 |
 |
Construction
of the Dam
Marion
Allen:
| Well, I was one of the lucky ones. I had known
Mr. Crowe from about 1912. . .or, rather he knew me. Mr. Frank
Crowe was the general superintendent of the job here. I contacted
my father, who was on the job- -he had come early in the spring.
And my instructions from him were to go to Las Vegas and see
the employment agent, and he would send me right out. The only
trouble was, by the time I got to Las Vegas, in about 2 weeks
time, the employment agent- -who had been an old friend of the
family and was given instructions from Crowe to send me out-
-had died. This kind of shook me a little bit, but I come to
the gate, and you know my hard luck story: the guards let me
through; I contacted my father here, and he sent me back to
Las Vegas. He said that they’d make arrangements to send
me out. About 2 days later we finally got out. So I didn’t
have too much of a hardship. The only problem was they warned me that the new employment agent, Mr. E. H. McAdams, was a hard-boiled man. You could get out on the job, but when you got there you had to take care of yourself and be sure you didn’t get hurt, get your work done, because you never got any second chance with McAdams. When I arrived they sent me out to the tunnels. I’d never seen the inside of a tunnel, and I wasn’t too enthused, but I didn’t want to pass anything up. This tunnel looked like about as big as this building here, and I went into it, so it didn’t bother me too much. . .about that far away. I went to work on 13 December 1931, and I was quite fortunate there, because about 3 days later the timekeeper quit. Mr. Red McCabe was the walker on the job, and he was under Woody Williams, the assistant superintendent. But Red McCabe had also worked on a Bureau of Reclamation construction job with [my father] about 1912, and so he knew me. So he give me the timekeeper’s job, which didn’t pay any more- -65¢ an hour, I believe it was something like that - -but it was a little easier job. So I jumped at that, and I was fortunate I stayed there. Of course, I also found out that part of this timekeeper’s job, number keeper’s job, was to see that the powder got loaded up in trucks. And we’d load about 2 tons of powder and, although I didn’t know at the time it was against the law, we also loaded the primers on the truck [laughter] And this was part of my job. But after a short time they stopped us from taking the primers in with the dynamite. From then on, we stayed till it was holed through- -got the tunnels through in the spring of 1932, and then they started the concrete. As I followed construction, I was anxious to get back on the concrete and get out of that mining- -I wasn’t a miner. So I went up to the upper end of the portals where they just started the tunnel for the concreting and explained that I was a cement finisher. This they doubted very much, and the fellow laughed about it. But he said, "If you’re a finisher, why, we need you.” After that I put in about 4 _ years as a cement finisher, and was the subforeman part of the time. Usually stayed right with it. . .it was a pretty good job. You didn’t get very rich, but you always made enough to eat on. I think I was very fortunate to always have a job. |
Copyright University of Nevada Oral History Program 2002
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| Before You Build the Dam | ||
| Controversy over Naming the Dam |
National
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