10 April 2013

Boulder, Nevada

We ended our trip to Disneyland by driving to Boulder, Nevada.  We'd been talking about the Great Depression in my history class recently and I used a picture of my Grandma from when she lived in Boulder to start a discussion about the Depression.  (We then had a class activity looking at a bunch of Dorothea Lange photographs.)


I don't remember that I had ever been to Boulder or across the Hoover Dam (though my mom did say that we did it once when I was 12 and we were driving to the Copper Bowl in Tucson).  I thought it would be cool to go see where my Grandma lived for a few years of her childhood.

While preparing for the activity I did in my class, I read up in my Great Grandpa's (Stewart B. Eccles) memoirs about their experience in Boulder.  At the time, he was a suit salesman and struggling to make ends meet like many others.  He wrote, "I had known good times and bad times all my life . . . but the depression years were something else."  He was desperate for a job and so used his name and wrote a letter to a cousin, Marriner Eccles.  Marriner said he could give him a job!   Though the job was really related to some kind of position in Ogden but, Stewart didn't read it clearly and high-tailed it down to Boulder to see about getting the job.  He borrowed $2 from his sister, had a big packed lunch from his wife (my Great Grandma Fern), and hitched a ride with Fern's cousin (who was headed to California) riding all the way to Las Vegas in the back of his truck.  When he got there, the job he was supposed to have obviously wasn't there, but he found another job anyway and began working in the Six Company's Store.  (Marriner Eccles owned the Utah Construction Company which was one of the six businesses involved in the Six Companies, though I otherwise don't know what the job was in Ogden or how my grandpa got this big difference confused.)

He worked in the store for a couple of years, but hated the man who was his boss.  Eventually he and Great Grandma Fern were able to stop buying things from the store (which were high priced, but automatically deducted from your pay) and save up enough to quit working at the store.  At that point, Grandpa got a job working as a "timer" on the dam.   In his book, Stewart said he earned $5 per week at the store (working 12-hour days, 6 days a week), but eventually earned $8 per week (5 days a week) as a timer.

In my Grandpa's memoirs, he doesn't mention too much about day-to-day life in Boulder, but here are a few things I remember my Grandma telling me (even though she only lived there from age 2-6).
  • The wind blew so much that Grandma Fern had to sweep the house constantly and everything was always dirty and dusty.
  • The house only had 1 bedroom, a kitchen/living room, and a bathroom, but the bathroom was only a toilet.  They would take baths once a week in a large tub in the middle of the kitchen floor.
  • The only grass and trees in town were at the government office building, so every Sunday they would get ice cream cones then go there and sit in the shade.
  • My Grandma's sister Pat was born in Boulder.
  • Whenever they were going home from somewhere they would have to count the houses on the street until they found their's since every house looked exactly the same.

On our trip, we went to the historic Boulder Motel which was built in 1933.  They have a museum there and I talked with the museum guy for a few minutes.  He told me where the company store would have been located.  Though I didn't really understand where it was while we were there, once home, I think I figured it out.  I think it was originally located where Frank T. Crowe Memorial Park is now.  

I also asked the museum guy if he knew what a "timer" meant.  He wasn't postive, but he said that at any point during the construction there were around 1500 people working at the dam site.  There was an immense amount of coordination that had to go on between the men, the concrete, the equipment, etc. A "timer" could have been any number of jobs, but was likely a person keeping track of some of the dam workers time cards. 

While at the museum, I also learned:
  • One mother's story that said something like, "by 9:00 a.m. it was already 120 degrees so I'd have to wrap my babies in wet sheets just to get them to sleep . . . "
  • There was a picture of what a row of company homes looked like, but it looked like they were on stilts and I don't recall why that would be the case (maybe they just weren't finished yet).
  • A carpenter said something like, "the Six Companies are selling these housed for $745, but they're only built out of cardboard that costs $125 . . ."
  • There was also a little sideboard about the Company Store in the museum.




Above is a picture of the outside of the historic Boulder Motel.

Below are pictures James took of the new bridge and the Dam (currently Hoover Dam, formerly Boulder Dam).





** Sidenote:  About our trip . . . we stayed at the El Rancho Motel.  It was the nicest we could find, but was pretty run down.  I sort of cringed when Molly and Jack were crawling around on the floor, but they had been cooped up for so long I couldn't stop them.  The kicker was the sign on the back of the motel room door "Absolutely no motorcycles allowed in the room."  Very classy!

07 April 2013

Joshua Tree National Park

I love National Parks.  This one, however, we could have skipped.  It's in the desert and the scenery is very desert like and there is really not much else to look at besides brown desert.  The road was under construction through most of the park and we had to wait a long time then follow a pace car.  At least it is another National Park visited (for the record books, of which there are none).


This flag represents the only color we would see for miles and miles (except for blue and brown).


Desert.  Isn't it beautiful!?!


Look, more desert.


We saw some big rocks.  Molly her first experience with an out house (hole in the ground with a toilet seat) near these rocks.  She was a little weirded out and totally obsessed with the fact that there was no sink in the bathroom.  She went, though, and use some "hanitizer" when she finished.


Look, an actual Joshua Tree.

And then a few more of them.  


Molly really was good on this long day in the car, but after a while she unbuckled herself and I just didn't have the heart to buckle her back into her seat.  We settled for the middle of the back seat with a seat belt around her middle.  I figured if people survived cars for 100 years without car seats, she would certainly survive for a few hours.

**Side notes:
* I am slightly disappointed that we didn't stop at the General Patton Museum in the middle of nowhere.  It may have been interesting and I highly doubt I will ever return to this part of the world.
*Also, we drove through Palm Springs and it looks like a super yuppyish weird town with lots of strange clothing stores, middle aged people with sweaters tied around their shoulders and loafers on their feet