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Oral History |
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Bad Eye last of the CP Chinese workers left in Elko, Nevada Recorded and edited by John Eldredge My name is James William Hefferon, I come from a long line of Irish railroad workers. My dad worked for the Western Pacific out of Elko Nevada. He came during construction days when they were building the railroad. My grandfather worked in Salt Lake City Utah for the D & R G. My mother was born in Ogden and moved to Salt Lake City with her father's family were she met my father. Her family was in Ogden Utah and worked for the Southern Pacific. They were married in Elko Nevada. I moved to Elko with my father's family in the early nineteen thirties. I was about eight years old at the time. It was during this time that I met Bad Eye. He was the last of the Chinese residents of Elko. He had come to Elko during the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad. He had some kind of accident that injured his eye. That's why we called him Bad Eye. I never did know his real name. He was about 80 of so years old, five foot three inches high and weighed 130 pounds. His hair was still dark black and he wore it in the traditional que, although many Chinese had cut their hair by this time. He dressed typically Chinese. In the five years I knew him, I never did see him with out his silk skull cap so I can't say if he shaved the front of his head or not. His blouse was dark blue and buttoned down the center at the front. It was crocheted down the front and had little straps that pulled over and fastened to cloth knot buttons. It reminded me of a smoking jacket. His pants were bell bottom blue, and he wore wooden soled shoes which strapped to his feet. They made him walk funny and I thought it would take him forever to get anywhere. Bad Eye was anti-social around adults. I think he must have been mistreated by them in the past. We always treated him well because he treated us nice. In fact he liked us. We were probably his only real friends. Joe Gabbieola and I visited him regularly. Martin Mackey would come with us on occasion. The old fellow really enjoyed our visits. Bad Eye lived in the downstairs of the old Chinese church. It was located across the Humbolt river along the railroad grade. When I heard the train coming, I would run out to see if my dad was on the caboose. If he was on his way in I would run home, but if he was on his way out, I ran out of sight so he wouldn't see me. Then I knew I could stay for a while. The church was two stories high and had a look of gingerbread. It reminds me of the old victorian screen doors we had. It was made of carved wood and painted old english red, barn red, and black. It had faded over the years from lack of care. The style was Oriental. The Chinese temple was located on the top level where two stairs ways lead up from either side to a porch at the top. The temple still had all its furnishings and was very fascinating to us. Nobody bothered anything in those days. There wasn't vandalism like today. I can remember beads and other objects hanging from the ceiling, and we had to separate the strings of beads to walk through. Inside were table-like alters and three alcoves at one end, a large one in the center and smaller ones on either side. The center one had a large wooden figure. It was black faced, clothed in gold, and about three foot high. The wooden alters were painted with black lacquer and had shiny red tops, and the curtains around the alcoves were red. It was a strange and spooky place. Bad Eye gave me a wooden black lacquered pot that came from the altar. It was hand painted with flowers and sat on a pedestal. The pedestal came apart in two pieces. It must have been 18 inches high and a foot wide. I gave it to my mother. My sister still has it. The first level of the building was finished with an old slat wood floor. It had a large kitchen with cupboards and a large square oak table and regular old chairs. There were several smaller rooms which had wooden bunks built against the walls. Bad Eye slept in one of these rooms. There was also a den where the old man smoked. He was very clean and kept the place clean as well. The church building was moved to the Las Vegas strip in 1947. It has since been torn down. When Bad Eye smoked he had weird dreams, pipe dreams. We would watch the old fellow when he puffed and it smelled good to us. But we never touched it. His pipes were made of ivory and carved like a dragon. The stem was yellow white. He gave me one of his pipes and my dad made me get rid of it. It was a beautiful thing. It was more than a foot long and carved like a dragon with horns and all. It seems like the dragon came up with his mouth opened some way and in his mouth was a small brass cup. Old Bad Eye would dip his opium in the end of it, but he never used much. The bowl of the pipe was the brass cup and very small compared to the pipes my dad smoked. The opium burned like tabacco but had a sweet smell which permeated the whole basement. We could smell it as soon as we came in. It was kind of perfumy, not a tabacco smell at all. It seems to me he mixed his opium some way, but I really can't tell what he did. The old man laid on his side a lot when he smoked, and we sat and talked to him. Then he would roll over on his back and we watched and studied him and his pipe. He was an interesting old fellow. In Elko, what were we going to do? We had radio but it didn't come on until 7:00 pm. There really wasn't much for young people to do. When old Bad Eye died I really felt terrible. I had lost a good friend. I didn't think they even had a funeral. If they did, my Dad didn't let me go. The Elko cemetery was an interesting place. In the Chinese section there were big tins. They were about a foot to a foot and a half square, and two feet in height. The lids were bent down around so they would fit tightly. We had to pry them open. The corners of the tins were square. I remember the lids best. They had a bead around the edge like that of an old wash tub. We could get our fingers under them and pry them off. I'm sure they were galvanized because there was no rust on them and they were too heavy to be tin. I don't remember if they were marked, but they must have been. There were dozens of them stacked up in piles. They had been there for years before I saw them. We went to the cemetery after school and looked through the cans for rings. We never found anything, not even teeth. They may not have used gold in their teeth back then. The skulls had all their teeth. No flesh or hair remained. We never found anything in the cans but bones. The bones were stacked with the skull in the center. One day we took a skull to school and got in real trouble. When we went to return it we couldn't find the can we took it from, so one can ended up with two heads. We used to wonder about all those cans of bones and our teacher told us that they were to be sent back to China. When there was a large enough load they would load them up and return them to their home land. There were many Chinese graves out on the old Central Pacific right of way. These were never dug up and returned to China, they were to far out of the way. I know of one Chinese grave out around Halleck Nevada. It's been there ever since I can remember. It's marked with a wood marker. I saw it when there was a train wreck there. It was left from the construction days of the Central Pacific. I don't think the graves at Palisades Nevada were ever dug up either. In the mountains when they were blasting many Chinaman were blown up. Their remains were left also. One other Chinese family came to Elko and opened a store. But they didn't stay long. They were the Wing Lee family and sold produce shipped by rail from Sacramento California. They had two children my age, Zong Wing and Wing Lee. Wing Lee was the son and Zong Wing was the girl. Wing Lee was in my class at school and was a brilliant kid. He could look at columns of numbers on the black board and give the sums right off. I had to add and it took much longer to get the answer. There were two other Oriental families in Elko with children in school. Both were Japanese. Why they ever choose Elko or how long they stayed I don't know. I left Elko in 1941. |
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