HomeMy Public PortalAboutFleming, TomSubject: Tom and Ellen Fleming, Margie Bowen
Address: Donnelly
Date: April 19, 1976
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Oxen team used for logging at Tamarack -about 1908.
Deadwood mines 1924-lead and zinc
Oberbilling-first owned Stibnite mine
Stibnite-1932
Bradley bought mines at Stibnite
1927
Mines at Stibnite
Power line from Cascade to Stibnite
Local City Government of Stibnite
Food at mining camps
Game at Stibnite
Callendar's Store Stibnite
Dances
Doug Yensen
RELEASE Or TAPIRS TO IDAHO BICENTENNIAL COMMISSION'S ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
,___T---
I, ( a f F-LE11,11,0G- on this day, 1\-Pka_ l C 07 c
hereby give and grant to the Idaho State Historical Society and the Idaho
Bicentennial Commission as a donation for such scholarly and educational
purposes as the Idaho historical Society and the Idaho Bicentinnial Commissi-n
shall determine, the tape recordirgs made today, and allliterary rights therein.
(signed)
( ,i tness)
Tom and Ellen Fleming and Margie Bowen
with Joe Bennett
And Doug Jones
April 19, 1976
Page 1
DOUO "Today's date is April 19, 1976. We are conducting an interview between Mr.
and Mrs. Tom Fleming and Mr, Joe Bennett and Mrs. Margie Bowen for the purpose
of recording oral history. This conversation is being tape recorded at the
Flemi.ng's residence northwest of Donnelly. The time now is approximately
2:00 p.m."
JOE "The first thing, Tom, we'll ask you where you were born and when?"
TOM "I was born in Halley, Idaho, August 10, 1903."
JOE "Ellen, can you tell us when you were born?"
ELLEN "I was born in Cumberland, Wyoming in 1909."
JOE "Can you tell us where your folks came from, originally, Tom?"
TOM "My mother was born in Clover Valley, Nevada, They came from Nevada and
settled about 25 or 30 miles of, west of Hailey in that Fairfield country.
They homesteaded and farmed for a few years and then came into Bailey. I don't
know the exact year but it was probably around 1883."
'JOE "Your dad, where did he come from?"
'TOM "My dad was born in Horseshoe Bend. His dad had a saw mill right in Horseshoe
Bend. They ran a saw mill for several years, Finally, they quit the saw mill
and went down and homestead right where Emmett is now, right in the town of
Emmett,"
JOE "Do you know what year that was?"
TOM "I don't know what year they homesteaded, I couldn't tell you that, Joe."
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JOB "Do you know where your grandfather came from to Horseshoe Bend?"
rom "They were originally from Pennsylvania."
JOE "Fleming, is that an Irish name?"
TOM "No, I think it's Pennsylvania Dutch. The grandfather. -can my mother's side of
the family was born in Germany."
JOE "Ellen, what can you tell us about your folks?"
ELLEN "Well, my, mother was born in Finland and so was my dad but of course he was
Swedish. He was born right on the border of Finland."
JOE "Were they married there?"
ELLEN "No, they were married in this country."
JOE "Do you know when they came here?"
ELLEN "I don't know exactly when Dad came because he came before Mother did. I think
she came in 1905."
JOE "Where did he come to and where did your mother come to?11
ELLEN "Dad came to Montana but Mother came straight to Wyoming, right straight."
JOE "Her folks came out to the coal fields."
ELLEN "Yes, that's where a lot of them came."
JOE "Do you know what town they were born in there in Finland?"
ELLEN "Well, Mother was born in Jurva, Finland. I don't know the name of the town
where Dad was born, it was right on the border and it was just a little community."
JOE "Where were they married?"
ELLEN "They were married in Cumberland, Wyoming."
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JOE "Then when did they come here?"
ELLEN "Well, of course, we came off and on but we bought the ranch in 1926."
JOE "But you'd come in here before?"
ELLEN "Yes, we'd come during the summers and visit the relatives here. I'll tell you
what happened, they had so many mine strikes. Then we'd come here and spend
the summers and go back in the fall after the strikes were settled. We'd go
back and go to work."
JOE "Did your father live here very long?"
ELLEN "De died in '53 from '26 to 153. Of course Mother lived thirteen years later,
she died ten years ago."
JOE "Your folks farmed and your dad was in the saw mill. Did you work in the saw
mill, too?"
TOM "Yeah, when I was big enough to walk I started in the saw mill. My dad used to
drive oxen, it fact, when they came into the Wood River country about the only
mode of transportation they had to get around in was oxen and horse teams.
My dad had many, many yokes of oxen. He hauled heavy machinery to the mines.
Then he finally got into the saw mill business. Then logged and hauled lumber
with the oxen."
JOE "I never did see but one outfit logging with oxen and that was over there by
Tamarack. Here come eight head•of oxen down the hill with all these logs."
ELLEN "Where was that, how long ago?"
JOE "It's been a long time ago because we was going to Council to pick up apples.
It was probably along in the fall of 1908. I know we had to cross the Weiser
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JOE "River thirteen times to get to Fruitvale. We used to buy out apples there
from Tom Glenn. He had two boys and the last one just died here the other day.
Then when dial you start mining, Tom?"
TOM "First my dad had the saw mill for years. I started working in the mines in
about 1923."
JOE "That was before you and Ellen were married."
TOM "Oh yes"
JOE "What year were you married?"
ELLEN "1930 "
JOE "Where were you married?"
ELLEN "Cascade"
JOE "Where did you get acquainted with Ellen, Tom?"
TOM "At the Deadwood Mine. I mined in the Hailey area for a few years. Then the
Bunker Hill outfit that I was working for in the Hailey area bought the Deadwood
mine. So I came into Cascade headed for Deadwood in December of 1924. Then
I worked at Deadwood until 1930."
JOE "What did you do at the mines, you were a miner?"
TOM "I started out as a miner but all the time at Deadwood I was mine foreman."
ELLEN "Was it a gold mine?"
TOM "No, it was lead and zinc and silver. I think we left Deadwood in '32."
JOE "What was the name of that mine?"
TOM "Just the Deadwood mine."
JOE "I can remember when the miners used to come over to Donnelly to dance from
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JOE "the Deadwood mine. Was there just the one mine there, Tom?"
TOM "Just one mine at Deadwood,"
JOE "Do you know when the discovery was made there at Deadwood?"
TOM "I suppose the prospecting started there in 1910, '15 somewhere along in there.
Those old prospectors had those mines and they just hung on and hung on for
years till they could finally get somebody to take it over. It was just like
Stibnite, for example. You could say that the discovery was made at Stibnite
as early as 1903 because that's when the Thunder Mountain boom started. It
was about 1903 when those miners started drifting out of the Thunder Mountain
area. As they came out they prospected on their way out and they discovered
Stibnite."
JOE "Did Overbtllitk. do any of that, did he discover any of that or did he just
buy the property?"
TOM "He practically, you might say, bought it. It was a deal where those old pros-
pectors went in and they filed on their claims but they would struggle along
and they needed a grub stake so Overbilliftg would grub stake them... After a
few years he'd: quitgrubstaking.them and he'd take over the mines. I don't
think he himself really filed on very much land, .Of course, he filed bn a few
around there."
JOE Vhen did you go into Stibnite, Tom?"
TOM "The first time was 1932, when Deadwood closed down. I went to Atla►+ta first,
it was running pretty good. I went from Deadwood to Atlanta, then from Atlanta
back to Stibnite. That was in December of '32, almost '33. We stayed there
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TOM "till 1935."
JOE "When did F.W. Bradley take over at Stibnite?"
TOM "Well, he took it over in the spring of 1927. It was in the stages of devel-
opment until 1930."
JOE 'Overbilling hadn't developed too much when he sold out had he?"
TOM "No, not really. He did some development but very little. He turned it over
to Bradley on a lease deal. He just took a certain percent of the royalties."
JOE "I remember him really well, he drove a Franklin car. He didn't want to be
bothered with putting water in and a Franklin was air cooled. Do you have any
idea how many claims were in the Stibnite property?"
TOM "I would say roughly, probably a hundred."
JOE "They did a little mining before they started the open pit, didn't they?"
TOM 'Oh yes. They started the mill in 1930 and they mined underground. It was
strictly for gold operation. They mined for eight years underground. How-
ever there was some antimony but it was more or less a by-product and at that
time there wasn't even a market for it. They would rather have not had any
antimony at all but there was a relationship between the gold and the antimony."
JOE "After they mined there about eight years they started the open pit when they
discovered tungstun or was they still mining for gold?"
TOM "They were still mining for gold. They moved from the upper camp at Meadow
Creek, that's where the underground mine was. The open pit mine was about two
miles south. That operation went on until '38, from '38 until '41."
JOE "Tell us a little about that open pit, how they mined it, Tom:"
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TAM "With power shovel and trucks."
JOE "How did they handle that material after they put it in the truck what did they
do with it? Did they run it through the mill. then?"
TOM "Yeah, they had to haul it from the pit up to the mill, which was two miles."
END OF SIDE ONE
JOE "The antimony, what was that used for?"
TOM "Most of it toaharden lead for bullets. They used to for flam pro6fing and
paint, they developed many uses for it."
JOE "Did they use that in steel, too?"
TOM "Yes"
JOE "The same as they did tungstun."
TOM "Probably not so much in the steel as they did with lead. But tungstun they
alloyed with the steel and the antimony was alloyed with the lead."
DOUG "What other uses are there for tungstun?"
TOM "I don't know for sure whether there are any other uses other than alloying it
with steel. What it does with tteel, it hardens the steel so it will stand up
under tremendous heat."
JOE "Do you have any idea on what their production was. Tom?"
TOM "I have all the figures, Joe, right off the top of my head I couldn't tell you
but I could get them awful quick if you wanted them."
JOE "I just thought maybe you could tell us what an enormous amount it was. I
thought it was supposed to be 75% of the U.S. production wasn't it?"
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TOM "Yeah, I expect it was."
JOE "That ore was mined and hauled to Cascade, wasn't it?"
TOM "Not the ore itself. They did the same thing with .the tungstun ore. They
mined it then hauled it and put it through the mill.. Then the concentrates
were hauled."
JOE "Where was that shipped to, Tom?"
TOM "Most of the concentrates went to California. The gold concentrates, they
were shipped to Salt Lake."
DOUG "Jere they shipped by rail?"
TOM "Yes, from Cascade."
"Did they have power in there when you first went in there, Tom?"
TOM "Yes, not Idaho Power but they had their own generating plants."
JOE "Can you tell us something about what the power line cost and the length of it
from Cascade?"
TOM "The length of it must've been around seventy miles. It was eighty miles by
--road but they took some short cuts through the mountain."
JOE "That was quite an expensive deal."
rOM "Well, I imagine it was well over a million dollars."
JOE "About how many men did they work there in the mines? Did they work three
shifts there all the time you were there?"
TOM "When Bradley first started it was a three shift deal, they worked around the
clock for years. Then most generally, I would say, it was on a two shift basis
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TOM "a night shift and a day shift."
JOE "Did they have a very large number pf people in there before the war started,
before they started producing before the war."
TOM 'I think when we went in there in the spring of 1941, I think they had about
sixty men working there. I don't know how many families there were."
JOE "I saw a figure 'if six hundred families once."
ELLEN "At the peak I think there was fifteen hundred people there."
TOM "They actually discovered this tungstun in the diamond drill holds back in
Washington in the middle of February or March. They decided the quickest way
to get to it was to sink a shaft and start mining it from underground. We
were working for the Anaconda mining company in Mount City, Nevada. We'd been
in Stibnite prior to that so they knew us. They wanted us to come back and
help sink the shaft. We went back and sunk the shaft. When we went there in
the first of April, 1941,.Iwould say there was probably sixty men at that time.
I'll tell you things happened awful fast. You just can't imagine how that thing
boomed."
"That's when they started building all those houses and everything."
"Yeah, it seemed like you'd get one expansion program finished and they'd hit
you with another one. The mill expanded from about 150 tons a day up to twenty-
five hundred tons a day and from sixty men to four hundred men."
"What was the Mountain City mine, was that gold?"
"No, copper. That was really a rich deposit."
"Isthat still working.?"
"No, it closed down. One of the reasons I decided to leave there because I
could see the beginning of the end then when we left. I knew, of course I
JOE
TOM
JOE
TOM
JOE
TOM
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TOM "was well acquainted with the superintendent of Stibnite, he wouldn't ask us
to come up there unless he had something pretty good."
JOE "There at Stibnite, was there several other mines working in there at the
same time?"
TOM "Yeah, Cinnabar they called it. They run the power line from Stimnite into
Cinnabar."
DOUG "Was there a local city type government at Stibnite or was it more of a
company town?"
TOM "It was an incorporated village. They incorporated it I would say about 1947.
I was the first mayor of Stibnite. They had a mayor and city touncil and
marshal and police."
' '711N "It was ouite a town, really nice, really a wonderful camp. We had a hoepital
and a recreation hall. Most of it is up in McCall now. Our house and a lot
of other housesare there now. We go there every once in a while to take a look
at our old house."
JOE "How did they keep the road open, Tom?"
TOM "In the early days during the gold operation they didn't keep it open. They
just stock piled the concentrates. We were snowed in from November till May.
Then after the urgent need for the tungstun and the antimony and so many
people moved back there it was kept open by the state and the federal government
put in some money and the company spent a lot of money on the snow pllws and
the rotary's. It was very expensive."
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ELLEN "They were very good roads, I don't think we were ever snow bound except when
we had a real hard blow."
JOE "I had an uncle and aunt of mine once that cooked for Holk. She said the second
man at the table, she'd cook a platter of eggs, and the first man would take
two eggs and the next man would take all of them: When the snow came Holk
alwayd had to haul his supplies over the snow, which was very expensive. She
told him about it and fussed about it and she said, 'He eats a dozen eggs
every morning for breakfast.' Holk said, 'That's all right, give him all the
eggs he wants.' She said, qtr. Holk, those eggs are costing you a dollar and
a half a dozen.' He said, 'I don't care if they cost a dollar and a half a
piece, give him all%he:wants!'"
"The food was wonderful."
ELLEN "Except the eggs, they weren't always so good."
TOM "Well, at Deadwood, of course, they weren't because when we were in Deadwood
they never kept the road open at all. They had to lay all of their supplies
in in the fall."
JOE "That was before refrigeration. The one thing I can remember that I never
liked was cold storage eggs. Even if they'd only been in cold storage a little
while seemed like they always had a terrible taste to them."
TOM "Miners don't have a real good appetite. They are working underground and thr
air is not too good and their appetite is not like it would be for a logger.
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TOM "In Deadwood, of course, I was working underground and I didn't have too much
of an appetite anyway, but a big platter of those eggs would go by me And I'd
hold my nose. The guy next to me was working outside and he'd slip off about
four or five aggs. Now he could eat them I'll nevee know."
JOE "I think it was kind of traditional that the miners table was very well supplied."
TOSS "Oh yes, the best in the country. Of course, the loggers, too."
JOE "How long did your work there, Tom, and what position did you have?"
TOM "I was the assistant manager."
JOE "How long were you there?"
TOM "Well, we were there nine years, weren't we?"
ELLEN "I think, all total, we put in thirteen years at Stibnite."
TOM "We were there nine years the last time and it closed down right shortly after
we left."
ELLEN "We left in '50, and I think it lasted another year."
ITOM "Yeah"
JOE "Do you think that probably would've run longer if Bradley hadn't got killed?"
TOM "No, it wouldn't Joe. In fact as we left there I could see the handwriting on
the wall. It was just one of those things. You could tell those people
in Stibnite that the mine was going to be closed down and they would think
that was impossible, it just couldn't be done. I knew a lot different. It
just couldn't have continued to run unless they discovered more ore."
JOE "I've heard that a lot of these tailing piles are rich in gold. Is that
true, Tom?"
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TOM "Well, in a way it is, Joe. There is lots of gold but recovering it is another
thing. In their the gold operation they got about a 65% recovery, the rest
went out in the tailings. They could make a better recovery if they wanted
to. -See, the gold was real fine in hard rock and in order to make a better
recovery they had to grind the rock finer. So, when they started to grind it
finer it cost them more money. So they would wind up with less net even though
they made a better recovery. They had to hit a happy medium and take a 65%
recovery. But there was lots of gold that went out."
ELLEN "Why doesn't somebody pan it?"
TOM "It isn't free gold, it's locked in that rock."
END OF SIDE TWO
JOE "Did you mine anymore after you left there, Tom?"
TOM "No, we had several chances."
ELLEN "We came to the ranch in '50 and we haven't been off Of the place."
TOM "We stuck with it for better than 25 years and that was long enough."
JOE "Then you come out here and bought this ranch from McCall?"
TOM "We bought it from Johnson. It had changed hands a couple of times."
JOE "You raised hay and cattle."
TOM "Yeah, grain and seed and cattle."
JOE "The mine around Yellow Pine, was that mine going, too?"
TOM "Nothing, productive Joe. They had some prospects down there but they weren't
producing anything."
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JOE "They were mining mostly for gold, weren't they?"
TOM "They were mostly prospecting for antimony but they never got any production.
Of course, Bonanaa did. They produced quite a lot of quicksilver up there.
When were you up there Marg?"
MARGIE "We went up there in November of '42, after the war started. I think that was
about the peak of it. Monahan was head of it."
JOE "What started Yellow Pine?"
TOM "Well, I would think probably, Joe, you could almost go back to the Thunder
Mountain days. Of course, there were a few prospects around there but nothing
productive."
JOE "You weren't old enough to be in on any of that Thunder Mountain."
TOM "No, that was just about the time I was born."
DOUG "I was wondering, back in Stibnite, did you see much game back there in those
days?"
ELLEN "Yeah, they'd come right into the back yard any time."
TOM "I'm not trying to run the Fish and Game down or anybody else but they try end
tell me there's as much game as there ever was. We used to see the deer right
in the back yard. To try and tell somebody that was :there and saw it and
know it, for some young guy to try and tell me what it was like back there fifty
years ago and he wasn't even born. After we got married in 1930 our house
was right along a stream. I'd come home from work and heck, we'd take the
fishing pole and go down to the creek. While we were getting our fishing poles
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TOM
"ready the darned deer would come right up to where we were getting ready to
fish. They'd just come right up there and look at you. We could catch us a
mess of fish in a few minutes and go home and cook them for supper. We kept
going back to Deadwood fishing year after year after year, even after we came
onto the ranch. But so help me God, the last time we went to Deadwood fishing
I never saw one single deer, I saw one track. We didn't catch enough fish to
eat. Then they try to tell you there's as much game as there used to be. We
used to go in on the Middle Fork from the Wood River country. We used to go
in there and my God the deer would just come right up to camp."
mu "Even after we moved here in '50 we had them right here in our timber; the deer.
We even had racoons and all sorts of wild things. Of course, we still have the
coyotes, they are here now. We had deer and fish in -/Mud Creek, which is
unheard of now."
TOM "We were in Stibnite during the depression. I'd work for four and a half a
day and I thought I was making pretty good money. We lived on venison back
there but we never wasted one single bit of meat. If you Lunt back there now
I bet you couldn't even get enough meat to eat."
ELLEN "You couldn't."
JOE "Or when they wouldn't let us kill fool hens, they didn't for years and years
and years because somebody could kill them with a stick. Now thcy.have about
a hundred day open season on them, all grouse. I've driven hundreds of miles
of woods and places where grouse should be and I saw one grouse."
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TOM "I was born in Hailey and we used to come over the Galena Summit down on the
head of the Salmon River. I can remember, if you've ever been over there
you know those big sage brush flats. I've seen those big sage brush flats when
they were almost alive with sage hens. But I bet you couldn't fine one sage
hen."
JOE "Where did you go to school?"
TOM "I went to school in Hailey."
JOE "Did they have ahigh school there?"
TOM "Yeah, they had a high school there."
ELLEN "I started my school in Cumberland, Wyoming and I ended here in McCall. I
graduated from McCall."
JOE "Did you have some brothers and sisters?"
TOM "Yenh,there was seven kids in the family. They are all gone but my youngest
brother."
JOE "Where did you fit in there, Tom?"
TOM "Well, there were three kids older than I was."
JOE "Ellen?"
ELLEN "There were three of us, I havd a brother older and a sister younger."
JOE "Wayne is the oldest one in the family?"
ELLEN "Yes, and of course you know Virgi.e Maki, there's just two years difference
between us."
TOM "My youngest brother still lives in Stanley. He had the mail contract from
Hailey to Stanley for years and years. He retired just last year and turned
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TOM "it over to his daughter and she's carrying it. He has a ranch about ten or
fifteen miles south of Stanley."
JOE "Were the rest of them miners like you, Tom?"
TOM "No, I was the only one that went underground. They never had any desire. I
just got started in it and it never seemed that I could stop."
ELLEN "I think that's the way it is, once you start mining it gets in your blood."
TOM "Of course my dad had that little saw mill and he -needed help. There was tw•o
boys older than I and us boys stayed home and helped Dad run the saw mill and
log and he had a little bunch of range cattle."
JOE "Where did he get his logs, Tom, and how?"
TOM "They logged with the oxen and the saw mill was about thirty miles north of
Halley. It's just up north of where Sun Valley Is. I can remember when Sun
Valley was just a cattle ranch."
JOE "Well, at Horseshoe Bend you said your grandfather floated logs?"
TOM "Oh, they used to float the logs down the Payette River. They cut them ,up along
the river and floated them down the river to Horseshoe Bend. My dad run many
a lot down the Payette River down to Horseshoe Bend."
JOE "They didn't have quite so many rocks then."
END OF SIDE THREE
DOUG "Were Indians in Horseshoe Bend?"
."OM "I can remember my grandmother telling about the Indians that came into
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TOM "horseshoe Bend. My folks had two or three cows. The Indians used to come in
there and beg for food. My grandmother got to giving them a little milk. As
soon as she gave them a little milk they'd come back the next day and they'd
want some more. She had to put a stop to it some ;way so one day they came in
and she had some sour milts. She gave them sour milk and they really got mad.
I remember she was telling about this one time they thought the Indians were
going to attack. They had a fairly large house and everyone got in the house
that night. They had an upstairs and they were going to wait and see if these
Indians would attack _ They never did but they were given orders that everyone
had a gun was to shoot the firsth thing you see. During the night there was
a little girl that had to go to the bathroom and she got out and went out in
the brush. They darned near shot her. They didn't but they could see her
moving out there and one guy was gonna shoot her and I guess this other fella
stopped him."
DOUG "Who were some of the merchants in Stibnite during the time that you lived there?"
ELLEN "Frank Callender was it, I think."
TOM ''Of course, for years it was just a company store. I think Solly Callender,
that's Franks' dad, was the first really independent operator of the store."
DOUG "Then he continued to run it?"
JOE "No, they moved down to Yellow Pine, I believe."
TOM "Callenders ran it during the depression. I don't know exactly when Callenders
left. We left -there in '35 and Callender was running it then."
DOUG "I think he said they left in '39."
TOM "That's probably about right."
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JOE "Then they bought out Homer Lavander in Yellow Pine. The first: time I knew
Homer he run the store at Riggins, thar was in 1914. I believe Jim Harris
bought him out. Then he went to Yellow Pine, Homer Lavazider did."
(break)
ELLEN "I was gonna say maybe that's the reason the Indians weren't here, it was
just too rough for them;"
JOE "I don't think they ever stayed here in the winter."
TOM "I get to thinking back and nowadays if we get snowed in for a day, my God,
you think we're killed; When we were in Deadwood we'd go in there about the
middle of October, we wouldn't get out of there till the first of July, There
was no way in the world to get out."
JOE "Talking about Deadwood, them boys, Roy May and George Schaffer run a bunch of
dances. They had a girl orchestra, eight or ten girls. Anyhow, they had
four dances a week. One at McCall, one around on the west side of the lake at
the old hall there, one at Meadows and one in Donnelly. They were cussing about
it there at Donnelly because they had so many fights. Those boys were ooming
from Deadwood and fighting. I come along there one night and there was two guys
fighting. I jumped out of the car and a big tall slim guy knocked a heavier
guy down and he said I'm gonna kick him in the face, he always kicked me in the
face when he got me down; About that time Doug Yensen come bursting out the
door and he said, 'Help me, Joe.' and he jumped on this fellas back like this
and I reached around and I got him by the thunb. He just swung me off of that
porch with that thumb. Doug had his arm around his neck just choking him as
hard as he could to keep him from kicking the guy that was on the ground in the
face. We finally got him choked and down he went. So we said, 'Let's throw
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JOE "him in the car.' I said, 'That your car?' and he said, 'Yeah, we are partners!'
They were mining pogether over at Deadwood. So we throwed him in the car and
he said, 'I'll take him home.'"
"When was that Joe?"
"Viten they was mining over there at Deadwood. I don't remember what their names
was. You probably knew Doug Yensen."
"Yeah"
"Ile was as 'stout as a bull and he just jumped on this guy's rack and throwed his
arms around his neck. I thought he was gonna break his neck but he didn't:.
hurt him."
"Back in the early days in Stibnite, of course that was before the town was
incorporated and before we had a deputy sheriff, or anything back there, we
used to have to kind of take the law into our own hands. If some guy got
rough somebody would just have to subdue him."
"You didn't have a jail at that time?"
"No, we didn't. I remember this one guy was a big, stout, husky miner and he
was working graveyard. He come off shift at 8:00'in the morning and decided to
get drunk. He started to make a lot of noise around the bunk house there, of
course there were fellas trying to sleep. The cook went and got the mine
superintendent and thought he could do something with him and he couldn't do
anything. Finally they went and got three or four guys to get him down so
they could hog tie him. They finally got him down and got him hog tied and
somebody said let him up now. They went to let him up and they'd tied one of
these guys to the drunk guy!"
IILLEN "Those were the good old days."
Page 21
TOM "By the time they got the rope untied add got everything straightened around the
guy had passed out;"
END OF SIDE FOUR AND INTERVIEW
'HE STAR-NEWS—THURSDAY—SEPTEMBER 30, 1976
Services held for former Stibnite
mine superintendent
DONNELLY—Services
for long-time Valley resident
Thomas E. Fleming, 73, who
died September 25th in a
Boise hospital, were con-
ducted Wednesday in the
Lake Fork Finnish Church.
Rev. Dennis Neels of Our
Savior Lutheran Church in
McCall officiated and music
was by vocalist Bill Leaf and
organist Linda Duncan.
Casket bearers were Ches-
ter Scheline, Charles Sche-
line, Jake Maki, Frank Nis-
ula, Art Nissula and Roy
Parks. Honorary bearers
were Murrell Ready, Ed
Cruzen, Frank Hall, Bob
McBride, Pete Wallace,
Jack Kangas and Frank
Callender. Interment follow-
ed in the Finnish Cemetery,
under the direction of Wal-
ker Chapel.
He was born on August 10,
1903 at Hailey and married
Ellen Stenberg on October
20, 1930 in Cascade. He
worked in mines in Montana
and Nevada and at the
Deadwood Mine before be-
coming superintendent and
assistant manager of the
Stibnite Mine operation dur-
ing World War II. The couple
had ranched in the Norwood
area since 1950.
He was a Valley County
Commissioner between 1962
and 1972, when he retired, a
former McCall -Donnelly
school trustee and a member
of Cascade Lodge No. 82, AF
& AM and Valeria Chapter
No. 76, O.E.S., McCall.
Surviving are his wife, of
Donnelly; a brother, Harry,
Stanley; and several nieces
and nephews. He was pre-
iii
ceded in death by four
brothers and two sisters.