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Oregon Folklore Studies American Folk Stuff
THE LAST DIGGINGS
By Walker Winslow
It has long been proverbial in Oregon, as elsewhere in the
West, that a majority of gold prospectors and miners end up
without the gold they spend their lives seeking. Of the few
who are materially rewarded, only a small percentage keep
their gain. As a consequence, most miners spend their last
years in limited circumstances. They are not wholly defeated,
however; orally they live the good years over again, narrating
their life stories in a style that is robust, racy, and
picturesque. The following is a living example.
When I talk I am liable to do some tall running off at the
mouth. I am a long distance talker and for all I know I may take you
for a long ride in the wrong direction. I am a miner and for forty.
fifty years I have been tunneling a shaft straight into this poor-
house. You can't oall that very good mining. Most miners is fools and
I'll bet you that for every dollar lifted off the bedrock in this country
two was put back on it. Miners is liars too honest liars. If you
question a miner's word about his claim you might as well question his
daughter's virtue. That's the way they stand by their lies. I have lied
some tall ones in my day, and struck millions in this old head that no man
will ever see or take to the mint. That's haw I got where I am by
being a lying fool. I don't take it you are religious, so I'll go further
Oregon Folk Stories 2
and say that miners is damned fools, and that I have been one of the worst.
I'll tell you about some of my special kinds of foolishness.
I an a hard rock man and I learned my business at Kermit, California,
up in the Feather River country. That was a big diggings and some of the
best of the old hands was there. I learned the business from the ground down.
You don't learn from the ground up in my business. I could timber and out
my own steel before I was twenty-five. We didn't have none of them hardware
store drills in them days. The boss man handed you a bar of steel and said,
"Cut 'or up." You couldn't come no kicks about your drill unless you wanted
to kick yourself. To be a timber man you had to be a first-rate rough carpenter,
and like as not you had to fell your own timber right on the ground. A man had
to Imaw his business and a foreman could tell a greenhorn like reading beef
from a poor ox, and you didn't ask the foreman haw to do anything. He'd just
say, "Go ahead, and if it don't suit me I'll let you know." No one ever got
fired in them days. All you had to do was criticise a man and he wit. There
WAS none of this sucking around like you have now, and a man didn't hang onto
his job like a priest to a parish. Every once in a while we just drug down
our pay on principle, and vent down the road to a new job. They'd call us
hoboes now, I guess. hut in the.L days we was known as Overland Johns, aid by
god, I knew every creek and cow between here and nexico, and right back up to
Alaska. You see what it has got me. But in them days if you were a mining
man there wasn't any other way around. People didn't like the homeguard, and
if you stayed in one place very long that is just what you got to be. If a
man kept movin, he had to keep on his toes, and that made good mechanics of
us old timers. People hired the drifters.
Oregon Folk Stories 3
I'll give you an example of how'', got our jobs, and this wasn't
long ago, either. I drifted into Cornioopia one night on the late stage
just out shaking the maell of rortlend off myself and I dropped into a
small blind pig to warm myself a little. I'm not much of a drinking man,
but the bartender there could see that rm., an old Ovorlandor, and he was
an old timer himself. He grinned at the sight of me. 114 didn't have much
to say, but when I got up to leave forth. hotel he calls me and says, "Look-
ing for a place, old timer?" I told him that he pretty near had the idea.
"Nell," he says, "you go see so and so in the morning. He wants amen."
Then he asked me my name, and I told him and it on to bed. The neat morning
I went around to see the guy he told me tout, and he asked me a hell of a lot
more questions than he had any business asking about, where I had been and who
I'd worked for. I told him as much as I thought he ought to know. could
see that the job was in highgrade and that he wanted to know just who he was
hiring. He was just about to paint my check for me tell me it was no go
when here comes the bartender and he says, "Say, so and so, ain't you hiring
this man. This is Hank Simms. He don't anount to nothing and never will,
but he is a hard rook man from Inky back, and so tight in his mining it would
take a ton pound sledge to drive a drill in him, and so honest it would tido)
a pinch bar to pull it out." "You're hired," says so and so to me. Will, I
handled some of the steepest highgrade you ever did se for that EISM4 I have
seen the time when we pulled down a stand of it that would run 600 ounces of
silver to the ton, and maybe 300 gold, and I don't think that the man ever
watched me. He trusted me and that highgride was the kind you carry in canvas,
so none of it Will leak out. That bartender's word was better with him than a
deacon's.
Oregon Polka stories 4
Highgrede ore is the kind that is rich enough to steal the way it
is, and the men who steal it are known as highgraders. There are other high
graders too, suoh as the oompanies that buy property and skim off the cream,
end then sell out to some sucker for a lot more than there is left. But the
kind I am talking about here is the kind that steals ore and peddles it. A
man could be honest as hell until he saw a clump of highgrade, end then Al
his principles wou/d leave him. I had a Swede working with me that just
couldn't leave highgrade alone. He VSA an honest men up to a certain point,
but with that ore there was too much of a strain on it for him to stand up
under. The shaft ran beck into the mountain and this highgrade clumped out
every so often. The way you do with that stuff is leave it hanging so the
boss can watch it. He can measure a bunch of it that way and there is no
running off with it. One day we ran around a hanging of extra -rich stuff
and finished cleaning up around it just at quitting time. I went out of the
shaft and left the Swede standing there looking at the highgrade, and then
pretty soon hoard a crash. He couldn't stead it any longer and he had
knooked it down. We went on down to the bunk -house together, and an hour
later along came the foreman, and he says, "Ole, I am going to have to ley
you off you are a good miner, but I got to let someone go and it might
as well be you. I'm going down the hill tonight, and I want you for company.*
You couldn't leave the Swede and that loose highgrade in the same county,
and the super knew it. He didn't blame the Swede and he walked clear to
town with him to keep him honest. Now /Lye been too damned honest. People
used to call we Honest Hank Simms. They ought to hare said, *There goes
Honest Hank Simms an his way to the poor -house."
Oregon Folk Stories 5
V.
You would think that mining your life away was enough of a gamble,
but no. Aminer wouldn't have it that way. He had to buck the tiger and
sweat out hole cards right along with his other prospecting. Sometimes
they'd hit but not very often, I saw one poor galoot of a Cousin jack
that's a Cornishman one into one place with not enough clothes on him
to flag a handoar, He walked up to the wheel and put his last dollar an
the double 0 he was drunk, and it pays 36 to one ao-s and damn me if he
didn't hit the pay -dirt. /t wasn't a very big joint and the limit would
have been ten dollars under ordinary oireumstanoes, but Cousin Jack was drunk
and the dealer knew that there wasn't no double Ms coming up twice in a raw,
and so he say', !Leave her lay, Jack." He did, and by dawn here comes the
old double 0 again. The house only had eighteen hundred dollars, and he took
it all. In three dap I saw Cousin Jack, and all he had was the jimmies and
no breakfast. The next time I saw him he UVA bull cook in a Mormon osmp
happy as hells said that as soon as he made a stake he was going out pros-
pecting. A real miner never goes prospecting until he has to earn his grub-
stake the hard way. He'd no more take money he made mining or gambling and
do that than a priest would shave with Holy water. MA a little different,
but you see where it got me. I mined right up until a year or two ago, and
I quit my last job because I was too cold not too old. It was up in
Canada, end you could pitch a biscuit out the cook -house door onto a glacier.
VI.
40410
Every time I start to get wise you aunt to point out to me a/lore I
am in the poorhouse. I don't know that it proves much, though. tell
Oregon Folk Stories 6.
you the story of a model man you know the kinds he never drank nor
gambled. Be went to church on Sunday* prayed when I would have sworn,
and followed the teachings of Jerusalem Slim to a T. Good man, it was
just his way. I had a Gatholio foreman tell me once, "Simms, when I am
up on top of the ground the Pope can tell me what to do* but when we are
down in it your word is as good as his." (The foreman's name was Doyle
an Irishman and a damned good mining man). Well, this model man worked
a claim next to mine, down in Southern Oregon, way back, say* forty years
ago. He worked it hard* prayed like hell, and when the diggings was about
to break up he sold out for a thousand dollars. The rest of us stayed on
until a Chinaman couldn't have panned out a grain of rice in a day. I
figured that this model man would amount to something. But whim I last
heard of him he was doing his mining on the side, like it should be done,
and farming and raising a family. When I came in here to live I was sitting
down in the hall one day, and there was an old codger sitting next to me and
we got to talking. Said he was from Southern Oregon* so I got to playing
the names of people I knew at him* and he came back at me. We went on seeing
who could stir up the most live ones. Finally I played the model man at him.
I says, "Have you ever heard what happened to Cliff Prins? He must be a
deacon by now, and rich." Well, I was talking to the model man. He has
room here. If you want to go see him he'll show you the other side of the
ledge.
VII.
I guess that if a man has miner's blood in him, he can't never make
it on top the ground. He's like ample: he can tell his my around by the
kind of rook he's in, but the wind don't make sense.
Form A
Federal Writerst Project
Circumstances of Interview Works Progress Administration
OREGON FOLKLORE STUDIES
Name of worker Walker Winslow Date November 29. 1938.
Address
Subject
2069 SW Park, Portland, Oregon.
Hezdrook Yining.
Name and address of informant Bonk Simms, Odd Fellows' HMO,
SE Und Holgats St.* Portland* Oregon.
Date and time of interview Nov. 29, 1938. From 10 in the moraine until 2 PM,
Place of interview Er. Simms' roam at the Odd relloweasee.
Name and address of person, if any, who put you in touch with informant
Howard Corning* 400 Elks Bldg.
Name and address of person, if any, accompanying you none.
Description of room, house, surroundings, etc. The Odd halms' hems for oll
people *couples large grounds and consists of two well -kept brick buildings* of
four or five stories each. I was shown around the institution by the Superintendent
and the entire establishment is clean, modern, and nicely furnished. Each of the
residents has a private room mad it was in Hank Simms' roam that I conducted the
interview. The furnishings of this room were two chairs, a bed, and a chest of
drawers. There were no pictures on the malls and but a few ef Mr. Simms' belong-
ings on the dresser. Everything was very orderly and it was evident that Hank SIMMS
doesn't belong to that school of elders who go in for exotic interior decoration,
In spite of the comparative bareness of the room, one felt at home.
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, each bearing the proper heading
and the number to which the material refers).
Form B Federal Writers' Project
Personal History of Informant Works Progress Adninistration
OREGON FOL4ORE STUDIES
Name of worker
Address
Walker Winslow
2n19 MiL Peer, Portland* arson
Subject Folklore (Mining)
Date November 29, 1938.
Name and address of informant Rho( Simms, Odd Fellows' Home, 32nd !agate,
Fernand* Orogen.
Informabion obtained should supply the followIng facts:
1. Anoestry 6. Occupatl(,ns rind accomplishments with dates
2. P_ace and date of birth 7, Spect.-.1 ,:k.511s ard inerests
3. Pamfly 8, Commiznty and rolisaous activities
4. P?acas lived in, with dates 9. DoscriptioY1 of in -:-man
5. Education, with dates 10. Other points gained in interview
(1). Mi. Hank Simms is an old type of westerner and resents having his family
affairs pried into. He does* however, in the °ours* of ordinary conver-
sation, reveal many of the anomie necessary to the above questions. His
father, Henry Hutton Simms, was born in Illinois, in 1823, and come West in
the gold rush of trOrtrnine. Later he took up a donation claim two miles
north of the (2) town of Willamina, and it was there Hank Simms was born in
the year of 1852 (3). About the rest of his family and his early years on
the homestead. Mr. Simms WA uncommunicative and wanted to get on to talk
of mining, in which I had told hin I IIVA interested. Question four (4) is
answered by Mr. Simms' olaim that he has lived in practically every mining
town from Alaska to Mexieo. (5) is as yet unanswered, but Simms is a
remarkably literate man.
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, each bearing the proper heading
and the number to which the material refers).
Rank Simms Form B 2
00/
(6) Mk. Simms is a miner aid has worked in every type of metal but tungsten, and
at every position in the mines from laborer to superintendent. (7) Mr. SiMMe
special skills and interests are those connected with mining .mm- geology, etc. (8)
Mr. Simms is an atheist an rom his present residence it can be assumed that he
was an Odd Fellow (9). At 86, Bank Simms has the appearance of a man twenty years
younger, and his only infirmity seems to be a little meekness in the legs. H. is
a tall and somewhat handsome man, clean-shaven, with clear eyes and a steady
countenance that at times wears an ironic sort of smile. When he loads his pipe
you notice, with surprise, that his hands are steady and from the elarness of his
voice and the delivery of his speech, you have a hard time bringing yourself to
believe in his age. He has all of his awn teeth and though they are morn they
seam strong and grip his pipe with some determination. His weight is about one
hundred and ninety, and he is still a powerful man and one whose body has not been
broken by labor, but built by it. The hearing is good and, except for minor lapses
there seems to be no flaw in his memory. (10) One of the significant things
about the man is his honesty about his present position, and he says that he can-
not see why a person who was unsuccessful enough to end up in a home for the aged
should be of interest to anybody, or why anything he could say shoed seem important.
It "mad be the impression of this interviewer that Mr. Simms is an extremely
reliable source of information; he is remarkably free from any biases that might
color the picture of the past. Since he harbors no bitterness, his remarks on
others can be given some validity. When a person still living might be hurt by
anything he has to say, he refuse* to give the proper name. Bank Simms is the
finest type of old western man.