was probably thirty when he started.

SA:         So now is it thriving?

LM:        Oh yes.

SA:         What are some of the jobs that they do?

LM:        Oh, they get a good share of the houses, and they get the road work, and they get work at the base.

SA:         Did they get this housing development right next to you? The whole housing development out here. Right here, you just go past you on Lovelock?

LM:        We got some of that on the left. Over here on the right, it's different. We didn't get all of that.

SA:         But there's a big housing development next to you. Did they get all that? Right off the highway. When I turned on the wrong road I got into a bunch of houses next to you, right off the highway.

LM:        Oh, yeah, that's Venturacci. We're getting part of that.

SA:         So what do you see now with the base, with Miramar's Top Gun from my neck of the woods, moving up here, what do you see happening in the next decade here in the Fallon region?

LM:        Oh, I think it's going to be steady growth. I don't see anything to slow it at all. Even though we're losing water--they're taking our water from us, and the ranching is going to depreciate probably. So they'll be less water to go around. But I still think it's going to grow steadily--the community.

SA:         And you're also getting a lot of retirees?

LM:        A lot of 'em. Surprising. We were out at a soccer game and they said that they asked about Fallon and they came and drove around and they said it'd be a nice place, they thought, to stay, and they bought a home here. I think that goes on quite a bit.

SA:         Yes. And probably too, some of the military people who like it and stayed?

LM:        And retire here, yeah. We have quite a bit of that.

SA:         And some coming from the bigger cities, like Reno.

LM:        Yeah, they think it's great here, they don't have to commute (chuckles) and fight the traffic.

SA:         And also lower taxes here for California people that come into Nevada.

LM:        Oh, I think so, yeah.

SA:         Now, let's go back to your mother. I want to find out how her years were. Did she live with you until she died? Tell me a little more about those later years.

LM:        Well, my mother was real healthy, really, and she lived with us and was a great help and a wonderful person, and she lived 'til she was eighty-eight. Then she was in the hospital probably a week before she died. So it wasn't a long, drawn-out affair at all. She was a wonderful person.

SA:         It must have given her great joy to be right in the midst of her children and grandchildren and her great-grandchildren.

LM:        Oh yeah, she loved that. She loved the grandchildren, and they liked her.

SA:         Oh, that's great. [End of tape 2 side A] I want to go back now to an earlier period and find out if during your busy years you had time for something that is so popular here--and that's fishing and hunting. Tell me, did you have time to partake in any of that?

LM:        Yeah, I just managed to work it in some way or other. We done hunting in every season that showed, and we fished. I took the kids with me and we drove a long distance to fish, really. We drove to the West Walker River and fished, and we drove to Reese River and fished. And we fished in Lahontan. I just managed to take the kids every time I had spare time.

SA:         Did you start that after you were a father, not when you were a young person, a single person with your dad?

LM:        Well, yes, I fished as a young person long before I was married. In fact, I'd fished in the Reese River country from the time I was twelve on, whenever I could get out there. Of course those days it was a big deal to get that far with the old cars, you know, so we were kind of limited.

SA:         Oh that's right. So was it then mainly after you had your own family that you did a lot and you had a car?

LM:        Right, you know, and then it was easier to get going with a car that would go fifty-sixty miles an hour, instead of one that would go twenty-five or thirty.

SA:         Now, would you all pile in the car, or would you go with your sons?

LM:        Mostly we all went. A lot of times the girls had other stuff going, and I'd take one boy or both of 'em. We just kept it going all the time.

SA:         What kind of fish did you catch?

LM:        Well, mainly, whenever we went out of town, we were after rainbow trout. In Lahontan we caught catfish, if we fished Lahontan hard. And at times we caught trout in Lahontan too. Catfish in Stillwater too.

SA:         Was that after they developed the lake and the recreation area at Lahontan?

LM:        Well, and of course the lake had been there since 1915-1916.

SA:         So you would go before it was developed?

LM:        Oh yes!

SA:         Tell me about it.

LM:        Long before it became under the state park system.

SA:         Describe what it was like.

LM:        Well, it was just beaches and no control whatsoever. Nobody bothered you. You didn't pay any fee. You just went and camped or went and parked and everything was there. No watching--not watched at all.

SA:         Was there plenty of water?

LM:        No doubt the weather and climate has changed, but the dam used to fill almost every year without fail. And now we're in seven, eight years of drought. It's hard to picture what it used to be.

SA:         And did a lot of other people go there too?

LM:        Oh yeah, it was always popular, all the families would show there, and you'd see everybody you knew on the beaches--swimming and boating.

SA:         Oh, there was boating there?

LM:        Lots of boating.

SA:         Would people bring their own small canoes or something?

LM:        Right. Their own boats, yeah. [tape briefly cuts out] It was a lot of fun.

SA:         When you were out there, did you see the workings of the dam there when you'd go? Did you walk around and watch that at all?

LM:        All you could see, the power plant was usually in operation, and you could see that. And the bridge was ht at night and you could see all the roads and everything. The dam itself, if it ran over, often it would run over and it was a beautiful sight, the water running over the top.

SA:         Uh-huh! Does that happen very much?

LM:        Well, (chuckles) not for a long while. It probably happened three times in the last twenty years.

SA:         That's a beautiful bridge.

LM:        Yes, it is.

SA:         Now, what about hunting?

LM:        Well, early on, I became a member of the Greenhead Hunting Club.

SA:         What is that?

LM:        The government pasture ten miles south of town was a large wetlands area and it was a home for thousands of ducks in those days.

SA:         Really?!

LM:        Thousands of ducks and geese. It was world-famous, really. And I used to hunt ducks probably five, six times during a season. They'd have a thirty-day season and I'd hunt five or six times, and it was great, great hunting.

SA:         Now how far is that?

LM:        Ten miles south,

SA:         Would a group of you go?

LM:        Well, yeah, usually I'd be with my boys, or maybe one other person. Before the boys were big enough to take a gun, why, I'd go with other people, friends of mine.

SA:         Are you the one who trained them how to use a gun?

LM:        Yeah, I did.

SA:         How old were they?

LM:        Well, I let Michael take a gun when he was eight.

SA:         Oh my goodness!

LM:        And Jim about the same. But it was real, real careful, cautious stuff until they were ten or eleven. I think by the time they were twelve I'd kind of figured they were safe.

SA:         What else besides ducks?

LM:        Ducks and geese. And it was great hunting, great hunting. Well, like I say, it was almost world-famous. We had hunters from all over. It's on the Pacific flyway, and it gets the ducks from all up and down the coast.

SA:         Is that something that you've kept up all the years? Do you still do that?

LM:        Oh, the water's gone out there now.

SA:         Oh, the ducks are gone.

LM:        And the duck hunting is . . . well, it's poor. It's too tough for me now--I can't do it. But my grandson is still getting ducks out there, and he has a great time, so it's still possible.

SA:         Did you ever hunt deer?

LM:        I did for several years. And then they made my gun illegal. I had a gun that'd been in the family for three generations. It was a 25-35 and they made the gun illegal. That made me mad and I pouted for a couple of years. And then I quit and I never missed it, I never looked back.

SA:         [Laughs] Anything more on the fish and game before we move on?

LM:        I served on the county commission game board, what they call it--an advisory board that makes the recommendations to the state board--for twelve years.

SA:         What years, approximately?

LM:        About 1955 to 1965, right in there.

SA:         Did you enjoy that?

LM:        Oh I loved it, yeah. I made some waves.

SA:         Like what? What were some of your contributions?

LM:        Well, Federal Fish and Game Laws people get Pittman-Robinson money and Dingle-Johnson money.

SA:         What does that mean?

LM:        Well, Dingle-Johnson were sponsors of the bill that passed it--you know what that means--and Pittman-Robinson.

SA:         Okay.

LM:        That's just a typical example. If you spend twenty-five cents, they'll spend seventy-five cents--the government will, which is the taxpayer. You know what I mean. And a lot of times I would say, "Let's not spend the twenty-five," and that didn't go over big a lot of times.

SA:         [Laughs, tape cuts] Anything more on mining?

LM:        Well, in 1974 1 became interested in a turquoise mine, which is a fleeting thing. Turquoise is a different type of mining that I'd ever done, of course. Turquoise is a semi-precious stone you find. In 1974 the price was high. In 1973, the price was great. In 1974 it was high. We actually produced a lot of stone.

SA:         Where did you. . . .

LM:        This was in Grass Valley. It's--112 to Austin, 130--about 150 miles from here.

SA:         Yeah, I've interviewed in Grass Valley. How did you hear about the mines in Grass Valley?

LM:        Well, my son was the lawyer for several of those mines out there.

SA:         What mines?

LM:        For the turquoise mines out there.

SA:         Oh, for the turquoise mines.

LM:        So this one, they wanted to turn it over, they wanted somebody to work on it. So I went out there. It was a sabbatical. I was still working at the concrete plant, but they could handle the plant and I was going to go out and just have recreation.

SA:         And this is in the seventies when it was high?

LM:        Yeah. So we done real well and we produced a lot of stone. In 1975 I got everything I needed to really produce. And in 1976, (chuckles) the price went to nuthin'! (laughs)

SA:         Why was that?

LM:        Oh, everybody's got a reason. They blame everybody. The Arizona people blame the Japanese for making artificial stone.

SA:         Yeah, I'd heard that.

LM:        So I don't know really what--maybe over-production. Over in Battle Mountain and another section of Austin they were producing stone like crazy, you know. That's typical of what happens when the market is good, the price goes up and everybody was producing turquoise. But it was a fun deal, I enjoyed it! But it was another case of (chuckles) a big failure. (laughter)

SA:         Oh, gee! I hope you saved some of the turquoise for your gals.

LM:        A man is judged by how many failures he's had, you know. (chuckles) So that was that story. I really enjoyed it.

SA:         Did you keep some of the turquoise?

LM:        Oh yeah, I got it all over.

SA:         Did you belong to any organizations in town?

LM:        Well, years ago, about 1952, and before, the old guard in Fallon had formed a dance club, and they limited it to fifty couples, I think. I may be wrong on that, but say fifty couples.

SA:         How did you apply? How did you get to be one of the fifty?

LM:        Well, (chuckles) you got to be one of the fifty. I don't quite know how, but you were invited, really.

SA:         Were all these couples about the same age?

LM:        Right. We had a dance once a month and you paid five or ten dollars a month, and that included the music and the food and everything.

SA:         Wow! Where were they held?

LM:        They were held at some hall. We held 'em for years at the Eagles' Hall and the American Legion Hall downtown for a few. And it was a wonderful thing. It was a wonderful, wonderful thing. People loved to dance, and it was a great night, and it was cheap compared to if you go to Reno, you know. And we had more fun anyway! And you took your turns--well, not everybody--but you took your turns at being president. I was president one term.

SA:         What year did you say this started?

LM:        Well, it must have been. . . . I joined in 1952, and it was in operation then. I think it must have started about 1946.

SA:         And they had fifty couples? I mean, you could get that many couples that would...

LM:        Oh yeah.

SA:         Gee! Would it be a dress-up event?

LM:        Pretty much, yeah.

SA:         Any pictures from it?

LM:        Oh, don't think so.

SA:         No photographs of the group?

LM:        No.

SA:         And who would play?

LM:        Oh, we hired an orchestra. We had one orchestra that stayed with us for twelve years, I think.

SA:         Was it local musicians?

LM:        Right. And at times we hired orchestras out of Reno. We had various orchestras, but one we had for a long while, and they were local people.

SA:         Now did this break up? Did it end?

LM:        It just kind of. . . . I think television ended it. Stuff to do.

SA:         Television? And also were they getting older and didn't want to dance?

LM:        Well, yeah.

SA:         Or did one die, or. . .

LM:        Yeah. A lot of those people still go now, every chance they get, anywhere where they can dance. (laughs)

SA:         Isn't that wonderful! Any other organizations you got active in?

LM:        Oh, I was president of the Lions Club one term.

SA:         How long were you active with the Lions?

LM:        I think twelve years--twelve or sixteen years.

SA:         Are you still with them?

LM:        No. And then we bought a motel.

SA:         Who did?

LM:        My boys and I.

SA:         Which motel?

LM:        It was the Uptown. They renamed it. I’ll find out [tape cuts out] It's now called the Value Inn, and it's on West Williams. And the old folks remember it as Uptown Motel. Had a top hat on the sign.

SA:         Do you have a picture of it, or an ad or something?

LM:        Oh, I don't believe so.

SA:         So tell me what kind of a motel, who stayed there, who took care of it? Tell me about it.

LM:        We had twenty units we could rent. And actually, there was one for a single person. We could rent twenty-two. And they rented for as little as eighteen to thirty-five dollars. I had kind of researched it on how many celebrations there were in a year, and my boys had figured it out, how many rodeos and when we could expect the "No [Vacancy]" sign, and we hit it right on the nose. It done exactly what we thought it would do.

SA:         Really? Now, who took care of it, who ran it?

LM:        Well, we all worked at it: my son and my son-in-law and my daughter-in-law and my grandson and Julia. Julia was the wheel, she really kept it going.

SA:         She was the boss of it, the manager?

LM:        Oh yeah, she hired and fired and managed and everything. Then we hired a manager, of course. Managers are quite a problem.

SA:         Was it part of a franchise?

LM:        No.

SA:         Oh, it was a private motel--your own private motel. Did you have to do a lot of renovation on it?

LM:        Oh, we worked on it constantly. We had to fix it, fix it, fix it. When we got done with it, it was a thousand times better than when we bought it.

SA:         Did any workers rent it by the week or the month?

LM:        We had a couple by the week. I believe we had one in the front there that went by the month for a while.

SA:         Did you advertise it, Chamber of Commerce or anything?

LM:        No, only in the phone book, Yellow Pages.

SA:         And it's on a good street, so people would pass it.

LM:        Oh yeah, real great location.

SA:         How long did you have it?

LM:        Eight years.

SA:         Did it pay for itself?

LM:        Oh, it was a good investment, it done well.

SA:         Why did you end it?

LM:        Well, it got to be too much for us, and Julia was getting too much of the work.

SA:         (expressing concern) Oh. So you sold it?

LM:        We sold it.

SA:         Make out okay?

LM:        Oh, they're still paying for it. My grandchildren will be getting. . . (laughter)

SA:         So that was another venture?

LM:        It was a success.

SA:         Good. You needed a few of those.

LM:        Yeah! (laughter)

SA:         Now, anyone else in the family that you want to tell us about before we finish here? We want to get to your kids, but anyone else?

LM:        My sister, Dorothy.

SA:         Tell me about her.

LM:        Well, when I was growing up, she was always the older--a lot older, it seemed like. You know, anybody two or three years older than you seems so terribly old. She would be here in the summertime, whenever school wasn't in session.

SA:         She was the one that went to California?

LM:        Yeah, she went to California, and she graduated from the University of California, and then went to--well, had several jobs--and then became head of Los Angeles… what do they call those? Rehabilitation projects? No not that… Where they rebuild the inner section…

SA:         Oh! The Inner city?

LM:        Yeah, she was in charge of that. We went down just six months ago and moved her into a –She had been in the same apartment for 25 years – And we moved her into a – I don’t know what they call them – It’s a place where the meals are cooked and she has everything... .

SA:         It's kind of like a retirement home where you have your own apartment?

LM:        Right. Yeah, she has everything, her own apartment.

SA:         And where is this?

LM:        In Stockton.

SA:         In Stockton. Okay, so she's retired now.

LM:        Right.

SA:         And did she have a family, did she marry?

LM:        She was married to Earl Alcorn, but he died a young man. She's been a widow for years and years.

SA:         Did she have children?

LM:        No. (pause) Oh, that's Jim! Jim's my youngest son, and he lives right up here. He was in here.

SA:         He helps you run your business?

LM:        He is half of the ready-mix plant now.

SA:         Oh, okay, he's half owner.

LM:        And John Dondero is my son-in-law, and he's the other half. He's married to Michelle who's the dean of the college.

SA:         Well, let's just finish up by your telling me briefly about your beautiful family. You've got a picture I see on the wall of all your beautiful grandchildren.

LM:        Well, you know, if a man can gauge his success by his grandchildren--I've been a success. (laughter)

SA:         You certain are! That's a beautiful gang. Is there a small snapshot of that that we can put a copy in the transcript?

LM:        I don't know where that is. I could ask Michelle--she could find out what that was taken from. That's my legacy, right there.

SA:         That's beautiful, that's beautiful. Is there anything that we did not cover that you want to add to your interview?

LM:        You know there's a lot of little vignettes that I could keep you busy for weeks, you know, just bore you to tears, One of 'em brings to mind, when we were mining. . . .

SA:         Which mine?

LM:        At Wonder. We bought everything at Kent's. Everything we used we bought at Kent's. We bought powder and caps, fuse, meat, bread, potatoes, picks, shovels--everything we bought at Kent's. And we had lots of leasers on the hill who'd done the same thing. If we got a shipment, a carload of ore out and on the way, then we would come to town. I had this one friend of mine named Johnny Chisholm, and he got a shipment of ore out. Well, he was subleasin' so he paid ten percent to Louise F. Curtis who owned the mine, and he paid fifteen percent to Henry Koocher who he was subleasing from, so he paid 25 percent out of every dollar. Anyway, Johnny got a shipment out, and he went to town and we didn't go to town that night. And so Monday morning it would be, at two o'clock in the morning, I guess, we're asleep in the jail.

SA:         In the jail?!

LM:        Well, we lived in the jail.

SA:         (laughs) Oh, okay, that's right!

LM:        And Johnny came in and he called me Shawn--we were good friends--and he's shakin' me to wake me up, "Wake up, Shawn, wake up." And you know how a drunk is a nuisance, you just want to get rid of 'em, but he seemed lucid. He said, "Shawn, wake up, wake up." I said, "Oh Johnny, go to bed." And he says, "Shawn, I want you to feel this shirt. Feel that material." So in order to get rid of him, I reached up and I felt the material. He says, "An eighteen-hundred-dollar shirt! Chances are you'll never own a shirt like that." He went to town, his check was $1,800 and he got home with his shirt.

SA:         Oh my gosh! Someone took his money?!

LM:        Oh no, he gave a lot of it away, and he drank it and gambled. He just had a great time--two days, a weekend. Of course he paid his bill, he paid Kent's bill first. "Feel that material," he says. "Chances are you'll never own a shirt that good!"

SA:         What a wonderful story! Mr. Mackedon, on behalf of the Churchill County Oral History Project, I want to thank you so much for sharing your stories and remembrances of Churchill County with us. This is the end of the interview.

Sylvia Arden

Leonard O. Mackedon

1235 Lovelock Highway, Fallon, Nevada