Sardella: My name is Miller Sardella, I’m retired Sheriff of Tuolumne County. I was born in 1909. I’ve been here in Tuolumne County all of my life.

Becky Royce: You were born in this county?

Sardella: No, I was born in (___) Italy and I came over here in 1912.

Becky Royce: Very good, very good. Mr. Longeway?

Longeway: Hubert Longeway, 1911, been here all my life. Cowboy most of the time, worked in the woods; travelled very little.

Becky Royce: Were you born in the county?

Sardella: Yeah born right here, Middle Camp, close to Twain Harte.

Becky Royce: Very good. Mr. Martin?

Joe: My name is Joe Martin. I was born in 1895. In Soulsbyville.

Becky Royce: In where?

Joe: Soulsbyville.

Becky Royce: Soulsbyville, very good.

Joe: Right there on my…

Becky Royce: Ok. Do any of you have any stories you’d like to start telling about your youth or…?

Joe: Ask Miller, he’s a pretty good story man.

Becky Royce: Ok.

Sardella: Where do you want me?

Becky Royce: Just anything you want to tell us. How things were different then than they are now or…

Sardella: Oh yes, I’d like to say this. Give me a night 30-40 years ago, that’s why I like Tuolumne County. They had the gambling, they had the prostitution, and they had, this was a real country, and I could remember that the old timers right there at the Wagon Wheel [Saloon] today this is…That they’d pull in there with a pickup truck with whiskey in the bottom of it. And whiskey jugs were all padded with papers and rags and then on top of that layer of whiskey they’d have another layer of whiskey on top and the same thing they covered over the canvas and it’d stay in the main street for two or three weeks and the fellas go down there drinking at the bar there at the Wagon Wheel. Nobody would bother them. Everybody helps one another, and we never went to the bank to get any money. We used to go down and see the sport girls and borrow the money from them. That’s…give me them old days back.

Becky Royce: I’d hate to ask but how did you pay the girls back?

Sardella: We paid them back with a little interest.

Becky Royce: Oh ok. Oh dear. Hubert, what do you remember about your real early days?

Hubert: Pretty much the same, all honest people. You got to bring that up now days.

Becky Royce: Honest people?

Hubert: Thevery there is around here, you never had it. You could leave this house or our house or anybody’s place, your cabin in the mountains months at a time, year, groceries, guns, and go back and it be the same as you left it or maybe better. A man would come there would bring something even they were that good. Now you got it, you can’t leave an hour or they rob you in the night, so that’s happened in these times, you know. And then this, like Miller said, we’d run our own banking system. There was no money, that we were better than they are now. In other words no hard feelings about these guys got a better break. We had it better. The money wasn’t there but the friendship was there and the kind of people, it was a lot better than it is now on that respect. Just the only thing we were missing was money and it proves that that’s nothing. The honesty went out when money come. Now these guys don’t need to steel, they done their stealing. If we would’ve had to steel really in them days, we wouldn’t steel nothing. Now they don’t need it. The same guy that breaks in here has got a $100 in his pocket, usually. So what’s happened, you know, it’s happened for the bad, right up town.

Becky Royce: Weren’t there robbers and murders and things in those days too just there weren’t as many?

Sardella: Very little. Next door neighbor robs you now. See what I mean there’s so many, and it ain’t the growth population for a hundred either, it’s worse than that. In other words, there was one robber then and there were only so many people here. They point that out, but it was rare, the thieves, wouldn’t steel at all, and needed something to eat, well you give it to him, or you give it to him or bring something to him. As far as that depression, you know, the big depression and all of us hill people up in here never wanted for anything because we knew how to live, cornmeal, kill a deer. Deer fed our families in the mountains, most of them, you know, the herd was the main of supply of deer meat. Well nature provided the deer. Nobody gave us them, they were there. They pull you…we’d eat beans and you went according to income which we never had any income. And they can’t do that anymore now, you know, nobody know how live or don’t try. They could do it again if they tried it. Them kind of people them days haven’t got them anymore I don’t think. You got thieves and it’s a habit, it’s a disease to steel now it seems like. Because one time in the mountains driving cattle in the summer, it’s kind of a retirement field, I mean I don’t have to go back. You can’t leave them cabins half a day usually for sure that you don’t come back and somebody beat the windows out of it or stole your groceries out and they don’t need them but you catch him and find out about it and he’s got a real nice 4wd pickup and $50 worth of booze maybe and beer, in other words, luxuries in there. He don’t have to do it. Well what’s the answer? Where’d he come from? It’s something happened in that span of life, you know what I mean? They’re good people.

Becky Royce: What do you think about it, Joe?

Joe: Well, I’d repeat what he says.

Becky Royce: It wasn’t like that when you were growing up?

Joe: And if they did, why, they would just tie him up to a tree if they caught him.

Becky Royce: Oh yeah? Did you ever see anything like that happen?

Joe: They gonna hang this tree right over here. I guess it’s down now.

Becky Royce: But there were hangings of when you were growing up that you knew about, you just never saw them?

Joe: Never saw…never saw them. I think this one thing is old Peanut Johnson. The start of Tuolumne up there in Tuolumne is when he started the saw mill.

Becky Royce: Oh he started Westside?

Joe: He was the one who started Westside.

Becky Royce: Did you even…

Joe: And there’s nobody that could go up there and get outside of Tuolumne and like if you want to put in bid for groceries or something like that or meat or anything. If you didn’t belong to Tuolumne, you were out. Didn’t make a difference of how cheap you were or anything.

Becky Royce: How come?

Joe: Well because they had a store there and they all rented the store and whoever rented it, and there was Hodges used to have a butcher shop and they would put in next to…put in a bid and whoever was the lowest in that bid would get…from Tuolumne.

Becky Royce: Was it a company store? Is that what it was?

Joe: Yeah I think it was a company store but they would run it…I think the last one that has it was Buck Tannan. But you had just a good a chance and Hodges just had it the biggest part of the time and he had a little market up the street from there. And I used to work for Bill Hodges we did the killing in Soulsbyville and haul all meat to Tuolumne.

Becky Royce: How old were you at this time, Joe?

Joe: I started at ten years old with Bill Lodgers.

Becky Royce: Ten?

Joe: And I worked there till I was 17.

Becky Royce: When did you start butchering on your own?

Joe: In 25.

Becky Royce: How about you?

Sardella: (___)?

Becky Royce: Yeah. Started working? Doing what?

Sardella: Well we started pretty young but (___) to work it out. First I remember going to the mountains. A fellow named of Dale Adams come and, why, we had a stopping place up there for cattle men. You know, we sell meals and the band of cowboys would come in and they’d charge them every 50 cents a night for the horses, 50 cents a meal so we were right on the road for that, you know, sheep and cattle going to Bridgeport and going over the summit and going these mountains. So I went with Dale Adams and drove a wagon with a span of horses when I was 12 years old up to (___) range they would call it where he went. That was the first I remember, and then after that I went with everybody I imagine. Went as many with five different cow (___) pits in one year. Would go out and ride back. There’d been the cattle would be going up (___). One year about 1927 or ’28 five different outfits. You see, you’d come home and they’d hook you in another one and another one. You got about a dollar a day which you didn’t care whether you got that, you was eating and you had a good time with them. In other words, you wouldn’t turn it down if they said, “No pay, come on.” See it wasn’t that you had to go, it was a thing to do because there was no excitement them days; no entertainment. We’d go with the cowboys and cow men and they treated a kid for good to young. And then when you got there, you wouldn’t come back because it was better there than it was home. You had fishing up there and you buddied up with them guys and they treat you good, so you hate to come back. So you’d stay up there awhile (___). Back home you’d come (___) in the summer and in the fall go again. So that’s the kind of way I started out, course, (___) mountain we got all kinds. I worked in the logging camps and some heavy work falling timber. We fell timber and que in the mill two of us, and we got a dollar a thousand more to feed. We’re falling them and liming them and bucking them, and we’d work about ten hours no less than that. We’d go in the dark and we’d make about a dollar and a half a day in the 30 days, would be about it. You figured all it was made about it which you was happy to get and no complains now thinking that he’s got to get a $100 a day. I feel we had it better then these guys got it now because we had the whole thing. It was like a poor kid getting a new pocket knife. You feel better over that pocket knife than these guys got to get a new car now (___), see. So I think we had the best of it as far as life.

Becky Royce: Miller, did you go up with the cows?

Sardella: Oh yes, I was quite a cocky boy you know when I was a young man. I used to work for Bill…for, pardon me, he was (___) to Leland Meadows. I started out when I was about seven years old for Burt Reid and he was known back in the mountains for years doing (___) (___) and we carried the mail from Leland Meadows to Haystack into the Valley, well to credit myself that was 1924. Then after that I worked for Burt for one summer, two summers and then I go start making horses, Joe Martin, saying that he’s (___) and I broke a lot of young horses for women. I was quite a lady’s man at the time (___) and so…

Becky Royce: He needed the time.

Sardella: The time…then I went back in business for myself. Actually, I worked the U.S. (___) when we were kids and we worked in the winter time. That (___) U.S. (___) that still out in rain today and from there we go in the mountains and I was a packer and guide for years…28 years from Strawberry, Pinecrest, Twain Harte, and I was pretty well liked sort of guy all my life and Joe Martin would give me horses, (___) give me horses and then put me in the business, you know. That’s how I got started. Then I’d never forget the time that they had the Sonora Pass. They built the Sonora Pass (___) Douglas to the Sonora Pass and they couldn’t get anybody to work, you know, because they always wanted to come to town Strawberry, Long Barn, so somebody come up and they got to talking and they want us to pack the stuff to Sonora Pass so they moved all the women up there at the Sonora Pass. See this was what made this county, was the women and the women (___) it’s the truth and they moved the women up there to Sonora Pass and they were bedding road three or four miles a day because they wanted to get up there and get (___). That can be deadly…no that’s how they built their roads here, but they’d get the women and put the women ahead of them and all these workers, you know, they wanted to up and see the women so they build the roads and they’d work three-four miles a day they’d go and then they’d move the woman farther up and they’d move the road farther up. I experienced all that.

Becky Royce: Yeah.

Sardella: Timer and it was the (___) to time of though (___) that the deer got, you know, the cattle got sick at that time and they killed them all. I don’t know what it was for but they did and they had crews up there between Elk Pine and Mono shooting steady all days with rifles to keep the deer from crossing and yet they were having big parties with the deer. There was nothing wrong with the deer. That’s when I was a kid, and then from then I was down there all the time and went to braking horses.

Becky Royce: Is that when some of their ranchers lost their whole…

Sardella: That’s right…

Becky Royce: …the cattle?

Sardella: They driving in the canyon and 24-25 and driving down the canyon and I see these government men sit up there and shoot on cow three and four times before they’d kill it, and then they’d get them all together then put lime and stuff on them and bury them up. There were thousands a head of cattle. That was in 1924 and ’25 and they’d kill the deer and the porcupines, mountain rabbits and everything because they saw that the salt licks; killed everything, disturbed everything.

Becky Royce: Even the salt licks?

Sardella: Everything in the mountains. Killed everything; ox, birds, and everything in contact with the salt and you couldn’t ride your horses through one of those salt logs for the dead animals didn’t want to go around. And that was tough times and they done that because I think the price of beef was low and they killed a lot of them. I think Joe…they did it. They raised the price of beef I think at that time. Now Joe could probably tell you more about that then I can. He’s (___) (___).

Becky Royce: Can I…don’t lose your…(___) (___)…Ok now what did you start to say about the…?

Sardella: Foot and mouth took place.

Becky Royce: Yeah.

Joe: Well when the hoof and mouth started?

Becky Royce: Mmmhmm.

Joe: I think it was around ’23 or ’25, up to ’25 and they went all over the county, you know, and they killed these animals and they had places along the road where they would put sacks down and put stuff in you had to ride over them to keep from spreading this disease, they were supposed to have…

Becky Royce: You don’t really think they had it, huh?

Joe: I never saw any of it.

Becky Royce: Didn’t you?

Joe: And then at Murphy up here. Well he didn’t have any use for them anyway and he called it the buzzard’s nest. They were (___) town here and there was (____). I think (__) (___) (___) the (__) of voting. But anyway, that’s where the headquarters was.

Becky Royce: The government headquarters?

Joe: Yeah and this fella by the name of Dr. Littleton whose a (__) and they came up there to M.S. Murphys and they were going in to kill his cattle, so he met them at the gate with a shot…with a rifle and he told that if anybody went through that gate he’s a dead man. So they didn’t kill them.

Becky Royce: They didn’t go through his gate then, huh?

Joe: He’d tell them he’d kill them (___) ran them back.

Becky Royce: And yet his stock didn’t die?

Joe: No, but they killed (___) right across from his fence there. They killed all of his cattle. So I never seen them with it. The only place I saw was in France.

Becky Royce: In France you saw it but not here? Yet they killed all the herd.

Joe: It’s common there. It’s their face and around their nose and their hooves, where they have it.

Becky Royce: Did you have any cattle that had it (___)?

Joe: No unless I’ve seen a lot of them killed. My dad was gang warden at that time, see, so we was around the mountain that’s hidden the cattle, Bumblebee, the called it. That’s Bumblebee Creek above Strawberry. (___) (___) there, see, go on the cattle hidden there and (___) Pedro’s and (___) sheep at Eagle Meadows and Sanguinetti cattle a lot (___) and O’Neal and (___) Leland’s and the whole works went into them pits so we would be there to see it. You know it was real sad that they’d pile them all in there and shoot half of them dead and it was (___) anyway. But the deer Clark…my dad was hooked up with the gang warden (___) was around that lots and they pulled after they shot along time they got hard (___) killing and they’d poison the salt logs with cyanide. And I’ve seen the (___) Leland, we stayed there one night with Burt Reid and there were 16 deer dead at the salt log in the morning. None of them had it. Then later I met with an uncle of mine over to McCormick’s that’s just across on the Calaveras side for specimen they wanted, see. So between him and I we killed 300 deer in a month. He killed the most because I was just a kid you know, except it was easy to kill; there were hundreds of them. So we killed 300 deer in about a month and six weeks we stayed there I guess for sample…just (___) out of the counties. Not a one had anything wrong with them, perfect, and everywhere lime was I never heard of a bad but they did have limed salt log for disinfectant. See after you (___) (___) put quick lime on it. That was to kill the germ or whatever. Well a deer, what was left, was so hungry. They get on there and they licked the lime and their tongue fell out from the raw lime. Then we’d feed (___) and the hooves come off. I’ve seen (___) (___) we were there at Wood’s run cattle there. We went down roads and we headed down the roads and we drug her into the car with no feet left on her. We drug her in our old car brought her up for inspection and the doctor was there, they called him, you know one of those federal guys was a doctor and he said, “Foot and mouth.” You know he had to hold up his end I guess, but it wasn’t. That’s all it was lying and the old mountain guy do it and the whole works. Yeah now if it wasn’t foot and mouth, I hadn’t seen it and they never seen it, but the one we did see was strictly lime. Eat the hooves fall off of them and quite a few we seen in…look at the country that you wouldn’t see them, you know.

Becky Royce: Yeah.

Joe: So all that part was…they got $125 a month to shoot them and groceries, so that was real good for them days, you know what I mean, you wouldn’t say run them off now. I believe they wouldn’t allow the weak here. There’d be a way to try to stop this thing without killing all our cattle, all our deer, so my dad was a warden like I said and I think it was 31,000 deer in Tuolumne County record. They had a record of 31,000 killed and then stop you, and you hardly ever see a deer afterwards, but they came right back by…that was ’24-’25 by ’31-’32 there was a lot of deer again. See, they strong, you know what was left multiplied back, and good. So there’s another thing that shows you now that wait for this deer study and all this junk they got. All you got to do is leave the deer along or anything of nature out here, leave it alone and don’t fool with it; it’ll take care of itself.

Becky Royce: That’s what I was going to ask you. When there was that many deer, were they good size deer or were they…

Joe: (___) deer. (___) (___) they wanted.

Becky Royce: They what?

Joe: (___) here you could pick out anything you wanted.

Becky Royce: They weren’t over raised or anything like they?

Joe: (___) there was plenty for everybody, and everything doesn’t find, and there was like in the 30s along up to the 40s there was lots of deer. Well nature provided the (__) hard winter would kill off all the deer and that’s what’s wrong with that, and my time in ’37, I’d seen dead deer you know. In ’37 was a heavy winter where we lived there (__) the altitude in Twain Harte when it was six feet deep; couldn’t see the top of the fence post.

Becky Royce: This is what year?

Joe: ’37.

Becky Royce: ’37.

Joe: So some deer died that way we always look at it what’s the difference you know. That nature done that and if there isn’t any deer, you know, some die and you still have lots of them, who does it hurt? It never hurt me; never hurt anyone. And now they can ignore about a few dead deer, they ain’t got enough deer to die anymore because it all lacks the dollar, you see, they’re afraid if they shut the season down a year or two which it multiplies right back, we all know it, raise on these cattle and sheep and (___). We know that (___) plenty (___). They did lose that money and it hurts you greedy for money this regime we got here running this thing, that they won’t shut her down here too, that’s all it would take. If they want the deer back and they would multiply right back, you know, they might not want them for make room for people.

Becky Royce: Maybe so. Do you agree with that Miller?

Sardella: I agree with that very much so because years ago when I was back in Strawberry and this is right on the records. That got 12, 14, 16 deer all four, five point deer. That was years back. Big (___) deer. But now what’s killing the deer off, they don’t…I may not against progressing anything, but in our forest service they allow rifles, pistols, and the newcomers are coming in here and they don’t understand the old methods. Outrun the deer population and they killed everything off up there. They killed them, they eaten; they’re living on the cream of the land up there. Which the forest service, if there are any men at all, they should stop all the (___) in the national forest green or two and the deer come right back, but they don’t want the deer back, they want to sell the license for $50, $100, pretty soon it’ll be $150 and so all that can afford to go hunting is the big people. I have nothing against the big people because they worked hard for their money but the honest person, the working person, and the kid that hadn’t got the chance no more because he can’t afford to buy a license for $100. While we’re backwards of the European Country 200 years or more over even in Italy, where I was born, they used to have Jack rabbits and they’d live on them and then they get…they start killing them off and now it costs about $200 to get a license to kill a Jack rabbit and here they kill them for fun here. Now the Jack rabbits could supply the nation in case of war or anything else. Rabbits and the animals…the deer here, it would be a self-supporting commie here which we haven’t got any of that. They’re killing for fun; a big sport. They don’t even eat them, and now I think that’s the greatest form of what United States had ever done with the U.S. Forest Service. Allowing all these people going there, but they want that. They want recreational and it’s ruined the country. You can’t even cut a tree; you can’t even start a fire. There’s no more garbage, they’re hollering about pollution this and that and we’re not even getting rain no more.

Becky Royce: Yeah.

Sardella: It’s changing the whole country.

Becky Royce: Do you remember another that it was this dry?

Sardella: Well I don’t remember a year it was this dry right at this time, myself, because we never paid no attention probably. But I imagine we had a lot of dry winters like this way back in maybe in 1928 and 30s, but it was all was rain. We’d get plenty of rain and snow but it’s a different, all together, different ball game today; different type of people and everything else and they seem they want to go on that way and it’s not on the right trail. I believe they’re on the wrong trail, but that’s just my opinion.

Becky Royce: Well that’s a good opinion.

Sardella: I think, maybe, John could add some of that…

Joe: …this is all before my time but I could ask some questions…were you able to go someplace …

Sardella: (___)…got the picture of deer while they’re on that. You might tell them…the questions for you to ask are…

Joe: About the hoof and mouth?

Sardella: Yeah. Tell them about the guy that used to do all the steeling in the winter time and I hide the stuff in the cave. What was his name?

Joe: Monty Wolf.

Sardella: Monty Wolf. Tell her about that Joe.

Becky Royce: Yeah tell me about Monty.

Joe: Well all I heard are just the stories, you know.

Becky Royce: Well that’s what we’d like to hear.

Joe: Well there’s so many of those stories, why, I didn’t believe in them and never paid much attention to them.

Becky Royce: Oh you didn’t believe them? Oh, these were just stories? Oh.

Joe: That’s the way I felt about them.

Sardella: The stories I know it’s…

Joe: …maybe John will know more.

Sardella: No I don’t know. It’s just the stories I heard. I heard that he used to stay…

Joe: Something like big foot.

Sardella: Yeah stay in the mountains in the winter times, see, and he would gather all the…he’d go up to one camp to another and steel all their stuff and store it in these caves along the…what was it…along the river and stuff like that. You know.. You know, I heard quite a bit about Monty Wolf. Well he used to…well when we were kids, we (___) to (___) and there was a sign there on the table there, “Thank you very much Singing Eddie for the groceries. Signed Monty Wolf.” Now I’m like Joe, there’s a lot of stories and like the big foot and everything, but actually there was a Monty Wolf, and he was wanted by the authorities, the law, and he just took off in the mountains, and that’ just what he did. He used to go up to these camps, take the groceries, and store them up there all winter. But it all was…even though and he was always nice and thanked them for the groceries. But there was a Monty Wolf. There was, Joe, (___) history.

Joe: Yeah there was a man here that I knew…

Becky Royce: None of you ever met him, huh?

Joe: I never. Say there big foot.

Becky Royce: Yeah well big foot we know (___).

Sardella: That was a farce, you know, but I don’t think Monty Wolf was…I think Monty Wolf in his time was kind of like the specialized individual that stayed all winter. He stayed in the mountains all winter and he never really bothered the thing except he took all these things like the beds out of the cabin and like this (___). And they’d claim that they had found his caves along the…I think it was the Clavey River, that where they found the beds and all the stuff (___) (___). When Hubert gets back, he might know more about this then…well that was on his street, John, by Monty Wolf. (___) that cave.

Becky Royce: Oh is it?

Sardella: Do you remember a Bonnie Wolf?