An Interview with

MINNIE

PERCHETTI

An Oral History produced by

Robert D. McCracken

Nye County Town History Project

Nye County, Nevada

Tonopah

2011

Minnie Perchetti

2010

COPYRIGHT 2011

Nye County Town History Project

Nye County Commissioners

Tonopah, Nevada

89049

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Index

PREFACE

The Nye County Town History Project (NCTHP) engages in interviewing people who can provide firsthand descriptions of the individuals, events, and places that give history its substance. The products of this research are the tapes of the interviews and their transcriptions.

In themselves, oral history interviews are not history. However, they often contain valuable primary source material, as useful in the process of historiography as the written sources to which historians have customarily turned. Verifying the accuracy of all of the statements made in the course of an interview would require more time and money than the NCTHP’s operating budget permits. The program can vouch that the statements were made, but it cannot attest that they are free of error. Accordingly, oral histories should be read with the same prudence that the reader exercises when consulting government records, newspaper accounts, diaries, and other sources of historical information.

It is the policy of the NCTHP to produce transcripts that are as close to verbatim as possible, but some alteration of the text is generally both unavoidable and desirable. When human speech is captured in print the result can be a morass of tangled syntax, false starts, and incomplete sentences, sometimes verging on incoherence. The type font contains no symbols for the physical gestures and the diverse vocal modulations that are integral parts of communication through speech. Experience shows that totally verbatim transcripts are often largely unreadable and therefore a waste of the resources expended in their production. While keeping alterations to a minimum the NCTHP will, in preparing a text:

a.         generally delete false starts, redundancies and the uhs, ahs and other noises with which speech is often sprinkled;

b.         occasionally compress language that would be confusing to the reader in unaltered form;

c.         rarely shift a portion of a transcript to place it in its proper context;

d.         enclose in [brackets] explanatory information or words that were not uttered but have been added to render the text intelligible; and

e.         make every effort to correctly spell the names of all individuals and places, recognizing that an occasional word may be misspelled because no authoritative source on its correct spelling was found.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As project director, I would like to express my deep appreciation to those who participated in the Nye County Town History Project (NCTHP).  It was an honor and a privilege to have the opportunity to obtain oral histories from so many wonderful individuals. I was welcomed into many homes—in many cases as a stranger—and was allowed to share in the recollection of local history. In a number of cases I had the opportunity to interview Nye County residents whom I have long known and admired; these experiences were especially gratifying. I thank the residents throughout Nye County and Nevada—too numerous to mention by name—who provided assistance, information, and photographs.  They helped make the successful completion of this project possible.

Appreciation goes to Chairman Joe S. Garcia, Jr., Robert N. “Bobby” Revert, and Patricia S. Mankins, the Nye County commissioners who initiated this project in 1987. Subsequently, Commissioners Richard L. Carver, Dave Hannigan, and Barbara J. Raper provided support. In this current round of interviews, Nye County Commissioners Andrew Borasky, Lorinda Wichman, Joni Eastley, Gary Hollis, and Fely Quitevis provided unyielding support. Stephen T. Bradhurst, Jr., planning consultant for Nye County, gave enthusiastic support and advocacy of the program within Nye County in its first years. More recently, Darrell Lacy, Director, Nye County Nuclear Waste Repository Project Office, gave his strong support. The United States Department of Energy, through Mr. Lacy’s office, provided funds for this round of interviews. Thanks are extended to Commissioners Eastley and Hollis and to Mr. Lacy for their input regarding the conduct of this research and for serving as a sounding board when methodological problems were worked out. These interviews would never have become a reality without the enthusiastic support of the Nye County commissioners and Mr. Lacy.

Jean Charney served as editor and administrative assistant throughout the project; her services have been indispensable. Valerie A. Brown, Debra Ann MacEachen, Robert B. Clark, Lynn E. Riedesel, Marcella Wilkinson and Jean Charney transcribed a number of interviews, as did Julie Lancaster, who also helped with project coordination. Proofreading, editing, and indexing were provided at various times by Joni Eastley, Michael Haldeman, Julie Lancaster, Teri Jurgens Lefever, and Darlene Morse. Joni Eastley proofed all the manuscripts and often double-checked, as best as possible, the spelling of people’s names and the names of their children and other relatives. Jeanne Sharp Howerton provided digital services and consultation. Eva La Rue and Angela Haag of the Central Nevada Museum served as consultants throughout the project; their participation was essential. Much- deserved thanks are extended to all these persons.

All material for the NCTHP was prepared with the support of the Nye County Nuclear Waste Repository Office, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. However, any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed herein are those of the author and the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the views of Nye County or the U.S. DOE.

—Robert D. McCracken

2011

INTRODUCTION

Historians generally consider the year 1890 as the close of the American frontier. By then, most of the western United States had been settled, ranches and farms developed, communities established, and roads and railroads constructed. The mining boomtowns, based on the lure of overnight riches from newly developed lodes, were but a memory.

Although Nevada was granted statehood in 1864, examination of any map of the state from the late 1800s shows that while most of the state was mapped and its geographical features named, a vast region—stretching from Belmont south to the Las Vegas meadows, comprising most of Nye County—remained largely unsettled and unmapped. In 1890, most of southcentral Nevada remained very much a frontier, and it continued to be so for at least another twenty years.

The spectacular mining booms at Tonopah (1900), Goldfield (1902), Rhyolite (1904), Manhattan (1905), and Round Mountain (1906) represent the last major flowering of what might be called the Old West in the United States. Consequently, southcentral Nevada, notably Nye County, remains close to the American frontier; closer, perhaps, than any other region of the American West. In a real sense, a significant part of the frontier can still be found in southcentral Nevada. It exists in the attitudes, values, lifestyles, and memories of area residents. The frontier-like character of the area also is visible in the relatively undisturbed quality of the natural environment, much of it essentially untouched by humans.

A survey of written sources on southcentral Nevada’s history reveals some material from the boomtown period from 1900 to about 1915, but very little on the area after around 1920. The volume of available sources varies from town to town: A fair amount of literature, for instance, can be found covering Tonopah’s first two decades of existence, and the town has had a newspaper continuously since its first year. In contrast, relatively little is known about the early days of Gabbs, Round Mountain, Manhattan, Beatty, Amargosa Valley, and Pahrump. Gabbs’s only newspaper was published intermittently between 1974 and 1976. Round Mountain’s only newspaper, the Round Mountain Nugget, was published between 1906 and 1910. Manhattan had newspaper coverage for most of the years between 1906 and 1922. The Rhyolite Herald, longest surviving of Rhyolite/Bullfrog’s three newspapers, lasted from 1905 to 1912. The Beatty Bullfrog Miner was in business from 1905 to 1906. Amargosa Valley has never had a newspaper. Pahrump’s first newspaper did not appear until 1971. All these communities received only spotty coverage in the newspapers of other communities once their own newspapers folded, although Beatty was served by the Beatty Bulletin, published as part of the Goldfield News between 1947 and 1956. Consequently, most information on the history of southcentral Nevada after 1920 resides in the memories of individuals who are still living.

Aware of Nye County’s close ties to our nation’s frontier past, and recognizing that few written sources on local history are available, especially after about 1920, the Nye County Commissioners initiated the Nye County Town History Project (NCTHP) in 1987. The NCTHP represents an effort to systematically collect and preserve information on the history of Nye County. The centerpiece of the NCTHP is a large set of interviews conducted with individuals who had knowledge of local history. Each interview was recorded, transcribed, and then edited lightly to preserve the language and speech patterns of those interviewed. All oral history interviews have been printed on acid-free paper and bound and archived in Nye County libraries, Special Collections in the Lied Library at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, and at other archival sites located throughout Nevada. The interviews vary in length and detail, but together they form a never-before-available composite picture of each community’s life and development. The collection of interviews for each community can be compared to a bouquet: Each flower in the bouquet is unique—some are large, others are small—yet each adds to the total image. In sum, the interviews provide a composite view of community and county history, revealing the flow of life and events for a part of Nevada that has heretofore been largely neglected by historians.

Collection of the oral histories has been accompanied by the assembling of a set of photographs depicting each community’s history. These pictures have been obtained from participants in the oral history interviews and other present and past Nye County residents. In all, more than 700 photos have been collected and carefully identified. Complete sets of the photographs have been archived along with the oral histories.

On the basis of the oral histories as well as existing written sources, histories have been prepared for the major communities in Nye County. These histories have also been archived.

The town history project is one component of a Nye County program to determine the socioeconomic impact of a federal proposal to build and operate a nuclear waste repository in southcentral Nye County. The repository, which would be located inside a mountain (Yucca Mountain), would be the nation’s first, and possibly only, permanent disposal site for high-level radioactive waste. The Nye County Board of County Commissioners initiated the NCTHP in 1987 in order to collect information on the origin, history, traditions and quality of life of Nye County communities that may be impacted by the repository. If the repository is constructed, it will remain a source of interest for a long time and future generations will likely want to know more about the people who once resided at the site. And in the event that government policy changes and a high-level nuclear waste repository is not constructed in Nye County, material compiled by the NCTHP will remain for the use and enjoyment of all.

—RDM

2011

Robert McCracken talking to Minnie Perchetti at her home in Tonopah, Nevada. April 2, 2010, Tape One, Side One.

CHAPTER ONE

RM:     Minnie, what is your name as it reads on your birth certificate?

MP:      It reads Katherine Boscovich. I didn’t know my name was Katherine. When I went to get my birth certificate they said, “We don’t have a Minnie. We’ve got a Katherine.” My dad named me Katherine but my mother always called me Minnie. I met the lawyer that day—he happened to be in the post office—and I said, “What do I do?”

He said, “Just go by Minnie, like you always have.”

RM:     Where did your mother get the name Minnie?

MP:      It was a popular name then. I have a cousin named Minnie, a lot of people had Aunt Minnies, so they liked the name “Minnie.” But my dad had put down “Katherine,” named after his sister.

RM:     When and where were you born?

MP:      I was born in 1920, June 26, on Magnolia Avenue, which is the house right next door to where I live. It’s still there.

RM:     Isn’t that wonderful.

MP:      After my mother died I never did rent it again.

RM:     Did you grow up in that house?

MP:      Yes, my three brothers and I.

RM:     So you lived right door your whole life. That’s a wonderful thing.

MP:      It was wonderful because as my mother got older I was right here to take care of her. And there are lots of memories there; my brothers and I played there. Then when I got married and had my kids, they played there. Then the grandkids played there. And last year at Easter, I had 17 great grandchildren. It was a wonderful Easter last year—all of them were in my backyard.

RM:     Isn’t that wonderful; in the family home. What was your mother’s name?

MP:      It was Christina Kuljaca.

RM:     When and where was she born?

MP:      She was born in Yugoslavia on February 27, 1892. It was near Kotar, but the little village that she was born in was called Kuljaca, just like her name. She lived up in the mountains in what is now Croatia.

RM:     And how many children did she have?

MP:      Four—three boys and a girl; I was the baby.

RM:     Oh, the spoiled little girl?

MP:      No, my brothers made me tough; I’d fight just like they did.

RM:     You don’t happen to remember her parents’ names, do you?

MP:      This is catching me unaware; you read that story on her, didn’t you, in the book they just put out? There’s a whole story on my mother that my granddaughter wrote. You can get it up at the Station House at the desk, but get Number Two. I’ll show it to you before you leave.

RM:     Okay, good. Was she raised in the village where she was born?

MP:      Yes. It was a beautiful country, I guess. It was all olive trees and she was near the ocean. When she came to Nevada it was so different. My dad and her brother lived together and they worked at the Mary Mine by Silver Peak. My dad decided he’d like to get married and her brother said, “I’ve got a sister back there, let’s call for her.” She decided to come and they met in Reno. This was in 1914. She’d never seen him before but he was very handsome—I’ll show you the picture.

RM:     You’re showing me a picture of your mother and father.

MP:      That’s the day they got married. Weren’t they good looking?

RM:     They certainly were.

MP:      She said when she looked at him she thought, “Oh, my gosh.” They got married and left right away for Mary Mine. It’s way up in the mountains above Silver Peak—no grass, no trees, no water, nothing. She said, “Oh, what have I done?” But when she saw him she fell in love and so she made out all right.

RM:     They got married right away, didn’t they?

MP:      Yes, as soon as she got into Reno they got married at some café that was owned by Serbian people.

RM:     So she got off the train and. . . .

MP:      Went right over there to that restaurant and got married there.

RM:     And it was a wonderful, happy marriage?

MP:      Yes, it was. After Mary Mine, they moved to Tonopah—like I said, right next door. They had goats and chickens, lots of goats. She milked goats and made cheese.

RM:     Do you recall her talking about life in the old country?

MP:      She always told me how beautiful it was. She tended goats for the family. She never went to school; she’d herd the goats up in the mountains every day and bring them back.

RM:     Did she have a lot of brothers and sisters?

MP:      She had two sisters and one brother, and the brother of course was living here with my dad, but the other two didn’t come.

RM:     Did they keep in contact?

MP:      Yes, I used to write letters for my mother.

RM:     Now let’s talk about your father. What was his name?

MP:      Well, Nick, but Nikola Boscovich.

RM:     When and where was he born?

MP:      I don’t know the name of the town, but in Yugoslavia, up north near the German border.

RM:     Was he older than your mother, or about the same age?

MP:      He was older but I don’t remember . . . I know he died when he was 45 from miner’s consumption here at the mill. It was a shame. I was only 10 years old when he died. But he came and worked in mines around Nevada before he went to the Mary Mine. He worked up at Pioche and all over.

RM:     Do you know when he came to America?

MP:      It seems like it was about 1910. Like I said, he met my mother’s brother at the Mary Mine. His name was Christo—Chris—Kuljaca.

RM:     Were his family miners in Yugoslavia?

MP:      I don’t really know what they did. Most people back there had goats, but I don’t know how they made their living.

RM:     Did he come directly to Nevada when he got to the United States?

MP:      I believe so. He died when I was so young, I never had a chance to ask him things.

RM:     Could you give me the names of your brothers, starting with the oldest?

MP:      My oldest brother was Marco Boscovich and then Bozo Boscovich (actually, his name was Robert, but all his life people called him Bozo) and then George and then me.

RM:     Bozo married Marguerite Clifford, right? I knew Bozo.

MP:      Oh, did you? He was a wonderful guy. We loved George but he got killed when he was 51 in a car accident. It was the day he was going to retire; it was sad.

RM:     Oh, no. Now, by the time you were born the family had moved to Tonopah. Were your brothers born here also?

MP:      No, two were born in Blair. That’s right by Silver Peak, sitting in the flat. Mary Mine was up in the mountains and she went down to Blair to have her babies. Then they moved to Tonopah and George and I were born here.

RM:     How big was the camp at Mary Mine?

MP:      It was just a small place (I notice they’re opening up that mine again). She lived in a little old shack up there. She said she cried buckets of tears—she missed the ocean and the beautiful country, and to come to a little shack and no grass, no trees and she couldn’t speak English.

There was a lady there who would take her down to Silver Peak to do her shopping. They just loved her at that store because she couldn’t talk English but she had a sense of humor. If she wanted eggs she’d cluck like a chicken “cluck, cluck, cluck” and she’d laugh along with them when she didn’t know what she wanted. It was quite an experience for her.

RM:     Oh, my goodness. Did she eventually learn English?

MP:      Yes, she did. She never learned to read or write; she could just write her name. She wouldn’t let us talk Serbian at home; we didn’t know too many of the Serbian words because she wanted to speak English. She talked pretty good English as time went on.

RM:     How long did she live?

MP:      Till a week before she was 97. The last few years she couldn’t walk and so I took care of her. But that’s a long life.

RM:     Did she grow to love the desert?

MP:      She learned to like it. And she always had a big garden; and was hard in all those rocks but she had a beautiful garden. She supplied half the town with lettuce and green onions. She always made goat cheese and they’d raise a pig and she would hang it. We had a smokehouse—she’d hang the hams and bacons there. She’d dig a hole in the ground and build a fire there and put a tub with holes in it over the fire and smoke would come out of it and smoke that meat. She made sausage, kielbasa; she was a wonderful cook.

RM:     Did she make wine?

MP:      Oh, yes. She always made a lot of wine and some grappa.

RM:     Did she have grapevines in her yard?

MP:      No, they’d have to order the grapes from California.

RM:     How many goats would she have?

MP:      About four goats, I think. Every morning she’d go out and milk the goats and oh, man, she made good goat cheese.

RM:     Did you learn how to make it from her?

MP:      No, I never did make it. And after she died, of course, we never had the goats anymore.

RM:     So she had goats right up to the end?

MP:      Pretty much. I never did milk them. When she got too sick to go out there, we got rid of the goats.

RM:     When did she die?

MP:      In 1987, I think.

RM:     I did an interview with Kayo (Catherine) Lydon years ago and she told me about her mother, Miruna Banovich.

MP:      Miruna lived right down the street from my mother and they went back and forth, visiting. I was down there half the time with Kayo and my mother and Miruna would visit all the time.

RM:     Kayo lived right at the corner?

MP:      Right at the corner, but they tore the place down when they put that main highway in.

RM:     Miruna’s husband died of silicosis, too, I believe.

MP:      Yes, her husband died when he was very young and he left her with those kids.

RM:     Kayo told me all about how Miruna made wine and they herded goats and made cheese and sausages and wine and so on, just like your mother.

MP:      Yes, they all did. They were all such hard workers.

RM:     There must have been more feed for the goats in the hills in those days, then.

MP:      My mother never took her goats out of the yard so she must have bought the feed. But Mrs. Banovich would take hers up in the hills every day so they could eat the grass growing there.

RM:     I wonder if you could feed a goat on the grass that grows on the hills now.

MP:      Goats could eat brush, they could eat anything. They’d eat a tin can—I used to see them eat the paper off the cans. All the kids had burros; we grew up with the burros. My brothers wouldn’t want to take their sister when all the boys were going so they’d give me old Sloppy Joe, the worst burro there was. And he was so slow, so I’d get so far and then I’d turn around and go back.

RM:     Each kid kind of had their burro, didn’t they? But the burros ran wild?

MP:      Yes, they’d just go eat and if you’d want them you’d call them off the hill.

RM:     The burros would come?

MP:      I think so. It seems to me I remember that. But I had Sloppy Joe and if you were riding along he’d try to rub you off on the side of a building; that’s why they didn’t like him. I finally gave it up. I decided they didn’t want me.

RM:     What are your earliest memories of Tonopah?

MP:      It was so wonderful. It was a slow pace. You knew everybody and everybody was a hard worker. It was much nicer than now, I would say.

RM:     In what sense?

MP:      Everybody was more friendly to each other and you helped each other. There were no cars; people were happy walking here and there. I remember once a month they’d have a dance at the Serbian Hall and at 2:00 in the morning when the party was all over, everybody would walk home. My mother used to dance the kolo, a Serbian dance. She could really dance. It was interesting to watch.

RM:     Where was the Serbian Hall located?

MP:      Right behind the post office and the TV station. It was a two-story building that eventually burned down. In fact, the Finnish people and the Swedish people used to have their own places. There were lots of foreigners here then because they all came here to work the mines. If you go down to the cemetery you notice they all died when they were real young because they didn’t wear the [dust] masks. Where my dad worked, he was getting all that [silica] dust. It was sad.

RM:     It certainly was. What other ethnic groups were there in town besides the Swedish, the Finnish, the Yugoslavians—you called them Serbs.

MP:      There were a lot of Irish people, English people. I remember the Bogdons were down there. She taught my mother how to make pasties—that’s an English dish. There were lots of foreigners here then.

RM:     Did the groups interact quite a bit?

MP:      They were all friendly. But there were a lot of Serbians so they’d get together and drink their wine.

RM:     Tell me some more about your childhood growing up and what it was like back then in Tonopah.

MP:      We never did have a lot—as far as fancy clothes, we just had good sturdy clothes. In fact, I wore boy’s shoes for a long time.

RM:     Were they hand-me-downs from your brothers?

MP:      I don’t know. I think I had my own shoes. But I remember when I was about seven years old for Christmas my dad bought me a pair of little patent leather shoes that a girl would wear. I was thrilled to have my own instead of boys’ shoes.

RM:     Did you wear dresses?

MP:      Yes, and I still remember my panties that my mother made out of a flour sack. The back would say Occidental Flour. [Laughs]

RM:     Did she make a lot of your clothes?

MP:      Yes. She had the old treadle machine. She didn’t make the boys’ clothes but she’d make her dresses and mine.

RM:     Being the only girl, did she dote on you a lot?

MP:      Her favorite was my brother George. He just adored my mother all those years. When he died at 51 it broke her heart. She never saw a happy day after that.

RM:     How sad. Can you talk about the miners getting silicosis?

MP:      Yes. So many of them had silicosis. They came out here and they died by the age of 35; my godfather died when he was 35. The miners finally got to where they were wearing that sponge, but it was hard.

RM:     I’ve worn the sponge, and I didn’t like it. It’s hard.

MP:      My dad didn’t like it.

RM:     So the town had a lot of widows, I guess.

MP:      Yes, it did. A lot of them remarried and some didn’t.

RM:     When you were growing up, what were some of the mines that were pretty active in Tonopah?

MP:      Of course the Mizpah and the Belmont. My husband Tony came out here to go mining at the Belmont Mine and that’s when they had the big fire and the Belmont burned. He came from Saginaw, Michigan. It was funny—his dad told him he would love the mining. He did, too. They rented a house from Leo Quas, who had the dairy. Tony would get off at 3:00 and he said, “Leo, I’ll help you deliver your milk.”

The first time I met Tony, he was coming in the back door to put some milk or cheese or butter in the house. He was good looking and he must have liked me, too, because he went home and he said, “Mom, I think I met the girl I’m going to marry.” We fell in love just like that. That’s the only boyfriend I ever had.

RM:     Oh, my goodness. What year was that?

MP:      I met Tony in ’36. We ran away and got married the day after I was 17.

RM:     Where did you go to get married?

MP:      To Hawthorne. And I didn’t know it till later, but a lot of my friends ran away and got married there, too. The justice of the peace was a big, fat barber. [Laughter]

I was afraid to tell my family we got married when I came back because I knew my brother Bozo would kill Tony so we didn’t tell them right away. I finally thought, “I’d better tell them. They’ll be wanting me to go to school.”

My mother said that day, “We’ve got to go get you some school clothes,” and that’s when I told her. Oh my God!

RM:     What did she say?

MP:      “Oh, Minnie,” she started crying. She said, “Are you pregnant?”

I said, “No, Mama, I’m not pregnant. I didn’t get married because I’m pregnant, I got married because I fell in love with him.” Well, they finally accepted it. We got a little apartment and set up housekeeping.

RM:     Where was your apartment?

MP:      It’s not even there anymore. It was down off Florence Avenue; there was a big apartment. And then my mother had this little three-room house. She said, “Oh, you might as well live in there,” so we moved up here later and we’ve been here ever since. Of course, we added a bedroom there and the bathroom. It didn’t have a bathroom or nothing—in those days we all had the outside toilets and took our baths in the big washtub. I still have the washtub.

RM:     On the kitchen floor.

MP:      On the kitchen floor. All our baths were there.

RM:     Yes, I did that. And the water was heated on the stove?

MP:      Heated in the boiler. That’s how I washed clothes; I put water in the boiler.

RM:     Did you use a scrub board?

MP:      We sure did, and finally Tony got me a washing machine.

RM:     You would have gotten married about 1937.

MP:      Yes. Then Bob came a year later, in 1938, so I started my family fairly young.

RM:     Talk more about your childhood, growing up in Tonopah and going to school and that kind of thing.

MP:      We all walked to school; there was no such thing as driving. The kids nowadays are spoiled; they think they have to have a ride everywhere. At lunchtime we’d have to come all the way home and we would hurry up and eat lunch. My mother would cook fried potatoes and she’d beat eggs and pour over and, oh, it was so good. She always had a nice lunch for us. Then we’d run back to school.

For some reason, I was awfully bashful. When it was my turn to get up and say a poem or something, I’d tell her, “I don’t know it all,” and sit down. I did know it, but I was too bashful to get up and say it. I finally got over that, thank goodness.

RM:     Did you go to the old school up where the park is now? What school did you go to? Barsanti Park?

MP:      Yes, that’s where the school was. In fact, my son Bob went there. I had Miss Curieux when I was in the first grade and he had her those many years later.

RM:     What did you think of school, growing up? Did you like it?

MP:      Oh, I loved it, but I was bashful. I was just average. I never failed, but I wasn’t that sharp.

RM:     How many would be in a class back in those days?

MP:      I think that we had about 20 in our class. It seems to me we had a fairly big class through all those years. I had my friends—Billie Wardle and Betty Bird and Bernice.

RM:     Was Betty Bird Wally Bird’s daughter?

MP:      Yes, they just lived across the street. We’d play hopscotch and jump rope all day long. And Billie Wardle—you probably remember the name Wardle, he had a drugstore—was my really good friend through all those years.

RM:     What kind of play activities did you do besides the burros?

MP:      The girls and I played hopscotch all day or we jumped rope or we’d come in and play jacks. Kids don’t do that anymore; all they want to do now is those little games and TV. We grew up happy. My mother would give me a catalog and I’d cut the pretty ladies’ dresses out; we played paper dolls. We had a happy childhood.

At night when I was little—and my kids did this—every night it was Kick the Can and all those games, Annie-I-Over. There was no TV.

RM:     What did you do on winter evenings?

MP:      It was a good long winter. Of course, our winters were so different. We’d sleigh ride every day, there was that much snow. Even when my kids were growing up, sleigh riding was the big thing. I don’t see anybody sleigh ride anymore.

RM:     There’s usually not enough snow, is there?

MP:      No but there was a lot of snow then.

RM:     Are the winters as cold as they were back then?

MP:      I think so. I never owned a pair of gloves so I guess it wasn’t too cold.

RM:     So you had your little sleds and you were out going down the hills. You probably went down these hills right here in front of your house?

MP:      Yes, we did.

RM:     And you probably didn’t have to worry that much about cars, did you?

MP:      No, we’d hardly ever see a car. I remember one of my playmates was Clarabelle McGee [sp]. They had the dairy and they had a car. Oh, boy, was it a thrill to get in their car and go for a ride. It had the open sides; I don’t even remember any windows on there.

RM:     Where was the dairy located then?

MP:      About where D&D Tire is. And then the other dairy—like I told you, my husband worked for Leo Quas. No, Leo Quas took care of the dairy. They had the cows up kind of where the old bowling alley used to be.

RM:     So there was a dairy where D&D Tire is now, on Main Street.

MP:      Yes, and then a dairy at the end of Florence Avenue. His name was DuPratt. They went to Reno later. They could deliver the milk.

RM:     And then they would pick up the bottles, right?

MP:      Oh, yes. We’d have to put the clean bottles out.

RM:     Did your mother, after your father died, ever make wine and sell it to people in town to help make ends meet?

MP:      I don’t know, but I think she did because I can remember seeing some wine in the bottles so she must have. I think there were a few people that would come up and buy it. I remember they worked at the water company and at the power company.

RM:     Did you kids have to go out and collect bottles? Kayo told me that they used to go out and collect bottles for her mother’s business.

MP:      I didn’t have to, but I imagine that my brothers did because my dad died when we were young and they had to make the living for the family. They’d get up at 4:00 in the morning and help McGee deliver the milk before they went to school.

RM:     How much older was your oldest brother, Marco, than you?

MP:      Well, we were born every two years, so when I was born he was eight years old.

RM:     So he would have been 16 when your dad died. And the boys had to go out and help support the family.

MP:      Yes, because there was no money coming in.

RM:     Did they go into the mines at all?

MP:      Later they did. One worked at a garage, one delivered telegraphs, and they made the living. Then they went to mining when they were old enough.

RM:     When you were born, Tonopah was still going strong, wasn’t it?

MP:      Oh, yes, the mines were running.

RM:     What was the town like when you were ten?

MP:      It was still busy—there were two shoemakers and three barbers—I can remember the barbershops—and the show hall. We had a lot then; we had the clothing stores. It was such a nice town. Everybody was so friendly.

CHAPTER TWO

RM:     Could you start at the top of Main Street or at Florence Avenue and go down Main Street and talk about some of the businesses that were there?

MP:      On Florence Avenue, like I say, first Leo Quas had the dairy. And of course the Wardles lived there, but there wasn’t a business. And then Mrs. Vuich had a little grocery store at the corner of Florence and McCullough. Then you go a little further and on the left-hand side there was a rooming house, but I don’t know the name of it.

Then there was Coleman’s store, and that’s where we all bought our groceries. In fact, my mother would walk down there and buy a sack of flour and come walking home with the sack on her shoulder so she could make the bread that day. Then across the street I can remember a little lady had a shop there, it might have been a sewing shop because she had thread and stuff like that. Then you go down a little further and that’s where this man had apartments, rooms, for rent.

RM:     Still on Florence?

MP:      Yes. And across the street this way at the corner was the gas station. It was on the V.

RM:     Kind of where Red Douglass’ garage used to be?

MP:      He was up here, and then you go down and the next garage was the Kelly Garage and then the V; I’m trying to think of his name.

RM:     Was the Kelly Garage where it was in the ’50s?

MP:      Probably, yes.

RM:     That big building there on the south side of the street?

MP:      Yes, you remember that. Because across the street was the Kelly Hotel. Mrs. Dahlstrom worked there. Little Reischke’s was next to that. The next one was Cox; he had the hardware store.

RM:     What is there now?

MP:      Just that old double-wide trailer sitting there. Reischke’s was next to it and then the Kelly Hotel. Next to that was a Chinese laundry.

RM:     Oh, this would have been on the road to Vegas.

MP:      Yes, at that end down there.

RM:     I remember in the ’50s Reischke’s was over here on Main Street. Is that the same place?

MP:      Yes, on lower Main.

RM:     What was where the post office is now?

MP:      We had the Elks Hall and then Lyon’s  dress shop was in there and then the post office, but what was there before the post office? I did an interview with some people and they met me down there at the post office. They said, “Can we ask you about the post office?”

I says, “Well, what do you want to know?”

They says, “Tell us what you think.”

I said, “Well, I watched them day by day building it. I loved it. It was the prettiest building in Tonopah. But I really don’t know what else to tell you.”

Whatever I told them, Don Logan called from Vegas. He says, “Minnie, I just saw you on TV. You gave an interview for the post office.” [Laughs]

RM:     What about the Belvada Apartments? Were those apartments there when you were growing up?

MP:      My sister-in-law lived there with her two kids and half the kids in town would go up and down that elevator. I didn’t, but other kids did. It was nice then.

RM:     Were they kind of expensive and ritzy?

MP:      I don’t think so. They were just plain old apartments. My sister-in-law was working as a waitress and she lived there with her two kids, so I don’t think it cost too much. And right next to that was a five-and-dime.

RM:     Is that where the A Bar L is?

MP:      Down a little more, about where Bob’s got that furniture store.

RM:     Okay. And then you cross the street from the Belvada Apartments—was that a drug store in those days?

MP:      Well, Pollins owned that corner store. They’d sell cigarettes; I don’t know what all they had in there. But it was a fountain and we’d go down and get our milk shakes and all that.

RM:     I remember in the early ’50s we would go there.

MP:      Did you grow up in Tonopah?

RM:     No, but I lived in Reveille Valley in 1954. Next to the drugstore, was that the Tonopah Club?

MP:      No, that’s across the street and over there. That big empty lot was the Tonopah Club.

RM:     But it’d be down the street from the Belvada Apartments?

MP:      Yes, the same building as the Masonic Hall or wherever. And next to that, of course, was the Tonopah Club. My husband worked there for years, tending bar. Then there was a clothing store and Quick Lunch, which was a little restaurant that the Serbian people owned. They’d cook all that old Serbian food in there and it was good. Then McCullough had his clothing store and next to that was the Montana Café—some Serbian people owned that, too. The building’s still standing, the Ramona Hotel.

RM:     And going on down a little bit and over one block was the red-light district. What did kids think about it back then?

MP:      We were curious. I went with Della and Katie. P. J. had this car and we’d beg him to take us through there. We’d hide way down where we could just see out and we’d see the girls sitting in the window. He’d get mad at us and say, “I’m not taking you through there.”

“Oh, please, we just wanna see!” He’d make us hide way down. [Laughter] I remember that and I remember those girls. I remember Taxine real well. She was a really neat lady. I remember Barney, the guy she married. They were a nice couple, really. I don’t know much else about them.

RM:     Did you know Bobbie Duncan when she was down there?

MP:      I didn’t know her until she was up here. She was a nice lady. I remember a girl I knew was going to graduate and she didn’t have a dress and Bobbie Duncan bought her a beautiful dress, saw that she got a dress. She did a lot of good things.

RM:     Taxine was like that, too, wasn’t she?

MP:      Yes.

RM:     Do you remember Toni Buffum?

MP:      Oh, yes. She was always a friend of mine—she and that little old buggy, that Jeep that she’d drive. She was so beautiful. She was just wonderful. She always told me, “Minnie, when I die I’ve got something in that house with your name on the bottom of it.” But nobody ever gave it to me. I don’t know what it was.

RM:     I’ve heard her house is still there and full of things.

MP:      They gave the daughter that house. I don’t know which one they live in now.

RM:     Now, going on down the street there was the Big Casino.

MP:      It was gone by the time I can remember.

RM:     There was another building that I read about not too long ago, an important building called the Arena.

MP:      That was before my time so I don’t know about that one.

RM:     When you were a kid growing up, what were the big night spots in Tonopah? There was the Tonopah Club. . . .

MP:      And the Mizpah. Those were the two. And that’s for everybody. We were talking about it the other day—what we missed. We could park on the streets and you parked this way (diagonally). We’d park down there and you knew everybody. People’d get out of their car and come talk to you and it was fun. But the Mizpah and the Tonopah Club were the highlights.

Of course I remember the Elks Hall and the charity ball—oh, my goodness. That was the one time of the year I got a new dress, and it would be a pretty one. They always had an orchestra; it was wonderful. We were just married and Tony and I would go to most of them. You never get an orchestra here anymore. Of course, Don Logan’s had an orchestra. The charity ball—we waited for that all year long. It was always in November.

RM:     Where did you get your dresses?

MP:      Mostly right next door to Nora Reddington’s  She had the little dress shop there. She was the aunt to the Friels and those folks.

RM:     Was it a long formal dress?

MP:      Yes, most of them were; everybody dressed up. It was beautiful.

RM:     And you didn’t have to be an Elk to go, did you?

MP:      Oh no; everybody went. Of course the bad thing about it was you had to climb all those stairs to get up there. I remember when my brother Bozo got drunk and was going to go home and he fell down the stairs. [Laughs] He had a little blood running from his nose. I remember the night the Elks Hall burned—we all felt so bad.

RM:     When was that—after the ’50s? I remember going to a dance there.

MP:      Yes, it was after the ’50s. I remember Roy Wolfe and his store down there.

RM:     Do you remember Charlie Stewart?

MP:      Everybody knew Charlie Stewart. He was a nice guy. When my husband came from Saginaw, Michigan, there was nothing to do in town so he found Charlie Stewart’s place and he learned how to play poker there. It was the hangout for everybody. The kids would all play poker in the back room.

RM:     I didn’t know that. He was next to the theater then, wasn’t he?

MP:      Yes. Tony learned to play poker there. I think that was kind of bad, because he loved cards for the rest of his life.

RM:     Do you remember when Charlie Stewart came to town?

MP:      No, I don’t.

RM:     So from your earliest memories he had his little place there next to the theater.

MP:      I didn’t pay any attention until I got married because I never did go downtown all that much, I was just 17, 16. No girls ever went to Charlie Stewart’s. We’d go to Polins, next door, and have our soda pops or our milk shakes.

RM:     And that would have been across from the Mizpah, right?

MP:      Yes, it was a corner store. The Polins owned it. In fact, my husband worked for Polins; they invested in a mine in Manhattan and my husband went out and did mining. I lived out there with Bob when he was a little baby. We lived up at the mine out of Manhattan for about eight months.

RM:     Was it right there in Manhattan?

MP:      No, it was up top of the hill. There was a little cabin down below and we lived there.

RM:     Talk about living in Manhattan—what was it like?

MP:      I never did get away from the house much. Bob was a little baby and I just let him play around the house. There were lizards everywhere, I remember that. We didn’t have a screen door and if you’d leave the door open the lizard would be poking his head in. But it was nice—we’d go out in the backyard and pick pine nuts. It had its good points.

RM:     Were you glad to get back to Tonopah?

MP:      Oh, yes. That’s when we moved into this house.

RM:     Talk some more about your husband’s background.

MP:      He was born in Oklahoma and then he went to New Jersey and worked with his dad and his uncle in a big dairy. He had some relatives who lived in Saginaw so he moved there and was a busboy at a big hotel there, the Bancroft Hotel. That’s when his dad invited him out here to go mining. He was a city boy when he came here—he had suits and spats and all that. [Chuckles]

RM:     So his dad came out here first?

MP:      Yes. He liked the mining so he called for Tony and Tony loved it.

RM:     About what year would that have been?

MP:      That was 1934 because I met Tony in ’35.

RM:     Do you remember what year Tony was born and where?

MP:      He was born in Lehigh, Oklahoma, in 1911. He came from a big family; they had eight kids. He remembers when the sky would get real quiet and they’d all run into the cellar because a cyclone was coming. He was glad to get out of Oklahoma.

RM:     Had his parents emigrated from Italy?

MP:      Yes. The dad came first and I guess he’d met the mother in Italy and he sent for her and they got married in Oklahoma.

RM:     Did he mine a long time?

MP:      They all worked at the Belmont Mine and when that burned he and his dad went over to the Mizpah and worked there. The dad was a watchman at night. He’d stay in that little cabin where he lived and spend the nights as a watchman.

RM:     Do you remember him talking about the Belmont Mine? What was it like underground?

MP:      It was hot. At first, where he worked he wore a lot of suits. They said you’d walk in the Belmont and you’d see a coat hanging here and a coat hanging there. He’d take them to work and then it was too hot and he’d just leave them hanging.

But they used to lease, especially the Mizpah. When we got married and moved here, Tony said, “Now, watch for me. I’ll be up there at 10:00” or so. I’d go out there and I could see the mine. We were still in love, and it was thrilling.

RM:     How long did he work at the Belmont?

MP:      Just a couple of years before it burned.

RM:     Did they do pretty good leasing?

MP:      Not really, no. And that’s what he did at the Mizpah, too. I can’t remember why he quit; I think it wasn’t that good. He was going to go to the army—that was 1942—and he had to go to Salt Lake for his physical. When he came back he’d just turned 35 and that was the year it came out that a married man at 35 didn’t have to go. He lucked out. He’d sold his business; he was in a little trucking business. He didn’t have to go after all so he decided to go into roofing.

RM:     Oh, that’s how the Perchettis got into the roofing.

MP:      Yes, Tony’s dad was a roofer. And at night a lot of times, Tony would tend bar because raising a family was pretty expensive. And he wouldn’t let me work. “You stay home and take care of the kids.”

RM:     What bars did he work at?

MP:      The Tonopah Club.

RM:     He always worked there?

MP:      Yes. They said he was the best bartender. He kept everything sparkling.

RM:     Who owned the Tonopah Club then?

MP:      Slim Russell.

RM:     What do you remember about him?

MP:      They were nice people. They’d come down every Sunday to eat dinner at the Tonopah Club and they’d go in to Tony and he’d make them a real fancy drink every time. They thought the world of Tony.

RM:     So he was tending bar and roofing; was he mining, too?

MP:      No, he gave up the mining. We’d go prospecting a lot. That’s when you had that black light and under the light the mineral would show green. He picked up one rock and when he got it in his hand, it wiggled; it was a scorpion. We’d go out at about 10:00 at night in the dark and prospect. He always had hopes . . . we spent half our time prospecting these mountains.

RM:     Did you ever find anything?

MP:      No, not really.

RM:     But he had been able to make a living leasing at the Belmont and the Mizpah?

MP:      Yes, but not real good. In fact, you’d lease and you wouldn’t get paid for a few months so we charged our groceries. Tony loved movies and Mr. Robb was a good friend of ours and he’d let us charge our show tickets. When we got paid we’d be so proud we’d take the money down. I remember paying Mr. Robb $75 for two or three months.

RM:     At the Miner’s Theater, down there?

MP:      It was called the Butler Theater. Marshall Robb owned it. Later, Buddy (our second son) married their daughter.

RM:     Was the theater an important thing in your lives here?

MP:      Oh, yes. We went all the time. Afterwards we’d go to Polins and have a little milkshake or whatever we wanted. Tony loved the movies. My little daughter, Rita, would go down there and clean the next day and made a few dollars.

RM:     Was the theater usually filled up?

MP:      I think there were quite a few who went. I don’t remember the price now, but I know it was cheap, I think 35 cents or something like that.

RM:     Was the theater always there, as long as you can remember?

MP:      It was always there. Buddy’s the one that tore it down. That was sad. When they gave it up, everybody was getting TVs.

RM:     Did you get any seats out of it or anything like that?

MP:      No. We should have.

RM:     It would be fun to have a seat out of it, wouldn’t it?

MP:      I know. We never thought about it

RM:     By the time your husband was leasing, mining was kind of coming to an end here, wasn’t it? Were there still a lot of people mining when he was leasing in the late ’30s?

MP:      People were going other places and doing other things. The Belmont Mine had burned by then and the Mizpah finally closed, as I remember, so everybody went looking for work other places. Both my brothers had worked there at one time or other—Marco and Bozo.

RM:     Did Marco and Bozo get any silica dust?

MP:      No, they didn’t work there that long. They would help out. They were two strong guys so they helped people shift those heavy ore cars; they didn’t actually mine.

RM:     Did your husband get dust?

MP:      Yes, that’s what he died from.

RM:     He died of silicosis? How old was he?

MP:      Sixty-three. He died in 1973. But he had a stroke when he was 54. Poor guy, he never talked again. All he could say was “shit.” It was funny, but that was the only word he ever spoke. The whole right side was paralyzed so all he could use was this hand. I taught him to walk. We got a cane to fit here and I taught him to walk so I was able to take him for rides. He lived that way for eight years. It was very, very hard, taking care of him because he’d get so despondent. He would hit the table, like “Why?” We had hopes that he was going to get better. But actually, he died from the silicosis. His chest got. . . . It was a bad time.

CHAPTER THREE

RM:     So mining was petering out and along came World War II. Talk about that era.

MP:      The mines closed down then and as I say, Tony started roofing and he tended bar at the Mizpah and sometimes he’d deal poker. That was his life from then on. He liked roofing.

RM:     And he could make a living roofing?

MP:      Yes. And sometimes at night he’d go down and deal poker and make a few dollars that way. I used to help roof. I got on one of the highest roofs, where Carolina Loncar lives now. Titlow owned it first. You had to tab each [shingle]—put a little piece of tar under each one. The boys were kind of small so I wouldn’t let them get up there. Tony took them on another job and I tabbed that whole roof, and it was steep! I don’t know where I got the nerve to do that.

RM:     You weren’t afraid of falling off?

MP:      No. I didn’t want my boys up there so I thought, “I’ll do it.” When I look up at that house now, I think, “Where did I get the nerve?” But I helped him roof when the boys were in school.

RM:     Talk about the era of the airbase. What was its impact on Tonopah?

MP:      Tony went to work hauling oil—he’d take fuel oil out there and he enjoyed that. A lot of my friends went to work out there. My mother, next door, rented out two of her rooms. One night a couple came and they couldn’t find a place to stay and the husband was going to leave in about ten days so she gave them her bed and she fixed a couch in the kitchen.

And she didn’t have a bathroom. They had to use the outhouse and take a bath in the wash tub. They said, “Well, where do you take a bath?”

She said, “I show you.” That was a different life for them, I’ll tell you! But they loved my mother. She’d cook for them and would be nice to them because their husbands were going to leave. A lot of the town used to rent rooms out to the women when they’d come to see their husband or boyfriend or whatever.

RM:     There must have been a lot of airmen in town. What was that like?

MP:      We had the USO and they had dances for them down there. I never did go to any of the dances and I didn’t mix around with them, except the ones that stayed at my mother’s or that rented little houses around here. It was a busy town.

RM:     There were a lot of people stationed out there, weren’t there? Were people pretty happy with the airmen in town?

MP:      Oh yes, they were good to them.

RM:     Did many of the airmen marry local girls?

MP:      A few of them. My girlfriend, Hope, married Andy Kovich. They lived in one of my mother’s rooms down there. They had a big fight one night and she took off her diamond rings and threw them in the fire. My mother had a little wood stove, that’s how she heated the house. Later they got a divorce.

RM:     Did it ruin the diamond, just out of curiosity?

MP:      I don’t remember that part. I think she lost them both.

RM:     The airbase had a positive economic impact on the town, didn’t it? There were jobs and people spending money, but after the war, they closed the air base down.

MP:      Yes, and everything got pretty quiet around here then. It seemed like from then on things kind of got a little slower every year. I remember when my three brothers were in the war. Bozo and George were over in Germany and they met with Charlie Cavanaugh. What a thrill!

The day the war was over . . . I never drank in my life and I had two drinks that night. I got drunk on two drinks. I didn’t care. I was so happy to think my brothers were going to come home. This town celebrated because there were a lot of Tonopah men over there. My brother Bozo was a mechanic, and when a truck would break down he’d be underneath it with all this bombing all around. He said, “Minnie, it wasn’t fun.”

I said, “I don’t suppose.”

RM:     Do you remember when Bozo married Marguerite Clifford?

MP:      Well, I got married in ’37, Marco got married in about ’30- . . . so Bozo got married in about 1938; they were married when he left for the war. Of course, Marguerite came from the Cliffords’ ranch.

RM:     Oh, yes, I knew the Cliffords pretty well in those days.

MP:      The pilots would fly over their house and when they’d land they’d all come out there to eat—Marguerite and Beanie and all of them would cook for them. They loved that! Who was the pilot that was so popular at that time? He drove those fast. . . . He took the top off their trees; he went that low. He was a wonderful friend of theirs.

RM:     How well did you know Beanie?

MP:      Real well. The three Antoniazzi girls lived at Salisbury Wash at a little ranch. They went up to Tybo to work, to be waitresses and to clean, and they met the three Clifford boys up there. So the three Antoniazzis married the three Clifford boys.

RM:     That’s a great story. Was their ranch near the present-day highway? I only knew one of the Clifford boys; that was Joe. He and I were pretty good friends back in the ’50s.

MP:      O. Joe?

RM:     Yes, O. Joe. We used to fool around and we’d go places together.

MP:      He was something. Always complaining, was my memory. Always complaining about something. [Laughs]

RM:     Who were the other brothers?

MP:      Tom and Jim.

RM:     What were the girls’ names that they married?

MP:      One was Nevada; they’re the ones that moved to California. And then Christina.

RM:     And Joe was the only one that stayed on the ranch? And then he and Beanie had three children—Joe, Roy, and Marguerite.

MP:      And they had one that died when it was young; that was sad. I used to love to hear Marguerite play that old-time piano. It was like in the movies, you know, clink, clink, clink.

RM:     Yes, honky tonk.

MP:      She could play well. She played by ear. If you knew them you must have eaten some of their cooking; they knew how to cook.

RM:     Oh, yes. I used to eat at their house. Salisbury Wash is not the same as Five-Mile, is it? There’s a ranch house right beside the highway at Five Mile.

MP:      No, this is before you get there. There’s one fellow who still lives up there and I can’t remember his name right now. Maybe it’s where the rest stop is, but it’s in the hills up there.

RM:     There used to be a tank on the south side of the road at Salisbury Wash, right? But the ranch was the other side of the road? About how far up there?

MP:      Not too far.

RM:     You couldn’t see it from the road?

MP:      No.

RM:     And those girls grew up there?

MP:      They had one brother, Tony Antoniazzi. He worked in town for the highway department.

RM:     Here’s a question I’m dying to ask you. We’re writing a book on the United Cattle and Packing Company and O. K. Reed. What can you tell me about O. K. Reed and his wife Maude and his daughter Florence and the rest of them?

MP:      I didn’t know too much about Florence. She married Jim Butler, right?

RM:     Now that’s not “the” Jim Butler, is it?

MP:      Yes, not the old Jim Butler—I heard bad stories about him [laughs] through Alice Lorigan.  You must have known Alice Lorigan. She was born at Belmont and she used to tell the neatest stories. She hated the old Jim Butler. She said he just was not nice. She lived across the street and the house was a little high and there was a porch—she said he’d come out there and pee; he didn’t care who was watching.

RM:     Is that right? Was he still married to Belle then? Was that before he discovered Tonopah?

MP:      Yes, because Alice lived until she was 90-something and that was quite a few years back.

RM:     What else have you heard about him? He had an Indian wife, didn’t he? What do you know about that story?

MP:      Yes, he had an Indian wife and he wasn’t nice to her. That’s what Alice Lorigan told me.

RM:     What Indian group did she come from?

MP:      I never thought to pay attention. All I knew, she was an Indian lady.

RM:     Tell me more about Alice.

MP:      Alice practically owned Belmont. She was born there and her little house is still there, sitting in the trees.

RM:     I heard that Jim Butler’s wife was from the Kawich Range area.

MP:      Yes, she was from one of the tribes up there.

RM:     Somebody else told me that she was from up north, more toward Belmont, but I’d heard she was related to the Kawich Shoshones.

MP:      Somewhere in my mind that rings a bell.

RM:     But you’re talking about another Jim Butler. When did he come in here, do you know?

MP:      In the ’30s.

RM:     So he was a younger man?

MP:      Yes, and married to Florence Reed and her sister Helen was married to Ed Slavin. Her husband, Jim Butler, made a lot of money at one of the mines here. Florence was nice. They used to come up to my mother’s and drink a little wine with her. I don’t know how they got to be friends with my mother. Ed Slavin was a good friend. He worked with one of the boys at the Mizpah Mine and he and Helen would come up to visit Baba. Everybody called my mother “Baba.”

RM:     How did she get that name?

MP:      Most of the Serbian grandmas were called Baba. So it was Baba Beko—they all went by the name of Baba.

RM:     How far back did you know Helen and Florence Reed?

MP:      I would say the ’40s.

RM:     They were older than you, weren’t they?

MP:      Oh, yes. Like I said, they used to come and visit my mother. Everybody liked my mother. She was the friendliest person, jolly and. . . .

RM:     Which one did you know better, Helen or Florence?

MP:      Oh, Helen. I’d go up and visit there once in a while.

RM:     Did they live in the same house that Ed lived in when he was alone (after she died)?

MP:      Yes, for years. And Jim Butler and Florence lived in that house that Belle Lee lived in. It’s up there right by Carolina Loncar. It’s kind of a stone or brick house but I don’t know what street it’s on. Alice Lorigan lived next to Ed Slavin.

RM:     Yes, I remember that. Who was the oldest, Helen or Florence?

MP:      I would say probably Florence was.

RM:     Who got married first?

MP:      I don’t remember that; I just didn’t pay that much attention. I know they always brought my mother a Christmas present. I’ve got a couple of the pins they bought her—beautiful pins. I think they used to like to get stories out of her, too. She’d tell stories about the old country and about when she first came here. They used to enjoy listening to her.

RM:     I heard that one of the sisters committed suicide; was it Florence?

MP:      No, it was the other sister, Lucille. She lived over here on Florence Avenue. I thought I’d forgotten all these names.

RM:     You know names better than anybody I’ve interviewed, and I’ve interviewed a lot of people.

MP:      I remember that guy she was married to, but I guess I was not too interested. I can’t remember his name.

RM:     But it was a bad relationship and that was the reason?

MP:      Yes, drinking. She’s the only one; the other two didn’t drink, not really.

RM:     Was Lucille the youngest sister?

MP:      I think so, as much as I remember. I think it was sort of that they got to drinking and fighting. They lived on Florence Avenue. He was a nice-looking guy, the guy she was married to.

RM:     Did you know their father, O. K. Reed, at all?

MP:      I knew he was Helen’s dad and he was a real rancher. I remember seeing him with a cowboy hat and all that. But as far as really knowing him, I didn’t.

RM:     What did he look like? Was he a big guy?

MP:      No, he wasn’t really big. Not as big as you, I don’t think. He was a nice-looking man. I think he and his wife drank a lot, as I remember.

RM:     His wife ran off with a cowboy, didn’t she? What do you know about that story?

MP:      I don’t remember that. I know that she died of cancer. I remember being at the hospital and seeing her there. But I never did really know them. It was just Helen that I really knew, Helen and Ed.

RM:     Tell me more about Ed Slavin.

MP:      He was a neat guy. A few years back I had my knee replaced and I was in the hospital in Reno and I was there extra days because clots moved in. He was in the hospital at the same time so twice a day he’d come down the hall in his wheelchair and we’d talk about old times. He’d say, “Do you remember this?” and “Do you remember that?” [Laughs] We had the best time remembering things. It was so neat.

RM:     I wish I’d had a tape recorder going then.

MP:      I wish you had. We really went through the whole town.

RM:     And you and Ed both grew up here?

MP:      Yes, as far as I know. He used to play basketball.

RM:     He was on a championship team. They sent them back to Chicago.

MP:      I don’t know if I have the picture but I remember him being on that basketball team. Dula Garilovich, Ray Wolfe, and all that bunch were on that basketball team.

RM:     You didn’t know the Humphreys who had the packinghouse in Goldfield, did you?

MP:      I’m getting them confused. We had Humphreys in Tonopah, but that wasn’t the same Humphreys.

RM:     I don’t think so. And there were also Humphreys in Manhattan.

MP:      Oh yes; I knew them.

RM:     What do you remember about them?

MP:      I just knew them, I think. Carroll Humphrey and Elsie—they were neat people. Very different. Every time we’d go to Bishop we’d eat at that little restaurant, the Waffle Shop. We’d always see Carroll there and he’d say, “I come here just to see the Tonopah people when they come,” so we made sure we ate there. They were a good couple. They never had kids.

RM:     Is that right? Do you know anything else about the big ranch that the Reeds had? It covered a lot of territory.

MP:      I know it did, and I never did go there. But I know Helen was a real cowgirl. She could ride horses and rope and the whole shebang.

RM:     What was your first trip out of Tonopah?

MP:      You’re going to laugh at this. I never left Tonopah until I was 14 years old and we were going up to a church camp at Lake Tahoe for two or three weeks. Betty took Della and me. When I was going around Walker Lake I thought, “Oh, my God! Oh, that’s beautiful.” It was just Walker Lake, but it was the first time I’d been out of town. Well, nobody took me; nobody had cars.

I still never go anywhere; I haven’t been to a lot of places. But I did get to Hawaii. I went there for a week with a two of my best friends. We had a ball.

RM:     Who are they?

MP:      Grace Wilson and Connie Zulk. They let me sit by the window so I could watch. Of course, all I saw was clouds, but I don’t care. I just loved every minute of it.

RM:     Was that the first time you flew?

MP:      Yes. I flew twice in my life. The next time I went to Missouri. My friend was sick and her daughter said, “Minnie, would you fly out here and ride home with Mom? I’m afraid she might get too sick.” Then they took me up to Branson. Oh, my God. It was wonderful. I wish I could remember everybody I’d seen; the shows that we saw. They were great. What was the guy who stuttered?

RM:     Mel Tillis. He’s good.

MP:      I love him. I should have written it all down.

RM:     Do you get to Reno much as a young woman?

MP:      Yes. When I was about 14 I had some cousins that lived there and I came home on the T&G Railroad. I wanted to get home in time to go to school and we traveled all night. Well, when I got home my face was black from that wood stove. That’s what they heated it with—a wood stove. So I didn’t go to school that day [laughs] because I was a mess.

The other trip I made, I went with my niece, Gayle Kretchmer, and Bill. We went up to Yellowstone and it was beautiful. We stopped at Wyoming and visited a friend there, so it was a nice trip. So I did get a few trips in my lifetime. But I never have been back East. The one trip that I did want to take was I would have liked to have seen Alaska. But the boys have all been up there and they’ve told me all about their trip and showed me pictures.

RM:     What was your first trip to Vegas?

MP:      Oh, gosh. Do you know Bob Revert?

RM:     Yes, sure. I interviewed him years ago.

MP:      He would call me every week and we would reminisce. And the minute we’d get on the phone—I wish I had a tape for those—he’d say, “Do you remember the store in so-and-so?  Do you remember . . ?” He would remember everything in Tonopah and every time he called, he would talk about some different family or something different. He was a neat guy. He was married to my sister-in-law, Florence, Tony’s sister. I’d go to visit them once in a while.

RM:     Was that in Beatty?

MP:      Beatty first but then Vegas. After they lost that little boy, they moved to Vegas. It was sad; they never did get along too well after the little boy died.

RM:     That was a real tragedy.

MP:      Yes, and it just sort of spoiled their marriage.

RM:     When was your first trip to Vegas, do you remember? I just wonder what you thought, going from Tonopah to Vegas.

MP:      When I was in the eighth grade, my eighth-grade teacher, Miss Bradley, took us all on a trip to Boulder Dam; they were building it. We went through Vegas and it was dirt roads. That was 1935. I remember Vegas when it was just nothing.

RM:     What did you think of Boulder Dam?

MP:      Oh, we were thrilled. They weren’t through building it, but she wanted us to see what they were doing. It was neat.

RM:     Did you ride the train down?

MP:      No, I don’t know if we went in a bus or car. I think somehow or other, they got a bus. The whole class went, the eighth grade class—Marshall Robb and all of those. . . .

CHAPTER FOUR

RM:     What do you think when you see Vegas now?

MP:      I hate it. I hate the traffic. I was there with my granddaughter and she was going so fast it scared me to death. I said, “Robin! You’re going too fast.”

She said, “Grandma, if I don’t they’ll run over me.” We were on the freeway. You have to go 70 miles an hour, at least.

I said, “My, God, you’re scaring me to death!”

“Grandma, I know what I’m doing.”

I don’t like anything about Vegas and now I listen to the news and every night there’s something. It’s horrible. I don’t want any part of Vegas, although I have to go down and get a cataract removed. But I’m putting it off.

RM:     How do you feel about Reno?

MP:      I like Reno. My brother’s family all live there, the Boscoviches. Do you know DanRa ? Her son Brock Boscovich is a doctor. In fact, when Bob was in the hospital in Carson City, he came down to see Bob because that’s where he had worked, in that Carson Tahoe Hospital.

RM:     So Bob was in the hospital up there?

MP:      Yes, they flew him out of here. It scared me to death. He needed a pacemaker but he ended up getting pneumonia real bad and then his diabetes got real bad because of all the medication he was taking. They straightened all that out, got the pneumonia straightened out, and then they put the pacemaker in.

RM:     So he’s doing fine.

MP:      Yes. He seems to be doing as much [as before]. He’s not supposed to lift anything heavy, but he’s driving and they thought he’d at least wait a couple of weeks to start driving.

RM:     You can’t keep him down. Do you think it’d be all right if I went ahead and interviewed him?

MP:      He’s okay now. He is full of stories.

RM:     He’s probably the No. 1 storyteller in Nye County.

MP:      He really is. He’s so friendly and he knows everything. He knows more than I do about the people I know.

RM:     I’m counting on him for stories.

MP:      Oh yes, you’d better. You’ll have to go down there to the Clown; he works from 12:00 to 5:00 in the summer. One day when I went down to see him I became a celebrity. Did you ever hear about that?

RM:     No.

MP:      I went down to the Clown to visit Bob and here comes these photographers. I was sitting on the couch and they said, “Would you mind if we took your picture?”

I said, “Well, yes, if you want.” They were real photographers, they had the big cameras.

They said, “Turn your head this way, hold it up, this way, that way.” So they got the right picture. They said, “Would you mind if we ever used your picture?”

I said, “I don’t care if you think you want it.” Well, do you remember when they were having the election and McCain would go out and give his little speech for about two minutes? They had my picture above him.

It was like that for two months. I had people call from Florida. They said, “Minnie, I’m sure I just saw your picture on TV.”

I said, “Yes, I was there.”

I got a call from Texas, and all my relatives from Reno and Vegas called, “Minnie, we saw you on TV.”

I said, “That was me.” It was a real nice picture. They sure knew what they were doing—I looked a lot better than I do. For about two months as McCain sat there doing his little speech, they’d show a picture of me.

RM:     They didn’t give you a copy, did they?

MP:      I don’t know if they did or not. But Bob wrote to them. He said, “Now that you’re making so much money, you ought to give my mom a little bit.” They sent me $250. I thought that was really nice of them. But they made me look real good. So I was a celebrity for a while. That was quite a thing in my life.

RM:     That’s quite something. Okay, let’s talk about some of the other people from the early days. Do you remember when Little O. K., O. K. Reed’s boy, died?

MP:      He was such a neat boy. It just broke their hearts.

RM:     You knew the boy?

MP:      Not real well, but enough—like, going to school and all that, I knew him.

RM:     He went to school here in Tonopah?

MP:      That must have been where I met him; I don’t know where else it would be. I remember him real well—a nice-looking boy.

RM:     His death just broke O. K.’s heart, didn’t it?

MP:      Oh, yes, it did. It bothered the whole town of Tonopah when he died.

RM:     Did Maude leave him after that?

MP:      It could have been.

RM:     Ed Slavin told me about the Reeds’ daughters going to high school and living in the Goldfield Hotel in Goldfield. Ed was courting Helen at that time. He said those old miners at the hotel looked after those girls like old mother hens. Ed would go in there for a date and he said he really got the scrutiny from those old miners.

MP:      I remember going over to that Goldfield Hotel. I was probably in eighth grade and a bunch of us decided to go over to a dance they were having there. I told my mother I was going to sleep with my girlfriend because she would never have let me go to a dance out of town like that. I was so bashful that I kind of sat back, but it was fun. That hotel was beautiful, all those leather chairs all sitting around. It was popular.

RM:     Did you stay there all night?

MP:      No, we came back. I think Della was driving and gave us a ride home. You don’t remember P. J. McHugh?

RM:     I don’t think so.

MP:      He was a character.

RM:     What do you recall about Bill Beko? You must have known him pretty well.

MP:      He was my son Bob’s best friend. Bob felt horrible when Bill died; he just couldn’t believe it. We all grew up together.

RM:     Was Bill Beko your generation or Bob’s generation?

MP:      My generation. He was younger than me, but he was a nice guy; I liked Bill very much.

RM:     He was a power in Nye County, wasn’t he?

MP:      Oh, yes. Well, naming that courthouse after him. He was a smart man.

RM:     He was raised here, wasn’t he?

MP:      Oh, yes. The house where they have that hair cutting and all that on Main Street, that’s where their home was. Mrs. Beko had two boys and three girls. They had goats in the back and chickens. She had a little smokehouse back there.

RM:     What did the dad do? Was he a miner?

MP:      He was a senator once, or something; maybe a commissioner. He used to write all my mother’s letters to the old country. She couldn’t write so she’d go down there once a month and he’d write the letters. That was awful nice of Mr. Beko. They were a nice family, very nice. Milka Beko was a wonderful person; she married Jacobson. The Bekos don’t have the “vich” on their name so you get fooled. The rest of the Serbians all had the “vich” on their names and you could tell they were Serbian.

RM:     Right. As long as we’re talking about Serbians, what do you recall about Serbian Christmas?

MP:      Oh, my gosh. My mother would cook a big meal for a certain group that worked at the mine. Ed Slavin and all that bunch would come and she would cook this pig with the head on and put the apple in its mouth. She cooked everything—her macaroni and chicken was out of this world. And you never tasted such good potato salad. She was a good cook. And then the wine—I remember the boys going up and down the cellar getting the wine to give the guests. She worked hard. Everybody loved it when she did those meals.

It kind of got spoiled towards the end. You’d get some people—freeloaders—that would come up and didn’t really know her and she didn’t know them, but they’d sit and eat and drink. She said, “You know, I don’t like that. I don’t know those people” so she finally quit having it.

RM:     So on Serbian Christmas you kind of had to know people to go from one house to another. It wasn’t for just anybody.

MP:      No, you had to know them.

RM:     How many people would come up, would you say?

MP:      I’d say 50 all together—the people we met at the mine, a lot of the old bachelors around that didn’t have anybody. She used to love to cook for them.

RM:     What day is Serbian Christmas?

MP:      January 7. They believe that was the real Christmas.

RM:     Did the Serbian community in Tonopah celebrate the regular Christmas?

MP:      Yes, we did. She figured it was only fair for the kids; we were living in America. She’d put up the tree with the ornaments for the first Christmas and she’d cook a turkey but the meal was not as elaborate as the Serbian Christmas; she wouldn’t cook a pig and all that. And then Easter—I think the Serbian Easter is the week after the Western Easter. She’d always have lamb. That was a tradition.

RM:     What were the other holidays that you celebrated?

MP:      I remember New Year’s Eve. My dad would take the gun and shoot it straight up in the air and all the Serbians would do the same thing. You’d hear bang, bang, bang. They were so thrilled to be citizens of the United States. They worked hard to get there. They studied the Constitution and they knew it word for word, the whole thing. My brother Marco taught my dad the Constitution and I taught my mother. When they got there they only asked them a few questions. I thought, “My God, I taught her all that and they only asked her a little bit.”

RM:     But they were really proud to become citizens.

MP:      My dad and mother were so proud. They loved the United States, they loved everything about it. My mother cried buckets of tears when Roosevelt died. She thought he was the most wonderful man; she believed in everything he said.

RM:     Were the Serbians here Democrats or Republicans? It sounds like they may have been Democrats, if she cried when Roosevelt died.

MP:      I’m sure they were, then. It seems to me somewhere that I heard that they were Democrats. (Mishka is my little Serbian cat. The older cats were called Machka and that’s Mishka. I talk to her all day. She’s my company.)

RM:     It’s a beautiful cat. What do you recall about Jack Longstreet?

MP:      I remember seeing him. Where my daughter lives on the next street up there, this lady that was his girlfriend had a home and he’d come to town to see her. We’d heard about him losing his ears, and his hair was cut straight across like that.

RM:     From his jaw line

MP:      We’d sneak up on the hill to see if we could see him with his ears gone. He’d bring the horses and be in the races on the 4th of July.

RM:     What was his girlfriend’s name?

MP:      I have no idea now. It seems like it was Maude, but I can’t be sure. But Marguerite Clifford said he was a real nice man—he lived by the Clifford Ranch at Stone Cabin. She said when he’d come to town he’d bring candy and give to all the Clifford kids.

RM:     He did have a bad reputation, didn’t he?

MP:      He stole the horses and they chopped his ears off, wasn’t that it?

RM:     Yes, something like that. Do you recall anything else about him?

MP:      Just that. We’d see him over at her house and the horse would be tied there. I remember when they used to have the horses races in Tonopah. Mosel would come from Goldfield with his horses and Jack Longstreet would come with his and I don’t remember who else and everybody would go downtown and watch the horse races. The oldest Banovich boy would race his horses. It was fun.

RM:     Do you recall anything else about Jack Longstreet?

MP:      That’s about all. Marguerite, like I say, said he was a nice man, really. Of course, he did a lot of bootlegging up there.

RM:     One person in Nye County history I’m really interested is Bill Thomas.

MP:      He was a nice guy, he really was. I remember when old Bob Revert came up to go the funeral—he was so disappointed because Tonopah didn’t go to his funeral.

RM:     They didn’t?

MP:      There weren’t very many people. Bob Revert almost cried over it. Because he was a good guy. I remember he moved over here. He married Tillie, I think was her name. They had a few cows and she decided she wanted to sell milk.

RM:     A few cows in the town?

MP:      Yes. They lived in the house where Ray Jensen lives. His first wife died and they lived up there on the hill and then he married this gal.

RM:     You mean right across the street here?

MP:      Where Ray Jensen lives, yes. There’s a big house up there. Right behind the highway garage, up that road, that big house that they’re building there. He was a nice guy. My mother just thought the world of Bill Thomas. He did a lot of helping out.

RM:     He was sheriff here for a big part of your life, wasn’t he? He was elected about the time you were born and he was still sheriff in the ‘50s.

MP:      All those years, yes. We all thought a lot of Bill Thomas.

RM:     He was the sheriff all those years and never carried a gun.

MP:      I know; times have changed.

RM:     Just a little bit, haven’t they? Who are some other people in town who stand out in your mind that you would like to talk about? The Reischke sisters—talk about them.

MP:      Mrs. Reischke, and that was her daughter that lived there, mother and daughter. Her daughter, of course, was a photographer. In fact, I’ve got a lot of pictures. One day I went out to the dumpster to dump my stuff and here’s these pictures somebody had thrown away so I have quite a few of those there.

RM:     Oh, my gosh. Would you let me look at them sometime?

MP:      Yes, sure.

RM:     They used to live out at Reveille, didn’t they, a long time ago?

MP:      That part I don’t remember. The old man used to mine out there because he’d come into town. She had that little store with all this penny candy. I was a kid then, and she had patience. Maybe we’d only have two cents to spend. We’d pick up this one and that one and everyone did the same thing. We stopped there every day to get something with our penny or two. She was a neat lady—a funny little lady. She served ice cream and sodas and that.

RM:     In that little store that was there in the ’50s?

MP:      Yes, with the little metal table and those ice cream chairs. Oh, how I remember her, her curly hair. Her daughter wasn’t very pretty but she was nice.

RM:     Whatever happened to the old lady?

MP:      I don’t remember when she died. The daughter took off and went to Vegas and somebody said she was a bag lady down there. I know she had money, but they said she was a bag lady. I always felt kind of bad about that. I thought, “My gosh, what happened to her?” She was not a pretty person at all, no boy ever looked at her twice, but she was nice.

RM:     Whatever happened to Mrs. Reischke’s husband?

MP:      I don’t know. I’d see him when he came to town. The big house they lived in is gone; it was where the Silver Queen Motel is. It sat right at the end of the dump. It was a big brown, two-story house and they just walked down the hill to the store. He was a miner, I think, I know that he worked but I don’t remember much about him.

RM:     Did you know the Fallinis at all?

MP:      Neat people. Of course, I know young Joe and his wife well but I remember his dad and his mother. They were nice people.

RM:     Did you know the grandfather?

MP:      Yes, Giovanni. They named the little baby that, but now they’ve decided to shorten his name so they call him Gigi. I liked the Fallinis very well. I’ve gone out to the weddings when the daughters got married. I’ve gone to doings out there, dinners and that.

RM:     While the tape was off just now, you had a phone call from Bob Revert’s daughter.

MP:      His daughter Elaine Richardson; she’s married to a lawyer in Vegas. When Bob died he said, “Lainey, I would like you to take the folks’ home and make it into a kind of museum. I don’t want that house ever to be forgotten. I want that to be known as Revert.” So she has been collecting antiques and she has fixed that house beautifully. She said if you ever go to Beatty to ask about it. It’s the old Revert home. They’re going to be there Sunday, she thinks, and they’ll be there probably every weekend from now on through the summer.

RM:     I’ll do that. Where is the house?

MP:      It sits right off the main street. It’s kind of hard to explain, but anybody would point it out to you. She even put a clothesline in the back like they used to have. Bob said, “Use some of the money I’m leaving you to refurbish.” She has bought wonderful antiques to put in there.

RM:     And they have a lovely little museum in Beatty; now they’ll have that house, too. I was going to ask you about the Sharps—Lena Sharp.

MP:      You’re good friends of theirs, aren’t you?

RM:     Yes. But what do you recall about their ranch?

MP:      I know Lena because she stays here when she comes to town—that’s her bedroom in there, I tell her. [Chuckles] I’ve know her for years. I knew her mother and dad real well when they’d come up from Las Vegas.

RM:     They’re Serbian, too, aren’t they?

MP:      Oh, yes. They lived there when the roads were dirt roads. I met Lena because my mother was good friends with her mother and dad. I sort of lost contact with her when she went to the ranch and I didn’t know her again until she moved to Tonopah when she taught school here and then we got to be friends. Now we talk to each other on the phone a lot. They’re good people. Her daughters are great. She raised those girls, put them all through school. She did a wonderful job.

RM:     Yes. In fact, her daughter Jeanne [Sharp Howerton] is helping with the book we’re going to do on the cattle ranch. She’s going to do some of the photography for it.

MP:      Oh, good. She’s a nice girl, really nice.

RM:     Yes, she is. What are some other people? Red Douglass.

MP:      Oh, everybody liked Red Douglass. He was the nicest person. He lived on the next street. The house is still there; Carol lives there. Red Douglass was an awful good friend of mine and of my brothers; he went to school with them. He smoked when he was a young boy but he’d hide his cigarettes above my mother’s door there; he wouldn’t take it to school and he wouldn’t take it home. [Laughter] Red was a very nice person. He’d help anybody.

RM:     He had the garage down here for a long time. Do you know when he started it?

MP:      I don’t know, but my brother Bozo worked there for years. He and Alan Douglass were pals and they’d fill up a little old car with groceries and stuff and go fishing. Yes, Red Douglass was nice people. His son, Tommy, comes to the Tonopah picnic sometimes. He’s a nice boy. I’d say Red Douglass was one of my good, good friends. I just thought the world of Red.

RM:     How well did you know the Terrells?

MP:      Oh, a long time, forever. They lived in the house next to Alan Douglass up there. I remember the dad had the newspaper and then Solan took it over. Solan was good people. He could be very cranky sometimes to people. He’d just as soon call them an SOB as. . . . But he was good people. They were all the people we grew up with.

RM:     So you grew up with the Terrells? There was Bud, and what was the other one’s name?

MP:      Starle. And Solan.

RM:     Talk about some of the doctors in town. Doc Joy I remember.

MP:      He was neat people. He gambled a lot and people held that against him, but so what? I remember when I was ready to have Nick—Tony went down to the Mizpah and he was in there playing; he loved to play those machines. He said, “Doc, you get up there now! She’s gonna have that baby!” He was very nice. He would make house calls. He delivered two of my kids, Nick and Rita. I really, really liked Doc Joy. He helped a lot of people.

RM:     Were there any other doctors in town that you recall?

MP:      When I was growing up, Dr. Cowden. He was a neat old doctor. He drank a lot, though, so they had to make sure he was sober. [Laughter] He was the first doctor that I remember. He had a little office downtown and was good when he wasn’t drinking.

Of course, Dr. Craig—he delivered my son Bud. He was a good doctor but he was mean and abrupt. If you had stitches to take out he’d just yank them out.

RM:     When you were a kid growing up in the ’20s and into the ’30s, what was the healthcare picture in Tonopah then? Was there a hospital? Was it where it is now?

MP:      No, it was across the street over there. There was a lot of TB. They had a little place in the back and if people had tuberculosis they had them back there.

RM:     But there was a hospital for people to go to?

MP:      Oh, yes. We had the Miner’s Hospital up there and then we had the county hospital.

RM:     Where was the Miner’s Hospital?

MP:      Behind the Catholic church. There’s part of it there yet. Where Linda Fitch lives is part of the hospital.

RM:     Norman Coombs told me there were a couple of places here where the old Cornish miners, and maybe the Serbians, too, would go to die when they had silicosis.

MP:      Probably up behind the Nye County Hospital. They had some rooms back there and I think that is what happened to them.

RM:     Did you know Norman very well?

MP:      Oh, yes. Norman was neat people. Any time I met him at the store, what would he buy? He was always saying he was broke, you know. “I can’t afford to feed me, but I’m buying this loaf of bread for my chickens, or my dog,” or something. He was always joking. He was a good guy.

RM:     He knew how to find gold.

MP:      Oh man, yes. He was a miner. He could get out there and prospect and he would pick up a piece of gold. He was a good friend of Bob Bottom’s. My brother George Boscovich was Bob Bottom’s stepdad.

RM:     I’ve interviewed Bob; I really like him.

MP:      He’s a miner, let me tell you. He learned how from Coombs, I bet.

RM:     He did; he’ll tell you that. The other guy who could really find gold was Bobby Revert.

MP:      Young Bobby? Yes. He and my son Buddy are good friends. He’s good people. He smokes too much and drinks too much, but he’s good people. That doesn’t matter.

RM:     That’s right. Well Minnie, it’s been wonderful talking to you. Thanks so much.

INDEX

A

Antoniazzi, Beanie,

Antoniazzi, Christina

Antoniazzi, Nevada,

Antoniazzi, Tony

Antoniazzi sisters,

B

Banovich, Miruna

Barney (Taxine’s husband

Barsanti Park School,

basketball championship team

bathing in washtub

Beatty, Nevada,

Beko, “Baba,”

Beko, Bill

Beko, Milka,

Beko family

Belmont, Nevada,

Belmont Mine

Belvada Apartments,

Bernice (friend

Bird, Betty

Bird, Wally

Blair, Nevada,

Bogdon family,

Boscovich, Brock

Boscovich, George (Minnie Perchetti’s brother

Boscovich, Marco (Minnie Perchetti’s brother)

as eldest brother, 4

father’s citizenship preparation

marriage,

as miner,

Boscovich, Marguerite (Clifford),

Boscovich, Nikola “Nick” (Minnie Perchetti’s father

Boscovich, Robert “Bozo” (Minnie Perchetti’s brother) at Elks Hall,

marriage to Marguerite Clifford,

as mechanic

as miner,

Boscovich brothers support of family after father’s death,

Bottom, Bob,

Boulder Dam,

Bradley, Miss (teacher),

Buffum, Toni,

burros,

Butler, Belle,

Butler, Florence (Reed),

Butler, Jim,

Butler Theater,

C

Cavanaugh, Charlie

charity ball at Elks Hall,

childhood clothing / shoes,

childhood games,

Chinese laundry,

Clifford, Beanie (Antoniazzi),

Clifford, Jim,

Clifford, Joe (son of Joe and Beanie),

Clifford, Marguerite (daughter of Joe and Beanie

Clifford, Marguerite (wife of Bozo),

Clifford, O. Joe

Clifford, Roy,

Clifford, Tom,

Clifford Ranch,

Clown Motel,

Coleman’s grocery store

Coombs, Norman,

Cowden, Dr.,

Cox’s hardware store,

Craig, Dr

Curieux, Miss (teacher),

D

Dahlstrom, Mrs.,

dairies in Tonopah,

dances,

Della (friend),

Doc Joy,

Douglass, Alan (Red’s son),

Douglass, Red (Alan),

Douglass, Tommy

Duncan, Bobbie,

DuPratt dairy,

E

Elks Hall

F

Fallini, Giovanni,

Fallini, Joe,

Fitch, Linda,

five-and-dime store,

Florence Avenue businesses,

food / food preparation

Cliffords’ cooking,

gardening / meat products sold,

goat cheese

school-year lunches,

Serbian holiday food,

Serbian restaurants,

winemaking,

Friels family

G

Garilovich, Dula,

goats,

Goldfield, Nevada

Goldfield Hotel dance,

H

Hawaii trip,

Hawthorne, Nevada,

healthcare in Tonopah,

horsethievery,

Howerton, Jeanne (Sharp),

Humphrey, Carroll,

Humphrey, Elsie,

J

Jacobsen, Milka (Beko),

Jensen, Ray,

Joy, Dr.,

K

Katie (friend),

Kawich Range

Kelly Garage,

Kelly Hotel,

kolo (Serbian dance

Kovich, Andy,

Kovich, Hope,

Kretchmer, Bill,

Kretchmer, Gayle,

Kuljaca, Christina “Baba” (Minnie Perchetti’s mother)

friendliness of,

George’s death and,

lack of education,

life in Yugoslavia

marriage arranged by brother

renting rooms,

winemaking,

Kuljaca, Christo “Chris” (Minnie Perchetti’s uncle),

L

Lake Tahoe trip,

Las Vegas, Nevada,

leasing (mines),

Lee, Bella,

Lehigh, Oklahoma, birthplace of Tony Perchetti,

Little Reischke’s

Logan, Don,

Loncar, Carolina,

Longstreet, Jack,

Lorigan, Alice,

Lydon, Catherine “Kayo

Lyon’s dress shop,

M

Manhattan, Nevada,

Mary Mine,

McCain, John,

McCullough clothing store

McGee, Clarabelle

McHugh, P. J.,

miner’s consumption. See silicosis

Miner’s Hospital,

mines / mining

Belmont Mine,

closing of mines,

expert miners

leasing,

Mary Mine,

Mizpah Mine,

prospecting,

Missouri trip,

Mizpah Club,

Mizpah Mine,

Montana Café,

Mosel (horse races),

N

Nye County Hospital,

P

Perchetti, Buddy (Minnie Perchetti’s son),

Perchetti, Florence,

Perchetti, Katherine “Minnie” (Boscovich)

birth

births of children,

celebrity at Clown Motel,

childhood clothing / shoes,

childhood games,

early life in Tonopah,

early married life,

Goldfield Hotel dance,

Hawaii trip,

knee replacement

Lake Tahoe trip

Las Vegas, feelings about,

living at Polins mine,

marriage to Tony,

Missouri trip,

as mother’s caretaker

move to present home

origin of nickname, 1

real name, discovery of,

Reno visit with cousins,

roofing business and,

Serbian cats,

Serbian holiday customs,

Serbian language use in home, 5

shyness in school,

Tonopah at age 10,

as Tony’s caretaker,

Yellowstone trip,

as youngest of four, 2

Perchetti, Nick (Minnie Perchetti’s son),

Perchetti, Rita (Minnie Perchetti’s daughter),

Perchetti, Robert “Bob” (Minnie Perchetti’s son)

as baby in Manhattan,

at Barsanti Park School,

Bill Beko and,

birth,

health problems,

Perchetti, Tony (Minnie Perchetti’s husband)

death from silicosis,

life before Nevada,

marriage to Minnie,

as miner,

poker at Charlie Stewart’s,

roofing business and,

Tonopah Club and,

Perchetti brothers service in World War II,

P. J. (friend),

poker at Charlie Stewart’s,

Polins’ store,

post office, Tonopah,

prostitution in Tonopah,

Q

Quas, Leo,

Quick Lunch restaurant,

R

Reddington, Nora,

red-light district, Tonopah,

Reed, Florence,

Reed, Helen,

Reed, Little O.K.,

Reed, Lucille,

Reed, Maude,

Reed, O.K.,

Reed ranch,

Reischke family,

Reno, Nevada,

Revert, Bob,

Revert, Bobby (Bob Revert’s son

Revert, Florence (Perchetti

Revert house as museum,

Richardson, Elaine (Revert),

Robb, Marshall

rooming houses,

Roosevelt, Franklin,

Russell, Slim,

S

Salisbury Wash,

schools,

Serbian Hall,

Serbian population in Tonopah

American citizenship / politics,

“Baba” for grandmother,

businesses,

holiday customs,

kolo (dance),

language use in home,

Serbian Hall,

Sharp family,

silicosis and,

“vich” as common surname ending,

sewing shop,

Sharp, Jeanne,

Sharp, Lena,

Sharp ranch,

Shoshone Indians, Kawich Range,

silicosis (miner’s consumption),

Silver Peak, Nevada,

Slavin, Ed,

Slavin, Helen (Reed),

sleigh rides,

Sloppy Joe (burro

sponge for silicosis prevention

Stewart, Charlie,

T

T&G Railroad,

Taxine (prostitute),

Terrell, Bud,

Terrell, Solan,

Terrell, Starle,

Thomas, Bill,

Thomas, Tillie,

Tillis, Mel,

Titlow,

Tonopah, Nevada

Barsanti Park School,

Butler Theater,

cars in,

Clown Motel,

dairies,

doctors,

Florence Avenue apartment

Florence Avenue businesses,

healthcare,

horse races,

Magnolia Avenue residence,

Main Street businesses,

Minnie Perchetti’s early life in,

nationalities of population

red-light district,

Serbian Hall,

Tonopah Army Air Base,

Tonopah Club,

wives widowed from silicosis,

tuberculosis,

U

United Cattle and Packing Company

V

Vuich grocery

W

Walker Lake,

Wardle, Billie

Wardle family,

Wilson, Grace

winemaking,

winters then and now,

Wolfe, Roy,

World War II,

Y

Yellowstone trip,

Z

Zulk, Connie,

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Index