Warren Nelson - University of Nevada, Reno

2 Warren Nelson
went to school in a little county school. Six
people in the school, fi ve girls and one boy.
Needless to say, I was the only boy. Being the
youngest of the six children I probably took
quite a bit advantage of the girls and of the
teacher by bringing mice to school and trying
to scare the girls all the time. Th is came back
on me a couple of years later when my father
remarried.
My father married a young girl that was
nineteen years old, just eleven years older
than I. She was a very useful person and I
moved to town to live with them. She had a
great deal to do with my life. She had had a
tough life herself. She was born in Oklahoma;
her maiden name was Loutherback. She had
a child by a former marriage. My step-sister
is still alive; I don’t see her very oft en. She
was very strict with me, but still very fair. She
was a great help to me. I was nine years old
when I moved in with them, but I still went
every summer and stayed with the people at
the ranch. I had great experiences as a young
person on the ranch— helping put the hay
and getting the cows. I became very fond of
that kind of life.
I fi nished grade school in 1926 I believe.
I think that was the year that Charles Russell
died. I remember that very vividly because
he was a great friend of my father’s. One of
the great things of my life is that I always tell
everybody that I knew personally Charlie
Russell. Charlie was a great man. He brought
the first fresh pineapple I had ever seen
from Hawaii and gave it to me. Brought it
back on a ship because in those days there
were no planes going back and forth. It was
quite a treat and something very diff erent.
I can remember very vividly my father and
Charlie Russell sitting in front of a still in the
basement of our home making whiskey. I
suppose it was pretty good bourbon, without
the fl avoring, because they used to sit there
and drink this hot whiskey as it came out of
the still and tell stories about the old days.
Charlie Russell would bring a couple of illegal
beaver hides all hooped up on a willow and be
fl etching the meat off them while they were
drinking. It was a great experience that I’ll
never forget.
I suppose I was about twelve years old
when I started in junior high, not a very
good student, but got by all the time, full of
mischief. One of the toughest things in my life
was to go from a little country school and start
in working with boys who I had never played
with or been around. So you can imagine that
I had a lot of trouble. I’d get punched in the
nose every time I’d turn around; I had many
a black eye and many a broken nose before
I found out you can’t tease boys like you do
girls.
Going through junior high and into high
school I suppose I grew up very fast. As a
freshman in high school I got to be, I suppose,
a little wild. Drinking dandelion wine and
chokecherry wine if we could steal it or buy it.
I became quite a problem for my parents. My
father became very unhappy with me. I had an
argument with him when I was a sophomore
in high school about drinking and not going
to school; I was going to get a job and go out
on my own. I got a job at three dollars a day
as an electrician’s helper; I worked for two
days and my step-mother came and got me.
She prevailed upon me to go to school over
in Helena, Montana.
Th e school that I attended was Carroll
College; at that time it was called Mount
St. Charles. Mount St. Charles was a high
school and a college both. I think there were
eighty-nine people in the college and about
forty high school students. We had a football
team, and I had a chance to do things that I’d
never done before. I started to learn to like
athletics and got real hung up trying to be a