Joseph P. Mosconi - University of Nevada, Reno

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22 Joseph Mosconi passed away married my first wife’s youngest sister, one of the Devincenzis from Reno; I married a Devincenzi girl, Erma. And who else? Bony. No, he’s French. They had a saloon here in Verdi? Yes. He owned the Verdi Hotel one time. It’d be his brother’s son, Marcelle...Vic just passed away...but Marcelle is still alive, and he married a girl from Sierra Valley. She passed away here a year or so ago. He’s still alive; I was talking about him just the other day. He was quite a character. he was a Reno boy. Their father had a blacksmith shop in Reno where they used to shoe horses. They were French? French and Italian. C. Lonkey is the one that moved the sawmill here from up near Hobart Mills. Now, wait a minute. He moved the sawmill in the early 1890s from up the Little Truckee River from Boca dam, I’m pretty sure. A good many years there was some cabins there, yet, and also piles of slabs. Those days they just piled the slabs, and then they would sell them to the people [who] used to even go up there with horses and wagons and get their slabs. Sometimes they’d haul them to the railroad and load them on flatcars and ship the slabs to the wood yards. That’s even before coal came in this part of the country. Can you think of other Italian families that were in ranching here right around Verdi when you lived here? You said there were some other farms. Yes. The Quilicis. Then the Capurros, which is now known as the Belli ranch. They’re—Bellis—Swiss-Italian. Then the Canepa ranch. One of the boys is still there in the Verdi township down there by Mogul. Then there was the other Capurros down there in the Verdi township. See, the Verdi township goes clean the other side of the River Inn. Then, oh, there was the Schiappacasses. They’re beyond though. The Pirettos and the Schiappacasses and the Capurros and up on the hill... Capetti. With so many families growing vegetables, wasn’t there a lot of competition? Wasn’t it hard to find customers? No. There was a big demand? A big demand in Reno because that was before the time that Levy Zentner moved in here. There was quite a few, especially the ones down along the river. What was those fellows’ names? I was talking to one lady from the Pioneer Citizens Bank. She’s an employee there; I think her name is Delia Rossi. I was kidding her and I said, “How old are you?” She knows me, and she said [Mr. Mosconi whispers], “I’m 55.” S h e didn’t want the other girls to hear, I guess. They had a ranch down there where the mental hospital [is] along the river there. They were all Italians in there. Oh, what was the other fellow’s...I used to go down and buy some vegetables from them because we didn’t have enough. To sell up here? To sell up there—Davis’s Mill, Loyalton. Now just think. We drove 2 horses and the spring wagon loaded with vegetables clean to Loyalton, California, over the shortcut which is 28 miles from Verdi. And from down there
University of Nevada Oral History Program 23 at Sunnyside it’s 5 or 6 miles further. About 34 miles to Loyalton. Yes. You said that you went to work for the box factory here, and you cut your fingers? Why don’t you tell me about that? Well, I worked in the box factory at 15¢ an hour. This was in 1912, because I remember that Charlie Bruuns was the foreman. And he got a note.. .a young man came up there from the depot agent over here, Mr. Broach. We had a SP [Southern Pacific] depot here, and Mr. Broach lived in the depot, a big 2-storey building; he raised his family here. He sent a young man up there with a note to Charlie Bruuns, the factory foreman, that there was going to be an airplane come over the hill. So he sent a fellow by the name of Ovila...French. He was the warehouse foreman, where we stored the [sets of the pieces used in assembling a single box], to go up on top of the warehouse, and he says, “When you see something coming over the mountain up there, you come on down.” I laughed about that many times, and when I tell it, people laugh. He says, “You come down and tell us, and we’ll shut the factory down, and we’ll all come out and watch it.” Well, by that time, where would that airplane be? Right! Over Reno! See how much we knew about airplanes? Yes. And you were working in the factory? I was in the factory. I’m pretty sure it’s 1912. I was 13 years old. Is that when you first started in the factory, in 1912? Yes. Do you remember how you got that job? No, I don’t remember. But I know that they were hiring young people. There were several young people in there. Then, when summer started.... You weren’t going to school anymore? No. So you quit the school at 12? About 12 years old. Then when the harvest season started in California, they’d put us to work at 6:00 in the morning in the box factory. From 6:00 to 6:00. And no overtime. Straight time. We made $1.65 a day. We got paid once a month. The Verdi Lumber Company would send us a statement—so many hours, so much money—and they only withheld $1.00, and that was for Dr. Wilcox. We had better doctor service then than we have today. He lived here with his family, and he used to ride around town here, all over everywhere on horseback. He had 2 little ponies that he rode around in, and he knew every child and every woman and every man here. And they paid us.... We’d go stand in line after supper. We’d hurry up and get down about 7:00 and stand in line, all of us. That would be the box factory and the planing mill and the sawmill and lumberyard. Did you have your supper right at the factory? No. You’d go home for supper and then come back? Go home for supper and then hurry up and get down there and stand in line.
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Joseph P. Mosconi - University of Nevada, Reno

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