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Lloyd Castagneto_2
SILENCE: COUGHS
CRAIG: [00:00:30] OK.
LLOYD: See, the reason that he didn't, uh, he said the reason he didn't put it up for bids and all these furnitures out on the road could, one of them would bid it in and I'd lose it. Then I'd have to go out on the road. And, uh, I said, well, that, that has to come sometime [00:01:00] so just might just well come now. I said, I'm, uh, I'm, uh, right now, let's see, that was 21, 930, I'm just 30 years old. And I just didn't have a title of a foreman or something, although although I was working for twice as many men as they were. I said, so I might just as well take a chance. Well, there was [00:01:30] an old, one of the oldest, he was the oldest, uh, foreman in the, out on the line in the territory. And, uh, he knew I wanted this and he told me, he said, if you want it, he said, you, you bid on it. He said, I'll, I'll get the word around that I want to get off the road and get [00:02:00] in and I'm going to bid it in. And he, he scared, he threw the scare in all of them, I bid on it and then they only bid the reserve was mine. So I was appointed then in 1921 as a, made a, a foreman.
LLOYD: So I worked as a foreman with the headquarters here at Nampa. From then on, it was, it was big enough to work around here and to work within [00:02:30] 15 to 20 miles, any direction. Uh, see, there was lots of work out on the Morphin Line and that, in those days, they were shipping lots of stock. And, uh, there was lots of work at the stockyards, the, the raw wooden stockyards in O.C. And, uh, they, uh, [00:03:00] so I stayed as a foreman at the headquarters right here. And then in 1926, the supervisor retired, B&B supervisor of the territory from, from Glens Ferry to Huntington and the branches. Uh, he retired. And those were appointed [00:03:30] jobs. They didn't have to give it to the oldest foreman, but they had, before this time, they'd always give it to the oldest foreman that was out on the road. But I was the youngest foreman and they, they appointed me to that job, 1926. So—
CRAIG: [00:04:00] Now, with these stockyards around, did Nampa have a big stockyard?
LLOYD: Oh, yes. Nampa had a big stockyard down there.
CRAIG: Right, Right, right where it is still today?
LLOYD: Yep. Yeah, right down in the, in the east end there. Oh, they've changed it all. They've turned a lot of it down now. They had big stockyards. They used to—you see, in those days, they'd have a train load out of, out of, off of the [00:04:30] Burns Branch there. It'd come off of there with two or three train loads in, over a period of a short time. And a train, of course, only, only run about, on the, on the stockyard. They'd only have about twenty-five or twenty or thirty at the most in the train. They'd all be all stock. They'd have to stop every so [00:05:00] often and feed and water. Nampa was one of the important places to feed and water. See, they'd come down here and they'd, then they'd, then they'd go, then they'd probably go from here to, to Pocatello. Speed wasn't what it is now. And the—
CRAIG: So a lot of the business [00:05:30] in those days was, was livestock business.
LLOYD: Oh, lots of it. Lots of livestock and hay. On the railroad, as many things fell, everything, everything moved on the railroad in those days, see, because there wasn't such thing as, any such thing as, as big trucks hauling things between places. Oh, now I have something else. [00:06:00] Oh, I was, I was just going to tell you something about, Ontario was a big shipping point. Before they got the, before they built the line into Burns, which was early [00:06:30] 1900s, before they built the line into Burns, why, they used to drive, they used to drive, used to drive, they used to drive, I don't want to sound big to you, but they used to drive 5,000 head of cattle. Because several of those boys, when I lived there then, several of those boys there, we had our horses, you know, and they'd hire us for a dollar a shift at night to help just keep [00:07:00] them surrounded out there in the pasture. They weren't fenced in.
CRAIG: This was when you were a boy and lived in Ontario.
LLOYD: I just, I mentioned that because to show you what was going on in those, in those days.
CRAIG: Amazing. So you just, several of you boys would just stay on the perimeter of all these cattle and just keep them kind of, keep them [00:07:30] fenced in, kind of, huh?
LLOYD: Yeah, just keep them.
LLOYD: You know, it's a, where, it's a, it's a climate, I think, that I wish that there's more people that could have gone through the same era. I think because it isn't, it wasn't high speed like we got [00:08:00] now. I mean everything was in a hurry. You had team wagon. You used to get, we had, this happened before I come to Nampa here, but it happened, it happened before 1910. I had, we had a concrete business, my dad and I had concrete business, [00:08:30] and we used to have a team, we had two teams of horses, and we used to have, we'd have to haul our gravel from down on the river, go down on the river and haul it from up in there, and then in the wintertime, I'd have a bobsled, put the bobsled on, and we'd bundle up [00:09:00] a bunch of people in the bobsled, full of straw, take off for out into country, have somewhere, six or seven miles, somebody's house, and just have a big time. People don't know what it is to have a good time nowadays. They just don't know.
CRAIG: Amazing. That's fantastic. What, what was Nampa like, [00:09:30] you know, as 1926 approached, and you were talking about that, and then you, you started into the 30s and such, and the depression came on. Was Nampa hard hit by that depression?
LLOYD: Was I hard hit?
CRAIG: Well, was Nampa hard hit, or were you hard hit, or was the railroad a pretty a pretty secure job, or what?
LLOYD: I'd have to say in a way, but I don't think too much, because the railroad, [00:10:00] of course, you mean in the 30s, huh?
CRAIG: Yeah.
LLOYD: Well, it was, there was layoffs, there's no question about that. There was layoffs, but they had a, I left the railroad there in 1934 until 1936, when I came back, and I was, I was [00:10:30] working for the government. They had all kinds of buildings, building work, and, of course, it was old U.S., there was just no limit to the things building work, and, of course, it was old U.S., there was just no limit to the things that we built, schoolhouses, and Roosevelt down there was one of them.
CRAIG: You were involved in building Roosevelt?
LLOYD: Oh, yes, sure, I supervised in building Roosevelt. Oh, yes, sure, I supervised it. That was one of them that I was up. They, the fellow that, there's [00:11:00] a fellow here that had come out of Washington, and he was a, he was a, he was a, he was a, he was a was one of them that I was up. But they, the fellow that, there was a fellow here that had come out of Washington, and he, I was taking some of these locals around here, and they had [00:11:30] to work all over the state of Idaho, and, yes, he wanted me to go around and check all those things there. I drove around for two or three months there, did nothing but just driving around and checking the various jobs, and, of course, it was one thing. I don't, no, I don't want to think it's, it's I'm [00:12:00] not making a big thing of it, but everybody that is in on that wasn't trained for it, what I'm trying to say. See, they just wasn't trained for it. It was government money.
CRAIG: Some of it were just work projects,
LLOYD: and they just threw anybody in on it. Yeah, yeah, and the only ones that I had was a good project, see, and it [00:12:30] showed up good, so that's when this guy wanted me to take it, take it in the states, see, and get some of those booted up a little bit. And that wasn't very long after that, I railroaded one of me bags, and that's when I went back and went up to Sun Valley.
CRAIG: What, tell me for just a minute, what projects were you involved in in Nampa? [00:13:00] Roosevelt School, you mentioned.
LLOYD: Oh, Roosevelt School, another one was that little, they they used it for a little gymnasium out there that's out there back, the back of the city hall now, you know, see, but that's where the high school was.
CRAIG: You put that gymnasium onto the...
LLOYD: That little gymnasium there. That was one, and see, we had half a dozen of them around in the [00:13:30] country.
CRAIG: Now, were you involved in Central at all, Central down there, Central Junior High School, where the big auditorium is there on 14th?
LLOYD: Yes, I believe, I believe that. I didn't have anything do that, I don't believe, but I think it did. I think that come under that.
CRAIG: Same program, huh?
LLOYD: Mhmm
CRAIG: What was the program called?
LLOYD: I [00:14:00] was trying to think of it. I can't recall it now.
CRAIG: Okay, um...
LLOYD: What [00:14:30] was it? PWA, wasn't it TWA?
CRAIG: W... WWA or something like that?
LLOYD: No, no, there was another letter in there. Maybe I'll think of it, I don't see it.
CRAIG: Public Works, wasn't that it? Public Works?
LLOYD: Yeah, it was Public [00:15:00] Work, that's what it was, see. Yeah, PW... Several was paying all of it, and school districts was supposed to pay a small part, but it was a small part, see. That was just to get the men to work. And when we're talking about it, and these guys had loafed on the job, there wasn't very many. Most of those fellows [00:15:30] were men who had families here and something, and they wanted to work hard and do a good job doing what they were doing there, see, rather than, they wanted something to show for what they'd done after they served. And of course there was a certain amount of them that they didn't, they could lean on the shovel all day, they didn't care what they was doing, whether it was doing any good or not, you know. But most of them, most of them did. That's [00:16:00] why they took so much pride in the schoolhouses and things like that, see, because their kids were going to go to school there and so on and so forth.
CRAIG: These were just men that were out of work at the time, and so this project came along and lots of them were good hard-working men, and some of them weren't, huh?
LLOYD: Yeah, I think they made about, I think they made about $44 a month or something [00:16:30] like that, I forget. It wasn't too much that they made. I know they weren't paying me $200 a month for what I was supervising.
CRAIG: Now, Now, from 1936 until [00:17:00] into the 40s or so, you spent most of your time at Sun Valley, is that right?
LLOYD: Well, no. They sent me to Sun Valley Union Pacific they owned that, and they were starting in 1936. That's when it started, it was August or July 1936. They had [00:17:30] they had contracted with a Los Angeles outfit, O'Neil Brothers, to build a lodge. That's all. That was the only job.
LLOYD: And then they decided, Mr. Harriman decided that he [00:18:00] wanted some kind of a chairlift of some kind to get the skiers up the mountains, up the smaller mountains. And, of course, nobody knows anything. At the time, there wasn't any thoughts of of of of individual chairlift because there's none in the world. But Jimmy Kerr, an architect there, [00:18:30] our office an architect there, our office in Omaha, he worked out this scheme of this single chair lift. Well, Mr. Harriman, he jumped right on to that right away and wanted, he said he wanted one built up Dollar Mountain and one up what they called Proctor Mountain, which was a little ways around, ya see see there was three men Proctor Mountain, which was a little ways Proctor Mountain, which was a little ways Proctor Mountain, which was a little ways around. See, there was three [00:19:00] men that were behind all of this before the railroad took it over. It was actually, the railroad took it over early, but these men had first decided that before they even started to build, but they were going to build, there was three of them. There was Mr. Harriman, and Proctor, [00:19:30] and big banker from—
CRAIG: Morgan?
LLOYD: Yeah, Morgan. But before they had got started, the railroad took it on. And they bought the brass ranch there. And so they sent me up there to the railroad, [00:20:00] sent me up there in 1936 in August to build this thing. He was—nobody had ever, nobody had had ever, nobody had ever seen any such a toy as a lift. But people went wild over it after it got built, you know. Of course, the one they built up, the hard [00:20:30] one, the one to the high mountain, the Proctor Mountain over there, people didn't like that one because it was too cold going up the canyon. And they took it down after a couple of years, and they put part of it down for us, ski jump.
CRAIG: Now, as you—then when did you come back to Nampa? You spent a lot of time up at Sun Valley. When did you come back to Nampa? Did you ever leave Nampa?
LLOYD: [00:21:00] Yeah, the—we rented a house, and we were traveling most of the time from—oh, well, you see what happened. What happened is, is after the first ones were built there in 1936, [00:21:30] the chief engineer was out there, Chief Engineer from Omaha was in charge of that. And he said—I was working as a foreman there, see, at that time, foreman rate. And when it come wintertime there, he had a little [00:22:00] job that he wanted finished that hadn't been listed to do, and I had cleaned up everything and was ready to leave out of there. And he said, what I want you to do, I want you to stay here this winter. He said, just as long as you want to, if you want to stay all winter. See, of course, we were living in one of the cabins up there, see, [00:22:30] and so we didn't—he said, I want you to stay here if you want to stay here all winter. You'd love it up here if you want to stay all winter. Well, he says, stay here. But he said, you know, you built them, you know more about them than anybody else, so we just knew there was going to be lots of different—different trouble, little trouble every now and then.
LLOYD: And he said, [00:23:00] you stay right here until you're through. But, he said, I'm putting you on my roster as a steel erection officer. He said, you'll be an officer, a steel erection officer with ten headquarters at [00:23:30] Omaha. And he said, you won't spend too much time because he said there, but your headquarters will be there along with the rest of us. He says that you'll be spending most of your time in the West. So then we went on for—well, after—I stayed up there. I got tired. I didn't want to, and I stayed up [00:24:00] there through the month of January. Didn't have any snow for the big opening of Christmas, no. Not a bit of snow. And then it did—when it snowed, after it snowed once, and they tried it out a few—quite a few times, well, I left.
LLOYD: Went back to Omaha, and we lived in a—in a hotel there [00:24:30] for several months, and then began to —send me this all over, all over this U.P. system for one job after another. Then when the war came on in the 40s there, I went down to—down to [00:25:00] Portland, and I—we lived in an apartment there in Portland for a year, Mom and I, and all I did was just kind of be there in case anything happened on any of the ports, you know. And a terrific amount, amount of—a lot of things that was going through [00:25:30] a port there, Portland. Then they decided they wanted a—for the war, so they'd have oil in special places. They wanted me to look after, supervise three three new steel, big steel, 125,000-gallon oil tanks, one at Hamilton, one at Le Grande, [00:26:00] and one at Huntington. So I had a—an apartment at—in the hotel there, the big hotel, and worked out of there for [00:26:30] a year.
CRAIG: This was in—this was in Portland?
LLOYD: No, no, this was Legrand. This is Legrand, okay. I was at Portland a year before that, then Legrand for a year, supervising these other three. Well, in fact, no matter where it is, we were at Pendleton for part of the time, and then come up to Le Grande.
CRAIG: So you were—you were—then did you move back to Nampa after that?
LLOYD: [00:27:00] No, I came back—
CRAIG: When did you finally arrive back in Nampa?
LLOYD: Let's Let's see. [Silence]
LLOYD: Shut that off, man, if you want to.
LLOYD: [00:27:30] [Tape resumed] Moved in our—we had rented our house, and we come in and—
CRAIG: This was 44?
LLOYD: Yeah, and went back in our house, and then I worked on that same job as [00:28:00] a—as a steel bridge inspector for all the U.P. territory, but I was—they let me call my headquarters there instead of being called up at Omaha, which was at the end of the district, you see. They let me call my district so we could get established in some place for more [00:28:30] of my kids, you know, see. Why, we came back here and made it to headquarters. I didn't—I didn't claim any expenses here, but I claimed expenses whenever I—anyplace else didn't claim any expenses here, but I claimed expenses whenever I—anyplace else I went, see, halfway from here. But then it was just one emergency But then [00:29:00] it was just one emergency after time. One emergency after time. They were all emergencies.
CRAIG: So you were gone a lot?
LLOYD: Yeah, I was gone the biggest part of the time, see. I'd get—oh, I'd get home every couple of weeks or something, or maybe a month or a day or two, and then go on again, see.
CRAIG: When—when did your dad—when did your dad come to Nampa and start living? [00:29:30] About that same time, or—
LLOYD: No, no, he was—he was here before that. He—he would—he'd been worked on—working on a—with a bridge gang. He worked on that, and then he began to lose his eyesight, and he came here in 1938, we see, yes, see, we built that house over there, and [00:30:00] he came here about— about 32. Yeah.
CRAIG: So he lived in Nampa from 30—from about 1932 on, then, huh?
LLOYD: Uh-huh.
CRAIG: Now, what did he do from 1932 on? Did he work this bridge gang some, or—
LLOYD: He was blind, but [00:30:30] he had a little cubbyhole down there by the—what's the name of that—
CRAIG: Oh, the post office?
LLOYD: It It was right back—right back at the post office. It's back at the post office there, see? He had a little cubbyhole there, there, and he opened a little [00:31:00] candy stand, see, and cigarettes and things like that.
CRAIG: Newspapers and everything, huh?
LLOYD: Yeah, just that. And being blind, and his hearing was a little bad, he fixed up a little bed, a little bed in there, see, and he'd sleep there, stay there nights. I'd go down and get him, and if [00:31:30] I was in, I'd go down and get him, feed him, and—oh, different ones helped. They liked him, you know. They took up with him, and they helped him. And then—and he put dozens of different kinds of candy in the case, you know, but he could just—they'd come in and ask for a piece of candy, you know, see, but he could just put his fingers right on it, [00:32:00] and he'd get—and when they'd—I can see many times when they was paying him, the kids and whatnot.
END OF RECORDING
SILENCE: COUGHS
CRAIG: [00:00:30] OK.
LLOYD: See, the reason that he didn't, uh, he said the reason he didn't put it up for bids and all these furnitures out on the road could, one of them would bid it in and I'd lose it. Then I'd have to go out on the road. And, uh, I said, well, that, that has to come sometime [00:01:00] so just might just well come now. I said, I'm, uh, I'm, uh, right now, let's see, that was 21, 930, I'm just 30 years old. And I just didn't have a title of a foreman or something, although although I was working for twice as many men as they were. I said, so I might just as well take a chance. Well, there was [00:01:30] an old, one of the oldest, he was the oldest, uh, foreman in the, out on the line in the territory. And, uh, he knew I wanted this and he told me, he said, if you want it, he said, you, you bid on it. He said, I'll, I'll get the word around that I want to get off the road and get [00:02:00] in and I'm going to bid it in. And he, he scared, he threw the scare in all of them, I bid on it and then they only bid the reserve was mine. So I was appointed then in 1921 as a, made a, a foreman.
LLOYD: So I worked as a foreman with the headquarters here at Nampa. From then on, it was, it was big enough to work around here and to work within [00:02:30] 15 to 20 miles, any direction. Uh, see, there was lots of work out on the Morphin Line and that, in those days, they were shipping lots of stock. And, uh, there was lots of work at the stockyards, the, the raw wooden stockyards in O.C. And, uh, they, uh, [00:03:00] so I stayed as a foreman at the headquarters right here. And then in 1926, the supervisor retired, B&B supervisor of the territory from, from Glens Ferry to Huntington and the branches. Uh, he retired. And those were appointed [00:03:30] jobs. They didn't have to give it to the oldest foreman, but they had, before this time, they'd always give it to the oldest foreman that was out on the road. But I was the youngest foreman and they, they appointed me to that job, 1926. So—
CRAIG: [00:04:00] Now, with these stockyards around, did Nampa have a big stockyard?
LLOYD: Oh, yes. Nampa had a big stockyard down there.
CRAIG: Right, Right, right where it is still today?
LLOYD: Yep. Yeah, right down in the, in the east end there. Oh, they've changed it all. They've turned a lot of it down now. They had big stockyards. They used to—you see, in those days, they'd have a train load out of, out of, off of the [00:04:30] Burns Branch there. It'd come off of there with two or three train loads in, over a period of a short time. And a train, of course, only, only run about, on the, on the stockyard. They'd only have about twenty-five or twenty or thirty at the most in the train. They'd all be all stock. They'd have to stop every so [00:05:00] often and feed and water. Nampa was one of the important places to feed and water. See, they'd come down here and they'd, then they'd, then they'd go, then they'd probably go from here to, to Pocatello. Speed wasn't what it is now. And the—
CRAIG: So a lot of the business [00:05:30] in those days was, was livestock business.
LLOYD: Oh, lots of it. Lots of livestock and hay. On the railroad, as many things fell, everything, everything moved on the railroad in those days, see, because there wasn't such thing as, any such thing as, as big trucks hauling things between places. Oh, now I have something else. [00:06:00] Oh, I was, I was just going to tell you something about, Ontario was a big shipping point. Before they got the, before they built the line into Burns, which was early [00:06:30] 1900s, before they built the line into Burns, why, they used to drive, they used to drive, used to drive, they used to drive, I don't want to sound big to you, but they used to drive 5,000 head of cattle. Because several of those boys, when I lived there then, several of those boys there, we had our horses, you know, and they'd hire us for a dollar a shift at night to help just keep [00:07:00] them surrounded out there in the pasture. They weren't fenced in.
CRAIG: This was when you were a boy and lived in Ontario.
LLOYD: I just, I mentioned that because to show you what was going on in those, in those days.
CRAIG: Amazing. So you just, several of you boys would just stay on the perimeter of all these cattle and just keep them kind of, keep them [00:07:30] fenced in, kind of, huh?
LLOYD: Yeah, just keep them.
LLOYD: You know, it's a, where, it's a, it's a climate, I think, that I wish that there's more people that could have gone through the same era. I think because it isn't, it wasn't high speed like we got [00:08:00] now. I mean everything was in a hurry. You had team wagon. You used to get, we had, this happened before I come to Nampa here, but it happened, it happened before 1910. I had, we had a concrete business, my dad and I had concrete business, [00:08:30] and we used to have a team, we had two teams of horses, and we used to have, we'd have to haul our gravel from down on the river, go down on the river and haul it from up in there, and then in the wintertime, I'd have a bobsled, put the bobsled on, and we'd bundle up [00:09:00] a bunch of people in the bobsled, full of straw, take off for out into country, have somewhere, six or seven miles, somebody's house, and just have a big time. People don't know what it is to have a good time nowadays. They just don't know.
CRAIG: Amazing. That's fantastic. What, what was Nampa like, [00:09:30] you know, as 1926 approached, and you were talking about that, and then you, you started into the 30s and such, and the depression came on. Was Nampa hard hit by that depression?
LLOYD: Was I hard hit?
CRAIG: Well, was Nampa hard hit, or were you hard hit, or was the railroad a pretty a pretty secure job, or what?
LLOYD: I'd have to say in a way, but I don't think too much, because the railroad, [00:10:00] of course, you mean in the 30s, huh?
CRAIG: Yeah.
LLOYD: Well, it was, there was layoffs, there's no question about that. There was layoffs, but they had a, I left the railroad there in 1934 until 1936, when I came back, and I was, I was [00:10:30] working for the government. They had all kinds of buildings, building work, and, of course, it was old U.S., there was just no limit to the things building work, and, of course, it was old U.S., there was just no limit to the things that we built, schoolhouses, and Roosevelt down there was one of them.
CRAIG: You were involved in building Roosevelt?
LLOYD: Oh, yes, sure, I supervised in building Roosevelt. Oh, yes, sure, I supervised it. That was one of them that I was up. They, the fellow that, there's [00:11:00] a fellow here that had come out of Washington, and he was a, he was a, he was a, he was a, he was a was one of them that I was up. But they, the fellow that, there was a fellow here that had come out of Washington, and he, I was taking some of these locals around here, and they had [00:11:30] to work all over the state of Idaho, and, yes, he wanted me to go around and check all those things there. I drove around for two or three months there, did nothing but just driving around and checking the various jobs, and, of course, it was one thing. I don't, no, I don't want to think it's, it's I'm [00:12:00] not making a big thing of it, but everybody that is in on that wasn't trained for it, what I'm trying to say. See, they just wasn't trained for it. It was government money.
CRAIG: Some of it were just work projects,
LLOYD: and they just threw anybody in on it. Yeah, yeah, and the only ones that I had was a good project, see, and it [00:12:30] showed up good, so that's when this guy wanted me to take it, take it in the states, see, and get some of those booted up a little bit. And that wasn't very long after that, I railroaded one of me bags, and that's when I went back and went up to Sun Valley.
CRAIG: What, tell me for just a minute, what projects were you involved in in Nampa? [00:13:00] Roosevelt School, you mentioned.
LLOYD: Oh, Roosevelt School, another one was that little, they they used it for a little gymnasium out there that's out there back, the back of the city hall now, you know, see, but that's where the high school was.
CRAIG: You put that gymnasium onto the...
LLOYD: That little gymnasium there. That was one, and see, we had half a dozen of them around in the [00:13:30] country.
CRAIG: Now, were you involved in Central at all, Central down there, Central Junior High School, where the big auditorium is there on 14th?
LLOYD: Yes, I believe, I believe that. I didn't have anything do that, I don't believe, but I think it did. I think that come under that.
CRAIG: Same program, huh?
LLOYD: Mhmm
CRAIG: What was the program called?
LLOYD: I [00:14:00] was trying to think of it. I can't recall it now.
CRAIG: Okay, um...
LLOYD: What [00:14:30] was it? PWA, wasn't it TWA?
CRAIG: W... WWA or something like that?
LLOYD: No, no, there was another letter in there. Maybe I'll think of it, I don't see it.
CRAIG: Public Works, wasn't that it? Public Works?
LLOYD: Yeah, it was Public [00:15:00] Work, that's what it was, see. Yeah, PW... Several was paying all of it, and school districts was supposed to pay a small part, but it was a small part, see. That was just to get the men to work. And when we're talking about it, and these guys had loafed on the job, there wasn't very many. Most of those fellows [00:15:30] were men who had families here and something, and they wanted to work hard and do a good job doing what they were doing there, see, rather than, they wanted something to show for what they'd done after they served. And of course there was a certain amount of them that they didn't, they could lean on the shovel all day, they didn't care what they was doing, whether it was doing any good or not, you know. But most of them, most of them did. That's [00:16:00] why they took so much pride in the schoolhouses and things like that, see, because their kids were going to go to school there and so on and so forth.
CRAIG: These were just men that were out of work at the time, and so this project came along and lots of them were good hard-working men, and some of them weren't, huh?
LLOYD: Yeah, I think they made about, I think they made about $44 a month or something [00:16:30] like that, I forget. It wasn't too much that they made. I know they weren't paying me $200 a month for what I was supervising.
CRAIG: Now, Now, from 1936 until [00:17:00] into the 40s or so, you spent most of your time at Sun Valley, is that right?
LLOYD: Well, no. They sent me to Sun Valley Union Pacific they owned that, and they were starting in 1936. That's when it started, it was August or July 1936. They had [00:17:30] they had contracted with a Los Angeles outfit, O'Neil Brothers, to build a lodge. That's all. That was the only job.
LLOYD: And then they decided, Mr. Harriman decided that he [00:18:00] wanted some kind of a chairlift of some kind to get the skiers up the mountains, up the smaller mountains. And, of course, nobody knows anything. At the time, there wasn't any thoughts of of of of individual chairlift because there's none in the world. But Jimmy Kerr, an architect there, [00:18:30] our office an architect there, our office in Omaha, he worked out this scheme of this single chair lift. Well, Mr. Harriman, he jumped right on to that right away and wanted, he said he wanted one built up Dollar Mountain and one up what they called Proctor Mountain, which was a little ways around, ya see see there was three men Proctor Mountain, which was a little ways Proctor Mountain, which was a little ways Proctor Mountain, which was a little ways around. See, there was three [00:19:00] men that were behind all of this before the railroad took it over. It was actually, the railroad took it over early, but these men had first decided that before they even started to build, but they were going to build, there was three of them. There was Mr. Harriman, and Proctor, [00:19:30] and big banker from—
CRAIG: Morgan?
LLOYD: Yeah, Morgan. But before they had got started, the railroad took it on. And they bought the brass ranch there. And so they sent me up there to the railroad, [00:20:00] sent me up there in 1936 in August to build this thing. He was—nobody had ever, nobody had had ever, nobody had ever seen any such a toy as a lift. But people went wild over it after it got built, you know. Of course, the one they built up, the hard [00:20:30] one, the one to the high mountain, the Proctor Mountain over there, people didn't like that one because it was too cold going up the canyon. And they took it down after a couple of years, and they put part of it down for us, ski jump.
CRAIG: Now, as you—then when did you come back to Nampa? You spent a lot of time up at Sun Valley. When did you come back to Nampa? Did you ever leave Nampa?
LLOYD: [00:21:00] Yeah, the—we rented a house, and we were traveling most of the time from—oh, well, you see what happened. What happened is, is after the first ones were built there in 1936, [00:21:30] the chief engineer was out there, Chief Engineer from Omaha was in charge of that. And he said—I was working as a foreman there, see, at that time, foreman rate. And when it come wintertime there, he had a little [00:22:00] job that he wanted finished that hadn't been listed to do, and I had cleaned up everything and was ready to leave out of there. And he said, what I want you to do, I want you to stay here this winter. He said, just as long as you want to, if you want to stay all winter. See, of course, we were living in one of the cabins up there, see, [00:22:30] and so we didn't—he said, I want you to stay here if you want to stay here all winter. You'd love it up here if you want to stay all winter. Well, he says, stay here. But he said, you know, you built them, you know more about them than anybody else, so we just knew there was going to be lots of different—different trouble, little trouble every now and then.
LLOYD: And he said, [00:23:00] you stay right here until you're through. But, he said, I'm putting you on my roster as a steel erection officer. He said, you'll be an officer, a steel erection officer with ten headquarters at [00:23:30] Omaha. And he said, you won't spend too much time because he said there, but your headquarters will be there along with the rest of us. He says that you'll be spending most of your time in the West. So then we went on for—well, after—I stayed up there. I got tired. I didn't want to, and I stayed up [00:24:00] there through the month of January. Didn't have any snow for the big opening of Christmas, no. Not a bit of snow. And then it did—when it snowed, after it snowed once, and they tried it out a few—quite a few times, well, I left.
LLOYD: Went back to Omaha, and we lived in a—in a hotel there [00:24:30] for several months, and then began to —send me this all over, all over this U.P. system for one job after another. Then when the war came on in the 40s there, I went down to—down to [00:25:00] Portland, and I—we lived in an apartment there in Portland for a year, Mom and I, and all I did was just kind of be there in case anything happened on any of the ports, you know. And a terrific amount, amount of—a lot of things that was going through [00:25:30] a port there, Portland. Then they decided they wanted a—for the war, so they'd have oil in special places. They wanted me to look after, supervise three three new steel, big steel, 125,000-gallon oil tanks, one at Hamilton, one at Le Grande, [00:26:00] and one at Huntington. So I had a—an apartment at—in the hotel there, the big hotel, and worked out of there for [00:26:30] a year.
CRAIG: This was in—this was in Portland?
LLOYD: No, no, this was Legrand. This is Legrand, okay. I was at Portland a year before that, then Legrand for a year, supervising these other three. Well, in fact, no matter where it is, we were at Pendleton for part of the time, and then come up to Le Grande.
CRAIG: So you were—you were—then did you move back to Nampa after that?
LLOYD: [00:27:00] No, I came back—
CRAIG: When did you finally arrive back in Nampa?
LLOYD: Let's Let's see. [Silence]
LLOYD: Shut that off, man, if you want to.
LLOYD: [00:27:30] [Tape resumed] Moved in our—we had rented our house, and we come in and—
CRAIG: This was 44?
LLOYD: Yeah, and went back in our house, and then I worked on that same job as [00:28:00] a—as a steel bridge inspector for all the U.P. territory, but I was—they let me call my headquarters there instead of being called up at Omaha, which was at the end of the district, you see. They let me call my district so we could get established in some place for more [00:28:30] of my kids, you know, see. Why, we came back here and made it to headquarters. I didn't—I didn't claim any expenses here, but I claimed expenses whenever I—anyplace else didn't claim any expenses here, but I claimed expenses whenever I—anyplace else I went, see, halfway from here. But then it was just one emergency But then [00:29:00] it was just one emergency after time. One emergency after time. They were all emergencies.
CRAIG: So you were gone a lot?
LLOYD: Yeah, I was gone the biggest part of the time, see. I'd get—oh, I'd get home every couple of weeks or something, or maybe a month or a day or two, and then go on again, see.
CRAIG: When—when did your dad—when did your dad come to Nampa and start living? [00:29:30] About that same time, or—
LLOYD: No, no, he was—he was here before that. He—he would—he'd been worked on—working on a—with a bridge gang. He worked on that, and then he began to lose his eyesight, and he came here in 1938, we see, yes, see, we built that house over there, and [00:30:00] he came here about— about 32. Yeah.
CRAIG: So he lived in Nampa from 30—from about 1932 on, then, huh?
LLOYD: Uh-huh.
CRAIG: Now, what did he do from 1932 on? Did he work this bridge gang some, or—
LLOYD: He was blind, but [00:30:30] he had a little cubbyhole down there by the—what's the name of that—
CRAIG: Oh, the post office?
LLOYD: It It was right back—right back at the post office. It's back at the post office there, see? He had a little cubbyhole there, there, and he opened a little [00:31:00] candy stand, see, and cigarettes and things like that.
CRAIG: Newspapers and everything, huh?
LLOYD: Yeah, just that. And being blind, and his hearing was a little bad, he fixed up a little bed, a little bed in there, see, and he'd sleep there, stay there nights. I'd go down and get him, and if [00:31:30] I was in, I'd go down and get him, feed him, and—oh, different ones helped. They liked him, you know. They took up with him, and they helped him. And then—and he put dozens of different kinds of candy in the case, you know, but he could just—they'd come in and ask for a piece of candy, you know, see, but he could just put his fingers right on it, [00:32:00] and he'd get—and when they'd—I can see many times when they was paying him, the kids and whatnot.
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