I was going to tell you about Murl Emery’s
store. They would bring in the food and everything to Murl
Emery’s store. They never did have time to even check
the bills of lading, so he would tell his customers, “Well,
OK. Just pay us what you paid for the same thing before you
came here.” It was the honor system. They only had one
man and his wife to take care of the store, because Mr. Emery
was busy on the boats. So, now, I used to pay in Silverton
60¢ for a pound of coffee and 40¢ for a can of peaches
and things like that, where people from Texas were paying
about 20¢ for that can of peaches and about 40¢
for that can of coffee. Everybody just laid their money on
the counter, and if there wasn’t anybody to take care
of you, you got what you wanted off of the shelf and laid
your money down. It was the honor system. But I want to tell
you that one man who was working for Murl Emery quit after
about a month, and he had snitched enough money from Murl
Emery to buy himself a new car. [laughter]
Now, Murl Emery had a ferry across the river before we ever
began to build the dam, so all of the engineers that had been
doing the surveying for everything knew Murl. He had the contract
to take the men down the river in boats to the diversion tunnels.
The diversion tunnels were being dug from both ends at the
same time. That meant that there were 8 crews around the clock
- - 24 crews a day - - going to those diversion tunnels, and
they all went down river on the boats. |
|
National
Archives and Records Administration