DYER:   Today is the 31^st of August, 1973 and this is Richard L. Dyer, instructor of history at Columbia Junior College, talking with Mr. Walter Castle about the early days of P. G. & E. in Tuolumne County.  Well, Mr. Castle, before we get into the early days in Tuolumne County why don’t we talk about your parents over in Calaveras County and maybe you could identify your mother and father and when they came to this country, where they settled.

CASTLE:   Well lets see, they, my mother came from Cambria, down in San Louis Obispo County and my father came from San Jose. 

DYER:   Were they native Californians? 

CASTLE:   Yeah, they were native Californians.  And my grandparents they come across the plains in the schooners and the covered wagons.  My grandfather was four years old when they came here. 

DYER:   So they were real pioneers then.

CASTLE:   Yeah, his name was William Bane.

DYER:   William Bane.

CASTLE:   My mother’s name was Alice Bane.

DYER:   And your father’s name?

CASTLE:   My father’s name was Darling Castle.  That’s all, just Darling Castle.

DYER:   Darling?...

CASTLE:   Yeah.

DYER:   Castle…

CASTLE: Yeah, Darling Castle.

DYER:   That’s a little unusual.

CASTLE:   Yeah it is, it is, yeah.

DYER:   Of course people remember that name.

CASTLE:   I never seen, I’ve never seen too many names like Darling Castle.

DYER:   And they settled where in Calaveras County?

CASTLE:   In Angels, in Angels Camp, Angels Camp, and I was born there in May the 1^st 1901. 

DYER:   When did they settle in Angels Camp?

CASTLE:   Oh, about 1900 and, or about 1899 I think they told me they came, about 1899 or somewhere around there.

DYER:   Ok, and how many brothers and sisters did you have?

CASTLE:   I had three brothers and three sisters.

DYER:   So seven children in the family.

CASTLE:   Yeah. 

DYER:   And what did your parents do?

CASTLE:   My father was a miner.  And my mother was just a, she was a house wife.

DYER:   Did your father work in any of the more famous mines in the area?

CASTLE:   He worked in all, he worked in practically all the mines over there.  He worked in the Gold Cliff, and then he worked in the Utica, that was Utica Company.  The Craw Shaft, that was right above Angels Camp ????.  And then he worked in the Angels Mine and then Lightener Mine.  Then later after they closed down then he worked at the Morgan, over up Carson Hill.

DYER:   Carson Hill.

CASTLE:   The Morgan Mine at Carson Hill.

DYER:   Lets see, that would have been after they discovered that big nugget up over there at Carson Hill.

CASTLE:   Oh yes, that was after that.  That was Stevenot’s, during Archie Stevenot’s day over there where they found that big nugget.

DYER:   And your brothers and sisters, did they stay with mining or…?

CASTLE:   Well just two of my brothers did, Guy and Howard.  Howard the one, he got killed down at Mount Diablo in the quicksilver mine.

DYER:   From the poisonous fumes?

CASTLE:   Yeah, you got gassed and then you get squeezed between the hoist and the bucket and the timbers.

DYER:   Oh boy.  Now you were born in 1901

CASTLE:   19…, May the 26^th, 1901. 

DYER:   In Angels Camp?

CASTLE:   Angels Camp, yeah. 

DYER:   As a youngster, did you fine that that was a good place to be brought up in?

CASTLE:   Oh yes.  We had a good time.  ‘Course we never, you know when my father was in the mines you know they worked twelve hours a day.  They worked from seven to seven you know.

DYER:   Did you start working when you were still pretty young?

CASTLE:   Yeah, I went to work with my father when I was fifteen.  I learned the motors trade before I learned the….. *woman’s voice in the background, talking of an old photograph*… (laughter)  You see when we were little kids we hardly ever seen our dad at all because he’d go to work in the morning before we’d get up and then he’d come home at night after we went to bed.  They were working twelve hours a day you see.

DYER:   Now that was an average work day though?

CASTLE:   Yeah, what was an average workday, then they cut it down to ten and then they went to eight.  I think in 1908, I think they went to eight hours eight or ten, around there someplace, later, maybe later than that. 

DYER:   And was that six says a week?

CASTLE:   Seven, they were seven days a week, for two and a half a day.

DYER:   $2.50 a day.  And what was his job in the mines?

CASTLE:   Well at first he was a miner, he run the machine, the digging machine.  And then you know before they had the air, the pneumatic tools, they drilled by hand with a sledge hammer and a drill.  One guy would hold it, the other guy would hit it.  

DYER:   For two and a half a day you wouldn’t find too many people doing that today, Mr. Castle.

CASTLE:   Well you couldn’t get them to mow your lawn for that. 

DYER:   Do you remember the early school days in Angels?

CASTLE:   Oh yeah.

DYER:   You had most of your schooling there didn’t you?

CASTLE:   Yeah.   We had the baby class, what they used to call the baby class.  That was the kindergarten now.  And then you went from there to first grade, second grade, third grade, and on up to the eight.

DYER:   And you went to school in Angels?

CASTLE:   In Angels, yeah.

DYER:   Did you go through high school there?

CASTLE:   Yeah, yeah.  The old high school used to be up where the grammar school is now. 

DYER:   What does a young boy do for entertainment in Angels Camp in the early 1900s?

CASTLE:   What does he do?  Well you had a little, after you got up to be about four or five years old you know at six you go out into the pasture and bring the cows in.

DYER:   (laughter) That sounds like work!  Did you do any hunting or fishing or camping?

CASTLE:   Oh yes, oh yes.  Not camping, no.  We used to hunt and fish and swim and then after we got older, say ten or twelve years old, you know they did not have swimming pools in those days, you found a creek with a big whole in it and you went…

DYER:   Go down there.

CASTLE:   …swimming in that or in the Utica ditch, one of the two. 

DYER:   Then at fifteen you took on your first…

CASTLE:   Yeah I went to work in the foundry…

DYER:   …regular job.

CASTLE: …in the Angels ironworks.

DYER:   And how long did you stay there?

CASTLE:   Three years.  I learned the motors trade; I was there three years, a little over three years, we’ll call it three years.

DYER:   So you, then you, you were eighteen when you quit working in the foundry?

CASTLE:   In the foundry, and then I went to work for PG&E. 

DYER:   And you started at eighteen with PG&E?

CASTLE:   Eighteen, yeah.

DYER:   So that would have been about, just about the end of World War I.

CASTLE:   Well you see at the, the way it started was that the foundry got slowed down after World War I because we was doing all the ??? work for Moore and Scott in San Francisco, with these building ships and were ?vedment? work for them and then the work slowed down and they start to weed the people out, you know.  So then I went, I went to work for the PG&E then. 

DYER:   Now when did you meet Mrs. Castle?

CASTLE:   Mrs. Castle?  I met her about, oh 1930 I guess.  We got married in ’31.

DYER:   So you were working at PG&E for, oh over ten years before your marriage.

CASTLE:   Oh, I was married first.  I was married once before.

DYER:   Oh, I see.

CASTLE:   Bud, Bud’s mother, see.  She died in ’26. 

DYER: I see.  Your fist job with PG&E was in 19…

CASTLE:   Working on the flume.

DYER: … 19… was here, in mother load country?

C… 1919.  It was over at Stanislaus where these pictures were taken.

DYER:   Oh, along the Stanislaus then?  

CASTLE:   Yeah.

DYER:   Okay.  And you were working on the flume there and then you mentioned that you worked outside of the county.

CASTLE:   Well I went, that was only for a little short spell there.  I was down in ?Penno? for a while.  But that was later, that was after I started working on the mine, on the mine crew.  See that, on the flume I had to, we worked there, I worked there two years.  See that was, I was twenty years old when I went to work for the, in the mine department.

DYER:   So 1919 then you started working on the flume and that was in Tuolumne county then?

CASTLE:   Yeah, yeah that’s in Tuolumne county.

DYER:   What were you doing there?

CASTLE:   Oh just doing everything, working on the changing boards, side boards on the flume, and piling lumber, and changing stringers underneath the flume, and everything like that.  Just general, just general flume work.

DYER:   So actually, you really haven’t left the mother load country at all or anything.

CASTLE:   No, no I was just down there for two months.

DYER:   And you were too young to go into the service.

CASTLE:   Yeah, too young and too old for the next one.

DYER:   And too old for the next one.

CASTLE:   Yeah.

DYER:   My father was the same way.  And so this meant that you have lived here in this area for seventy two years.

CASTLE:   Seventy two years, yeah. 

DYER:   That must give you a pretty good idea what this area’s like. 

Stop of Tape: New Recording Follows.

DYER:   Today is the 2^nd of August and we are continuing our discussion with Mr. Castle about the good old days in Tuolumne county.  Now you mentioned that before PG&E located in the county, there was another power…

CASTLE:   Sierra and San, Sierra and San Francisco Power Company.

DYER:   Sierra and San Francisco…

CASTLE:   Sierra and San Francisco Power Company.  Their the original.  Their the ones that built Relief Dam and later they built Strawberry Dam, or Pinecrest, whatever you want to call it.

DYER:   Do you have any idea when they first built…

CASTLE:   1915 they built ah, they built Strawberry dam in 1906,7, and 8 they built Relief dam. 

DYER:   Were they in the Hetch Hetchy project?

CASTLE:   No, no they weren’t.  They had nothing to do with Hetch Hetchy at all.

DYER:   So PG&E took over then in…?

CASTLE:   About 1918.

DYER:   1918…

CASTLE:   Or 19, 1918, I’m not quite positive of the dates, but that’s when it was.  And Mr. Crab was the superintendent at that time and then Mr. Breadgood took over after Mr. Crab left.  See, he was the superintendent of the, Breadgood was the superintendent of the power house.  Then he moved from there to the superintendent of the whole, the flume…

DYER:   The whole thing…

CASTLE: …of the whole ?Merry Ann? right there you see.

DYER:   Was there any reason for Sierra and San Francisco Power Company leaving?

CASTLE:   Well I think that PG&E was just growing at the time, see, and they just gobbled that up at the same time of the Sierra and San Francisco Power Company.

DYER:   Where did PG&E get its start?

CASTLE:   In San Francisco.

DYER:   In San Francisco.

CASTLE:   Yeah.

DYER:   And so the two of them were competitors then?

CASTLE:   Yeah, right, right.  You see the first two power lines that were built out of Stanislaus were built by the Sierra and San Francisco Power Company. 

DYER:   And were did they go from, now?

CASTLE:   They went to Newark, from Stanislaus to Newark, in south San Francisco.

DYER:   Did this end the Sierra and San Francisco Power Company?

CASTLE:   That was it.  That was it.

DYER:   So just prior to World War I, 1915, they were out of business.

CASTLE:   Right.

DYER:   So probably PG&E then bought their holdings.

CASTLE:   Yeah, they bought.  They leased first and then they bought later. 

DYER:   Now you would have been fairly young at that time.

CASTLE:   I was only 18, 19 years old.

DYER:   And over in Angles Camp.

CASTLE:   Right, right.

DYER:   Working in the foundry there.

CASTLE:   The foundry, yeah.  See, I didn’t go to work for the PG&E till I was 18 because they wouldn’t hire you until you unless you was 18 years old. 

DYER:   So when you started working with PG&E in Tuolumne County, you were among the first hired with the company?

CASTLE:   Yeah, that’s right. That was the, well that was, well of course there was a lot of us; you know the San Francisco Power Company, the PG&E took over all their employees, see.  They took over all the employees that they had up there.

DYER:   Oh, so a lot of them just…

CASTLE:   Moved over…

DYER: …continued working with the…

CASTLE: …with a different company, see, with the Pacific Gas and Electric Company.

DYER:   Well Mr. Castle, why don’t we take just a little bit of time and talk about the type of work done and some of the different positions that the men held while they were working in general construction.  So starting with the line crews, could you give us a kind of run down of the different jobs that you had and the other men too?

CASTLE:   Well now you don’t want the flume stuff?

DYER:   Well lets pick that up a little later, but lets talk about…

CASTLE:   Alright, when I first, I went to work when I was 18 and I went to work as a brush cutter and then later, why, I worked for Charley Noick.  He was the superintendent of the job over there.  And then I worked there for about, ohhh lets see, on the brush crew I worked for about two months.  And then he put me on a job of distributing materials, you know, getting the insulator for the poles and all that stuff up to the work, the site where going to set the poles. 

DYER:   But, dropping back just a minuet now, in cutting the brush, why are you cleaning that?

CASTLE:   Cleaning the right of way for the power line, for the 110 volt power line, see. 

DYER:   Where there legal requirements that there be, uh…

CASTLE:   Yeah, the Forest Service had to provide, it had to be a hundred feet wide.

DYER:   You had to cut a path, like a fire…

CASTLE:   Like a fire, one hundred, it had to be a hundred feet wide and so then after the right of way was cut and then the other crew come in, the whole diggers, to dig the wholes for the poles, you know.  And then later, well then I was put on the crew of spotting material.  That’s the right of way, they took me off the right of way and put me on the spotting material. 

DYER:   Now how did you get that material back into the area?

CASTLE:   Well at first they had the little machine that I, that Ford, it’s a little tractor, and they hauled it up on that, see. 

DYER:   Oh that was on the track then.

CASTLE:   It was on the track and we just rolled it, they just rolled it off on the side of the flume and then from there we took it up to the, and that was done by block and tackle. 

DYER:   So that’s a lot of muscle power there.

CASTLE:   All they had to have was a weak mind and a strong back.

DYER:   Why didn’t you use a helicopter (laughter)?

CASTLE:   No, we didn’t have helicopters in those days.  So then I had, then he put me on a run, run the crew.

DYER:   So would that be as a foreman or an assistant?

CASTLE:   No, just give me a jab, as seeing that I got everything up there.  And that’s when I had all these kids from the University of California.  I had six, six boys in the University of California.  Then I had all these other laborers, you know, that were, well, six of them couldn’t even speak English! 

DYER:   Were these men who were recruited?

CASTLE:   No, they, we, you know in the olden days, they used to have a, what they called a Murray and Ready, a Murray and Ready hiring company.  And they, they’d send, that we were, “we need, we need twelve men.”  Well Murray and Ready would send twelve men up, either from San Francisco or Sacramento.  They’d send twelve men up for, to work there.  Of course in those days their wages were four, four and a half a day…

DYER:   Would that be what you’d call common laborer then?

CASTLE:   Yes, that was common labor.

DYER:   Four and a half a day. 

CASTLE:   Four and a half a day.  And then you would, you would have to have your own blankets and they’d furnish you a cot and a mattress and it was a dollar and a quarter a day for board, out of the four and a half, see.  A dollar and a quarter a day was for board.

DYER:   That’d be a bit steep for board, wouldn’t it?

CASTLE:   Yeah, that’s what they charged for board and room, was a dollar and a quarter a day.

DYER:   Of course I suppose someone had to put the bunk house up and they had to get the food in and…

CASTLE:   Yes, yes, yes.  And it was all done from Stanislaus, was all done up the tram for 2,800 feet, you know, up the tram.  Then we’d transfer it onto these rigs, like I showed you in the pictures there.

DYER: Those little, uh…

CASTLE:   Little tractors.

DYER:   Tractors, on the track.

CASTLE:   And then we would take it up to the different camps.  They had a camp at 4-Bay, they had a camp at C-4, and they had a camp at Sand Bar. 

DYER:   Now, when we talk about these camps, we’re talking about camps along the Stanislaus river.

CASTLE:   Right.

DYER:   Which fork of the Stanislaus?

CASTLE:   Middle, middle fork.

DYER:   The middle fork.

CASTLE:   Middle fork.

DYER:   And as you started up the river, you ran into Four Bay?  Was that the first camp?

CASTLE:   No, the Four Bay was the first camp. 

DYER:   … how did you…

CASTLE:   Just above Stanislaus, you got to go up on a tram! 

DYER:   Yeah.

CASTLE:   You got to go up on a tram way.  And there from there you want to C-4, and then to Sand Bar.  There was three camps. 

DYER:   I can see the name Sand Bar, what does C-4 mean? 

CASTLE:   That, that was the middle, that was the center of the flume.  It had sixteen miles of flume, and it was eight miles from, from 4-Bay to there and then eight miles up to Sand Bar. 

DYER:   And 4-Bay, what does that mean?

CASTLE:   That means the bay before it goes into the pen stock.

DYER:   Oh, its like before going into the pen stock, ah. 

CASTLE:   Right, right.

DYER:   So you shorten it to 4-Bay.

CASTLE:   4-Bay, 4-Bay.  Yeah.

DYER:   Its coming.

CASTLE:   (laughter)

DYER:   Um, other positions: now you mentioned the brush cutters and the post hole diggers.  Were there other jobs that the men had on the line crews?

CASTLE:   Yeah, we had linemen.

DYER:   Linemen?  Okay and what was their position?  What did they do?

CASTLE:   They set the poles, help set the poles and then they strung the wire and they framed the poles in like a, like those two guys on the, I showed you a picture of frame men, and they framed those structures in, strung the wire and that was about it.

DYER:   And that’s an “A”?...

CASTLE:   “H” structure.

DYER:   “H” structure.

CASTLE:   “H.”

DYER:   And is that because of the appearance of the structure?

CASTLE:   Yeah, it looks like a big “H.” 

DYER:   Looks like a big “H,” yeah.

CASTLE:   Yeah.

DYER:   Okay.  Where there other positions that men had that they specialized in something, like did you have some people who took care of the flume or people who took care of the bunkhouse? 

CASTLE:   Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had a, we used to have cooks, the flunkies...

DYER:   A flunky is a messenger boy or something?  (laughter)

CASTLE:   No, he’s the guy who cleans off the table and washes the dishes (laughter).  That’s a flunkie.  Then the bull cook, what we called the bull cook.

DYER:   A bull cook?

CASTLE:   A bull cook, he’s the guy that cleaned the bunk houses up and kept, you know, kinda tidy around there.  That’s the bull cook.

DYER:   Were these jobs that were good paying jobs?

CASTLE:   Well, I don’t know what they, they didn’t pay, well you know in those days you didn’t get to much pay. 

DYER:   How’d the men get along with each other?

CASTLE:   Fine.

DYER:   You had mentioned you had foreigners and you had some Americans and you had…

CASTLE:   You had all kinds of, you had all kinds of, just like they say in New York, “there’s a mixing basket.”  Well we had it up there too. 

DYER:   Yeah.  Were the college students only working during the summer?

CASTLE:   During the summer time.  They were, they always had jobs.  The, you take University of California and Stanford and USF, they’d send them up there to work in the summer time.  And some of them were real, real ambitious, and some of them were not, they didn’t like that rattlesnake business and all that stuff.  Now the rattlesnakes were plentiful up there, don’t think they weren’t.  There were plenty of rattlesnakes. 

DYER:   Well, that’d be virgin country up there and as you go into it…

CASTLE:   Well you’re cutting the brush, you know, and disturbing them and all that stuff, you know.  Why, we used to get in there…

DYER:   Four or five feet long.

CASTLE:   We had a Mexican, one Mexican boy there, he was about, oh, maybe twenty nine, thirty, somewhere around there and he would catch them!  You know how he’d catch them?  Take our boot laces off, make a lasso out of it, and catch them and then drowned them in the flume.  Then he’d skin them and make belts and what have you out of it.

DYER:   Oh, out of the skin.

CASTLE:   Out of the, out of the skins. 

DYER:   Wow.  Did he ever eat the meat?

CASTLE:   No, no, no, no.  We weren’t that much of a boy scout.  (laughter)

DYER:   I understand its good eating! 

CASTLE:   That’s what they, that’s what Ben, but I, haha, I don’t go for that.  And we never had one, we never had one snake bite of all the time that we, a year and a half, that we worked on that line we never had one snake bite.

DYER:   Well I heard a snake will try and get out of the way.

CASTLE:   It will, it will. 

DYER:   Unless you step right on it, with boots on.

CASTLE:   Well, you tantalize them a little bit and they’ll fight you.  But otherwise, they won’t bother.  A rattlesnake won’t bother you unless you bother him. 

DYER:   Did you have any, any bear problems up there?

CASTLE:   Oh no.  Bears were there, but we, we never had any problems.  We used to feed the deer and everything else there. 

DYER:   A bear didn’t try to get into your food?

CASTLE:   No, no, we never had no problems with a bear.

DYER: when did the unions take an active role at hiring men and regulating activities?

CASTLE: Oh, that wasn’t until way late.  I don’t know just exactly when...let’s, see.  At first we’d have accompany on you. You know, all employees had a representative and all that and then later when they went to the AFL-CIO—45 was the union number—so that was in 19…oh, I forget now, around the sixties, I think before unions came in.

DYER: Well, now, the unions were trying to organize some of the rail road workers back in the 1920s, but that wouldn’t affect PG&E.

CASTLE: No. No. You see, when we was building the general construction as a lineman, they were all boomers.  Most of them—a boomer line—you know, they’d work maybe a month here and a month there and a month someplace else, you know; they wouldn’t stay.  They’d just go from job to job.  They’d get their (_____) and then they’d move on.

DYER: Were these young men who had families?

CASTLE: Oh, yeah. I imagine most…they were all…they just floaters, you know, what we call boomer—we called the boomer linemen.  And they never strayed too long. Some of them did.  Some of them were in a…I can name about ten of then that stayed right through the full job.

DYER: Well now, were these people dependable workers since they were frequently drifting…?

CASTLE: Oh, yeah.  They were good men. They were really good linemen. 

DYER: Restless souls.

CASTLE: Just like a kid told me one morning, he says, “I heard the whistle blow. Goodbye.”  And there he went.  You know, that’s the way they do it.  They ride the freight trains, you know.  They just go from one place to another and that was it. 

DYER: The men worked not only during the good weather, but also during winter weather.

CASTLE: Absolutely.

DYER: Any problems with trying to contend with the snow or rain?

CASTLE: No.  You see, on that flume you don’t…the water level…the water doesn’t bother you because you are dressed accordingly. If you work under that flume—if you work underneath the flume—changing stringers and tires and all that stuff, well, the water is pouring down on you, you know. 

DYER: Because the flume does leak. 

CASTLE: Oh, it leaks, sure. But you jack the flume up to get the new stringers under there, it’s going to leak more, you know.  The water just runs on you all the time; so you had to have your…you had to have clothes that would keep you partly dry and the boots and stuff like that and then you had these cork boots, you know, the boots with all the stickers sticking out of them.

DYER: Oh, I see. Like a golf shoe today.

CASTLE: Well, it’s a little…they had thirty or forty in there and you climb up these slick timbers, you know, you got to have something to hold you.  That’s all you had, was just your hands and your cork boots—that was it.

DYER: Yeah, it seemed to be a little of a problem. Do they still use them today?

CASTLE: Oh yeah.  They don’t have any more flumes.  Now it’s all metal flumes, you know. Metal like when you go, well you was at Treasure Flat if you woulda look right up on the hill you would have seen these big half-round metal flumes.  It’s all metal now.   They don’t have any more wooden flumes.   Utica does.  What we call the Utica side over going into Angeles, and Angeles Water Supply and feeding that Angel’s powerhouse—that’s still wooden.

DYER: Now is that the power house…?

CASTLE: That’s in Murphys.

DYER: Yeah, along the Highway 4 there.

CASTLE: Yeah, just off to the right as you go out of Murphys you’ll see a little after-bay there and a powerhouse.

DYER: Now, that’s fed by wooden flumes?

CASTLE: Most of it.  Yeah.  They’ve got some metal, but not too much. 

DYER: Now, you also worked a s a field manager didn’t you, Mr. Castle?

CASTLE: Well, before that I was a foreman for a good many years.

DYER: The foreman of one crew?

CASTLE: Yeah.

DYER: How many men would be in the crew?

CASTLE: Oh, in those days I used to have about, oh, all the way from twelve to sixteen men. Because you had to handset the poles in, you know.  You had to hand set them.

DYER: So it took a lot of …

CASTLE: No. Flagpoles and a lot of beef, that’s all. You can get them set.

DYER: Can you lose a crewman doing something like that?

CASTLE: No. I never … I only had one accident. I only had one accident of all the time I was a foreman and that’s over on the Stanislaus road—a fellow broke his leg over there. 

DYER: Of course you had young men in top shape.

CASTLE: all in good shape, yeah.

DYER: Probably very stringent safety requirements.

CASTLE: Yes, you see, the safety program in PG&E started in 1924.  That’s when the pig push for safety started…in 1924.  And I had a fellow from San Francisco by the name of Dickerson.  Dickerson was the first safety engineer that came in this country and he used to give us first aid classes and how to bandage up your arm and your leg and put the splints on and all that, you know. And he practically left you on your own and it was a good program; it was real good. It started in 1924 when I was in Jackson—I showed you that picture, you know, when we were in Jackson—and that’s the first first-aid class that I had was in the old substation in Sutter Creek.  He gave us our first.  And then we had artificial respiration and all of that. 

DYER: Did you have to set the broken bone of your crewman?

CASTLE: Oh, no, no, we just bandaged it. No further injury.  That al we went for. Just bandaged it for no further injury and we didn’t set it or nothing, we just the splints on and whatever we could finDYER: a piece of stick, or newspaper, or whatever you could find and made a splint out of that and that was that.  

DYER: Just to keep it from separating more.

CASTLE: No further injury.  They used to preach “no further injury.” Of course if you had a compound fracture, well, that was worse than another color head and trying to get all that stuff on, you know.  But it was a real good education as far as I was concerned.

DYER: How many crews would they have working in an area, let’s says like on the, oh, the Spring Gap area or on the…

CASTLE: One.

DYER: One crew.

CASTLE: One crew—the flume crew and the electric crew and that would be it.

DYER: so that would be one working on the flue and one working on the lulls and…

CASTLE: yeah, and stringing wire.

DYER: …stringing wire…

CASTLE: …and whatever.

DYER: So there would only be like two full…

END OF TAPE

General Information:

Interviewer: Dyer, Richard

Interviewee: Castle, Walter

Name of Tape: P.G.& E. in Tuolumne County (castle_w_1_0)

When: 8/31/1973

Transcriber: Nicol (to 23:19) and Ariella (from 23:20)