Joseph P. Mosconi - University of Nevada, Reno

24 Joseph Mosconi
Yes, to get your check.
Check? They paid us in gold and silver.
We didn’t know what a check or paper money
looked like.
Gold and silver?
The only thing they had was $20 gold
notes, they called them. But they paid us in...
well, I had 3 pieces of money. They’re all gold.
There was 2 twenties, and was it 2½ or 5 pieces
of gold? I forget. I had those pieces in this
pocket and my dad’s pistol in this pocket.
Really? You’d take the pistol?
Walking up the track because we lived up
there above town about a mile.
What did you used to do with your money?
Give it to my mother. She got every penny
of it.
You never did see any of it?
Oh, once in a while. But that was to help
raise the family. My father also was working
in the lumberyard.
He worked in the lumberyard and had the
farm, too?
Oh, yes, sure. Then he also worked for the
power company, cleaning ditches with a pick
and a shovel. I done that, too.
By himself?
No, with a crew of men. Mr. John
Harker—Harker and Barker construction,
their father—was the foreman. A fellow by the
name of Walt Phillips was the superintendent
over it. They lived here in Verdi. That’s how
they cleaned all these canals, like the Highland
Ditch.
All by hand?
All by hand—pick and shovel.
They’d turn them off in the winter?
No. In the wintertime they fought ice.
They still do in these canals that furnish
electricity...power canal. But that canal that
furnishes the water to Reno—the Highland
Canal, Highland Ditch—they kept that going
year round.
They never turned it off ?
Never turned it off, and you had to fight
that ice. In the spring they’d turn the water
out, and they had big crews of men from Reno
and Verdi here. They had, oh, maybe a couple
hundred men with a pick and a shovel.
Do you remember what they used to pay them
to do that?
Yes, I’ve done it. Two and a half a day. That
was good money.
Were there a lot of Italian fellows doing that,
cleaning out the ditches?
Yes. The Babas. The Zuninos. Oh, lots of
Italians. There was lots of Italian people here
that worked on the section...on the railroad.
You see, every 5 miles, they had a section crew,
or a section station. There was one section
foreman—Sabini—at Mogul. There was one in
Truckee; I knew him— Cupples. His brother
was the road master that lived in Truckee. I