Phil Oyang, born in 1938, recounts his family history and experiences growing up in a cabin behind the Empire Mill in Grass Valley, California. His grandparents immigrated from China around the turn of the century and worked for the mine owners. Phil's father arrived in 1916, followed by his mother in 1924. The family cabin, initially a one-room dwelling, was gradually expanded to accommodate their growing family. Phil describes the close-knit community and the challenges of life in a mining town, including the risks associated with mining work and the prevalence of high-grading. He also shares anecdotes about his family's interactions with the mine owners and the local community, highlighting the unique cultural blend of Chinese traditions and American life. Phil's stories offer a personal perspective on the history of the Empire Mine and the people who lived and worked there.

Full Transcript of the Video:

Hello and welcome.

This is the 14th of January 2013 and we're out at the Empire Mine State Park and once again the Nevada County Historical Society is gathering oral histories and we are so lucky to have in our presence today Phil Oyang.

Phil knows a little bit about this mineyard.

He was born fairly close to this area.

Phil could you tell us a bit about your grandparents.

Let's go over your family history briefly.

Well I'm Phil Oyang and I was born in 1938 down at the family cabin behind the Empire Mill which was running at that time and I'm the sixth son of George and Susie Oyang and my grandparents came from Guangdong Province in China around the turn of the century and they had a sponsor which was part of the mine owners that were operating the Empire Mine at that time.

So my granddad got into the country and my grandmother came with him at that time as the servants to the mansion that was being built and later on they built a cabin behind the mill for father granddad and my mother grandmother and then later on the kids came along which were all born back in the cabin and we didn't have enough funds to go to a hospital we just had all the kids that the cabin born and later on other people came and visited around the house as the cabin was enlarged so right now the state of California is keeping and maintaining the cabin in relatively proper condition so it's suitable for inspection.

About the turn of the century for your grandfather and grandmother to come over here do you feel that they were leaving bad conditions with in China and had big dreams of maybe living or finding a better life here in Nevada County is that what that's exactly what they're attempting to do at that time it was a golden years for a lot of the immigrants from China they were working the mines and working on the railroad and doing very productive farming so that time things were rough in China the British and a lot of the countries are trying to overcome the Chinese government because of the land grab and so the British got control of Hong Kong and eventually as the people migrated everybody was searching for a better life out of China so your dad your grandfather came over here with big dreams and and then but he did leave your father in China that's exactly right and later on about 1916 my dad decided to take the chance and come over since my granddad had already established a relationship with the mine owners and in that case he had a sponsor so my dad got into the country then it was easier for my mom who came in during a 1924 time frame and she and him hooked up and the cabin was getting bigger and bigger because of add-on additions to it.

Had they met had your parents met before your your mother came to Grass Valley? See the old Chinese tradition was the pre-arranged marriages so I'm sure this one's pre-arranged in those days they just had the man and wife chosen by the parents for the combination of the two and they have the marriage very simply.

So your mother took a heck of a gamble she's betting that this man in Grass Valley is going to be here.

Exactly right hopefully he had the proper job and my dad he had a lot of experience apparently in agriculture back in the old country he knew a lot about gardening and some about mining but he learned a lot when he started going to school here and Union Hill was a one-room schoolhouse at the time being a one-room schoolhouse weren't that many kids and my dad got the job of being a kind of like janitor type of person he built the fire and pot belly stove and helped out the teachers and different chores and so his name is still on the register at the Union Hill Archives.

Did he make the hearth the stone hearth for the pot belly stove? Well we're not sure of the history of the building took place.

It may have been there when he got into the country because the miners needed education for the kids.

The Union Hill property was donated by the mining companies as a school location and so the school got built and most of the kids that were mine owner descendants they had to go to school which meant the Union Hill was the closest for many of them.

Did the whole old young family go through Union Hill grade school? Yes we all did.

How did you get there? We walked sometimes and when I was there they had a bus that picked us up on highway 174 and Colfax Highway and that was about the early 50s and then once in a while the bus went round we'd walk to school but most of the kids around Union Hill and see there was a bus service started up later on.

Now I'm not sure of this but I'm guessing that you got very good grades and that you were a very good student.

Mostly eggs.

Just like me.

Maybe in B and athletics I was a little bit slow.

My legs are kind of short so I couldn't jump as high as the other kids.

But you did compete? Yeah we had fun playing baseball.

We had a league downtown in the baseball and Les Ivo was the announcer at that time and during grammar school I could see the ball coming when I go for a strike and once in a while I hit the ball and get on base and more likely I would strike out but then I get on base and one night I was on first and attempting to steal second base and the catcher, he made a bad throw.

He didn't throw the ball to the second baseman.

He caught me right on the head while I went flying and I got the second.

That was a little disaster and then I'd be out in the field trying to feel the balls and the batters would hit a few around me and I'd go after them this way and that way and backwards and forwards and it looked like the ball was coming towards the front of me and then I went forward and the ball went over my head so I went in the rump and my glasses I guess weren't fitting me right that night.

Yeah.

It must have been those glasses.

It was fun playing baseball though.

Well Phil why don't you take us back to your home.

Now the cabin that you talk about that you refer to that your family grew up in has kind of an interesting history.

Tell us exactly where it is.

We are in the docent room at the Empire Mine and if you could tell us where your cabin is and tell us I'll ask you a few questions about your home life.

The cabin was built by the flavors of the miners and maybe a few relatives when the granddad came over in probably 1905-1910 timeframe it was just a one-room cabin it was built around 150 yards behind the Empire Mill.

How far from where we are sitting is your cabin? It's probably 300 yards.

So all the old young kids and that's your family home 300 yards you're right in the middle of the works.

That means the commuting to work all the kids the boys worked here at the mine and I worked with electricians but yeah we stayed down at the cabin and walked to work which was a couple hundred yards.

It got finally finished when my granddad and grandma settled they put in the vegetable gardens and they put in the chicken houses and there were goats and rabbits and turkeys besides the chickens and that was a mainstay for the farm animals but most of the people when we started planting and the granddad was good at agriculture as well as my dad.

When my dad came over in 1960 in the cabin might have been enlarged just slightly with the back area and the side rooms put on and they were planting gardens up in the front part of the yard in the back part of the yard all the water and electricity was furnished by the mining company.

So you had indoor plumbing in the cabin? Yeah indoor plumbing was there we had no septic system we had a cesspool and the back ravine is where they dump the storage just down the hill from the cabin is a nice little ravine with blackberries and it was fine to dump there's no OSHA or no EPA so where the stuff went downhill was in the ravine.

Well and when you were in that cabin most of the time your your grandmother was also there correct? That's right.

And as I understand it she had a pretty firm hand with you youngins running all over the place.

Well she had the old school training from the old country very very strict and nobody got away with any funny business in her house and and she took care of with a whacking stick anybody that got out of line.

Did she speak English? Very little.

So did you grow up bilingual? Yes.

So you spoke Cantonese? Cantonese was the typical language.

The Mandarin culture was up north and north China but southern China was Cantonese.

How about your Cantonese now is probably a little I can still remember a few of the words.

Oh really? Nihao Ma and Dojian and Xing Song that means mister.

So when you had your grandmother there and your parents and the six or seven kids that was a pretty close quarters but you make do.

Yeah the enlargement of the cabin was done in a few years for more rooms but the biggest enlargement came when unfortunate tragedy at the Ophir cottage took place.

The star mansion had burnt in the year 1935.

It was probably 18, 19 years old.

The building and structure was fairly new and in 1935 for unknown reasons the fire started at the upper level of the Ophir mansion which was a home for George Snore and in the consequences of that burning there was one part of the bedroom that was salvaged from the rubble and that room was intact and luckily for me they moved that entire room down to the cabin.

They moved it as a unit? As one room and it held together and they must have rolled it on logs.

Rolled it on logs? Maybe 200 yards down the hill where the fire took place and attached it to the back side of the cabin and put in the connecting doors and that was my bedroom and my brother stayed there and my sister had like a little adjoining room right next to the main room and that was her room.

So in these cabins you have to walk through bedrooms to get to the dining room or to the kitchen and that's how things were built in those days.

Well we're in the kitchen.

Why don't you tell us about what was on the table when the old young family did you all get together every night and have dinner together? Oh yeah there's plenty of food coming out of the garden and there was bok choy and bitter melon and tomatoes and corn and beans and potatoes and everything under the sun.

And it was all grown in your backyard? And what about holidays? Did you celebrate Chinese New Year? Oh yeah we celebrated the Chinese New Year with their decorative type ornamental fruit ornaments.

We had these oranges with grapefruits so we put a bunch of oranges in a bowl and then it set the grapefruit on top of the platform of oranges and then there was other side dishes you put around the plate and you had the money wrapped in red envelopes and that was a tradition and all the kids got these little red envelopes with two dollars from the parents and grandma would have a red envelope with two dollars in it and boy that was a good payday for us.

It was six dollars during Chinese New Year and that was one of the better times.

We had Christmas and all the other celebrations but Chinese New Year's we always count on the six dollars.

That was the big holiday for the old young family.

Yeah we'd haul in big bucks and that was the payday for the whole year.

So some traditions did make it all the way from Canton to Grass Valley.

Oh yeah there was a Chinese school down in Grass Valley at the nuns there at the cultural center now and St.

Mary's had the Chinese school so I read it and I think maybe Walter the oldest brother went to the Chinese school and they carried on some of the traditions but eventually the school went away and we still had some of the class books they handed out during the lessons.

So these kids these brothers and sisters of yours they went to school all day and then they'd go to well the school day we'd go to school maybe most of the time at Union Hill then otherwise we'd be out digging in the garden planting crops.

Well when would they go to the Chinese school after school? I don't know yeah when they'd split the days of going to school or it was a maybe a little mixed up for a while but everybody had to walk we had basic transportation but my dad never drove anybody to school as I remember everybody walked it was either to the movies or to school and that was the mode of transportation for the old youngs for a long time.

Is it fair to say that your mother and grandmother had more traditional women's role at that time which was feeding the kids tending to the kids and that your dad and grandfather had more of a traditional male role? Yeah that's exactly how it happened and my mom would do all the cooking we'd use all the vegetables all the garden.

Anything unusual that you haven't had? Well most it was basic foods they had stews and sometimes a steak or two and you could afford my mom liked to bake pasties and she was one of these cooked by feel we could feel how much of this how much she never read how to read recipes and she could make some of the finest crust through devotees in a pasty and we'd use beef steak and we don't use like what they use now hamburger or cheese meats we had the best in town and those pasties are just plum full of parsley and onion and the beef steak and everything you imagine and they were just tastiest things.

Can you tell me a bit I'm real curious about the Joss house was that a place where the old young family went? My granddad probably my dad mom but they were Buddhist when you come from the old country Buddhism would be their religion and so most of the Chinese population went to the Joss house and it was built downtown Chinatown in Grass Valley later it was abandoned and the Chinatown disappeared and the Joss house went to Nevada City and so it's maintained there now.

You know I come from going to church when I was a kid is that what it was like in the Joss house Joss house they would have a certain day of the week set aside and the Chinese population would congregate.

It probably fell on the same day because as the American religion was on Sunday due to the fact everybody had to work during those hours and the Sunday and the holidays maybe celebrated at the church or the Joss house.

Is it similar in you know we have pastors and priests and we have generally somebody conducting the service was it similar to that? Yeah I never been to it was gone by the time when I arrived and yeah I'm sure they had a central figure who was teaching the Confucianism and the Buddhist religion because of the old-timers that come from the country that originated and they'd know the history and the books and all the literature so they'd bring that with them when they come into California so the Buddhism religion is spread up and down all the towns that had any Chinese population and Sacramento I'm sure had a big population by that time.

One of your siblings had some physical difficulties.

There were now ailments in our family and my sister she got married and had two kids.

One kid was just crying and crying and yelling and shouting and you know it would drive you crazy.

Well she had problems with mental condition after that kid my dad and mom took care of it.

She had a mental breakdown and had to go to Napa and our Sonoma State Hospital to recover and that kid it would settle down.

My mom knew how to raise kids when it started crying and crying and half the night well my mom would just set the kid outside the door and let the kid cry and then take it back in it kind of settled her down.

She grew up to be a pretty good kid after she grew up but it drove my sister crazy and so she recovered got out of the hospital and everything and in another case my brother was going to UC Berkeley and the next oldest from me and had problems with classes and he was having difficulties and you know if you stay up too late at night and trying to keep up with the classes and overdo it well he had a nervous breakdown so he went over to the same place as my sister at Napa and Sonoma State hospitals so he finally recovered and got back and went to a different school after that but those two had problems and then the youngest who was younger than me the seventh child he was born with cerebral palsy and unfortunately he was born at home something happened and he never learned to read or ride or take care of himself he got to be the age of about six or seven and became a state welfare recipient he had to go to the hospitals there was one at Stockton and one at Sonoma he went to and was taken care of by the state facility but his mentality was probably well maybe two or three year old mentality he could never relate or speak or understand do you feel his presence ever in your life when he passed away this is about six years ago he had a heart arterial sclerosis condition and had a heart attack and passed away at the it's like assisted living home down in Penron and the doctors and nurses were there and he and I were never that close my parents would visit him every so often and when he passed away of the heart attack a hooper weaver I think took care of the transportation he was brought back to Grass Valley and then I had chapel the angels do the uh internment which meant the cremation process but that was good and fine the only problem was I brought back his ashes in an urn back into the house down here on the crossroad and the first night things were pretty quiet and nothing's happening the second night I had the ashes in the front room and I could feel this kind of energy wave action like this is funny because in my feet started tingling I could feel something going on like not pushing me but and energy going in and out of my body and I and I thought oh I did something wrong having those ashes in the room and I knew it was my brother and to this day I could still feel that slight tingling and that looks like an electrical energy passing in and out of my body that's the first time that anything like that's ever happened and I knew it's not my body doing it and I knew it was my brother he didn't currently know where to go and found himself what to do now well he found me and that was what happened now I'm taking care of my brother as a spirit I guess he doesn't bother me that much I can feel him come and go come and go every now and then now and then he seems pretty quiet a lot of times do you think uh I don't know this is kind of a tough question I don't know how Nevada County Historical Society this question is but do you believe in like spirits and spooks and do you think this mine yard has absolutely I'll tell you a story when I worked for the government over in Cheyenne Wyoming I worked for the federal government at McClellan Air Force Base for 26 years and they sent me out to places that are kind of you might say shaky like Saigon during the Vietnam War well they sent me over to Cheyenne Wyoming to the missile silo locations and the base that takes care of those missiles is stationed right at Cheyenne and it's called Fe Warren Air Force Base and that's one of the most haunted bases the Air Force runs they still have to use it because of the missile squadron taking care of the minuteman and the peacekeeper missiles so we were doing some jobs for the Air Force and they sent me to the Boq building office at Cheyenne Wyoming which was Fe Warren Air Force Base and they put me in one of the most haunted buildings on base everywhere and people have known been scared out of those rooms one guy well we got we got to bring her back to Nevada County here there for two or three days you know these are great stories but we got to get him back into the scared out of that room you were in well the spook i had my bed the middle of the night the spook i had my pants on the chair i woke up and there she was an 1890s lady sitting right on the chair and if you think i was scared out of my pants that was a time i believed in spooks what about what about the born cottage and what about the george star house do you think i'm sure that because i'm sure yes people worked in there i'm sure they can tell you stories spooks i know they're there and that well okay we're gonna we're gonna talk a little bit about mine life you grew up right surrounded by all this activity at one time i read that there was 80 stamps dropping 80 to 100 that was noisy it was noisy you must have been able to feel that in the ground all the time but does that turn into white noise and pretty soon you don't even hear it after you can still talk it's like well outside inside you're not to shout into somebody's ear to hear the conversation but you'd step outside and you can carry on a conversation outside the rumble was there but it's not as bad as the behind the jet engine or places where there's high noise level uh behind where the house was was it dusty inside no we had oh small amount it was mostly i mean the air outside it wasn't oh no no the air outside is everything sealed inside the mill any pollution products and mercury or cyanide all that was confined pretty well any dust was no health hazard at all people working in the cyanide plant and the mill workers had a short lifespan they had to endure all the mercury and the pounding and there was maybe a silicosis type problem yeah there is a certain amount of dust inside so as i understand it a crew in the mine consist of the miner a mucker and a mule skinner is that pretty much i've been down most of the time when i yeah that is probably the basic uh mining people that are there there's muckers i'll tell you about some mining horror stories about the mining when people relate to me how risky it is to work there it was uh times when they were blasting and you're a mucker or a miner uh a mule skinner you have to be very alert when they are blasting they would bore the holes with the mining drills and place the dynamite in a series of holes then they'd have the light fuses which is a certain length maybe two or three feet long and all these holes are bored in the tunnel and the dynamite sticks are placed in the hole and the caps are jammed in and all the fuses come out to a place and they're in big bundles well you're lighting the fuses and you're ready to escape out the tunnel and here you are lighting all the fuses and it looks like they're all burning and the fire is going in that direction towards the blast and powder so you head out hopefully before the blast so you get a distance away wherever you're hiding yeah and there is a person who's supposed to be counting the number of explosions so they were sequential they were sequential well hopefully they're kind of sequential because the length of the fuses are different lengths so here you go number one blow boom and then number two boom boom or whatever then hopefully somebody's been counting or all the charges go off but you know Murphy's law at times you have to be careful one or two charges might not have gone off due to the fact the fuse was half lit half blow loose anything can happen so the fuse that's still burning it is going towards the dynamite and you have the workers are down there and doing all the things getting all the gold ore loaded and you don't want to have an explosion and you do have an explosion suddenly like a boom and people have been killed that way and my buddy who was assistant electrician at the shop was working he had to go in and clean up the mess he was telling me you're picking up arms and legs and body parts when when they had a tragic accident or fire in the mine area how would they alert everybody to halt operations or did they halt operations they had to stop work and they had the bill signals to the hoist operator there's a problem and they may have had telephones down there and then send in a crew mind rescue people and that you know the procedures was that oh so was that rescue unit was that comprised of people on site yeah people who were organized to do the rescues and have to get down and take care of whatever has happened sometimes a cable might break or an ore car might run down the wildy down the main shaft you don't want to be in a man car the cable breaks because it's like hitting the bottom of the shaft would be not too good yeah or the cable whipping down the main shaft and you're standing in the way were there fatalities in the mines when you were living you know they're as severe they were more minor accidents than major good they were never explosions like a magazine blowing up or real tragic things well my understanding now these miners were by and large young i imagine a lot of them were single didn't have families i imagine some did some didn't and you were telling me at one time about a miner's trail did they have boarding houses in proximity to these mines where these young guys would would live and then the miners trail was the connecting trail between the empire mine and grass valley that trail came right across near our front door because the road in front of the house was part of the trail and then they went past the clubhouse which had rooms and that was thought that could have been a miner's residence for a short time there's only a three or four bedrooms upstairs in the clubhouse but all the way to grass valley the trail wound its way down the hill near pine street and then went down towards the old high school so at shift change you got a lot of miners filtering past your house and prior to that there's a lot of them coming in well bottom by the time in the 30s and 40s had cars and all up and down the walls here in front of the office they had parking sheds so a lot of them would park the cars all the way around I see there to the head frame and some walked Eddie Clemo who was a master electrician he always walked to his house downtown and the other fellows every time Eddie Clemo would come by we'd hand him a bag of vegetables and he enjoyed those oh sure and anybody else who had wanted leftovers we'd hand them out sometimes you would have surplus yeah too much yeah that's why the mine orders enjoyed the cooking we had so much fresh vegetables and a lot of produce left over so your your father worked for as a cook for and my granddad did a lot of cooking my father basically was mostly in the garden doing the chores there and he had these jobs like sweeping the main office that wasn't good on the first floor there's a lot of asbestos the pipes were wrapped like a shipyard wrapping of asbestos he was there sweeping the stairway going down to the bottom level of the main office and oh this asbestos was kind of floating around well I want to cover a couple of things I want to go back to these young miners they would have shift work exactly there's three shifts when they were going full bore they would run three but later I think when I was working there was just only a single shift and they were still getting gold all the veins and it was kind of like slowing down because in 56 there was the mine worker strike and there was a shutdown then but in earlier days they were working more than one shift and they could well these young guys working three shifts hard work when you had got that money in your hand as a young miner I imagine you went into grass valley and probably had a good time there were a lot of brothels downtown there was and uh oh spring street in Nevada city was land in brothels I bought real estate up and down around grass valley in Nevada city and I bought one on 203 mill street which had marshals past these in 1977 and there was a hotel upstairs called the valley hotel and there were taxi drivers who remember the valley hotel being the local brothel on mill street you would take the girls to work about those 10 in the evening and bring them back home two or three in the morning I guess then in Nevada city I bought another building behind the national from pat terney 203 spring street and pat terney's building his burnt down he rebuilt it to a similar building but that was a brothel when he owned it and I get stories from the tenant there was a bar there mad dog and englishmen they would have these strange things going on sometimes the doors on the cabins would fly open for no reason mad dogs and englishmen yeah mad dogs and englishmen the stereo would go up and down somebody would be turning the knob but they look there and nobody's turning the knob so if you're a young feller and you're down in that mine and you've been working a lot you know there it's got to be a lot of discipline not to try to go off the handle you know to maybe line your pockets with a hydrated door with hydrated well half the town and grass valley probably two-thirds of the town in their basements at the business establishments had illegal stamp mills and there was one at the kiddo mansion friend of mine that mcclown air force based new people working that stamp mill they would station guards in front of the mansion to watch out for the sheriff or the cops because the stamp mill makes a little noise and they might keep everything quiet when they're running their illegal stamp mills so high graders would take their workings or their lunchbox there sometimes they would try to high grade and the classical story of a high grader was a test tube method of uh they stashed the gold which was quite abundant underground into the test tube and they stick it up their rear end which meant hiding it from the boss but unfortunately one day the high grader had stooped over two four in the shower and the test tube was sticking out and the boss saw it so that was the last of his high grading technique for the empire or any other mine people were watching for these test tubes so did they take their product if they could get away with it and would they would they take it downtown and do some trading at the bars or they'd take anything that was worthwhile if it's in a test tube or in a they'd bring it to the local mill under the buildings and they'd mill it down so it was a currency underground currency yeah underground currency yep and the main workers didn't make very much so they worked hard for living and it was just like the marijuana profits today the underground economy yeah well um with uh uh hang on a second cut a second i'm i lost it here now when the high graders started taking some of the good ore out there must have been security measures in place to counteract that well as far as i could tell there weren't very many security guards there were none uh the security was actually activated by the ship bosses the ship boss was the man in charge of the crew was going down so he's overseeing the mining operation and the miners are loading up the ore cars and the blasting is completed they would kind of trust in the miners but you can't trust everybody so they were inspecting lunch pails articles of clothing and pockets or anywhere where you could hide gold specimens there were people around that had a knowledge of how the high graders were operating at the time so they would know where to look if it's a test tube stick up somebody's rear well they just look up somebody's rear and see if there's anything there if it's uh in the mouth or they maybe have everybody open their mouth and it goes it's hidden away and in the shower room people had to change their clothes so they're i'm sure watching very closely on the change from the working clothes to the straight clothes and later on whatever losses there was such an abundance of gold floating around they had a rule when i was working with the lecturers if the mine was assayed on the ore for two ounces of gold per ton at some particular waste station they were checking they wouldn't even bother to mill two ounces per ton they'd throw it away so nowadays at two ounces per ton they keep it like it's worth its weight in gold which it is yes and so to speak so security was not that great i know when the ship go out of the empire mine safe they never divulge the day they're shipping there was always a car that came up then and there were these people which was probably like a wells fargo or security agents with kind of a hidden gun here or there they would load the gold into the cnaz cars and go down to the local killer matching station or railroad access and ship the gold by railroad car back to the main line and have either i don't know maybe a san francisco mint or where they shipped it to would account for the volume of gold coming out of that so you on one side of your cabin is all this mining activity the noise and the hubbub and commotion and all that and on the other side of your cabin was the country club which is a whole different scene and exactly right i've worked tell us about that country club who belonged to it and what were the activities i i always associate a country club with a golf course well i haven't seen any golfers out here this style country club that originated uh during uh the time well after the the born mansion was built in 1897 and they put in the garden and then 1904 to 1905 the country club went in and this was a unusual fixture because it was located on empire mine property ranger jane told me this story of how it originated when the wealthy people of grass valley wanted a place where they can have parties and celebrate they picked the empire mine properties at a good location because they had already built the mansion and the yard landscaping with all the lawns and it was decided that at that time the mine owners said good and fine you folks build the country club on your own money and your own labor and you can put it on empire mine property so they found the choice location to locate it and there it went the uh entire construction and the labor and materials furnished by the wealthy country club members and then they had their parties and they worked there and took care of the fireplaces and helped clean up garbage oh you had a little job there and yeah we worked there on the many uh occasion uh during grammar school and high school and so when the state park came along ranger jane hall she explained to me how they had to settle out this problem with the building a fixture which is permanent not part of the entire sale of the acreage at the time so that clubhouse is an island now now they finally settled it out according to jane it was probably an agreement i don't have all the details maybe a 99 year lease that the grass rally country club could have use of the building in perpetuity and then the state part would do the maintenance and the upkeep to keep the building in condition and it had to be deeded back to the state as a permanent fixture so i guess that how the status ended up of the country club what kind of sporting events or there's no golf course and so i must they must have had activities over there yeah the country club this time they had it so tennis court which was the uh british english style activity at the time it had the croquet court very british and it had the bowling alley very british and the balls were quite small they're like miniature bowling balls and then it had the shuffle board it had the dining room and the main ballroom which had all the stuffed elk and deer and the antelope are these are these activities still up and running do they get the country club still has their parties there and the special events at the state park can a nevada city resident get into the country club well if you join the grass valley country club and have a sponsor and you can have a sponsor so i don't have much of a chance it's a fun club we used to go in there and the cleanup after the parties they'd have a fourth of july party this was back in the 50s they had so much booze out on the back patio left out from the part nobody would even take it home and here we are cleaning up the coke and um the liquor bottles and most of the half filled liquor and i tried some of their gem beam and that kind of spurted it out and do you mean people drink this stuff that took care of that or whatever it is so that took care of my drinking habits for a lifetime and so we cleaned up well i guess we just dumped all the liquor and maybe i don't think they were recycling bottles at that time so we hauled everything out to the dump which was the disposal the empire mine dump is located a distance from the tailings pile on the east side and the little wolf creek i think is a drainage so all the leftovers of the residues old tires and little toxic materials all went down into the dump do you think that gem beam bottle is down there it may still be there might be a little empty did you ever personally go down in those mines did you work the mines when i worked with the electricians at the electric shop here at the empire mine we went down underground quite a few times to clear up electrical problems they were salvaging back in the late that was 1955 56 they were shutting down the mine so there's some interesting locations we went down to salvage equipment the best run of the mines was probably the empire the hoisting machines were running good and the pennsylvania the pennsylvania mine i thought was the safest and then we went down the old north star mine i thought scared me quite a bit because i don't think anybody in the right mine would go down that mine except for salvaging equipment why what was what that one the shoring the timber it was very scary as well as the north star central but the north the old north star with the original diggings and through the years there was a big sinkhole there looked like it was 50 75 feet in diameter big sinkhole developed but they decided the last year i worked at the empire mine decided to pick up leftover machinery near the bottom of the old north star shaft the hoist was running barely and then pull out a real real heavy electric locomotive that is a machine that pulls the ore car in the different levels back and forth to the main shaft they're dumping into the main ore car so you're hooking these cables from the the cables are running down into the shaft and so that day we went down they decided well they'll salvage a battery car which was behind the electric locomotive as well as the locomotive which was probably double the capacity of the motor that was running the hoist so we'd go down in the man car which is a little small thing and real easy and the ore cars a little heavier and then the man cars are lighter so here we go down find the locomotives on one of the levels and the battery car with it they hook everything together and attach it behind the man car so we got three cars all strung up very moist then we pulled the bell signal a little hand lever switch being being being tells the guy up at the hoist room start pulling slowly so here we are we're in the first car the cable is pulled up tight here comes the rear cars that's good and fine we're on the main track which is going up it looked to me like a hundred percent grade it looked steep and it's probably about less than a hundred maybe 45 grade anyways we go over these little humping places like a roller coaster and they hear the cable moaning and groaning or at a spot where it was the steepest in the shaft i swear it must have been close to 100 grade going up right up the top and i think oh boy is that cable gonna break or what's gonna happen if anything happened we'd be a dead duck it finally made it over the top and was pulling hard and we finally got up to the surface level and i thought oh i made it and we talked to the hoisting engineering guy he told us that electric motor in the hoist room is as hot as a firecracker if that thing burned up we'll be having a fast ride down they never tested their safety equipment there's things that's supposed to happen to stop the machine from breaking loose and unwinding all the cable and the ending up at the bottom of the shaft that's cutting her preep in this was similar thing that the happened over at the old north well it's the north star central and that shaft was built like a coal mining shaft and a double duty one tunnel vertical and the tunnel next to it vertical so the man car went straight down like in an elevator so we were shutting down the mine there were no doors on the elevator the front there was one protective door right at the top level so nobody would fall down and go down hit the cage which would be descending or stopped at a certain level so we get into a cage no protective door you stick your arm out and the timbers are flying by when they're lowering the car so we go down the 1500 or 2000 feet the cable and all this water is coming down it's like a torrential rainfall and they got the pumps running but hopefully it's dewatering the mine and all this water is coming down so they finally get to the level where we want to get off the water is coming down and the cable it must have been running maybe over 1500 feet of cable the car stops and it starts bouncing up and down the cable is stretching so you gotta wait for the car to stop bouncing then you can get out of course there is no door between the cage and the level you just make sure that the thing's not moving on and when you're getting out because you don't want to be cut in half when the thing drops but they said well if something happens you get caught between levels well then you gotta wait for somebody to fix the hoisting motor if the cable breaks there's supposed to be these finger like dog things that catches the tunnel but those have never been tested probably ever in the years they were operating so the car could just end up five or six thousand feet down underground and you'd be a mashed up character i'm guessing you would be recognizable i'm guessing that once you got out of the mines and got work above ground that was just fine with you huh well the happiest moment so everybody's like my dad never did like working underground because of the silicosis the dust problem as well as the risk of machinery failure or blasting or any of that work is highly dangerous or you're not careful so person no matter where you're working if it's in the mill or in a carpenter shop or even an electrical shop they never taught me much too much on safety but i knew when to stand back when somebody's throwing a switch or opening up a circuit or closing a circuit there in the hoist room i used to listen to the circuit breakers when they're running the hoist up here at the empower mine master switch area inside the room there was a bank of circuit breakers and the hoistmen he's there working his controls every time they'd kick in the motor the circuit breaker would close and all the amperage going to that motor the sound of that breaker sounded like a gun going off you started up the motor and you got those that cover your ears and then he'd read the lights and then the bells and all fill i could sit here all day i could sit here all day and listen to your stories but sooner or later we're going to have to wrap this thing up but i do have one question for you because i understand that your granddad had his body taken from here back home to china that was a part of the custom if a person died not being in his home country or in his hometown i guess the gods or whoever would ostracize him so he wanted his bones to be buried back in the old country and not be left behind were they buried here at one time and then they exit he left on his own two feet back in the early 30s so grandma stayed and took care of the kids and i guess he went his way and grandmama's up at redwood servitary and so you've had quite a remarkable family and look at all the different worlds you have experienced in your lifetime here we enjoyed the mansion and we always snuck into the swimming pool perfect and snuck into the bowling alley perfect played tennis all we wanted to no cost so that was a fringe benefit and you know it was a kind of a lifetime dream to be living in an area where everybody was you worked hard friendly and we were like family to the mine owners so mom and dad knew the stars and johnny man and all the mine managers real well phil oh young you are a lucky man thank you and i'm gonna thank you for sharing your stories with us i really appreciate that glad to share it with anybody who is interested well we're gonna we're gonna try to get this out to the residents of nevada county and uh that's really important these stories are very important and i want to also say thanks to a couple of other people here first i'd like to thank clarence mater he's been with us doing a lot of help for a long time he's a real good hand and kathy wilcox barnes she has also been researching these different interviewees and it's very nice to have that and i would also like to thank mark triolo he is the main videographer today and he instructed he shared his talents with several other people here and again thank you mark thank you thank you excellent appreciate it all right no it's all our benefit okay thanks y'all thank you but i'm sorry i can't seem to help