Joseph P. Mosconi - University of Nevada, Reno

18 Joseph Mosconi
He said that they marked the tree, and
when they fell it in the spring, they had to
dig down; there was still a lot of snow yet....
They’d dig down, dig down, dig down. That’s
before the.. .the sawmills didn’t start then until
about June, I guess. Well, anyway, when they
dug down there, why, they felled the tree, and
they measured...it was 41 feet!
From there to the mark?
Forty-one feet. I guess there’s 40 feet of
snow up there this year; I can’t really say.
Yes, I would think there’d be a lot.
But they have been only keeping records
since 1906, I understand.
Well, they cut that wood 2 foot. I think it
was 2 foot, because then in the spring they’d
turn the water in from Castle Lake into the
flume. Then they’d haul the wood over there,
and...one stick after another...cluk, cluk, cluk,
cluk, cluk, cluk.
Just send it right down to Norden?
Yes, right down to Norden. I think that
they used it in the locomotives. They used
the wood at first, and then they went to coal.
That’s why they were cutting it up small
because they were using it in the locomotives.
The other wood that they cut for the paper
company was 4 foot and split.
What I forgot to tell you about Truckee...
we used to catch chipmunks and tie a little
string around them and then carry them in
our pocket. Then we used to sell them to the
people on the train...on the observation car.
Sometimes people would buy them.
You’d go down when the train would come
through Truckee? [laughter]
Yes. The train would stop. Then we used
to have the observation coach—a lot of people
sitting out there. And sometimes we’d sell
them. Fifty cents. When we got $1, we really
got something, in those days.
Yes. [laughter] How would you catch them?
Oh, we’d catch them up in the hills. We
had traps.
Another thing I forgot to tell you was
about the Chinese. The Orientals were not
allowed in Truckee for years and years. They
chased them all out of Truckee because
they were taking over the work of the white
people.
Was that when you were there, or was that
earlier?
No, that was even when I was there.
They wouldn’t let them come in?
No. But I think that they let them come
back in in about the 1920s. But I remember
my uncle, my father’s oldest brother, Uncle
Jim. One day a fellow by the name of John
Cabona handed him a gun and said, “Come
on, Jim. We’re driving all the Chinamen out
of Truckee.” John Cabona had one hand
missing, and he was quite a character up there
in Truckee. He was one of the roughest boys
in the community—honest and all, but afraid
of nobody.
So they went down and did it?
Yes. He went along with them, and I
don’t know whether they hurt any of them or
anything. I heard that they hung one up on
the power line or tree or something. Anyway,
there’s a lot of history.