Vern’s Stories: My Working Years - Part Three
It is now November 1933 and everything is looking good around the homestead. We have a huge pile of petrified Joshua wood piled up for our winter heating and cooking. We have been to Little Rock to get our annual load of pears for Mama to can. They are all looking pretty in quart and half gallon jars on the shelf.
The petrified Joshua wood, as the desert people called it, is an interesting article. It isn't stone like real petrified wood but a hard wood that when turned and polished looks a lot like mahogany. My cousin Ted Hunt used to take chunks of it home and turn it on a lathe and make beautiful bowls; they were a reddish-brown color and very hard.
As these large Joshua trees grew to full size and finally died and toppled over, the wind and sand would partially cover them over. The trunk which like all palms is a soft fibrous mass, through chemical action in the ground or other processes over many, many years, turns it into a very hard wood that burns a lot like coal. From 5 to 10 miles east of our place there was lots of this wood. How long it had laid there no one knows, maybe many hundreds of years before Columbus came to America.
Daddy had a 1 1⁄2 ton GMC truck. We three boys and Daddy would get in and drive up the hill east of our place six, seven or ten miles to the area where the wood lay half buried in the sand. When we got to this area in the Joshua forest where the wood was, Daddy liked to go along ahead of the truck and wave us on to the next petrified tree laying in the sand. One of us boys would drive (probably took turns driving) while the other two were on the ground loading the wood. Maybe that is where Ralph got his first truck-driving experience and fell in love with trucks. Many years later he made a fortune in the trucking business.
In gathering petrified wood, you had to be careful because this was desert pack rats' favorite place to make their little homes. Them, being the favorite delightful dinner of Mr. desert coyote, they had to have a plan to keep Mr. coyote from tearing up their home and gobbling them down. It's interesting how all of God's little creatures are endowed with the wisdom needed to protect themselves. These little creatures, when their home was all built, all cosy and nice, they would go to some nearby cacti and cut off branches and cover the top of their little home with these cacti, protecting themselves and their little family. If Mr. coyote was dumb enough to start pawing around, he would run off: yelping with his paws full of cacti needles. Well, gathering petrified wood was fun and fulfilling because we were having fun and filling a need in our family's life.
So as everything is looking good at home and the only thing in short supply seems to be money, I think I better get a permanent job. So off to the Borax Mines I shall go to look for work.
The mine has a system of hiring called "rustling." They have a tin shack called the rustlers' shack. It has a table and benches. Some of the men at the table play cards, some sit and talk, some are reading. These are depression days and some of these men are well educated and have lost high-paying jobs in the great depression and are looking for any kind of work that will put bread on the table. Others like me are young men looking for their first permanent job. Whenever the company needs men, the bosses in the sack room or bull gang come out and hire as many as they need.
On November 22, 1933 I was hired along with about 7 other men. I was happy to be hired by a big international company. My first job was pushing a wheel-barrow at the Western Mine, a company Pacific Coast Borax had bought out. We were cleaning up the place and wheeling the borax into box cars. Well, for sure I was starting at the bottom and there was only one way to go and that was up.
The Pacific Coast Borax Company had its beginning in Death Valley, California, back in the latter part of the 191h century, 1886. Aaron Winters, a prospector who lived in Death Valley, had acquired a large acreage of land there that was covered with a white powdery stuff: thinking it might be worth something some day. He didn't know what it was or if it had any value. By chance a friend traveling through stayed overnight with Aaron. He told him about borax and how to test for borax, a scarce but a very important mineral in the emerging industrial age. The friend said, "Pour a solution of alcohol and sulfuric acid over the sample, ignite it and if the flame burns green, it is borax." In their little desert cabin at night, as his wife Rosie looked on, he tested his white sample and it flamed green. In great excitement, he said to his wife Rosie, "We are rich; it is borax!" In due time he sold out to William Coleman, a rich industrialist for $20,000 dollars. (A lot of money back then.)
In 1886 the Coleman empire crashed and went into bankruptcy. A Mr. Frank Smith took over the operation of Harmony and Armagosa Works. In those days, Death Valley was far from a railroad, Mojave being the closest. They used heavy wagons, two connected together, each carrying 10 tons of borax, pulled by a twenty-mule team. They freighted the borax across the desert to Mojave.
As the operation prospered, Mr. Smith became known as Borax Smith and his company was incorporated as Pacific Coast Borax Company. Their logo became the famous Twenty-Mule Team trade mark. Later when better deposits of borax were found closer to rail heads, the Harmony and Armagosa works in Death Valley ceased operations forever.
There was a borax operation in the Calico mountains near Yermo, California, where steam tractors replaced mules for the first time and later there was a borax plant in Soledad Canyon, California.
The first discovery of borax in the Muroc district was about 1915. (The year I was born.) A Dr. Suckow came to the desert to build a sanitarium about 4 miles west of where the main ore body was later found. In digging a water well for his operation, Suckow discovered small amounts of borax. It was not enough to be commercially valuable but there was a feeling that there was probably a large ore body somewhere in the area. For many years, shafts were sunk, holes were drilled, looking for the main ore body of borax.
It wasn't until around 1925 that the main ore body was discovered by a consortium of speculators that drilled into the main ore body and discovered a huge body of borax, probably the largest ever found. Mr. Jim Kneen, a boy Daddy went to school with, told Daddy he was in the consortium and his share of the find was three million dollars. How many were in the consortium is unknown to us and how much Pacific Coast Borax Company paid for the discovery is unknown to us also, a lot of money, no doubt.
Well, getting back to the present, I am so glad to now be working for a big prosperous company that has the money and skills to do everything as it should be done, no cutting comers or cheap fixes, everything done right. Even though at present I am pushing a wheelbarrow, I see great opportunity ahead. By the way, I heard a story how the wheelbarrow was invented. Pat and Mike were carrying bricks to a construction job on a pallet with handles on both ends. Pat was a lazy fellow and came up with a brilliant idea. He put a wheel on his end and sat down and watched Mike deliver the bricks to the brick masons. I can't verify if this story is true or not but it sounds reasonable, doesn't it?
It looks like I have arrived at P.C.B. at just the right time as the company is starting into a great expansion program, building more buildings, moving in big rotary kilns, all kinds of new machinery, much concrete construction, and electrical installation. Looks like plenty of work ahead. I love all kinds of machinery and electrical and electronic equipment and I am here to work and learn all I can about all the interesting things around me. Boy, what a place in time for this young man to be in.
The surface part of borax camp, the main haulage shafts are on the east side of the camp complex. The main shaft down into the mine is 3 shafts wide all heavily timbered all the way to the bottom of the mine, with a tall steel gallis frame above. The huge two drum hoist sets back from the shaft about a hundred feet. The 3/4 inch cable is wound on the drums in opposite directions so that one cable with cage for 6 men and ore bucket beneath is going up while the other is going down. When one ore bucket reaches the top and is dumping its load of ore, the other is at the bottom of the shaft being filled.
Next to the shafts and to the north is the mill complex where the borax ore is processed. This building is 6 stories high and covers probably two acres of ground. There is a sacking room on both ends of the mill, east and west, with a railroad spur running along each side for bulk loading and loading the sacked.products in box cars.
West of the mill area is a large camp area where the miners and other men live. These cabins are about 9 x 11 ft. and two men bunk to a cabin. Each has a bed and a chest of drawers and there is a coal stove for heat in winter. This is all that is needed because everyone eats at the cook house and there are restrooms and washrooms scattered around the camp. One time there was a fire in one of the cabins. This old miner came running out with his mattress the only thing he seemed to care about saving. Everyone was wondering why he cared so much for that old mattress. It was later learned he had it stuffed with money.
South of the mill was the store where all the parts for the mill and mine were issued and the large machine shop. South of that was a large parking area for automobiles. Further south of that was the company offices and laboratory. Later a large three-story building was built with a grocery story and a post office on the bottom floor and company offices and lab on the second floor and rooms on the third floor.
Further south and a little to the west was the very nice homes for the mill superintendent, Mr. Korkill, Mr. Roy Osborne, overall operations, and master mechanic, Mr. Norman Ross. To the west of the company offices was the cook house, a large building that had ample room for all the residents. The front part was a large room about 40 x 100 ft. There were three tables running long ways of the building, full length. Behind this was the kitchen area where the food was prepared. And what meals they were! During meal time, morning, noon and night, these tables were piled with food: eggs, bacon, ham, gravy and biscuits in the morning. At noon and evening there would be several kinds of meat, pork chops, steak, roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn on the cob, coffee, tea, and big pitchers of milk. For dessert, several kinds of pie, jello, pudding and peach cobbler. Most of the men that had been there for along time ate modestly, but it was interesting to see someone new there that had maybe been on the road for sometime and maybe hadn't had a square meal in days, sit down and put it away. Talk about stuffing yourself: these guys were super stuffers.
After I went to work, I stayed in camp for a month or so, living in a cabin with a man named Ott. I probably did a little stuffing myself at the cookhouse. Not that I had missed any meals before coming there, but the food was so good and well-seasoned and so plentiful, it was hard to resist. After a month or so living in camp, I decided to move back home to be with my family. There wasn't much to do there in the camp in the evenings and I suppose I might have been a little homesick seeing I had never been away from home for too long. There was the time at Uncle John's but there I was with family. Anyway it was good to be back with Mama and Daddy, Glenn, Ralph, Genevieve and Nellie May.
I listened to all the latest news about happenings on the homestead and at their schools and Glenn and Ralph's latest heart throbs. I can't remember any for Genevieve or Nellie May; guess they were a little young for that yet. Ralph was having a little trouble with his dearly beloved. Seem Daddy had doctored him for the seven year itch with some sheep dip and the little sweet thing thought he smelled like a telephone pole. I guess Glenn is behaving himself with Plumber Bell (busdriver) as he hasn't gotten any more walking tickets. Nellie May's best friend at school, Grace Adair, has ridden her bicycle from her place west of Muroc, across the dry lake east to our place, 10 miles to play with Nell. They are 9 and 10 years old.
I am now driving 40 miles round trip to the mine and back home. It's not too bad, traffic is light, maybe a jack rabbit, coyote or badger but they don't slow me down none. Neither rain, sleet, snow or the black of night can keep me from the interesting work I am looking forward to each day.
We have now finished the job at the Western Mine and are back at the Baker Mine where everything is, mill, offices, camp and all described earlier. There are big things in the works. There will be a lot of concrete to be poured: large floors for new buildings. There will be big piers for big long rotary kilns to set on. Sand and gravel are coming in by car loads on the railroad.
Oscar Swanson has been hurt bad; his hand is badly mangled. These big gondola railroad cars have heavy iron doors on the bottom that opens when a long shaft with rollers under the doors are ratcheted down. Oscar was running these door down when the rollers took off at high speed and caught his hand between the handle bar and the frame of the car. He will be off of the job for 4months. They will bring in Carl Siders from the machine shop to run the bull gang until Oscar gets back.
Monday morning we are setting up to pour concrete for many days, probably many months. There will be floors for a new large machine shop, a floor for a big parts store building. Then there will be 4 big piers 6 x 6 x 8 ft. high, solid concrete for 2 big rotary kilns, 10 ft. in diameter and over 200 ft. long.
Our cement mixer is a large electric-powered mixer that mixes about 8 wheelbarrow loads at a time. (A far cry from the big truck mixers of today. They hadn't been invented yet.) Our mixer has a large mixing drum with vanes inside that mix the rock, sand and cement into concrete. There is a water tank above the mixing drum that fills automatically and is released into the drum by a lever overhead. There is a large hopper that sets on the ground. It is big at the bottom and tapers up to a small size at the top, so it will fit into the opening in the mixer drum. This hopper is filled with rock, sand and cement and has a cable hoist that raises it and dumps the mix into the mixer drum.
Everybody seems to want to be the mixer operator. I was content to shovel the sand and cement into the mixer hopper. The man that was running the mixer seemed to be having some problems. He finally got a shovel caught in the vanes of the mixer and had to shut the operation down. Carl Ciders was standing there. He looked at me and said, "Harris, you take over the mixer." I had never run a mixer but l jumped at the chance to run it. I was the mixer operator after that and didn't have much trouble running it. I learned to get just the right amount of water in the mix to keep the cement finishers happy. If it was too dry, it was stiff and hard to screed and finish. If it was too wet, it was soupy and didn't finish well.
Mr. Ott, the man I roomed with when I first went to work there, had been promoted to straw boss in the bull gang. He seemed to on occasion try to foul me up in what I was doing. I don't know if he wanted to show his authority or what. We were pouring some floors. I had been running the mixer for a long time and knew exactly what the cement finisher wanted in a mix. Along comes Mr. Ott and he says, "Harris, your cement is too dry. You are going to have to put more water in it." I protested, "I am mixing it just the way the finishers want it." Ott replied, "I said put more water in it, period." "OK," says I, "You are the boss." The next wheel barrow loads went to the finishers too wet. About this time, there was a terrible commotion over where the concrete was going. The finisher was an old Italian man from the old country. He was an excellent cement finisher, but knew just enough English to get by. When he got excited, his vocabulary in English was too limited to express himself so he would revert to Italian. Looking at the wet cement, he is waving his arms and Italian words are pouring forth in a staccato stream. It sounded pretty bad, but no one could understand him, so I guess it was alright. Mr. Ott never stayed to see the ruckus he had caused; he had gone on to other business and we went back mixing cement as we had before he came on the scene.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, things are going quite well. Daddy is feeling some better but not strong enough to go to work yet. It is now 1934. Glenn is a senior in high school and will graduate in June. Ralph and Genevieve are in the eighth grade and will start to high school in September. Nellie Mae is in the fifth grade and will continue studies in Muroc School for several more years.
I have decided I need a better car. The new cars are nice but with the kids all in school and Daddy not working, I don't see how I can make the payments on a new car and help support the family. I have decided I can handle a 4-year-old car. Mama goes with me; we go to Los Angeles and look around. I find a 1930 Chevy Coupe with a rumble seat. You don't see these anymore. The standard coupe in those days had a turtle back that opened from the back much like the trunk in the present day cars. The rumble seat just back of the rear window, the lid hinged back with a cushion on it, made the back rest and down inside there was a soft seat that held two people. You were outside the cab of the car in the cold. It was lovingly referred to as the mother-in-law seat!
There was a new invention that most of the top models in each line had this year called "knee action." Up until this invention, cars had solid axles between the wheels, both front and back, with leaf springs, both front and rear. With this knee action thing, each front wheel was
sprung independent of the other on coil springs, giving a better ride. This invention was so new, most people hadn't seen it yet and didn't know what knee action was. The dealers wanted to show it off by taking people for a ride because it was a big selling point. So we were taken for a ride, Mama and I. We were sitting in the front seat along with the salesman-driver. As we drove around town, Mama kept looking at the man's legs with a puzzled look on her face. Finally she could stand it no longer and she said to the man, "How do you use your knees? I haven't seen you do anything with yours so far." We both had a good laugh at Mama's expense while the salesman explained that the knee action was on the front wheels, down under the car.
In 1934 I started dating girls for the first time. I am now 19 years old and have a job and a respectable car, all polished up and ready to go. So why not? Where are you girls? Clara Pauley, the Santa Fe railroad station agent at Muroc’s daughter, who had just graduated from high school. Clara had taught me how to play the saxophone and was giving me lessons for a small fee.
Clara and I dated for a short period of time during the summer of 1934. We went to Lancaster a few times, had a hamburger or something and went to a movie. Later they started having Saturday night dances at the Muroc school house. They were like a lot of things that way. They started out real nice, sort of a community family affair, Muroc families getting together visiting, dancing a little and having fun together. In a little while people started coming from afar. There began to be a lot of drinking, carousing and unknown things going on outside and in cars. A lot of people quit going, I for one. They finally stopped having them. Clara and I stopped dating after several months; we didn't seem to have much in common.
On the job, back at the mine, I was getting new experiences on different jobs. They needed men in the sack room. I spent a couple of years there with a crew of seven or eight men. There were several crews like this working different places in the two sack rooms.
There was a huge steel tank that went up several stories that the borax was feeding into from the mill. This tank had two spouts at the bottom with butterfly valves with handles. Two men stood at each spout, sacking the borax. The sacks were large and weighed about 180 pounds when full. Next to this was the sewing machine with an operator that closed the bags. Next to the sewing machine on either side stood two men called the buckers. They bucked the heavy sacks from the machine onto the hand trucks, five high. The men running the hand trucks pushed the loaded hand trucks out to a box car outside the door. The truckers would dump the load in a row five high across the boxcar, then they would bring in two more loads and lean them against the row just set in. Four men would get around these sacks leaned against the row. Each man would grab a corner of the sack and with a quick heave throw it up on the pile until they were piled clear to the roof of the boxcar. This was heavy, hard work but they usually had the youngest men working in the sack room. They were young and strong and reveled in their strength and were proud they could do the work.
A friend of the family, Ernie Fillinger, who we have known since Santa Monica days when he had a plane at Clover Field where he carried passengers, has taken up a homestead near us. Ernie is concerned about the spiritual well being of the people around Muroc as there is no church in the area. Ernie has a friend, Seneca Lowell Griggs, who is a lay preacher. A meeting is arranged at Muroc School house and was well advertised. The meeting was well attended and Brother Griggs is impressed by the hunger the desert people have for the Word of God. He is hooked and decides this is his mission field to preach the Word in. Although he lives in Los Angeles and doesn't have a car, he is determined to be a pastor to these desert people. In the fall of 1934, Sunday School and church on Sundays began. Brother Griggs was a powerful preacher of the Word. I can't speak for the rest of the family, but I began to realize how far I had backslid in my dedication to Jesus and our Father God. Six years without a pastor or a church to worship in had left me cold and indifferent to the most important things in life. I was determined to change all this and get back to the sweet fellowship I had with my Savior as a boy of twelve. As I go back to work at the mine I am hoping this will be evident to the men I work with, that they will see more compassion, more love and more understanding of others in me.
At work I have been promoted to oiler in the mill. It will be a raise in pay but will entail shift work, night shifts as well as day and afternoons, 7 to 3, 3 to 11, and 11 to 7. I am learning some new things on this job besides oiling in two different kiln departments, I also work one day a week in the crushing department under Dave Gunn. Here you sit alongside a large conveyor belt, picking out of the ore, pieces of wood, plastic, and anything that is not borax. After a while it seems the belt stops and you start moving along the belt, pretty weird in the middle of the night. Different bearings on different machinery take different kinds of oil and grease. In what is called the roaster room, there are these four big fat short kilns. These kilns have four big trunion rollers, two in front, two in back, that support the kiln as they turn. Each trunion roller has a shaft with a bearing on each end, which on four kilns makes thirty-two in all. Each bearing has a square box on the top side that has a stiff grease in it. These kilns run at over a thousand degrees F. Each shift you have to go under these kilns and punch the grease down in the bearing. By the time you get across punching the grease down in all four kilns, in the summer time you feel like you are ready to have apoplexy or something.
Tonight at home we are going to a concert at the high school in Lancaster. Ralph is playing his saxophone in the band. On the way to it, we stop at the Penfield residence to pick up Miriam, Ralph's girl friend. When we get to the school, Ralph goes to the band room to put on his uniform. I, like any big brother would, escort his girl to a seat in the middle of the auditorium. I hate to say this but that night I stole Ralph's girl friend away from him. I know for a fact, I did not go there that night with any thought of stealing Ralph's girl friend. Everything seems a little foggy or dream-like. All at once I found myself hugging and kissing this girl next to me, that happened to be Miriam. I am somewhat sure she must have put me up to it! I just figured I was so tall, strong and handsome that I was almost irresistible to girls. Genevieve says it was not that way at all. That it was that I had a job, money and a nice car. Poor Ralph, he was just a school boy. He didn't have a job, money or a car. On the way home to her house, Ralph said, "You can have her. I don't want her." I began to wonder if I was getting such a great package after all. She was a great smoocher though.
We dated for several months. After a while, she didn't seem to care about me any more, maybe she had other dreams. Anyway I quit going to see her. In a way I felt bad about it for Ralph's sake but later when I saw how good Ralph did getting a wonderful lady like Florence, I felt it was for the best.
Brother Griggs was coming up about every week to minister to us. He was getting quite a bit of help from people in his church, bringing him up to the desert, the Stones, the Peachy's and the Bates.' The Bates' brought Brother Griggs up several times. Thelma says I didn't even see her the first time they came up but the second time they came up, I sure did. Genevieve (bless her) talked Mrs. Bates into letting Thelma stay over at our house on Thanksgiving week 1935. Thelma was very athletic, played ball on a girls' team. She was the pitcher. During that week, we played catch several times out in the yard. We rode over to the Ben Hanum alfalfa ranch with a young man that was working there and lived on the Ernie Fillinger place near us. He showed us around the ranch then drove us back home. Later in the week on Thanksgiving morning, Thelma and I drove over to Anderson's to get some items for Thanksgiving dinner. On the way home we went across the north end of the lake and picked up an elderly lady that was going to be alone on Thanksgiving and brought her home to eat with us.
Before the week was over, I decided this was the beautiful young lady I would like to spend the rest of my life with. Well, that will be it for this time. Stay tuned. Will Vern's latest romance be different, a real heart throb, or will it fade away like the other two did? Also more about the Borax Mine.
Love to all,
VERN
December 2004
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