(In my entire working life l never saw the equal of Dad). Mary cooked breakfast and dinner for the seven of us and also packed a fantastic lunch for us all, every day but weekends. She had a longer day than the rest of us but seemed to enjoy it greatly. Sally was a straight A student and a regular contributor to our meal time discussions.
One morning, late in the first summer l worked there, Baine, who had seen some of the drawings l had done in my spare time there, asked me if l had ever done any drafting. l had and l proceeded to tell how one of my dad's railroad buddies had bought for me a drafting table, a complete set of drafting instruments and enough drafting paper to last a few years , when l was ten years old. Three years later, in my second year of being a full time regular
employee in Dad's company, my assigned job for the summer was to draft the plans for, order materials and supervise the construction of additions to both the newest service station and the next-door cafe. ( Which actually joined the two buildings together.) Before that moment, l hadn't thought much about working at the Refuge the following summer,( between eleventh and twelfth grades) , but, hearing of my drafting experience and the rest, he offered me a somewhat better job on returning for the next summer and l accepted. More precisely, l would be doing the same work as the previous summer most of the time but some of each week he would have some drafting and drawing for me to do as well.
l had my first driver's license (issued two months before on my sixteenth B-day) in my pocket and was driving my recently-acquired '32 Chevy sedan,
(even more recently re-conditioned) carrying my three fellow teen-age workers, when we reported for work that summer (1954). This was good.
The previous summer none of our group had had a car for private use and we
had had to depend on our friend Ron, who worked at the fish hatchery located
about four miles from the Refuge village,owned a 1949 Pontiac sedan and
didn't mind giving us a ride to civilization (Elko, Nv in this instance) when he was going that way. Ron was 19 that year and had no trouble being "served".
(He looked older,somehow and claimed he'd never been "carded".Of course,
it's not so much how you look as it is how you act. And Ron was cool. So we
often found ourselves in his company in our first summer. Even so, when we added another car to the picture it didn't change things so much. My Chevy,
re-conditioned as it was, found several opportunities that summer to deny us
transportation. And our good buddy, Ron was always there with his beautiful
Pontiac.
We loved our work. Strenuous and exacting but fulfilling. Not just digging
holes for fence posts, stringing barbed wire, pouring concrete,running the
surveyor's chain or drafting plans for projects scheduled, some for sooner, some for later, but to see them, day after day, coming together and eventually
doing the works they were designed to do.
Hard working people are often also hard players as well. At least that's what
l've been told. l guess it depends on what you mean by hard. Or work. Or play.
l gotta admit that to our little group (Ron, my three co-workers and myself)
play, primarily, at that time, in that town, was a three or four hour tour of the five first-rate, county-certified, totally legal brothels. In Nevada, there is no state law against prostitution; it's up to local communities to decide how to handle it. Large towns, (Vegas and Reno) forbid prostitution, (some say that's
because high-class call girls pay big bucks to the right official for the privilege
to practice their trade despite the law.) Almost all the smaller towns like Elko, Wells, Carlin, Battle Mountain, Winnemucca, Lovelock (all on lnterstate 80)
and a dozen or so towns scattered about the central and south part of the state allow prostitution only in brothels licensed by the towns and inspected and regulated by the appropriate counties. Those who support the idea of legal
brothels point to Nevada's low incidence of sex crimes and venereal diseases.
Women employed in brothels are allowed outside only for shopping and for their weekly inspection by the county doctor. Should one be found outside the brothel with a john, the county will banish her for six months for a first offence
and a second offence comes with a lifetime ban.
The bar in a brothel is a place for those whom the bar-keep is convinced are
21 or over. A different requirement applies in the parlor: If the prospect appears to be pubescent and conducts himself like a somewhat reserved
gentleman, a lady (or, at least a woman able to act like one) will approach,
introduce herself and invite the prospect to her room (which usually looks like
a room in the town's best hotel (if a little larger). First, the pubic area is inspected and a prophylactic is given to protect the current client from exposure to disease that might have been deposited by the previous client. After that he pays her, she tells him to undress while she gives his money to the Madam. When she returns it's party time.
There were exceptions, but most brothels (in our area, anyway) worked like that. ID cards weren't so standardized. Driver's licences had no photo and could easily be forged or home-made. So it made sense that a seasoned bar-keep would be more likely to depend on his own deductive skills rather than a
piece of paper that might be a forgery. l had a few IDs that l made using my drafting kit which l seldom needed but which worked fine the few times it was needed. (Like the first time l got served at the Overland Hotel Bar).l don't
like to admit it, but during that summer (54) my fellow workers and l spent almost all of our off-work time in a bar or a brothel. One day at work two of my co-workers and l, assigned that day to the survey, were talking about our night before in Elko. It had been one, perhaps not to write home about (not the kind of story those at home would have an interest in.) The surveyor in charge of our team, Will Standish, a geological engineer of about the same age as l am now overheard us and joined our conversation. He, of course had overheard our reminiscences. He said we were pissing our lives away. At the rate we were burning our candles (or things shaped like candles) we would
reach his age having expended all our bullets for a gun that's plagued with a constantly droopy barrel, He really believed that since we make a finite amount of vital fluids we can run out of them if we don't conserve them. l think he might have gotten male fluids mixed up with the finite number of eggs with which females are born with and don't produce any during their lives.
One of the many species of birds which find refuge at RLNWR is the Trumpeter Swan. As huge as it is beautiful, even more so when in flight. As Will came to the end of his mini-tirade, our survey had taken us to the edge of the slough that we had spent so much time, in and around, up-dating it's systems, a pair of swans, coming from far above the opposite end of the slough glided in for a landing on the water just a couple of feet short of the bank we stood on. We had looked forward to seeing live swans in the finished slough for most of the summer. lt was a joy to see them land there, but for them to approach us so closely it felt like they were thanking us for making that environment better for them. The perfect end to a great summer job.
i
One morning, late in the first summer l worked there, Baine, who had seen some of the drawings l had done in my spare time there, asked me if l had ever done any drafting. l had and l proceeded to tell how one of my dad's railroad buddies had bought for me a drafting table, a complete set of drafting instruments and enough drafting paper to last a few years , when l was ten years old. Three years later, in my second year of being a full time regular
employee in Dad's company, my assigned job for the summer was to draft the plans for, order materials and supervise the construction of additions to both the newest service station and the next-door cafe. ( Which actually joined the two buildings together.) Before that moment, l hadn't thought much about working at the Refuge the following summer,( between eleventh and twelfth grades) , but, hearing of my drafting experience and the rest, he offered me a somewhat better job on returning for the next summer and l accepted. More precisely, l would be doing the same work as the previous summer most of the time but some of each week he would have some drafting and drawing for me to do as well.
l had my first driver's license (issued two months before on my sixteenth B-day) in my pocket and was driving my recently-acquired '32 Chevy sedan,
(even more recently re-conditioned) carrying my three fellow teen-age workers, when we reported for work that summer (1954). This was good.
The previous summer none of our group had had a car for private use and we
had had to depend on our friend Ron, who worked at the fish hatchery located
about four miles from the Refuge village,owned a 1949 Pontiac sedan and
didn't mind giving us a ride to civilization (Elko, Nv in this instance) when he was going that way. Ron was 19 that year and had no trouble being "served".
(He looked older,somehow and claimed he'd never been "carded".Of course,
it's not so much how you look as it is how you act. And Ron was cool. So we
often found ourselves in his company in our first summer. Even so, when we added another car to the picture it didn't change things so much. My Chevy,
re-conditioned as it was, found several opportunities that summer to deny us
transportation. And our good buddy, Ron was always there with his beautiful
Pontiac.
We loved our work. Strenuous and exacting but fulfilling. Not just digging
holes for fence posts, stringing barbed wire, pouring concrete,running the
surveyor's chain or drafting plans for projects scheduled, some for sooner, some for later, but to see them, day after day, coming together and eventually
doing the works they were designed to do.
Hard working people are often also hard players as well. At least that's what
l've been told. l guess it depends on what you mean by hard. Or work. Or play.
l gotta admit that to our little group (Ron, my three co-workers and myself)
play, primarily, at that time, in that town, was a three or four hour tour of the five first-rate, county-certified, totally legal brothels. In Nevada, there is no state law against prostitution; it's up to local communities to decide how to handle it. Large towns, (Vegas and Reno) forbid prostitution, (some say that's
because high-class call girls pay big bucks to the right official for the privilege
to practice their trade despite the law.) Almost all the smaller towns like Elko, Wells, Carlin, Battle Mountain, Winnemucca, Lovelock (all on lnterstate 80)
and a dozen or so towns scattered about the central and south part of the state allow prostitution only in brothels licensed by the towns and inspected and regulated by the appropriate counties. Those who support the idea of legal
brothels point to Nevada's low incidence of sex crimes and venereal diseases.
Women employed in brothels are allowed outside only for shopping and for their weekly inspection by the county doctor. Should one be found outside the brothel with a john, the county will banish her for six months for a first offence
and a second offence comes with a lifetime ban.
The bar in a brothel is a place for those whom the bar-keep is convinced are
21 or over. A different requirement applies in the parlor: If the prospect appears to be pubescent and conducts himself like a somewhat reserved
gentleman, a lady (or, at least a woman able to act like one) will approach,
introduce herself and invite the prospect to her room (which usually looks like
a room in the town's best hotel (if a little larger). First, the pubic area is inspected and a prophylactic is given to protect the current client from exposure to disease that might have been deposited by the previous client. After that he pays her, she tells him to undress while she gives his money to the Madam. When she returns it's party time.
There were exceptions, but most brothels (in our area, anyway) worked like that. ID cards weren't so standardized. Driver's licences had no photo and could easily be forged or home-made. So it made sense that a seasoned bar-keep would be more likely to depend on his own deductive skills rather than a
piece of paper that might be a forgery. l had a few IDs that l made using my drafting kit which l seldom needed but which worked fine the few times it was needed. (Like the first time l got served at the Overland Hotel Bar).l don't
like to admit it, but during that summer (54) my fellow workers and l spent almost all of our off-work time in a bar or a brothel. One day at work two of my co-workers and l, assigned that day to the survey, were talking about our night before in Elko. It had been one, perhaps not to write home about (not the kind of story those at home would have an interest in.) The surveyor in charge of our team, Will Standish, a geological engineer of about the same age as l am now overheard us and joined our conversation. He, of course had overheard our reminiscences. He said we were pissing our lives away. At the rate we were burning our candles (or things shaped like candles) we would
reach his age having expended all our bullets for a gun that's plagued with a constantly droopy barrel, He really believed that since we make a finite amount of vital fluids we can run out of them if we don't conserve them. l think he might have gotten male fluids mixed up with the finite number of eggs with which females are born with and don't produce any during their lives.
One of the many species of birds which find refuge at RLNWR is the Trumpeter Swan. As huge as it is beautiful, even more so when in flight. As Will came to the end of his mini-tirade, our survey had taken us to the edge of the slough that we had spent so much time, in and around, up-dating it's systems, a pair of swans, coming from far above the opposite end of the slough glided in for a landing on the water just a couple of feet short of the bank we stood on. We had looked forward to seeing live swans in the finished slough for most of the summer. lt was a joy to see them land there, but for them to approach us so closely it felt like they were thanking us for making that environment better for them. The perfect end to a great summer job.
i
