When we left the little town, we drove all night to Saratoga. Saturday morning
we packed our clothes and personal effects into her Jaguar and my Oldsmobile,
(a l954 Ninety-eight that l had purchased from a customer a few months before). Her apartment was furnished so we had no furniture to move and didn't
need to rent a truck.
While training with George, l learned he owned a house in Lovelock, also furnished, which was vacant. How convenient! lt was a two bedroom, two bath
located just two blocks from the center of Lovelock's downtown. Three twos make six and that is the number of domesticity which makes it a happy home (hopefully). We rented it for less than the rent paid for Dahlia's apartment in
Saratoga.
We returned to Lovelock by Sunday afternoon in my Olds. The Jaguar had a total break-down at Dixon and we sold it for parts. l think we got $600 for it.
That day was our first chance to see what we rented. lt was nice. George had built the place some years earlier and, while parts of it didn't make sense (one
of the bathrooms was equipped with a bronze-finished kitchen sink and the door to the other bath was stopped by the toilet about eighteen inches short of it's
full swing. But the place was tight, with no major mistakes and everything worked.
When l was in training with George, he told me that there was also a small building on his place, in which he had installed an assay lab. He suggested
that l talk to Jim Rowe about using it for doing assays instead of the lab at the
mine-site, which he said was much less satisfactory. And he said he wouldn't
charge A.R.D. an arm and a leg for the use of it.
At first, my parole officer didn't want me to leave Len's employ any more than
did Eli. But, when he learned that l had, in a week's time, not only secured a new job (that increased my income 100%) making it possible for Dahlia to be a
full-time mother and homemaker, he said " You came to my case-load as a "high-expectancy parolee" due to your record while at Soledad but you are "very
high" in my book. l'm inclined to go along with you on this one. l wish you and your family the best."
Len was torn. He liked my work, but he really thought it would be "good for you and your new family, And hey! l might get lucky and find a replacement
superior to you. Good luck you guys". My Dad pointed out that l had been out of prison six months but had only visited him and his family three times. "Now we
won't see you at all for maybe a couple of years. But l do think this move will be good for you guys. l just hope this won't be a permanent move".
"Don't worry, Dad. l don't think l could live in Lovelock, or any one place
permanently".
Soon after we moved into George's house, l traded the Olds for a four-year-old
Volkswagen. lt was a little rough and noisy but reliable and economical. lt served us well for some months before we traded it in on a new 1962 VW.
After a day of doing assays in the shed at the mine site, l talked to Jim about my using the assay lab next door to George's house. He was for it. He said that A.R.D. had used it before and found it satisfactory. They had stopped using it at a time when the large ore body being extracted then was finished. The ore body
currently being worked, called Cole Canyon was a very large body and would require many samples to be assayed every day, consistent with the many railroad gondolas being shipped daily. When assays were being done at the mine
site, samples are taken at the end of one day and given to the assayer at the beginning of the next day. The results were available at the end of that day. Using George's lab, samples from a day's mining are delivered to the lab in the evening of the day they were mined. Assays were completed overnite and results were available the next morning by 5AM, one whole working day sooner.
This meant l would work swing shift (which l always liked).Actually George's lab
was so well set up and so easy to work in, that l usually finished the samples and had the results ready before 9PM. l once mentioned that to Jim and he said
"We don't care if you can do the day's assays in a couple of hours, so long as they are accurate. You aren't paid hourly; you are salaried and paid the same
amount for each day you work regardless of the hours worked. Sometimes it might be necessary for you to work more than eight hours in a day while receiving the same pay as you got for working less than eight hours. There was
no union contract there, but we were all paid very close to scale and we had all the big holidays off with pay. l had been on the job a little less than six months at Christmas, but l, like everyone got two weeks paid vacation and a cash bonus to spend on it. l was sold on A.R.D. from the start.
Since l was a convicted felon on parole, in a different state than the one in which l was convicted, l was required to register with the police chief in the town of my residence. Lovelock's PC,was a weekend cowboy wannabe, namedGordon
Richardson. Within the first twenty minutes of the first day we were Lovelock
residents l reported to his office in the Pershing County Courthouse and registered. He seemed pained by having to go thru the whole procedure; He wrote my name where it belonged on the form and l signed my name on the line he pointed to. You could probably guess what he said; You better behave yourself, me and my boys will be watching your ass, You get out of bounds one time; l'm gonna get on you like stink on turds. (probably a Mormon) You'll excuse me but l don't like cons and l will go out of my way to ruin your day if l
need to". Of course, none of that stuff starts until l'm caught mis-behaving. l
figured i'd be fine if l stuck to my plan.
Being the assayer for the Coal Canyon works of A.R.D. Mining was one of my very best jobs. Before 5PM the day was all mine for whatever l might want or need to do. The samples would arrive at 5:30 PM. Each sample, received as chunks of ore ranging from the size of a ping-pong ball to that of a basketball,
though not really round. The samples are collected from the top of loaded
railroad gondolas, filled by dump trucks that had carried the ore twelve miles
from mine to railhead. To sample: first, using a limber cotton rope (about 3/8"
to 1/2")X about 80' long. Tie knots in the rope every sixteen inches. Fasten one end of the rope to the left corner of one end of the gondola. Then pull the loose end of the rope to the right corner at the other end of the gondola and pull it tight and secure it. Then walk the length of the fitted rope, with your sample bag and choose every chunk of ore that is either touched by a knot (or is the nearest chunk to a knot. if not actually touching). Full gondolas cannot be shipped before the results of their assays are known. Our contract with the buyer required that the iron content in the ore be above a certain percentage and the phosphorous and sulfur content be below a certain percentage. That
accomplished,it travels by rail to Pittsburg,Ca. where it's loaded onto ships which carry it to our customer in Japan, who used it to make steel.
The assay is a simple procedure. Samples are first run thru a crusher that reduces the large chunks of ore to material no larger than a quarter inch.That material is run several times thru a splitter that reduces the sample amount by half with each pass. Then, part of that material goes thru a pulverizer, which
makes the sample a fine powder. l won't share the exact procedure of the assay since that was proprietary to A.R.D. l never understood why that was necessary
but l honor it. l can say l was told that the steel, made from our iron was used in the construction of high-rise buildings and automobiles.
All that was required of me relative to my parole(a year of which remained at the time of our arrival in Lovelock) was to complete monthly a simple report of my general situation. At the start, l received twelve blank parole report forms
and was told that when l completed and mailed the twelfth form, my parole would expire automatically, assuming l hadn't violated it somewhere along the way, and been sent back to prison.
The three of us liked our Lovelock home with it's close proximity to the job that supported us so well, and we liked exploring the desert in that part of Nevada, but Lovelock, itself we didn't like much at all. During the almost one year that
our home was there, we spent just two less than half our weekends visiting
San Jose and it's environs.
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