Tom Inglins Oral History
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CHURCHILL COUNTY MUSEUM & ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
an interview with
TOM INGLIS
1982
Although this interview was not a part of the Churchill County Museum Oral History Project, it has been transcribed because of its historical content.
Transcribed by Glenda Price; edited by Norine Arciniega; indexed by Grace Viera; final by Pat Boden; supervised by Myrl Nygren, Director of the Churchill County Museum Oral History Project.
The following interview was conducted and recorded by Churchill County Junior High School students as part of a class assignment on Churchill County history. The tape was subsequently donated to the Churchill County Museum where it was transcribed and edited because of its historical content.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this interview are those of the interviewer and interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Churchill County Museum or any of its employees.
Content Warning: Significant racism, including two cases of anti-Chinese slurs. Though they were neither appropriate then nor now, they have been left in so as not to deny the history of racism in Churchill County’s residents through the late 20th century. Additionally, descriptions of very rough handling of animals that would likely be considered abuse today.
Interview with Tom Inglis (and his daughter, not named in this interview, as well as a second woman, unknown)
INGLIS: Now, what do you want to know, young man?
SELENTZ: First, we want to know just a brief history of your family.
INGLIS: Oh. Brief history. Well, that's quite a lot of… (laughing)
SELENTZ: (laughing)
INGLIS: Well, I tell you. I took a little down here. [papers rustling] Question 1, what was that one?
SELENTZ: Please tell us a brief history of your family.
INGLIS: Well, I was… I had two sons and a daughter. My parents are from Scotland. In 1898 [ed- presumably 1888] they came over to this country and they had a hard winter in 1889 and 1890 and the stock all died off out there in the ranges and my dad got a job skinning sheep. Oh, they were piled up like cordwood! (laughing)
SELENTZ: (laughing)
INGLIS: Yeah. See, it was a dry summer, pretty dry summer that year, and they didn't have much snow and there was very little feed and the cattle went into the winter pretty poor, you know, and they got no feeding and there was a lot of snow. Had nothing to eat. Oh, it was tough on them.
SELENTZ: Oh man…
WOMAN: Tell him where it was at!
INGLIS: It was up there in Humboldt County. You know, Winnemucca?
SELENTZ: Yeah.
INGLIS: That's where it happened. It was a tough setup. So… That's the history of the family pretty well.
SELENTZ: Okay.
INGLIS: And what's your question number two?
SELENTZ: What was your first job in Fallon?
INGLIS: Oh, I came in the Valley. Oh, I got a lot of hay to put up here that one year. I worked for the farmers puttin' up hay. That's about the first job I got. You know how it is, going around. Yeah.
SELENTZ: What was dating like? Like dating girls.
INGLIS: Oh, kind of a desert, you know. There was no trees along the river. Oh, once in a while you'd find a big tree and then you had a big flood.
SELENTZ: What was it like to date girls when you were younger?
INGLIS: The girls?
SELENTZ: Yeah, dating. You know, go out on dates.
INGLIS: (laughing) I was kind of bashful. (laughing)
SELENTZ: (laughing)
WOMAN: Tell him what you did to the poor girls!
INGLIS: Oh, I used to kid them along.
WOMAN: Kid them along, you did not!
SELENTZ: Um, okay. What toy or game was popular back then?
INGLIS: Oh, marbles. Used to play marbles and spin tops and play baseball, you know.
SELENTZ: What was your most exciting adventure?
INGLIS: Well, I tell you. We had a flood here in 1907, and we was livin' down on the low ground there and we had to get out early in the morning. The water was coming in out of the river. Oh, it was awful. Roaring down, it made us pretty scary. (laughing)
SELENTZ: (laughing)
INGLIS: Yeah, but we got out and we had to go down to a neighbors and stay that night, and we didn't get back in the house down there for three days.
SELENTZ: Did it flood out your house? The inside of it?
INGLIS: The water didn't get in the house. The house was kinda on a little high place. It was all around it. Down here the water must have been about four feet deep. Something like that. Down on that lower ground, about four feet deep.
SELENTZ: What caused it to flood?
INGLIS: Well, they had a lot of snow that year, 1906. A lot of snow, and it got warm in February. See, this was March 16, I think. Oh, it was bad and washed all the canal out up here. Yeah. Oh, and we didn't get any water. Like today they got modernized equipment. We just had the old mules. Put you right in the ditch. That was some job. Mules and horses. Yeah.
SELENTZ: What was it like in Fallon when you were my age?
INGLIS: Well, there was not much around Fallon. Just houses or shacks. No paved streets, you know. Just boardwalks. We had no trucks or anything to haul equipment. See, they went down to all these mining camps out here. They had to haul the freight from Hazen. Big long line teams, sixteen-horse teams.
SELENTZ: Do you know when the Nugget was put in Fallon? What was there before the Nugget?
INGLIS: You mean that restaurant?
SELENTZ: Yeah.
INGLIS: Well, there was a lot of saloons in here. There was the Palace Saloon. The Lofthouse brothers had a saloon. They were a nice bunch of boys. There was about five of them, I think. One of them was a saloon man. There's two brothers, a saloon man, and then the other brothers were out here working on Stockman. Boy, they were very fine fellows, these Lofthouse brothers. See, one of the boys worked up at Kent's feed yard.
SELENTZ: What was your favorite radio show?
INGLIS: Oh, I don’t know that. I used to like a lot of these pictures like wild west shows.
WOMAN: They didn’t have radio.
SELENTZ: How was school when you were in my [seventh] grade? Did you hit seventh grade?
INGLIS: Oh, yeah, I got in the eighth grade.
SELENTZ: What was school like?
INGLIS: Oh, there was pretty nice teachers.
SELENTZ: Was it a one-room schoolhouse?
INGLIS: Well, they had two rooms down here in Fallon. See, I want to show you. See, there's the picture of the schoolhouse in Golconda. That's where I went to school first. That's a nice building there.
SELENTZ: Oh, yeah.
INGLIS: There's two rooms in that schoolhouse. Had the fourth up to the eighth grade. I'm going to show them a lot of old-time pictures.
SELENTZ and OTHER STUDENT: [murmuring about photos]
INGLIS: Here's where we used stack hay in those days. We didn't bale our hay. That's a derrick.
SELENTZ: Oh, yeah.
INGLIS: That's on that place I had down here. And that's the way we used to scrape our ditches out. See, the old horses? Didn't have any dragline.
SELENTZ: Oh yeah. There’s two old horses… one after the other.
INGLIS: You heard, maybe, of Hangman's Tree. That's all gone now. They hung the men- the horse thiefs. And there's my mother. She’s down here, right down here. See, that was my youngest son's…
WOMAN: Oh, that was Alfred’s dog!
INGLIS: Yeah, here's the dog for Alfred, that younger son of mine, the carpenter.
SELENTZ: Oh, yeah. Pretty dog!
INGLIS: He'd get up on the haystack but he couldn't get down. (laughing)
SELENTZ: (laughing)
INGLIS: Had to go up and pack him down. He disappeared one time, and I couldn't figure where he went. I thought he'd run away. I happened to look up and there he was on top of the haystack. He'd climbed up the ladder like a man.
WOMAN: He was a nice dog.
INGLIS: You've heard of Fort Churchill. That's all 'dobe.
SELENTZ: Oh, yeah. Doesn't look too bad there.
WOMAN: You got any more pictures, dad?
INGLIS: I want to show you my parents now. See, there's my mother and us two little boys. That's my brother, oldest brother, and this is me.
SELENTZ: Oh, yeah.
INGLIS: See, Mother got sick had a doctor doctorin' her for her stomach and she was figurin' on never gonna get well so she said to take her picture but she got another doctor. Her stomach was all right. He doctored her for her liver, and you wouldn't believe in a month or two she perked right up. And there's us two little brats. (laughing)
SELENTZ: (laughing)
INGLIS: There's that saddle horse of mine. Mrs. Moiola's son's on him. He was a baby then.
SELENTZ: Oh, yeah.
INGLIS: He was a good saddle horse.
SELENTZ: That's what I'd like to have. A good saddle horse.
INGLIS: We about run out of pictures.
SELENTZ: What kind of tricks did you play on the teacher, if you did?
INGLIS: Oh, not bad. (laughing)
WOMAN: What kinds of tricks did you play on her? And keep it clean!
INGLIS: One time I spilled a lot of – you know these peanuts? I had ‘em in a [inaudible] poured em all over the floor! I remember it was not nice stepping on ‘em.
WOMAN: Tell ‘em the one you did to that Chink!
INGLIS: I used to work at this mine. I worked up in the mining camp at Gabbs, and I worked with this Chinaman and I used to play all kinds of tricks on him. (laughing) I used to take him hot water that he used to scald the dishes. Pack it a way out the back door. He'd have to go get it. Ho, ho, ho, ho, oh, it was a lot of fun, and he'd get pretty mad, you know.
SELENTZ: (laughing) I don't blame him.
INGLIS: And one time they got another Chinaman there. This old fellow, I worked with him. They fired him. The poor old fellow. I felt sorry for him. So they got this other Chinaman there and he was a little short fellow. He was a nice Chinaman, and, they had water running from the mines over to a big tank running into the boardinghouse to wash dishes and heat the water, so I went over and shut it off. Poor old Chink didn't have any water! (laughing) So one day I went out and went over there and I saw the boss coming down and he was pretty short, he couldn't reach up where that water—he had hot water in that tea kettle and so he was pourin' that water and this boss took the kettle and got away up on top. He thought it [the tank] was froze, but it wasn't froze. After a while, they went in the boardinghouse and I didn't see them. I went and turned it on and they thought they'd thawed it out. (laughing)
SELENTZ: (laughing) What did the kids do for entertainment?
INGLIS: Pass the time away? Oh, we used to play ball, you know, baseball. Oh, heck. Several parties, you know. Oh, we got pretty good, but the folks never let us have their gun. Was afraid we'd shoot ourselves. Yeah, it's pretty nice up that way. Weren't very many people here. The folks used to go out sagehen hunting but these miners ... and these fellows used to come up from Winnemucca. Just shows you they---what I call tinhorn gamblers--they'd shoot fifty of these sagehen in a day. Isn't that awful?
SELENTZ: Yeah.
INGLIS: Wouldn't pick all of the little young ones up. Let them lay there and rot. Oh, that was awful. Yeah. That's the people for you. Well, I think pretty soon there won't be no game here. People just killin' off the deer, you know, and they're having quite a racket about these wild horses, you know. When I lived up there in Humboldt County out of Golconda, the hills were full of wild horses, see. You'd go the road when you were driving your team and they'd be running out in front of you. The Indians were kind of bad then, you know.
SELENTZ: Yeah.
INGLIS: These horses were going down and Mother got scared. You could see their manes flying out in the sagebrush. Gosh, she got a hold of Dad's lines, going to pull him over the hill. She says, "Look! The Indians are coming." She thought these manes were Indians. They weren't Indians, just wild horses. (laughing)
SELENTZ: (laughing)
INGLIS: Yeah. They used to scare her pretty bad, you know. Dad would be down in the field working and they'd come in the house, these Indians, bucks with all their old men and women, and my mother just about, oh, she was shaking, and they'd talk nice to her. Says, "We like white woman." He says, "You got some flour?" So she went in and got them some flour. "Want some baking powder?" Oh, she'd give them everything they ask for. (laughing) She was scared, and my dad come along and he seen all these Indians and he got mad. "Get the hell out of here!" That scared Mother worse. She was afraid they'd come back tonight and scalp her. (laughing) It did bother her. I had a lot of good times here, you know. Didn't have any automobiles, but, I had that saddle horse. Yeah. It was pretty nice. Yeah. Things are changed, you know. You take as long as I've lived here. I'm the only old-timer around here. They're all passed away, all in Fallon. There's a younger generation, you know, but the old-timers like my age they're all gone, yeah. A lot of nice people here. We had a lot of nice neighbors here. I'm the only one in the Sheckler District--that's where I'd lived, see--I'm the only one left in Sheckler that's an old-timer. Yeah. You see, the Mills boys, there's two of them. Claude Mills. Do you know Claude Mills and Vernon Mills?
SELENTZ: I've never heard of them.
INGLIS: We came here in 1906, and they came here in 1908. They're the oldest ones left. All the rest of them's gone.
SELENTZ: No, I don't know them. We've heard of them at school, but it's been a long time.
INGLIS: Well, it's quite a change. Now, you take that flood we had, you see, you take all along this river here and all around. There once was a big tree here and one here. Oh, not very many trees. You know, after that flood you'd be surprised. I guess all that seed was in the ground and down here you ought to see it. It just come up green like a meadow, you know. Yeah, very nice. We didn't have very much fuel here. We used to burn sagebrush. That's all we had. No better than those cottonwoods. You see all these cottonwoods out here now. A lot of fuel now, but you know they're going to make a kick about this pollution. They say this wood smoke is bad. I don't know. What'll we be burnin' then. No more sagebrush. (laughing) I don't know really. A lot of things change. When you get my age you'll see a lot more changing. See that mining camp, you know, a lot of these barn swallows are from there. You know, they build these 'dobe nests. Some of them was down under that bridge down the canal over there, to make a nest out of mud, see, and these miners used to get pretty mad. They'd build their nests up there, and by golly, you know, these droppings, they dropped down the fellows' necks and we used to take the hose and wash the nests down. Yeah, we had a lot of coyotes in early days, you know. Then they put a bounty on them. Used to kill the calves and all that stuff. Then when they got rid of the coyotes, then the jack rabbits got thick around here.
SELENTZ: Yeah. If it isn't one thing, it's another.
INGLIS: They'd eat all the stuff off. Do one good thing and do bad thing to another. Well, we had different things. We had a lot of pests here. One year we had a lot of squirrels. Oh, gee! Oh, there was dozens of them. Oh, thousands. Used to get poison from the Extension Agent, and I went down here at this bridge and walked up the canal. I had to turn water on that take-out up there, and by golly, you know, when I went up there to shut the water off, you oughta seen the dead squirrels where I started walking up. They're all dead and a lot of them'd be down in the holes dead. Always some pests. Then we had grasshoppers.
SELENTZ: Oh-h-h-h-h-h.
INGLIS: They'd eat the hay up. Oh, it's pretty tough, and then we got all these insects, more insects. We got this weevil that ate the hay and grasshoppers and these squirrels. Then we'd get these dry years. One year the water played out and your hay all dried out. [Inaudible, followed by long pause]
WOMAN: Did you ever see these little… what are they called? Horned toads?
SELENTZ: Horny Toads? Oh yeah.
WOMAN: They used to be thick around the house and they’d climb on every night.
SELENTZ: Yeah, they are. I like horny toads.
WOMAN: I like them. I wouldn’t let anybody kill them. And then there’s a lot of skunks.
SELENTZ: Skunks? Oh jeez.
WOMAN: I’m trying to think of those little things… they climb up the trees and look at you. They weren’t mean or anything.
SELENTZ: They weren’t squirrels? How about prarie dogs?
INGLIS: Oh, there's all kinds of things to bother you on the farm. Then we had one year here way back in 1916. Had a bad cold spell. Hay was left out and it got cold and frosted. [significant over-talk] Some of them took and burned it up. Oh, there was a lot of things a farmer had to contend with. But, the worst we had here was that flood. You see these canals up here. At the dam up there they'd dam it up and come around. Well, cut right down in the canal. Washed all the canal out. Oh, it was bad. I wish I'd a known how to stop it down there. You know, it just, you hear that water roaring by that'd scare you. Didn't know if it would wash the house out or not. Had it on a little knoll. That old house. Didn't do any damage to the house, never got in the house, and Dad had two sows, and little pigs. Water got in the pen --it was lower--and drowned all the little pigs. And then we had chickens there. You know, they got wet and they got what you call the swell head. All died off. The folks had to go buy some more chickens. Oh, you got all kinds of . . . What grades are you in?
SELENTZ: Seventh.
INGLIS: How old are you?
SELENTZ: I'm thirteen.
INGLIS: Seventh grade?
SELENTZ: Yeah.
INGLIS: Oh, you're pretty smart boys.
SELENTZ: (laughing) Thank you.
INGLIS: You got a nice teacher?
SELENTZ: Yeah.
INGLIS: Is your teacher a woman?
SELENTZ: We got seven of them.
INGLIS: Oh, gee! (laughing) By golly. Are they pretty nice teachers?
SELENTZ: Yeah.
INGLIS: You ever get a licking?
SELENTZ: No. (laughing)
INGLIS: (laughing) You behave yourself. That's the way to do it. We got one teacher down here. Used to know my daughter. Her mother, she was a real teacher. You know Mrs. Chapman? Her husband used to be a barber in Fallon. Her maiden name was McLean. Her father had a ranch here. That daughter of mine learned more off of her in one year than all the rest of the teachers she had. My daughter liked her and she learned a lot. Yeah, a lot of changes. Take Fallon, you know. Those days, gee, it was kind of tough. Like Maine Street, used to be boggy and then they'd haul sand in to cover the mud up and then the darn sand would blow away.
SELENTZ: (laughing)
INGLIS: You never seen these big freight teams, huh? By golly, you take sixteen head, a long line team. Then they had a jerk line. And you'd get up in the saddle and ride the wheel horse on the left side and had what they call a shot whip. That's a whip, used to skin mules, got a popper on it that they take and hit a mule with that. Yee, hoo, you kind of stung him.
SELENTZ: (laughing)
INGLIS: Dad bought a horse from a fellow down here right across the road here. He had a big scar. See, somebody hit him with one of these shotwhips and that broke the hide there and it really scarred. And Hazen. They had an awful time down to Hazen. That road, mud, you couldn't get down there hardly. I know a lot of people bogged down there. You couldn't get out. Cars couldn't make it. You had to have a team of horses. Yeah, well, you’d sink in those days out there. [End of side A]
INGLIS: What were we talking about?
SELENTZ: Your dad.
INGLIS: You gonna put this in the paper?
SELENTZ: Yeah. See, we have this book that we’re gonna make.
INGLIS: A book?
SELENTZ: Yeah, and we’re gonna put the stuff you told us down on paper. And then we’re gonna put it in this book, if that’s okay with you.
INGLIS: That’d be pretty nice.
SELENTZ: Oh yeah. Let’s see… [pause]
INGLIS: About my parents… Well, I told you about my dad before he come over.
SELENTZ: What did he [your dad] do when he was in Scotland?
INGLIS: He worked on the railroad, back there. What they call checker.
SELENTZ: And how did they come to Nevada?
INGLIS: Well, I tell you. They had some Scotch friends out here, and they wrote back. When my dad first come out here he worked in Colorado. He worked in a smelter. Him and another brother. My other brother went back. My dad had some money in the bank-back in Colorado and they had to figure out a way back, and he was going to take his money out and the fellows told him, "No, leave it alone. It's all right." Well, he had about seven hundred dollars, wasn't much, but the bank failed, and he didn't get any money. He never tried to save any more money. Then he come out north there. He worked for that big cattle company up there and he got a job, worked there for them puttin' up their hay. Then he had sheep there. I was going to tell you. He skinned a lot of sheep. He run sheep with that cattle company. That's when they had that cold winter. Oh. They died off like flies, you know. Puttin' no feed on. They went into winter poor, you know.
SELENTZ: Now, he was the first one over, or did both your mom and dad come over?
INGLIS: No, he was over here first. Then he went back and got married. That's when he come back over here. See, Jenny was born in 1891. I was born in 1893 over here, and I been here ever since. A fellow asked me how you stay so long in one place. Never got any money to get out. (laughing) Well, boys, what are you going to take up? You gonna be lawyers or farmers?
SELENTZ: Yeah. I'm going to be a lawyer.
INGLIS: You see, out here at Winnemucca seein' folks that put a station out. There was a mining camp. It was about sixty miles from Winnemucca, and he had a station. See Mother did the cooking and they'd come in, make a thirty-mile trip that day and stay there at night. Mother used to feed them and they'd sorta lodge there that night. That hot spring. Oh, that was hot water. My dad used to get a five-gallon can, fill it full of potatoes, run it down in that hot spring and it'd be cooked in the mornin'. I know I run through there, just a little kid. Mother pulled me out and these shoes she'd gotten off, and oh, you know what a hot water does. She put some olive oil on and that never hurt but the shoes she couldn't put them on me. They shriveled up. That was hot water. You talk about that arsenic in water. Over there that water was full of arsenic.
WOMAN: Well I’ll tell you, we went out on a picnic – went out on the hills, now, and we wanted to make some coffee, so we stopped at hot springs. I fixed my coffee and I just held it down in hot water, and you know it was boiling in no time.
SELENTZ: Woah…
WOMAN: So you see how hot it was.
INGLIS: Oh yeah, it was sure hot. Oh, another thing: My dad took a lot of foolish trips. He went out there and built a big house out there and corrals, take care of the horses, and that mining camp was played out. They had shut it down. No more ore. Well, they had that house out there. Nothin' out there for that house, so we had to move it in to Golconda. It was five rooms. Very big house. So we cut it in sections and they did that with no trucks. Horses took it. Put it on the wagon and hauled it in. Guess the house is up there, yet. Then he made another foolish trip.
SELENTZ: A glass of water would be fine.
WOMAN: No Pepsi?
SELENTZ: A glass of water would be fine, thanks.
WOMAN: Do you want a cookie?
SELNTZ: [uncertain noise]
WOMAN: What about you? Do you want water too or you want warm- you want a glass of milk?
SELENTZ [Or other young boy]: Water.
WOMAN: Water. Do you want water?
INGLIS: Yep. [Inaudible, over-talk] Another foolish trip my dad [inaudible] -Went up to Washington. He had a friend up there told him to come up there and by golly, we took a trip up there in that Portland area up there. He got a stump ranch, you know. All the things you'd need to make a living. You’d have to… [inaudible] All that stuff was cheap, but, He built himself a barn to put the cows in. You had to put the cows in at night, and it rained . . . [over-talk, seems like about the drinks and cookies]
INGLIS: That looks pretty nice. You boys write these?
SELENTZ: Yeah.
INGLIS: Pretty good writers. [Pause] Yeah, well I went to see a buddy, [inaudible] your folks have a ranch here?
SELENTZ: Yeah, my dad’s the manager of Dodge Ranch.
INGLIS: Oh, he works on the Dodge ranch.
SELENTZ: He’s the manager.
INGLIS: Oh, you’re…
SELENTZ: Selentz.
WOMAN: Well, they’re new people here, dad.
INGLIS: Oh, I get you.
WOMAN: And do you live there too?
BOY 2: No, I live in a different place.
WOMAN: Where?
BOY 2: I live in 60 Wildes Road.
WOMAN: He lives on Wildes Road. I used to know a lot of… don’t know anything now.
INGLIS: Who’s that other fellow that works there? Whitey Harrigan?
SELENTZ: My dad took his place.
INGLIS: What did Whitey do?
SELENTZ: I don’t know.
WOMAN: I imagine he’s about retirement age.
[inaudible]
SELENTZ: He sold it to the Bank of California.
WOMAN: Do you want to try one, hon? If you don’t like it you don’t have to eat it.
SELENZ: [laughs]
[long inaudible section]
WOMAN: But Charlie, I knew him ages ago. He used to have a little place up here.
INGLIS: I was going to tell you, you know, we took that trip up to Washington, my dad and us kids--I was just a kid. By golly, he got sick up there, my dad. Got that poison oak. Put great welts on you and he went to Seattle to get different medicine. Never done him any good. And then that kid brother I had, he got pneumonia. Oh, it was pretty tough. It rains up there, you know. It's awful. Never see the sun. We got up there in September. That's when the rainy season starts and we never saw that sun. Oh, it was cloudy all the time. It didn't rain hard, you know. Sprinkle and clear up. Lot of timber up there. Had these wild blackberries. Gee, they were good. Ohhh. Then they had the ridge raspberries. That's where you raised them in your garden, but you know, that year we was there we got a dry spell. They got the potatoes in. They never got big potatoes. Just little bits of things. Just dried all up. Yeah. I would have gladly come down. We come down from Seattle on the boat down to Frisco [San Franciso, California] and went back up to Golconda, our old home. My dad stopped up at Hazen. The railroad wasn't completed there so he had to get on the stage and rode into Fallon and we didn't see him for three days or so. We got worried. Thought maybe he got held up. He had quite a few dollars on him. When he come back about the fourth day, the fellow that brought him down from Fallon now and then they had the old wagon and he took us up. That's when my dad bought that place down there. We been here ever since. [long pause] Well, there's a lot of changes.
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