I wonder if there are mystical slots in the universe where unfulfilled plans are filed. If there are, there must be a big one for the wonderful plans made for Contact, Nevada in the early 1920's. It was supposedly destined to produce huge amounts of copper, silver and even gold ore. The plats for the town are still on file in the Elko County office, with all the streets and lots laid out with great precision. Even now one can find surveyors' stakes in what is left of the town, as weathered and worn as the dreams which set its construction into action. All the way up the canyon where the main mines were are large tailings, weathering away under the native plants which are growing over them, and rotting buildings are slowly sagging into dust. Huge pieces of machinery, ore cars tipping off their tracks and assay offices are rusting like mechanical cadavers, knowing that life will never enter them again. Even the people who once lived there, worked there, loved and dreamed there still carry something of the defeat and sorrow of that town. In a very real way, they trail some of the shrouds of that ghost town in their hearts.

It is said that in the days when they were surveying the town which was to be built, the head surveyor once illustrated the humor of the people of the town and mines. He was known to enjoy quite a bit of time in Ole Haas' saloon after work and on weekends, but late one historic Sunday morning Solly was to be seen on the main street of the town with his transit, his chainman and his rod man. They set to work in all seriousness, with Solly peering through his transit and calling directions to his helpers to move to the right or the left, forward or back. This procedure went on for some time until he was surrounded by group of curious citizens of all ages. They kept asking him what he was looking for, but he kept telling them he would let them know when he found what he sought. Finally, he shouted to the chain man to mark that particular spot where he stood, which happened to be right in front of Marshall's Store. Solly rushed over to it in ecstasy. He jumped up and down and shouted triumphantly, "This is it! I have found it! Yessir," he repeated, "this is it!" And he threw his hat down to mark the spot.

"What is it, Solly?" the bewildered crowd demanded to know. " What have you found?" Some profanity to emphasize the impatience of the people was beginning to be heard.

"This is it my friends! I've looked for it for years and here it is! You are looking at the asshole of creation!"

After the offended ladies departed hastily for home, the men had a good laugh, and slapping each other on the back, they headed for Ole Haas' sanctuary to celebrate the Great Discovery.

However, this was more prophetic than humorous for many people who came to make their livings there, for the Great Depression soon hit, and people's hearts broke as they struggled to make the dreams come true. Some died, and the rest held on as long as they could, and finally just drifted off to other places like dried up tumbleweeds at the end of summer.

My family moved to Contact from Twin Falls, Idaho in 1923. My brother John was about five years old at the time and my sister Martha about three. My father, John Detweiler, had been hired by the Gray Mining Company to sell off the town site which had been platted by the company. He had had extensive experience in settling farm and town sites for the Union Pacific Railroad and in other real estate business.

My mother, also named Martha, told me in later years that as they approached Contact on their move to that town, from the distance she saw what looked like a black cloud hovering over that area, though there was no storm. Being of Celtic descent, she felt is was a bad portent of things to come. However, women didn't interfere with the way a man chose to make a living for his family as long as it was honest, according to her set of beliefs, so she just set herself for what may have been self-fulfilling prophecies of tragedy to come. Her mother came to live there later and at one time cooked for the miners at China Mountain, some distance from Contact. Two of her younger brothers came to work in the mines, too.

The town was divided into two sections, called Upper Town and Lower Town. Upper Town, as indicated, consisted of the more respectable environs, while Lower Town was inhabited by a few miners and the Red Light District, which was a very
going concern since most of the miners who were working in the different mines and prospects were nearly all single men, as well as the cowboys who came in from the Utah Construction Company ranches, originally the old Sparks Harold outfit which was one of the largest cattle companies in the old west.

Dad, Mother, John and Martha drove down in a new Buick touring car and took residence in a company house until their own house could be built. It had an outdoor privy but at least it had the luxury of a kitchen faucet with running water. There were two rooms, one which served as kitchen and dining room, and the other as bedroom and living room. There was a Murphy bed which folded up against the wall in the day time, but pulled down into a double bed at night, and at the end of it was a small box the length of the bed into which John would be inserted at one end with his head pointed east and my sister at the other with her head pointed west. They both recalled the vigorous kicking matches they participated in during the night. Their vicious rivalry never ended in my memory, and after I was born in 1926 and we were living in our own house I recall frequently hiding behind the big Estate Heatrola stove in the living room, as the battles raged around the house if Mother or Dad were not there to enforce a truce.

For a few years the town had electricity, the power coming from the diesel engines at the Vivian Mine, but when the mine went bankrupt, the owners of the engines repossessed the engines and the residents were reduced to gasoline lanterns and kerosene lamps. One of my early chores was to wash the chimneys of the lamps to rid them of the lamp black and shine them up so we would have good light at night.

My brother, sister and I liked to believe that there had been gargantuan battles between giants back in the beginnings of time in Northern Nevada near the Idaho border in the valley that ran along the Little Salmon River. Huge boulders, many the size of great buildings, had been hurled from one side of the range to the other, and they fell into strange piles, many on top of one another. They made excellent places for children to climb, explore, make pretend palaces or even find natural fireplaces where we could build fires and roast marshmallows. I selected one fascinating pile along the highway I called "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" after the song by that name, which I never tired of hearing on the old wind-up Victrola record player.

It also looked like the giants had taken the buildings of the town and thrown them across the slope leading up to Table Top Mountain like dice on a crap table. There was a hotel, three or more saloons, notably those of Ole Haas, Jim Carroll and a fellow whose name I will not record because he sired the only seven-year old flasher I ever knew. (He would lurk in the girls' outhouse from time to time and shock us so that we would run squealing and mortified away. I don't think we ever told on him, however.) There were also two grocery stores, a pharmacy or drug store as it was called in those days, a bakery, a post office in one of the grocery stores, a garage and even a restaurant for a time. The dance hall was very popular for Saturday night dances to which whole families came and the children got to dance with the grown-ups to the fiddlers and accordion players until they got so tired they would go to sleep on a pile of blankets and coats over in a corner. The miners and cowboys were genteel enough to drink outside and their fights were held out in back where they would not distress the ladies unduly.

There were no lawns, sidewalks, flower gardens or trees, just dirt roads and paths that led from one place to another. Mother always raised a vegetable garden and canned what we didn't eat. We made trips to Twin Falls, Idaho where we bought extra vegetables and fruit for the long winters. We had barrels of apples but we always had to eat the apple with the blemish when we selected one to eat. This way, the one with a little rot would not contaminate the others. A perfect apple was a real treat!

Esther on her first day of school.

And, of course there was a grammar school, with one teacher for the first four grades and one for the next four. It had a big black bell that some privileged student would be able to ring by pulling a large rope to announce the start of school in the morning and after lunch, and at the end of recess. There was a highschool for the freshman and sophomore years, but after that the youngsters had to be sent away. Our programs and entertainments were held in the dance hall and I have fond memories of my first year in school. Mother thought Mrs.Southard, my dearest teacher, was putting me in kindergarten because I was only five but she put me through first grade, which entitled me to dress like an angel at the Christmas pageant and recite "The Night Before Christmas" to the assembled town. I had to be prompted once, which was very humiliating.

Our mother was very strict about our studies and tutored us at home as needed. Her methodology would have put her at odds with the social welfare people of today, since, for example, when I made a mistake while reciting the multiplication tables I would be rewarded with a good slap. This made for quick thinking under fire, so I don't really hold it against her. Needless to say, our report cards were repetitious "A's" and our deportment exemplary. Mrs. Southard hated one aspect of spring, which was the bounteous growth of wild garlic. If the cows ate it, their milk tasted like it, and we children would have contests to see who could find the most little plants to pull up and eat at lunch time. As we filed into the school room, the teacher would smell our breath, and if we were odiferous we would be isolated. Once, Lois Pratt, my best friend, and I succumbed to temptation and were identified as lawbreakers as we entered. Oh, the pain of it! We had to sit by an open window to let the fresh air blow the smell away while the rest of our classmates got to color balloons. I don't think I have ever seen such beautiful colors as the ones they were using.

Our father was a very versatile man and knew quite a bit about the law and how to manage people. He was soon appointed Justice of the Peace of the Town and so he was the judge in local disturbances and also in civil and mining matters. One of his enemies was Crazy Tex whom he had arrested and put in the local jail from time to time for disturbing the peace and public drunkenness. He was a truly dangerous character and more than once told my father that he had him lined up in his gun sights but decided not to shoot him. My brother says that Dad installed the first slot machines in Contact, but most of those were in the houses of ill repute. Of course my mother, a teetotaler, strict disciplinarian and very religious woman, objected to his going to collect from the machines in those places. According to John, they compromised. If Dad took John along, Mother could be assured that no hanky panky would go on. The girls became very fond of John and saved pennies for him in the little salt sacks people used to buy salt in, which they would give him when he came down with Dad. Of course, he became the richest boy in town and became the envy of every other boy. Knowing John, I'm not too sure of this story, and if it is true, I'm sure he didn't share much of his bounty with others.

Mother conducted a Sunday School in the schoolhouse with a few of the local ladies and their families. I remember Mother and my sister Martha singing a lot of hymns as they did housework. Martha sang soprano and Mother sang alto and they truly harmonized beautifully. I suppose it was the Welsh inheritance. Sadly, I was not allowed to participate since Mother decided I was tone deaf, although I excelled in band and orchestra in highschool. They also sang some old Civil War songs taught by my great grandmother, which were extremely sentimental and sad. My grandmother couldn't sing because she had diphtheria when she was a little girl and the treatment was to tear the scabs out of the throat as they formed so the patient could breathe, and it ruined her vocal cords. Her voice was always hoarse, though very soft.

Having been the first baby born in Contact, it was only natural that I would have unique propensities. Nearly three-quarters of a century later I can still remember the taste of dirt mixed with crumbled granite, which I sampled while sitting in the shade of a sagebrush making moss furniture for fairy houses. I must have been a big crybaby as I often remember resorting to tears. One of my first memories is of sobbing loudly because I was so confused and frustrated because I couldn't find any Easter eggs in the sagebrush. Apparently the town had organized a hunt for all the children and I was standing with my basket completely empty, and totally bewildered as to where I was to find whatever I was to find. Finally some kind lady showed me a beautiful lavender egg under a sagebrush, which I put in my basket and felt placated. It was all those other children running around shouting triumphantly which seemed to confuse me.

Basically I was a loner and I actually preferred playing with horned toads to dolls. (We called them "horny toads" because the modern connotation of "horny" was not known at that time.) I would catch five or six of different sizes and then dress them up in little outfits I would cut out of various scraps of materials for them. After having them act out their parts as fathers, mothers, children, etc., I would carefully undress them and take them back to the area where I caught them and turn them loose unharmed. They didn't seem to mind my company very much and I never saw them shoot blood from their eyes as I have read that they do when frightened. I think of the horned toad as my totem animal, even though I am not of Indian descent.

In spring and summer I felt at one with the mountains, sky, flowers and all living things. I was always the first one up in the morning to watch the dawn. I listened for the movement of the animals as they began feeding, I could hear a jackrabbit rushing off into the sagebrush, and sometimes I could catch a glimpse of a cottontail rabbit as it made its dainty way. The lift of the heart with the touch of the early dawn breeze, and the colors of tiny flowers or flamboyant prickly pear cactus blossoms thrilled me.

The joy of greeting the dog and other animals filled me with serenity. Looking off into the infinity of one mountain range
after another receding into the horizon, with the soft colors changing with the increasing glow of dawn was beautiful beyond description. I felt at at home with all these things. In the winter, my greatest joy was to make the first tracks in the fresh blanket of snow that had appeared overnight, to run circles or lie down and make angel figures. It was fascinating to look at the animal tracks in the snow and try to figure out who made them. Such a richness at no monetary cost!

We always had animals. My mother had been raised on a ranch in Wyoming and was an expert horsewoman. My father's people were prosperous farmers. So it was natural that they would not feel the family complete without milk cows, horses, dogs, cats, chickens and my mother always had canary birds.

Esther and her best friend.

I had a favorite white rabbit with pink eyes that followed me around like a dog. He even let me wrap him up like a baby and let me push him around in my doll buggy. My first real sorrow had to do with this rabbit. One day I discovered him sitting under a bush with his nose bleeding copiously and he wouldn't move. I ran to my mother, crying for her to come help make him better. I always read her face as some people read barometers. She merely shook her head and said that sometimes that happened with rabbits. There was no sympathy, she did not come with me to comfort the rabbit, nor did she try to soften the blow of his death. I sat by him crying until his eyes glazed and he stopped breathing. It was one of my first lessons that I would have to deal with many tragedies on my own. I eventually learned not to ask for help from others , even those who were closest to me by blood relationship. n justice to my mother, I know that birth and death with animals was a way of life on ranches and farms and people become hardened to their suffering. The children have to learn this the hard way.

I tried to train a huge Rhode Island Red rooster to ride in the buggy, but he seemed to be very preoccupied with what was going on in the hen house. So he would leap out and run back to his hens as fast as he could, with me in pursuit. He turned out to be a poor substitute for my placid bunny, especially since he was almost as big as I was and our tussles were very energetic

My mother referred to herself as a very Christian woman, and, indeed shewas the self-appointed arbiter of right and wrong for our family and the whole town. I actually had children refuse to tell me gossip or jokes for fear of my mother. She spent a lot of time and energy deciding upon the sinfulness of various events and never hesitated to voice her opinions about them, as they no doubt were revealed to her by God or Jesus Christ. She had beautiful black hair, which she never cut, and had the most unusual topaz colored eyes. She was slender and elegant, and carried herself with perfect posture and grace. I once asked my older sister if she perhaps thought Mother might really be a witch and she didn't say it wasn't true, but warned me never to ask Mother that question.

Mother and Carrie Nation were sisters under the skin. Her great enemy was the demon rum and anyone who imbibed was a degenerate, wicked sinner. Contact had more than its allotment of such sinners. This included my own father, I believe. Even after his death she swore he kept a jug hidden out in the sagebrush, and I'm sure its contents must have made life with Mother more bearable to him.

Rhode Island Red Rooster and captor.

Sickness had short shrift at our house. Mother was the most formidable adversary of any germs that dared to invade her children. I was supposed to have been a very sickly baby and she often told me how they never expected me to live, but she would have none of that. She was very advanced in her knowledge of nutrition and believed that proper diet, sleep and an unclogged alimentary canal was the best treatment of any disease. Of course, eucalyptus oil inhalations, mentholatum rubbed into the chest liberally, and castor oil and enemas made us think twice before complaining about sore throats or earaches. I always felt that it was mother who waged the battle against the illness, whatever it might be, and that I was merely a suffering bystander. I always took it for granted that she would win. Then we would have the preventative measure of eating properly, and I seemed to spend hours sitting in my highchair, with my feet in her lap as she "force-fed" me nutritious things I didn't like. As a reward, I would be able to see a picture at the bottom of my favorite bowl, which did add an incentive to eat.

I was not able to drink cow's milk so they bought a nanny goat and I was able to tolerate that. My sister says one of the funniest things she ever saw was my father driving up to the house with the goatsitting in the back seat of the new car with its head right next to Dad's. He had driven that goat over fifty miles from Twin Falls, Idaho.

I loved my father unconditionally. I always felt so safe and loved by him. I still have his massive old oak rocking chair in which he would sit to read and smoke a cigar, with me perched on his shoulder. I did not like cigar smoke, so frequently I would hop down, go get a dishtowel and wave it vigorously in front of him to blow the smoke away. I don't ever remember being reprimanded for this. I recall riding on those same shoulders on a bitterly cold winter day, with the wind keening through the telephone wires, and freezing my nose. We were on our way to Ole Haas' saloon, where I got to sit in a captain's chair like the men Dad was visiting with. The place smelled of stale beer and cigar smoke, but I felt happy just to be there with my father, and I knew I would never, never tell Mother I had been there with him. Somehow I knew there would be hell to pay.

Dad, Esther, and imported goat.

When I was walking with Mother and we went by a saloon, even in Wells, Nevada when we made a trip there, she would place her open hand between my eye and the windows. If I tried to peep over or under this "blinder" I would be told not to behold sin and would probably get a slap as well. It's amazing how many of Mother's family turned out to be alcoholics. Perhaps it was karmic spite, poor lady.

Ole Haas took his saloon profits out in his own trade quite frequently, and his thin, fierce looking little wife made him pay dearly for it. Ole was a blond, balding man of impressive girth, so he must have been like his Viking ancestors who enjoyed the groaning board and drinking bouts of history. On the way to school, we would often see poor Ole seated outside at the enormous wood chopping block in the front yard, with a napkin tucked under his chin as she served his breakfast. His demeanor was always downcast, but this did not prevent frequent trips up and down the steps to the house as Mrs. Haas brought more pancakes, eggs and coffee. Eating outside may have shamed him, but it didn't seem to affect his appetite.

The swamper at Ole's saloon was Old Benny Hart. A swamper is the man who sweeps out the saloon, wipes off the tables and runs the necessary errands. He lived in a tarpaper shack not far from the saloon and it was utterly fascinating to us children because on one side of the shack was painted in white a large circle with the head of a donkey in it. As I walked by I always wondered whose work of art that was, but never found out. I was afraid of Benny. He had no teeth and was usually pretty drunk. He was always saving up money to buy false teeth in Twin Falls, but as soon as he had nearly enough to buy the teeth he would go on a glorious bender and we never got to see him as anything other than the town gummer.

I don't know why, but false teeth seemed to be a big deal in my life at that time. My father's people were Mennonite farmers who had large farms in Idaho. They had to be huge because there were fourteen children in the family, and they were used as laborers just like the hired hands. Grandpa Detweiler was a martinet who knew how to drive animals and people and make lots of money. He was a devout churchman and on Sundays he wore a black suit. I remember standing beside my father under towering trees on a summer day, with all kinds of people milling around. Dad was pushing me toward a huge old man with white hair who was sitting under one of those trees with a big black book on his lap. His face was forbidding and I didn't want to get near him, but obviously I had to be presented to my grandfather. Later, at a long table set with platters piled high with food, surrounded by many adults and children, that same grandfather gave me the shock of my life. We had all been eating corn on the cob, when suddenly he removed his teeth from his mouth and proceeded to pick them. I had never seen anyone without teeth before, and I sat in absolute horror, knowing better, however, than to make a scene about it.

To tell you the truth, I later discovered that my grandmother was a gummer, too, and one of my great desires was to hear her say something while her teeth were out of her mouth. I often stood on a chair at the sink beside her while she scrubbed them vigorously and asked her questions about anything I could think of, hoping I could trick her into answering me. Wiley old woman that she was, she just ignored me as if I weren't even there, and when she had finished rinsing the dentures she would pop them into her mouth and go on about her business. My sister adored her all her life and felt Grandma was one of her best friends. I never felt all that kindly toward her afterwards, and I dare say she felt the same way about me. She had no sympathy for my scientific curiosity, although she had a facility for solving certain problems as evidenced by her "better mousetrap." She received some notoriety for her accomplishment while working at the China Mountain Mine as cook. There was an infestation of mice and she devised an ingenious device for ridding her domain of the critters. Each night she would fill a large tub about half full of water, put a board
up to the rim of the tub to act as a gangplank, and then suspended some kind of delicacy just out of reach of the mouse who climbed up and stretched himself out to get it. Then he would lose his balance and fall into the water, drowning. Everyone so admired her success with this invention that some reporter had it written up in the San Francisco Chronicle. This brought her much unwanted publicity, and she was very embarrassed by the whole thing. The family took it as a good joke on her and teased her for years about her being a famous mouse killer.

One of the great life lessons we learned, being raised in a small mining town, was that we, even as small children, were responsible for our own safety. Education in this respect consisted of being told how to conduct ourselves in this environment, and if we transgressed the rules, we only had ourselves to blame. The area in and around Contact abounded in prospect holes, stopes that were run into the mountains to investigate possible veins of ore and old abandoned mines, to say nothing of the large mines that were actively being worked. The children were told the consequences of exploring these dangerous and fascinating areas, such as being buried alive and lost forever to their families. They were also told the dangers of dynamite and the small caps that detonated the sticks of nitroglycerin. Watching the power of a stick of dynamite used to blast out a tree stump was enough to convince me not to touch one. When one of my classmates had half a thumb and two fingers blown off when she hit a cap with a hammer, furthered my belief in relying upon my parents' advice. However, once we had been advised not to get near these tantalizing things, or to put our hands in holes in rocks for fear of antagonizing a rattlesnake, we were turned loose to play in the town and surrounding hills. We were told to be home by lunchtime or dinnertime, and we could tell when that was by the position of the sun. We understood perfectly that our fate was in our own hands and if we were foolish enough to do the things we were advised not to do, any consequences would be upon our own heads. I learned caution, but not fear, and to enjoy myself within the parameters of good sense. I learned to size up a situation before I ventured into it. If a huge boulder looked too slippery to climb, I would look for another that had a series of hand and foot holds that I could depend upon. These were all good lessons to be applied to the rest of my life. I regret not always having followed them.

My very best friend, Lois, lived just a sagebrush path away. We were only allowed to play for one hour so we wouldn't get tired of each other and quarrel, so we really had fun in that short time. I didn't know it then, but her father was a successful bootlegger. They had a second house next to the one in which they lived, and we were told never to go in there as it was filled with dynamite. We never did venture to so much as open the door. What they said was only partly false. From what I learned in later years that the white lightening he sold really was dynamite, just of a different sort.

Her mother was extremely fat and spent most of her time seated at the kitchen window watching what went on in town. She made the most wonderful candy and bought sugar by the sack full. She was a meticulous housekeeper and Monday morning would see her out hanging the wash on the clothes line. Her dresses were too short to cover up her ample rear and thighs and when she bent over to take pieces of wet laundry out of her basket many of the men were vastly amused to watch the procedure.

When Lois was punished for some indiscretion, her mother used the rubber hose from the enema bottle to whip her. The few times I saw the tears running down her little face actually made my heart ache. I loved her very much.

One winter some of the girls at school chased Lois home and pushed snow and little rocks in her ears. It caused such a bad infection they had to take her to Twin Falls for a mastoidectomy. I remember my mother taking me over to visit her when she got home. Again my heart ached to see her so downcast, and hurting so much. I don't know if the families
argued or if anyone else had to help pay the expenses, but it was pretty much a general philosophy that if something happened to one of our families, we took care of it our selves.

Picture in Uncle Jack's pocket when he was killed in the mine cave in.

Two of my uncles were caught in a mine cave-in in Contact. One was killed and the other was partially paralyzed for months. No one thought to sue the mine owners. One of my early memories is watching them bring the living uncle to our house in a car. I stood in awe and fear as I watched them supporting and helping the once strong and vigorous Uncle Chuck who was now a kind of blue color and obviously in great pain. The men took him into the house where my mother took him in and nursed him until he was well. His physical therapy consisted of squeezing a rubber ball in his right hand and picking up kitchen matches patiently, one by one. Eventually he regained his dexterity, but I believe there was residual damage to the right side of his brain and eye. But we knew nothing of specialists and didn't have the money to pay for one if we did.

Uncle Jack, who was killed in the cave-in carried a picture of me in his pocket, and when I look at, I am filled with sorrow, for it is a symbol of the reality of the danger men lived with it every day they worked in the mines. All people who are associated with the mining industry carry the fear of the many tragedies just waiting to happen every time someone enters the portals of the mines, and the courage they exhibit every moment they are at work is amazing.

My father's people were Mennonites and if he had lived I would have learned to speak German as the Pennsylvania Dutch still do. I think he made translations for some of the nursery rhymes I learned:

Head thinker (rap on the forehead)

Eye winker (lift eyelid up and down)

Nose smeller (tweak the nose)

Chin chopper, chin chopper, chin chopper (pull chin up and down rapidly).

I never tired of this game and I played it with my own babies, who also thought it very humorous.

Likewise, our observance of Christmas was very rich and filled with tradition. Of course we left a handful of hay, a cookie or apple and a bowl of water for the reindeer. It would have disappeared by the time we were called to open the presents. On our tree we had black iron candle holders which were clipped to the branches. Each held a small red candle, but larger than the birthday candles we use today. We threaded lengths of popcorn, and made red and green construction paper chains, which were draped around the tree. One of my most magic memories was being held in one arm by my father, as he carefully lit the candles. These were live flames, and I know now how dangerous that was, but it was a tradition that was caught in my heart and still glows with auras around each candle. It was so beautiful I felt I couldn't breathe.

The parents made the youngest children go to bed and to sleep on Christmas Eve. Then they, with the help of the older children, put the presents under the tree and called the sleeping children to wake up because Santa Claus had just come and gone. Then the sleepy children would get up, unwrap their presents and play with them as long as they wanted. Unfortunately, I walked in my sleep a lot, and I remember one Christmas when they said I got up, looked around at the tree and presents and said, "It isn't ready yet," and went back to bed. They got me up again, and I remember that when I did wake up I had already unwrapped most of my presents and was playing with my very favorite: a little train that I could wind up and it would go round and round its little tracks. I felt cheated of half the fun, but I didn't say anything because it was so strange, almost as if I had been under a spell of some kind.

Knowing how I would walk, talk and function in my sleep, my brother and sister would give me half a piece of gum to chew when Dad brought it home from a trip as a treat. Then the next morning I would have no memory of tasting or chewing it. They thought it very funny, but I felt it was cruel. Even today I sometimes "come to" in certain events in my life and wonder how I missed the beautiful part of how they came to be. I think I have a goal in mind so intently that I seem to miss part of the process of how it unfolds in my experience until it is fully functional in the routines of living.

Mother always let us choose what we wanted for our birthday dinners. My sister Martha always chose chicken and dumplings and angel food cake with pinkfrosting. Mother would never kill a laying hen and one year she told Martha to go up the canyon to Old Joe Gazolla's place to buy a nice fat hen and bring it home. It was a couple of miles walk and Martha went bravely on her way to make the purchase.

It was not like buying a nice clean eviscerated chicken at the market today. The chicken's head had to be cut off and it would flop around beheaded spraying blood around until it lay still. Then it would have to be immersed in boiling hot water to loosen the feathers and we would have to pull the feathers off and singe the small fuzz off in a flame, the whole process a nauseating, disgusting procedure. Then Mother would slit the back end of the chicken open and then reach in and pull out the insides. She knew the names of all the parts of the anatomy of the animal and I received quite an education on crops, intestines, hearts, gizzards, lungs, gullets, etc. I found this part very interesting. If Mother found eggs developing inside a hen she would be horrified to have lost this valuable resource. After the eviscerating, plucking and singeing, the chicken would have to be cut into serving pieces, dipped in flour and fried in real butter, unless, as in my sister's case, the chicken pieces would be boiled until tender and lovely dumpling would be spooned on the top until cooked. It is amazing to me how we human beings make logic-tight compartments in which we separate the murder of the animal and its ritual preparation from the delight in which we savor its body.

In this case, my sister had purchased a big, fat, bright-eyed hen who was so charming that Martha fell in love with her on the long walk home. She refused to let Mother kill her. I don't know what we had for dinner, but I'm sure we had the pink frosted angel food cake with candles for Martha to make a wish and blow out.

It's not surprising that Martha would fall in love with her birthday hen. She was a very loving girl who loved to sing, dance and socialize. I was always enchanted when she and her friends would wind up the old Victrola and dance the Charleston until they were breathless. She told funny jokes and was usually kind to me, but after all, little sisters do get in the way. She was very artistic and I loved to watch her paint and draw. Sometimes as a special treat she would draw beautiful, full-busted paper dolls in bra, panties and shoes. Then we would make all kinds of paper clothes with tabs to fold over the shoulders and waists to hold them on. She felt her freckles made her hideous and her straight coppery hair was a curse. She noticed that when the cows licked their sides, it would leave the hair wavy, so sometimes she would go sit in a manger in front of a cow and tempt her to lick her hair in hopes it would make a magic wave. The cows never got the idea, or were just plain uncooperative.

As I learned from my mother and sister, I also learned from my older brother. I have to thank him for teaching me to have a high tolerance for pain, for one thing. It has stood me in good stead in later years. My senior by nine years I could never match him in any physical contests. He had my mother's black hair with a wave across the front that drove me and my redheaded, freckle-faced sister green with envy. He was handsome, intelligent and sadistic. He enjoyed catching flies and pulling off one wing, and then he would laugh at their antics as they ran around in circles helplessly trying to fly. So it was just a short step to torturing his little sister when he could catch me. He would give me "Dutch Rubs" in which he would hold my neck in the crook of his arm and rub the top of my head as hard as he could with the knuckles of his other hand. Sometimes he would make me play "paper, scissors, rock" and when he out-guessed me he would take two fingers and strike me across the lower part of my arm above my wrist until white welts raised up. When I won I would try as hard as I could to hurt him in return, but he would just laugh at me. Once I was riding a cow when he suddenly jumped at it and chased it so I lost my balance and fell off into a patch of prickly pear cactus, in a seated position. I will never forget the humiliation of having to lie on the bed with my panties down while Mother pulled the cactus needles out of my rear with a pair of pliers. I don't remember the pain, just the embarrassment of having people peering in the door to view the procedure in spite of my outraged modesty.

He saved his money and bought a black horse named Hank, and he would let me ride him. He recalls that I always demanded a stick, and though my short legs stuck out straight on each side, I would whip the horse and make him gallop all over town. Mother probably wasn't home at those times and he was probably hoping I would fall off. Once Hank ran away with me but I stuck on until he ran home and came to a stop on his own. I later told my friend Lois that this had mixed up all my insides and I'd never be the same again. This never deterred me from riding whenever I could, however.

Left: Big Brother John and Esther by the foundationof our future home 1927.
Right: Martha and Esther, the redheads.
Below Left: John, Esther, and Hank.
Below Right: All three Detweiler children. Note snowball in brother's hand.

I also have him to thank him for my being a heathen. One of my early memories is that of sitting up in the balcony of the church in Twin Falls, and watching what I know now was a baptismal ceremony. I believed that the painted backdrop of mountains and trees was real and the big baptismal font was truly part of a river. My mother belonged to a church that believed in baptism by immersion, so I watched in awe and fascination as the minister in his black robe took the Ohpeople who went down to him dressed in white robes and he and another man dipped them under the water. They came up dripping but smiling with joy. I thought it was so beautiful and I looked forward to the time when I might reach the age when I could be baptized in such beauty and dignity.

However, when I reached that fateful age we were living on a small ranch high in the mountains. It had a big horse trough, which was lined in summer with long thick green algae and moss. I had already been dumped into it several times and came out dripping with green in my hair and all over my clothes, so I did not enjoy that ceremony at all. One day a number of adults drove up the mountain to the ranch and I never dreamed what was about to befall me. Presently I was called into the house where they were all sitting in a circle and I was asked, "Esther, are you ready to be baptized into Christianity?"

The realization of what this meant struck me like a bolt of lightening because there was only one place in the whole area with enough water to dunk even a very small girl. I was very timid but this outraged my sense of what was sanctity and dignity. Imagine receiving such a holy service dripping in green moss and horse slobber. I said, "Where?"

And they replied, "Well, we thought the horse trough."

The word came out of my mouth as if someone else spoke it because I never was rude or defiant to adults. Just one word: "No!" And I walked out of the room. No one said another word about it and for many years I felt surely I would certainly not be one of God's chosen after that. But I had decided, anyway, at about that age that if God was a mean old man up in the sky who watched everything I did and wrote down all the bad things I did, I just wouldn't play. I would just go to hell. I didn't like the way God had set up the universe anyhow.

Besides, there were several earthly tortures imposed on innocent little girls when I was of that vintage. One was long woolen underwear with button down flaps in the back. Over these itchy sources of discomfort we had to pull on long woolen stockings which sagged and bagged and humiliated us, though we were assured that they saved us from the horrors of pneumonia, tuberculosis, influenza and various and sundry colds and illness which lurked in the frigid airs. But worst of all were the garter belts, inventions of the devil, which consisted of a series of belts and straps and dangling fasteners which were laboriously inserted over the tops of the stockings to hold them up. After shoes were put on, galoshes were pulled on over them, and we had to carefully fasten each clasp clear up to the middle of our legs. They were usually much too large and we had to stride along in an unnatural gait. Over that came the coat, the cap pulled down over the ears and the muffler wrapped around the neck. Lastly, the mittens, the lunch box put in our hands and we were set off in the direction of school.

Oh, the patience of our teacher in helping us out of our outer encumbrances and then at the end of the day to help us not only find the right ones but help us back into them.  Oh, but the wonder of spring when it became warm enough that we felt we could do without the woolen stockings, but our mothers said it was too soon to trust the weather. We would cheerfully leave our houses in the morning and as soon as we could find a convenient sagebrush out of sight of out mothers, we would undo the damnable garter belts from our stockings and roll the stockings down until we looked as if we were wearing doughnuts around our ankles. Never again would we feel such delight in air against our skin, the forbidden luxury of a taste of freedom from winter's iron rule. On the way home, we would reverse the procedure and enter our homes with long stockings held up primly by the despicable garter belts.

Left: Mother in her new car   Right: The height of fashion: mother on the rocks.

Once the Great Depression hit and the mines and most businesses went bankrupt, we children grew and learned that Dad was hard put to it to take care of his family. Mother talked constantly and tragically about the horrors of poverty. He traveled extensively trying to shore up his holdings in other businesses and real estate and even borrowed to the hilt on his life insurance. He worked desperately to make any money possible. He owned a truck which he used to haul mail to the depot, to go to Twin Falls to purchase things to sell, including grain for the bootleggers. We sold milk, cream and eggs to the local people. He turned a nickel wherever he could, but he gave no thought to his own health. His teeth became so infected that he developed Bright's Disease, which attacks the kidneys, and finally he had to be hospitalized in Twin Falls. Today a few injections of antibiotics would have cured him. I did not understand why Mother was gone so long and so frequently, and why I had to be left with strangers or my brother and sister. I had no idea what it meant to be in a hospital, nor why my father couldn't be home. Of course she was trying to be with Dad as much as possible, but we had cows to be milked, animals to feed, customers to be served, and though Martha and John were quite self-sufficient, I wasn't. No one explained to me what was going on. But one day they took me to the hospital and I was able to see a strange looking, thin man who I knew was my father, but so changed. He tossed constantly and his cheeks were sunken and he wasn't wearing his glasses. They set me on the bed beside him and he kept saying, "Has my little Dolly come to see me?" I wish I could remember every second of those last minutes with him but I can't. I wonder if I kissed him and hugged him. I hope so.

Then one afternoon in Contact, my Uncle George came to take me out of school. He had a very serious expression on his face and he drove me home in his big car where Mother was waiting and they told me that my father was dead. Was this another part of the darkness Mother had seen over Contact? From there my memories are very foggy. I know we drove to Twin Falls some time later and I remember that there was a funeral, but that I wasn't allowed to go. I had to stay with all my cousins while the adults were gone. I believe I entered into a sort of shell that I have never come out of, really. I was only five years old at the time. The loss of the person I loved the most in all the world, and the one I knew loved me changed me in ways I'll never understand to this day.

I had learned not to ask many questions; indeed, I wouldn't have known how to phrase them. One night, lying in bed with Mother, I asked what it meant to die and she replied, "Well, your heart stops beating." For a Christian woman, that was a strange reply. No reassurance of life after death or that he would be loving me from beyond the grave. The cruelty of it takes my breath away, but I also have to remember that this woman was living in terrible sorrow. She was so absorbed in her own terror of the responsibility of raising three children by herself when there was practically no money to be had, she could hardly be sensitive to the desperate need of a small child.

At any rate, I made sure to go out and run very fast and very long every day so that my heart would be beating so hard I could hear it and I would know I was truly alive. I could never bear to listen to my heart beat when I was lying down, so I
would shift my position so I could ignore the fact that it was destined to stop, and I would never know just when.

Mother worked as a cook for a while at one of the Utah Construction Company ranches and we continued to sell milk, eggs and cream to the people in Contact. A kind man who lived on a ranch about twenty miles from Contact started helping Mother with the haying, taking care of the livestock and making himself useful in many ways. His name was Carl, and we all liked him. It seems that it was preferable to Mother to marry this man than to move to Twin Falls where her husband's family would have helped her find work and a place to live. As it was, she had to send both her older children away because the highschool closed. Martha was sent to Twin Falls to work for her board and room with a family that wouldn't even let her eat at the same table with them. She had five dollars a month from an insurance policy Dad had with the Masons and that had to cover all clothing and school supplies. John was sent to live with
some family friends, the Lonkeys, in Pocatello, Idaho. He worked on their farm and went to school. We went to live on the small ranch owned by my stepfather. Mother took all our furniture and it was used nicely in the large log cabins on the ranch. Our house was left vacant.

And so, trailing wisps of the shrouds of the ghost town of Contact, our little family was split apart and all the courage and good face we made on the outside would never mend the brokeness inside.

In my research for this book, I came across some of the original documents describing and promoting the sale of bonds for the Vivian Tunnel Company. Because the Company was such a crucial part of the birth and death of Contact, Nevada, I thought it worthwhile to include this fascinating artifact.

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About the Author: Esther Early is a native Nevadan, born in Contact, which is now just another old ghost mining town. She was going to school in Wells, Nevada, when the bombing of Pearl Harbor happened. She attended the University of Nevada, Reno, and graduated with a degree in English and a minor in Spanish. She was certified to teach in secondary schools and later in Special Education. She taught in Washoe County and for five years was the hospital teacher at Washoe Medical Center. She has two daughters and one son. One daughter is a graphics design artist; one is a family marriage counselor and therapist; and her son is an electrical engineer. She and her husband had a family business, Central Credit, Inc., which they conducted for over twenty years. Her husband died in 1994. Esther is now Vice President of ElderCollege and Licensed Teacher in the Unity Church, and she does volunteer work with a number of other organizations. She is dedicated to learning and education and hopes to keep teaching and studying as long as she lives.

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Lifescapes