Coleman: …they didn’t tell us back in those days.
Dyer: Well then if you had a break down, then you would take the animals…
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: …and just go on to the next station…
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: …go back…
Coleman: Then go back…
Dyer: …and repair it.
Coleman: Yeah go back and repair it, yeah, or have somebody else come out of a smaller region, all your…or if you broke a wheel down or you broke an axel, they’d come out…the blacksmith would come out and put it in. That axel used to break quite often on the freight wagon.
Dyer: After leaving then…
Coleman: But those axels were about two in a half inches solid steel you know, but they’d snap off…could slid it and snap. (___) (___) because I broke one one-time; hell of a bang. Drop right to the ground.
Dyer: You ever have any trouble with highway men; people that stop…hold-up men?
Coleman: Oh no, no never.
Dyer: I guess that was much earlier.
Coleman: Yeah that was much earlier. I don’t…I guess when there was highway men and the hold-up men on the road, I guess there was these ox teams, see.
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: No, I never did hear a critter being held up.
Dyer: Well then you leaving Merced and then you’d go on to Snelling or Merced Falls and then you’d go on up to Webb Station?
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: Then Coulterville and then what would your next stop be after Coulterville?
Coleman: Uh, Bower’s Cave.
Dyer: Bower’s Cave?
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: Uh-huh and about how far is that from Coulterville?
Coleman: That’s about 16 miles. A little closer now because they shortened up the road in a lot of places. Used to wind around the Union but now they cut through straight now.
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: A mileage is a lot…a lot shorter for the modern (___) than they had in those days. See, they used the contour over the hill. Like the guy says they serrated the hills took to the highest point and then they dropped to the lowest (___) (___).
Dyer: Just work around the hill?
Coleman: Yeah somedays we would take it right over to Coulterville…
Dyer: Sure.
Coleman: …and I’ll show you some of them trade roads.
Dyer: I’d like to see them. I’ll take my camera with.
Coleman: I can show you one place within five miles it’d make your hair stand up. (___) (___) (___) 16 animals and two wagons loaded his mining timbers.
Dyer: Pretty (___).
Coleman: Fifty…50% tread I think some of those places.
Dyer: Did the animals ever refuse to go in something like that?
Coleman: No, nope they always go. I used to drive in later years I drove Dr. Lee’s team; Horus Wheelie, and he had ten short-string. Got a bright (___) (___) horse. He had all horses. He never liked mules. He raised mules and he never used them. He rig them to work and then he’d sell them to somebody. And this black horse will get there and he’d go all the way from Coulterville out without a drink of water, see, there’s no water on the road. Down at the mine, there was a tunnel there and it’d just run nice, cool water and that horse knew it, see. When he hit that ground…down grade going down in the there it was only about…oh I guess it’s 1500 feet down there but it’s straight down; and boy he’d lean into the collar going down there and no way, no where to hold him, you know. You’d hold him like pulling off of the road.
Dyer: Yeah.
Coleman: And he just line for that water because he knew it was down there. Boy I used to hate that landscape. To be on top of that hill. Both brakes locked in the (___) (___) and the rocks and the wheels and you knew…you could just say you was holding it and that was about all with that horse pulling.
Dyer: Well did you ever put any logs on behind to slow it down or anything?
Coleman: No, no.
Dyer: But you could…
Coleman: I had a…we had a thing we called a shoe, made like that. Had bridges up the side like that and then fastened to the side of the wagon. It was a shoe you drug that to save you from wearing your tire flat.
Dyer: Well that’d be almost like dragging a foot today, say, on a motorbike or something.
Coleman: Yeah, yeah.
Dyer: You just put it down along the side of the wagon? Yeah it seems to me it would wear the…
Coleman: Some of them used to have tweaks across them, but they’d tear up the road terrible. (___) wash then when you (___) (___) with it and then you’d really make it bad because you’d just jump from rock to rock then, you know. Couldn’t hold it at all.
Dyer: Well whose job was it to repair that road? Say someone did have a problem on it. Who…
Coleman: Use to have what they call “a road and pull tax” no supervisors or nothing and I…you and I, why, we had to pay our road and pull tags…why we could put in a day; two and a half and go out and repair that day. You put in a day and I put in a day and then the other tax payer you put in a day and that’s the way we would repair it.
Dyer: You put in time or put in some money.
Coleman: Yeah. Time and money. Everybody paid a tax.
Dyer: They don’t do that anymore?
Coleman: (___) no. No matter who he was, he paid his tax or he wasn’t around.
Dyer: Yeah well I think they learned early how important taxes are. Well after leaving then Coulterville, what other stations do you have before you get into…
Coleman: (___) (___) Hazel Green.
Dyer: Hazel Green, huh.
Coleman: And go to the lower Coulterville Road, Big Meadows, and then you’d go into Yosemite and unload and if you was luck, why, you could make back off to Big Meadows in the same day, you see. You left a little bit early and drop off of that hill because there wasn’t much pulling of the team then you would drop off of that hill pretty rapidly, see. You didn’t have to pull nothing on it and you handle that ole brake. You done the work then, see. Handling that ole brake and let the wagon run on them a little bit and they’d get out of the way and…
Dyer: Well do they have much going out of the valley from Yosemite down?
Coleman: Oh not very much back freight.
Dyer: So you’d go empty then?
Coleman: Out as far as Hazel Green and then maybe you could pick up two or 3,000 posts and load them and go on down to the valley. Posts were selling like hotcakes down there you know, cedar posts, split like easier.
Dyer: Like these.
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: These around the cattle field (___)?
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: Well didn’t Hutching’s have a sawmill out there in the valley pretty early? Did he have any…
Coleman: Well I think he…(____) only just for his own purposes there building in the valley.
Dyer: I see.
Coleman: Of course I don’t know what kind of a mill. It wasn’t much of a mill…it was enough…
Dyer: …or enough…
Coleman: …maybe…maybe 1,000, three a day or something like that.
Dyer: Yeah.
Coleman: But a lot of that lumber that was made then, especially in the olden days, was made with a cross-cut saw. Two men was up there and one down here.
Dyer: One man will be working in a pit and one above on a platform…
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: …and then saw. I bet that took muscle.
Coleman: It was cross-cut.
Dyer: That’ll take a lot of muscle on that.
Coleman: That guy had a lot of sawdust down below there.
Dyer: That’s true. He got more money down there?
Coleman: No. Lucky if he got a dollar a day.
Dyer: What would a freighter get?
Coleman: Well the (___) get about…about $2 a day for 12 hours and the freighter two and a half to $3 and some teamsters would pay you board, see.
Dyer: Uh-huh. Was that good pay?
Coleman: Oh yeah it was tops.
Dyer: You could live pretty well?
Coleman: Oh yeah, yeah. If you made that two and a half a day, that was take home money. You had that here. Nobody got a hold of that.
Dyer: No taxes.
Coleman: No taxes (___) no unemployment or nothing that was there.
Dyer: How many days a week?
Coleman: Seven days.
Dyer: Seven days a week?
Coleman: It was like the new 365 days.
Dyer: No paid vacations?
Coleman: No paid vacation, no coffee break.
Dyer: Unemployment insurance?
Coleman: Nothing.
Dyer: You had to work pretty hard for your money then?
Coleman: *unintelligible* (9:53-9:54).
Dyer: So from two to two and a half a day?
Coleman: Yep.
Dyer: Well, Frank, what about some of the people that you work for? You start out working with your father. Do you remember some of the other people like Stoddard? Did you work for Stoddard?
Coleman: I just drove stage with him, easy. That was a quite shared job.
Dyer: Well that’s for the tourist (___).
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: You had to be dressed up with your duster and all?
Coleman: Oh yeah your duster. That was a “must” that duster. I used to hate wearing those things and then.
Dyer: Well the duster was like coveralls wasn’t it; cover the whole body?
Coleman: Oh yeah it was like a big housecoat, bathrobe, it was linen. Boy, that was a must you had to have that.
Dyer: Did the dust bother the horses or mules?
Coleman: Oh I guess if it bothered them, they never complained.
Dyer: They never complained?
Coleman: No. You’ve seen the cat skinner, haven’t you?
Dyer: Yeah.
Coleman: Well that’s the way it all uncovered. Look.
Dyer: Uh…
Coleman: That old desert. Dust and sweat would just be caked on him. Him sitting right back in all them wagons and mules kicking up that dust and he was sitting down low right back there getting in front of that wagon. He didn’t have much choice. He had to be there an eat that dust.
Dyer: How long did you work for Stoddard?
Coleman: Oh it was seasonal maybe every spring I’d go up there and work a little.
Dyer: And you were driving stage then?
Coleman: Oh yeah I was driving stage. That is…just on special, see. I was going to tell you about us guys driving stages. I mean this Johnny Madena. We were wild and crazy, you know, when we’d break in horses and we’d hook them up in the big barn. They’d throw the door open and, man, we’d (___) (___) like we come out of a gun. We shot right out there in the open spaces. (___) (___) bucking and everything else, and we…when they started a regular run, they wouldn’t give us a job because we was too wild and crazy. They figured we might get a (___) (___).
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: Every night it ain’t about what it does, (___) (___) in the wagon and the stage coach. It didn’t bother us. We thought that was fun, see. Maybe worked a little bit and helped them along.
Dyer: That’s when you’re a young kid?
Coleman: Oh yeah we didn’t care. Well they were always scared to trust us, see, but when the spring come, why, they we was set for. Jobs where you come up and break these horses and we’d go to Stoddard and then we’d go to the Wawuna up at West and Feed. We can go there. Drop the rope off on there and when we got ahold (___) (___) and all the stages in operation, why, we didn’t have no job. We had to go look for another one somewhere.
Dyer: What’s this outfit? Wawona Y-S-T?
Coleman: Yeah Y, S, & T.
Dyer: Y, S, & T? What was that? I don’t…
Coleman: Yosemite Turnpike.
Dyer: Oh turnpike.
Coleman: Wash Bren. Wash Bren run that and Stoddard run the other one.
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: The Washbren really had the best staging outfit. Oh Stoddard’s is stage the horses and all that was kind of crummy. They Washbren, boy they had a beautiful horses…big fellows. They were meaner than hell but they were good horses.
Dyer: Where do they usually get these horses?
Coleman: Oh like I said they got them everywhere.
Dyer: Were their horses *simultaneous talking* (14:02-14:04)
Coleman: Yeah where they got most of their horses is from Old Miller Lucks.
Dyer: Miller Lucks?
Coleman: Yeah they bread them down at Buck and Willow. He branded with a (___) (___), you know, like a snake; and a lot of those horses S-Ranch horses. They were mean but they were good.
Dyer: What makes a horse mean?
Coleman: Oh some of them just naturally mean, bread mean.
Dyer: Yeah.
Coleman: They were all 14, 15 (___) high big, lanky horses. Good ones, pretty horses.
Dyer: And you say that…
Coleman: A lot of them in good shape.
Dyer: A horse like this in good shape would last like 20 years?
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: Well that’s a pretty good investment. It’s better than an automobile…
Coleman: Oh yeah. Yeah and they get seven to some farmer and he’d get five or six more years out of them.
Dyer: What would it cost Stoddard or anyone to buy, say, one of these good animals?
Coleman: Why they mostly generally bought them in pairs. They called them “span” see. A guy wanted to sell them all he’d say, “I got a span of horses I’ll sell you,” see. They were kind of mated, see. That’s what they called a “span.” And $200, $250 but you taken along with her a mule, black and white nose and pair it off like that about $750 a span. That was a fair thing. Old mules he cost a little more money.
Dyer: Did you try to mix them or did you just work the mares on a team?
Coleman: Oh a lot of them used to work the mares but they never made any difference.
Dyer: Didn’t make any…
Coleman: …(___) usually stallion right with the mares. Why, my dad used to have a stallion and a mare work together all the time on the wheel of the big teams. The stallion weighed 2400 and mare weighed 2300.
Dyer & Coleman: *simultaneous talking* (16:30).
Coleman: Yeah the guys talking about they ride a horseback and get bold legged, it is…put that on, make out I think because I when I was growing and I used to ride that big mare (___) (___) and beat this stick and straight out like this, I didn’t have them bend around and it was sticking straight out like this. Just like getting on the elephants.
Dyer: Yeah.
Coleman: You didn’t need no chiropractor to work on him and you was on top of her back and she was pulling. She just throw you right around that saddle. She’d throw the slack right out of you.
Dyer: I bet you slept pretty well at night too.
Coleman: Oh yeah, yeah. Yes sir it was good to rock you to sleep when you’d done all that working. Hit that bed and worrying about the next morning; see if everything is gonna go right. But they…the teamsters in those days, the owners, they knew what their team could move and they never overload them. You just loaded so much and that was it. If you stuck them, why, it was your driving that followed them up.
Dyer: Did Wells Fargo have a route in that same area? They run their freight wagons, stages…
Coleman: No they always leased…like Stoddard and Washbren they…they….they leased the rigs to handle their stuff. Wells Fargo Express and all that, they had a regular rig. At least on the rig to handle that stuff, see.
Dyer: So they really didn’t run their own?
Coleman: No I don’t think the Wells Fargo ever did own a stage of their own.
Dyer: This might…..
Coleman: Leased them all I think.
Dyer: They leased them, yeah.
Coleman: Same with the Pony Express. That was leased.
Dyer: And then they had these little express offices then in the towns?
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: Are most of the towns like, say, Snelling or Merced Falls have their express…
Coleman: Yeah they had an express office. All had a little express office.
Dyer: Did you do any work for Wells Fargo?
Coleman: Those days, just hauled freight for them.
Dyer: Freight?
Coleman: Yeah. I used to haul freight into Coulterville for Wells Fargo. The Wells Fargo in Coulterville was a pretty good size place. They drew quite a bit of business there and throughout the mining cutter you know. I don’t know what the weight was, but you could ship quite a bit by Wells Fargo, see. Come right from the east right there to the mills of Wells Fargo. That’s the way to get it. Then Parcel Post come in and Wells Fargo kind of faded out.
Dyer: Well did you use a lot of the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe trains there to pick up the supplies down in the valley and…
Coleman: Oh yeah.
Dyer: …take them down to the valley and…
Coleman: Oh yeah.
Dyer: …take them back then from there?
Coleman: Santa Fe and SP.
Dyer: What about the Sierra Railroads? Sierra came into Jamestown area along the 1890s.
Coleman: Yeah they still used to freight them there from Stockton. I don’ t know how come. They used to freight from Oakdale here and Sierra come right up from Oakdale.
Dyer: Did, uh…
Coleman: (___) (___) we used to have a steady run here, mule team.
Dyer: Well now did this cut into the freighting business then as the railroads began to move in to these places?
Coleman: Well no not in the mountain country here.
Dyer: Yosemite short line and some of the others?
Coleman: I don’t know how it effect here, see. They… I know it was Westhasm and OZ Billy. They both had low line teams all in here. Want people to climb their house and (___) (___) (___). See this road down through here wasn’t here. This was an old stage road right here. That’s where they got this fouled up stage road up over the hill here. This here is a stage road.
Dyer: So the Chicken Ranch Road was the original stage?
Coleman: Yeah it’s the original stage road.
Dyer: So they paved the old stage road?
Coleman: Yeah and then it goes out into the field down here and down through the mountain pass.
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: And they call this road up here “stage road” and there was a stage on that.
Dyer: What’s that? Over here near Rawhide?
Coleman: Yeah, yeah.
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: There used to be a road right over the mountain here went into Rawhide. The road runs right through my property right here. You can see where the wheels is over the rock.
Dyer: On your property?
Coleman: Yeah up to (___).
Dyer: Let’s take a look at that some time.
Coleman: Alright you can see where the wagons wore the rock down.
Dyer: Ok. Now during the late 1920s and the 1930s the movie company’s came into the Sonora area. Did you do any work for them?
Coleman: Oh yeah.
Dyer: Got to know…
Coleman: Way back Bill Hart’s day.
Dyer: Oh the big cowboy wasn’t he?
Coleman: Yeah big cowboy. He had a puny horse and jump right of the Sierra Bucksky right there at the Hales and Symons run out on the pavement. Train was moving five or six miles an hour and the little pony jumped right out. Oh it was sideways quite a ways, always floating and he would make her.
Dyer: See I’d be afraid of the pony would break it’s legs in something like that. Just jumped right out of the freight?
Coleman: Jumped right out of the boxcar. The bucks got pretty high off the ground, you know.
Dyer: Now was he on the pony too?
Coleman: Oh sure he was riding there mountain making a big scene.
Dyer: With the cameramen taking every foot of it, huh.
Coleman: The big (___) (___) right out there.
Dyer: What were you doing then? Did you appear in the movies, Frank, or did you…?
Coleman: Oh you bother appear in the movies, they never show you. There was only one time I was ever in the movies and that’s the…(___) pictures that you could see me. Down here in the…to Warnerville and Dry Creek what they call it and there’s a (___) cow carcass down in there and I was dressed in an Indian Chief and with my hand over my eye’s I was looking down at the white man’s camp ground and that was the Indian’s (___).
Dyer: Oh.
Coleman: That’s the only time you ever see me in the movies.
Dyer: So you were…
Coleman: I was in hundreds of them but that’s the only time you ever see in there. When I was driving stagecoach, I took all these wild chases but you never see me when (___) (___) (___) put the star up there, see. I don’t know the danger and he sit on his butt up there…
Dyer: So you actually did most of the dangerous things…
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: …when the big-name actors were the ones you saw on the screen?
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: And they got the big money and you got…
Coleman: Oh I got $25 a day.
Dyer: That wasn’t too bad…
Coleman: No.
Dyer: …$25 a day.
Coleman: No, I used to chisel a lot.
Dyer: Did they have you doing any particular risky things for the movies?
Coleman: Well I don’t know. You might…you might call it risky. You ever been up the Old Phoenix Lake Road to Longeway up there?
Dyer: That’s beyond the gold course out there is it?
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: Yeah.
Coleman: Going up through that gorge.
Dyer: Yeah.
Coleman: They got it fixed now.
Dyer: Where that road goes up there…
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: …to…
Coleman: Straight down through that gorge and around there.
Dyer: Right.
Coleman: I’ve had the curtains on the stagecoach and driving from inside couldn’t see where I was going, come down that hill there and the main star he ride out their horseback rescue the runaway stage and I was inside…
Dyer: Oh…
Coleman: …going down the mountain.
Dyer: You were?
Coleman: I was driving blind. That’s what they call “driving blind.”
Dyer: You were inside the stage and then *interrupted by Coleman* (25:34-25:26).
Coleman: With the curtains down like this here and nobody could see me, and I was in there and this star come over the hill and he mount and then he’d take the reigns from me and then he’d finish the run.
Dyer: So it looked like it was a runaway stage and actually you were driving it.
Coleman: I was driving inside.
Dyer: That’s pretty rugged country up there; even with a car…
Coleman: Damn rugged place to be riding like that.
Dyer: I guess you deserve $25 a day you’re in something like that. Well you’re gonna work for them again now aren’t you?
Coleman: Yeah I guess so.
Dyer: Aren’t they coming up here on…I think that red pony with…
Coleman: Red pony out in Columbia. Somewhere…I don’t know where the settings going to be somewhere.
Dyer: Henry Fonda and Maureen O’Hara?
Coleman: Yeah, yeah.
Dyer: What will you do for them?
Coleman: Drive the coach.
Dyer: Just drive the coach, huh?
Coleman: They treat this time…six.
Dyer: Six of them?
Coleman: Six when they always use four, only two better this time try to see. See if them guys down the get up and drive six.
Dyer: Yeah. Still have the touch?
Coleman: Oh yeah just like that…a duck to water you know. Ain’t no test just get up and do it.
Dyer: Well now you…
Coleman: That’s something you never forget. You forget how to talk the old language, but you don’t forget that.
Dyer: Well I guess if you got a 2300 pound animal going for water, you gotta know what you’re doing. You better not forget. Now you driving out there at the Columbia State Park too aren’t you…
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: …Frank, from time to time?
Coleman: Yep.
Dyer: For the tourist?
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: Now how far would you drive out there on a busy day? How many miles do you think you drive?
Coleman: Oh in the late years, I’d says, oh, four or five years back, they don’t…people don’t come like they did when they first started. It was like this Railtown and the people would just come and they’re in hurts to ride. You couldn’t accommodate them. You’d have to turn them down. You’d just have to tell them, “I’ve gotta knock off for the day. These horses got to eat.” You can’t run them all the time and with those head horses and (___) never drove the same team the second day, see.
Dyer: So you had a league team?
Coleman: A league team.
Dyer: Do you ever league driver back in the old days?
Coleman: Oh yeah.
Dyer: A man got sick or something?
Coleman: Oh yeah.
Dyer: And he’d take…
Coleman: Maybe too much to drink, stuff like that as a relief (___). I used to drive reliefs sometimes. Pick me up from town.
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: Having to come in down off the ranch and then (___) or something. “Hey cowboy. What you drive tomorrow? “ But you know the people didn’t like that cowboy driving too much either; too damn crazy and wild.
Dyer: Are you still that way?
Coleman: No it don’t bother me.
Dyer: You mentioned you also spent some time up in the Yellow Stone country…
Coleman: Yep.
Dyer: Did you get there…
Coleman: Yes I drove (___).
Dyer: …driving freight?
Coleman: No I drove stage up there.
Dyer: Stage?
Coleman: Yeah…that out in old Dung Hill, you know, hired out of state driver. Drove the last (___) in 1915.
Dyer: 19?
Coleman: 15.
Dyer: 15 the last year?
Coleman: Well animal (___) (___) (___).
Dyer: Well that’s about the time it stopped around this area too…
Coleman: Yeah, yeah.
Dyer: …wasn’t it? And Yosemite I think the automobiles went in about that time.
Coleman: Yep.
Dyer: Does your ever…brother-in-law Eddie (___)…
Coleman: July the first.
Dyer: July the first.
Coleman: I remember.
Dyer: Your brother-in-law, Eddie Webb, talked about going into the valley in (___) (___) for automobile.
Coleman: Yeah. He used to go in there and weight and measure man in Sonora here, Gerard. I don’t know whether old Gerard is still living or not. I haven’t seen him in a long time; maybe he’s passed on.
Dyer: Well why don’t we save the Yosemite story for the next tape and…
Coleman: Yep.
Dyer: …give you a chance to rest and maybe we can talk about Yosemite next time.
Coleman: Alright.
(30:04-end is blank)