| Mary Lou's Father
Working
at the YMCA
L:
Now, what was your first job in the Y. That was in Toledo,
right?
Si: Yes. I went in on what they called a fellowship plan,
and you were given work in the different departments. And
when I was given a permanent part, permanent position, it
was Membership Secretary of the Toledo Y. I
had my first automobile there; 1919, I was driving the Y automobile.
And late, I bought my own Ford.
L: And that started your love affair with cars.
Si: Yes. The first car that I had seen was back about, oh,
the latter part of the '90's. They had... They advertised
for the county fair, which was a big event the county, that
they were going to bring in a horseless carriage on Thursday.
Everybody in the county, I guess, was there at the fairgrounds,
and they brought in a Ford car and ran it around the track
about a dozen times. That was our first horseless carriage
to see.
L: Was
Toledo the place where the
Terrible Turk used to practice
wrestling?
Si: Yes.
L: You say you were in Toledo eight years before going to
Billings.
Si: Yes.
L: How big a town was Billings in those days?
Si: Sixteen thousand. Yes, I remember one lady, when she heard
I was going to Billings, she wanted to know if there was a
settlement there or was it all Indians. People didn't know
much about Montana in those days.
L: Billings was what? The biggest city or the second biggest?
Si: It was the second. Yep. I was able to say that I was the
best YMCA secretary in a radius of 200 miles. There wasn't
a Y closer than 200 miles from Billings. So, I wasn't stretching
the truth.
L: Was that a railroad Y?
Si: No. That was a city Y.
L: Was there anything special about [inaudible] the
city?
Si: Driving in Billings, we pulled in a little after midnight
on the Union Pacific, and the plane [sic] was met by
a hotel cab, and you could hear those wheels as they went
from the depot to the hotel. And I later found out that the
temperature was 40 degrees below zero that night.
L: How many children did you have then? Just Mary Lou or was
Tom born?
Si: Mary Lou and Tom were born in Toledo.
L: And then from Billings you moved where? To Denver?
Si: Yes, we were there for a couple of years and then went
to Toledo, back again to Toledo.
L: And then on to Pocatello?
Si: Yes. I was in Toledo for, as I remember it, about 8 years
and then to Pocatello.----
L: What exactly is or was a railroad Y?
Si: You made a special effort to offer certain privileges
like rooms, residence rooms, to the employees of the railroad.
You see, they would come in, Pocatello was a section station
where they had their shops, and also crews would change on
the trains. And there wasn't accommodations in town for them.
So the dormitory of this Y was filled with railroad men. The
company made a nice contribution towards the association,
and you recognized your obligation to the railroad. They didn't
try to run the policy of the organization. They left that
to the community.
L: I see. They expected you to...
Si: Take care of their men if rooms were available. And it
was up to us to see that they were. [Laughs] It would
even be necessary if there was an over crowd on a certain
night, to set up cots in the gymnasium, if necessary. Or to
turn the cots and equipment over to the men who wanted their
rooms and let them fix it up.
L:
Mary Lou told me once, one summer you were out of a job, and
you picked fruit up in Utah canyon.
Si: Yes,
I worked at Vivian Park, yes, Vivian Park. It was
fruit came after the summer vacations. See, they had cabins
there. They kept the cabins up, and they had a store, and
I would drive in and bring supplies back to the store.
And
then, after that was closed, I went out and picked pears.
I had the experience of making a decision whether I was going
to pick pears by the bushel or by the day. I don't remember
what the wages were, but I decided to pick them by the bushel,
not knowing that you had to pick a certain size, and all.
And I believe that I made about 10 cents an hour that first
day. That was my experience in the pear picking.
L: Did
you work just that one day? Si: Oh, yes, as far as pears were
concerned. That was a job, because you didn't dare bring them
under a certain size. That was a total loss to the grower.
L: What
did they do, go back and pick them after they got larger?
Si: Oh,
no, you just picked the big ones. They had to go through a
certain ring. If they didn't [sic] go through that ring, you
didn't pick them. Still growing, you see, after Labor day.
ML: What
did they do with the rest of the crop?
Si: Oh, they would
mature later in the year. They kept on growing, but it was
all a matter of size.
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