Webb:…his uncle from Sunny (___) and I’m going to make one.  I’m going to shave it down; hand shave it.  That’s the style.  I’ve already got a dollar invested in it down at the cabinet shop to get it cut down.

Interviewer1:  What do they make it out of now?

Webb:  Hickory.

Interviewer2: Hickory?

Webb:  I don’t think it’ll ever be as good as those.  Those are second growth Hickory.  This is just Hickory.  I don’t know…maybe when it dressed down, it might be alright.  The secret of a good whip is a good whip stock is one that’ll spring like this, you see, all the way down.  See that?  See how limber that is?

Interviewer2:  Yeah.

Webb:  That’s a little more limber than this one.  This is quite a bit older but this was regular five foot, but they dressed down and a good limbers got to be a limber whip to handle nice, you know.

Interviewer2: Yeah.  Eddie did you use the whip on the horses much?

Webb:  Huh?

Interviewer2:  Did you use the whip on the horses much?

Webb:  Not much; not too much.  You always had to have a whip but you didn’t use them much.

Interviewer1:  How do you attach those at the end?

Webb:  Huh?

Interviewer1:  How do you attach that whip to there?  Do you just slip it through the…?

Webb:  Yeah you slip that right over the top of it and then run through the loop.

Interviewer1: Oh.

Webb:  See over the top and through the loop.  No you…whenever you would hear of a driver coming in…bang, bang, bang… with  a whip all the time, they’d say, “Here comes the butcher.” 

Interviewer2:  Oh.

Webb:  You know there’s lots and lots of comments on that stuff. 

Interviewer2:  Could you have…

Webb:  Some of us would have the horses back all cut to pieces from the whip.

Interviewer1:  Were you pretty accurate with those?

Webb:  Huh?

Interviewer1:  Were you pretty accurate with those whips?  Could you…

Webb:  I killed a horse fly with them.  They ain’t too bad.

Interviewer2:  How did you do it?

Webb:  Well this five horse team you see here.  When we showed you the five horse team, that center horse there was a fly right on him right across his back and they’re just biting away and he was way out on the lead, you know, and I kept looking at that fly and I wondered well if I could throw the whip out there easy and scare him away and not excite the whole team, you know, you didn’t want to whip too much on them.  When you needed a whip, you use it, but if you didn’t, why, you didn’t have your team get all excited and sweaty so finally I…with a little whip just like this one here and I did like that with it and let it down easy just like that and got him…killed him.  A man and wife on the front seat; the lady looked at me and she said, “Driver, I was going to ask you if you could kill that fly.”  And I said, “Well I might as well tell you the truth.  That was a chance,” I said, “I hit him.”
“Maybe next time you’ll miss him.” But the horse (___) (___) with your whip.  You heard them talk about John Pistol wherever he pointed that finger, you’d shoot.  Well wherever you point that end of that stock, that’s where your lash will straighten out. He’d straighten out right on the line of that…straight.  That’s when you got your whip dressed down nice, you know, (___).  (___) quite active in working one of these things down.  You could work for days and days.  I used to knit the handles on with the silk.  A lot of money and now I can’t buy silk to put on a popper.  I used to sit about eight hours and knit a handle about that size on there and then wear your gloves out all summer and after I got tired of knitting them and all, I found out that your whip is smooth and your gloves will last longer without that. You knit them, it’s rough you know.  I learned it from Charlie Burgess who back in…let’s see it was 1903 when he was here and drove…I learned that from him. Knit a handle on there and then pearls on up, pay four bits for a stock and sit down and knit those handles on and sell it for $5.  Lots of people would buy it.  They see you and stay at Coulter Saloon, you know, down Chinese’s.  You’d knit those and then hang them up in the bar and people would come along and give them five bucks for them, and you couldn’t buy that silk for $5 now to just on the handle.  Let alone you can’t buy the stocks anymore.  I been trying, writing, and trying to buy.  This here is sheet silver furs on this one.  See I’ve loosened them up because they get…take the dampness in the winter time.  That’s why they’re all loose and there’s papers on here, you know.

Interviewer2:  What are they for?

Webb: Huh?

Interviewer2:  What are they for?

Webb:  Oh just for an ornament.

Interviewer2: Oh.

Webb:  Just for fancy.  They’d say, “Here you come with your Sunday whip today.”  They’ll say it cost a dollar a piece to weld them, put them together.  They run into money but this one I’ve had a long time.  I think it’s better silk than the others.  I’d have it for a good many years there.  That’s a nice handle.  (___) (___) made that handle.  The welder, the driver that was held up, he gave me that handle in 1912 and I…

Interviewer2:  My (____) (___) parents are fishing. (___) (___).

Webb:  I had a movie guy up here and he was horse (___), Rusty McDonald.  He…somebody told him I had some whips, so he come out to see them.  He went over the prop wagon.  I was working down there with him with the Wells Fargo and he said, “I got to get a…” He says, “Send me over a whip,” he said, “I got to put some ears on this horse.”  That was Dale Robinson’s horse you know.  He was supposed to be in the…behind some rocks and the horse was supposed to be watching for somebody that was trying to sneak up Robinson and he popped this whip and the horse would put his ears up and look, so he come over from the prop wagon and he brought a whip over and I was looking at it and I said, “You got many of Rusty?” and he said, “No that’s the only one I got.”  And I said, “The stock is pretty short, isn’t it?” And he said, “Yes, it is.”  Stock is about that much short, so he was out there and he was trying to make it pop.  I was telling him…he said, “Somebody said you got whips.” And I said, “Yes I have.”  He said, “They rent these.” And I said, “Well you tell them to come up and rent from me next time.”  He said, “It’s a good whip.”  So he come out here to see my whips, you know.  He had his wife and his mother with him, so I brought him out an old one that I use hanging up.  It’s a good whip you know but the stock was a little heavy and he was (____), so then I put the lash on one of these and I told him, I said, “I got arthritis in my arm.   I really don’t…can’t use it anymore,” but I told him how I used it (___) how we used to do them like that and he said to his wife, he said, “Look at that guys stick.” And he was trying to make it pop and (___) you know like you would with a black knife. Well there’s an act in those, you know, and anybody driving (___) and he was…he got to be good; forest was good practice, you know, but this fella…all they do is out on a lot, you know, they don’t…never knew…they asked me why I had them rings on top of the horses head.  It’s where you put your lines you know.  You could trace every one of them, and the lines from this horse goes right on top of this horses head.  It’s on the side you’re sitting on and that you’re in line.  I had a movie guy ask me why I put them things up there.  And I said, “Well that’s where they belong.”  And he said, “We don’t put them there.  We put them through the hays.” And I said, “I know you do.”  You come up to my house and I’ll show you some six-horse pictures and you can see where they originally were.  Well they don’t know, you know, they worked in the movies.  They don’t know.  A guy had...one guy up here and they looked at me and they told me to pick him out and see if he could drive the team. He looked and he said, “Let’s see how you hold that line.”  He was an actor going to drive in the picture; comic was it.  You see what’s (___)…*flaw in tape 10:25*…’til midnight going through looking at these things over; checking them over again.  You know nothing to do and sitting here and you can’t go downtown it’s too late and you start in on this outfit and drink them over and think how foolish I was that I didn’t have more.  I went into Yosemite to buy.  I had bought this.  We went last trip ’26 we was in Yosemite and went to Boisen’s and bought three pictures from him and he was to make some more and I was to back and get them and they all burned up.  They lost them all, but any of these only what maybe the museum had.  All of the Boisen’s is lost; every one of them. I took these up and they got…took my copies.  They took copies from here. I took these when I went into the valley for them.  These here, they had sleepers but I took the hotel and this some more.  They had these because they had…well this one isn’t in the book, but they had these; and there’s something about this man, Joe Johns, was this driver.  He come here in 1903 and he had been a sergeant on the police force in San Francisco working with Tom Gibbons.  You remember Tom Gibbons?  I hauled them up here and he said to me, “Ed, who was up here last summer driving?”  And I said, “Well Joe Johns was here, Bargess, and Johnny Mun; and he turned around to his wife and he said, “Sergeant Jones was up here driving stage.”  Well he was driving from Crocker into the Valley and back with a six and I’ve got three pictures of him.  One picture was taken on the Fourth of July morning and when he left Yosemite Valley, had on a white duster, big hard hat, and gloves up to here.  I’ve got the picture was taken see.  You look at that picture and see what he’s wearing there.  You see what he’s wearing there? 

Interviewer1:  General (___) (___).

Webb:  Huh?  Well I’ll tell you this long story…

Interviewer1:  …probably this one right here…

Webb:  Just soon as he got to the floor of the Valley to start up the grade, he stopped and he took off his duster and folded it up and put it in a little suitcase and he took off the big hat and put it in the front booth—had a hatbox he kept in his compartment—and he’s got one of those harvest hats, cork hats you know, but a rim about that much air between the hat though.  That’s what he’s got on there and a duster, a Gingham jumper.  He’s had the Gingham jumper on when he left Yosemite but he had the (___) (___).  He’d go to Crocker’s and back in the foot of the hill and he’d put on the duster and he put on the hat.

Interviewer1:  But why?

Webb:  Huh?

Interivewer1:  Why.

Webb: Yeah.  He’d come into Yosemite and the (___) (___) driver’s was looking at him and he said, “How and the heck can he go to Crocker’s and back and never get them clothes dirty?”  (___) (___) (___).  That was a long time before they found out that he changed them at the foot of the hill.  The other picture…let’s see...this one…and the one in the foot of the hill…I mean in the valley and the other one is in the book where it makes a turn with the dust.  Remember these two…the one stage just coming around making the turn and one had made the turn and it’s all covered with dust.  Well that’s the second one and the third one I got of them is someplace in here. I wish I could see it to show you and look at the two together to see how he dressed.  That’s the way he was.  He was…and he walked you know; that’s the way he stepped just by.  You’d say he looked like he’s walking on eggs.  He’s been on the police force and he was…well I don’t know how to word it…he was an athlete but to see him walk.  He wasn’t dragging his feet along you know he was just stepping along and then when he got up there, he got a hold of those six horses and he was nice to see; sure was wonderful. 

Interviewer1:  Eddie…

Webb:  You take Butterfield here, he was a driver; he was a good driver.  They probably knew one another too could’ve, but Butterfield he walked more like this.  Different than John’s you know.  Yeah.

Interviewer1:  Did the passengers ever…

Webb:  Huh?

Interviewer1:  Did the passengers ever crowd you when you were driving?

Webb:  Crowd you?

Interviewer1:  Uh-huh.

Webb: No, no they didn’t too much but I guess I never told you about Johnny White though when he come with me. That morning he would tell me…oh we got talking all the way up and all the way back.  He said, “You know why I’ve been so tired when I come in at night that I couldn’t hardly walk from the stable up to the hotel?”  and he said, “What burn me up the most is you get some old woman up on the front seat with an umbrella digging you in the neck; sitting up there digging you in the neck.” And he says, “I got so that I’d just go along and watch my chance and I’d say well here’s my chance and I tore my whip up like I was going to hit that horse and I’d get that umbrella and jerk it down.”  I guess he did it too he’d tell me.  He was a little man and I guess he was a wonderful driver though.  You take teams that is working every day, every day and get (___) (__), you know, they’re a lot easier to drive than it is to take a bunch of half broke horses; try to do anything with them.  Yeah I was thinking (___) (___) and show you how he left Yosemite; how he looks there on the road. 

Interviewer1: (___) (___) pink horses or whatever they call them…what do they call that word?

Webb:  Not too many.  Here’s a souvenir, you need that.   I think it’s 1905.  That was the last year I guess I drove there.  Forest Lumson was the up driver, see.  And when he passed the cabin there, the (___) garden you know where the cabin…there was an old cabin there.  You know where the Polive Garden is right?  You know where the telephone was?  Was a (___) Ranch.

Interviewer1:  Oh yeah.

Webb:  Straight across from Dan’s camp.

Interviewer1:  Yeah.

Webb:  There used to be a camp in there, you know, it was known as (____) Geyser.

Interviewer1:  I know where you mean.

Webb: (____) you see.  Forest come along there and the fella comes from behind the cabin with a shot gun and he held the gun up when he did, Forest thought it was Johnny Castoney.  Then the player Joe got him so he popped the whip in the horses and he started down the road and the guy waved the gun a little higher.  Forest said, “Do you mean it?”  He said, “Of course I mean it.”  Forest pulled him up and he stopped and he walked out there and he said, “Get out this is a stick up.”  He had a sack over his face and he was a short guy and the next stage coming down would be Bill Walton, see, he was on the down stage and when he come around the turn there where you would cross the bridge now, that river view, he looked down the river to see the other stage coming.  You always looked ahead you know.  You know about when you was going to meet him and he could see some people with their hands up.  So he turned around to his partner and he said, “There’s a hold up down here and don’t get excited,” he said, “he’ll probably demand your money.”  And on the front seat was a girl from La Grange, Sadie Belts, who had worked with Mrs. Hamilton all summer.  Sadie Belts was riding alone in the front seat with him and the (____) goes over her lap and sat who you know like a lady (___).  She slipped her little hand purse with a dollar in it and out of this satchel and brought the satchel down under her feet, then dropped a (___) down on top of it.  Who sat there and rolls along and never said a word to nobody and when they were ordered out, she opened her purse, shook the dollar out on there, and everybody else give up.  The one fella says…he says, “Give me that watch.”  This fella says, “My mother gave me that watch.”  He said, “You taking that watch away from me and all of my money.”  And he said, “I haven’t got anything to pay my bare home.”  He told him where he was going and he said, “Well take a dollar and walk.” So when they come down to hunt for the guy, Lee Price come down with blood hounds. I was at Chinese when he come down.  See this happened on a Saturday night and I would’ve experienced it myself but I was driving Coulterville and (___) Coulterville stage and if there was no passengers Saturday night, I didn’t have to go over ‘til Sunday morning, see.  So I didn’t have to go.  Then…so Lee Price come down, he brought the dogs down and they went down there and they put them on the track.  The dogs went up the hill and over and down into the Moccasin Road and come down and when they come to that…where the end of the Moccasin Bridge is now that climbs the hill, you know.  They went over the old Blacksmith Shop.  You know what they call the old Blacksmith Shop?  Your dad would know.  You mentioned the old Blacksmith Shop and the fella that lived there was about six feet tall and he had a long beard and he was in Sonora and they’d go back there at the spot and them dogs would take them right back to that house again; and the man that lived there was in Sonora.  It wasn’t him, but it was a short man that robbed the stage about Johnny Castoney size and if you heard the rumor of how they go flat-like, I know you…you’ve seen the guy when you (___) (___).  (___) (___) they go flat.

Interviewer1:  I know who you mean.

Webb:  Huh?

Interviewer1:  I know who you mean.

Webb:  You know who he is?  It was comical my Georgia and every time he used to see me, he’d look at me and smile, you know, and Forest says that if you turned him in…if you told who he was, he liable to plug you.  You got to prove it.  That’s what Virgil said about the guy that held him up.  He…I wouldn’t want to mention the name over there because some of his people might hear.  I guess you just some step children maybe are living around you, but he’s the one who’s supposed to be…he said, “Take a dollar and walk.”  And Forest said, “Well...”  Now how did he do that?  How did he go over that cabin?  The dogs traced him to the cabin.  He was smart enough to know that guy was away.  In those days, those guys walk where they went, you know.  If you got a ride on a stage, it would take you two days to go to Sonora and back anyway and you could go over to his house and change your shoes and probably put your shoes in a sack and put on another pair and go on about your business, but the ones he wore holding up that stage, he wore them over to that front door.

Interviewer1:  How much did he get on the…?

Webb: I don’t know just how much he did get.  I don’t remember.  There was no express boss and he didn’t bother with no mail.  There was mail on one of those stages.

Interviewer1:  I remember my dad speak of him but I never heard him say. 

Webb:  I don’t remember.

Interviewer1:  Did you ever hear the bridge there…did you ever hear you know right at the Steven’s Bar Bridge on the south side of the river. Did you ever hear that call Robber Roost?

Webb: Robber Roost?

Interviewer1:  Did you ever hear them call that Robber Roost?

Webb:  No.  I tell you where Robber’s Roost was.  (___) Morris put Robber’s Roost on the summit going down.

Interviewer1:  Right.  That book in there.  She said that Robber Roost is at the end of the Steven’s Bar Bridge.

Webb:  Yeah.

Interviewer1:  That’s one thing other thing that’s wrong there.

Webb:  Yeah.

Interviewer1:  Robber’s Roost is at the top of that little rock on top of (___) Creek.

Webb:  Yeah.

Interviewer1:  Right.

Webb:  Because I’ll tell you…you believe it or not, I drove the first stagecoach down the (___) Blue Grade. 

Interviewer1:  You did?

Webb:  Yes sir.  Johnny Phooley was a teamster and then the morning Saul Morris says, “You been down the new road?  And when you tell Forest, tell him to come up the new road.”  I meet Forest Lumson at Cavanero Ranch, see.  I’m driving up and he’s coming down.  The morning mails in the road, so I made the first…took this first stage down there.  I think we cross that creek about seven or eight times during that trip, you know.  You went down that turned into Chlorination Works and cross the river at the (___) and then you get down a ways on the (___) Road and then cross back and forth and when you got into Jacksonville, then you crossed over right back to Sheeths and went up the hill and down over to Stephen Bar…

Interviewer1: You cross the Moppet Bridge there?

Webb: Yeah we went over the Moppet Bridge there. 

Interviewer1:  Well she says in that book that the Robber Roost the course is down there.  I can remember that little boy going up the hill and my dad would always got the top of the hill he’d say, “see those rocks up there?  That’s where they…”

Interviewer2:  Oh why did…

Webb:  I’m (___) (___).

Interviewer1: (___) (___) (___) (___) (___).

Webb:  I got a picture with Johnny Sigally taken right at Robber’s Roost.  He’s coming up the hill and the Robber’s Roost is right where he’s passing on the picture was taken, and Ms. Lawrence that taught school at Priest someplace up there; she boarded at Priest, she’s on the stage with Johnny.

Interviewer1:  Why do they call it Robber’s Roost?

Webb:  Paul Morris put those on there when the road first opened for the tourist to look at.  He painted those and put them on there. He was painting signs for every one of that stations; the number of the stations.

Interviewer1:  Oh, but he was the one that put the sign right…

Webb:  Yeah.

Interviewer1: …in the street out there too?  That be a second road…

Webb:  Yeah.

Interivewer1:  Yeah that’s right.

Webb:  Paul done all that.  (___) interesting for the tourist.

Interviewer1:  Oh yes.

Webb:  Yeah he’d done that. Yeah he was the one that always makes you laugh.  I thought you’d seen some of those in the paper.  He used to write every once in a while for (____)…

Interviewer1:  He used to put a newspaper out, you know, the Morris brother did down there. I have a copy of it.

Webb:  Oh do you?

Interviewer1:  He was obviously proud.

Webb: (___) for Charlie Jones he got…

Interviewr1:  …the banner.

Webb:  Yeah for the banner.  He’s got one in there about the…what the stage driver’s did and what happened and he said….the worst thing he said happened to Eddie Webb.  He said he come in with a bunch of tourists and I forget if he said after the dinner or so on; they asked him if he ever engaged in a game of poker and he said no but he was a sport and he was always willing to help anybody out and join them, so Eddie joined them and long in the wee part of the morning he said, “I don’t know how many thousand dollars winner and then he walked out and it was all a dream.”  He come up with one story about one on the left, left one of the drivers.  I heard that for years when I was a little kid about Billy Walton going down the grade and the rattle snake jumped out and bit the wagon pull and the wagon pull swelled up and crowded both wheelers off the grade. Yeah that…

Interivewer1:  Do you remember an old Gardella down in Moccasin?

Webb:  Yes.

Interviewer1: He was quite a character, wasn’t he?

Webb:  Yeah.  Let’s see…Augustine.

Interviewer1:  Augustine.

Webb:  Yeah. He come to Coulterville one time after I bought the (___) (___).  He used to come up there with a saddle horse and get drunk and they had…that thing reminds me.  They had an Edison machine there and they had to reproduce (___), so the guy next door he said to me, “I got old Augustine in here,” and he says, “I wonder if you can run that machine?”  I said, “Yeah.”  And I went in and put the reproducer on there and they got old Augustine safe and we took it off on the Edison machine.  Foolish that a fella didn’t think ahead 30-40 years and get that machine.  I could’ve bought it from (___).

END TAPE

General Information:
Interviewer: ?
Interviewee:  Eddie Webb
Name of Tape: On Stage Coaches
When: ?
Transcriber: Dee-Ann Horn
Transcribed: 11/12/2017