Ice Inspection At Perk’s Slough

Ice Inspection At Perk’s Slough

The most exciting word in high school was “party”.  Yes, this word would send a buzz like a lose bee down the halls of our school. The excitement built as it traveled in a humming hush which the adults must not overhear.  “Where will it be, who will be there, how can I get there,  what will I wear?”  Now, two of the biggest

Sue & Danny Acting Out

party animals I knew were my younger brother, Danny, and my best friend, Sue “Hot Lips” Hatton.  So at noon time one February 1965 day, just as I was hanging up my waitress apron at John’s Cafe (where I worked during lunch hour) in preparation of returning to school, Danny came to me.  He was all excited and demanded, “Chere, take me out to Perk’s Slough.”  Why?”  I inquired. “I need to inspect the ice to see if it is hard enough to have an ice skating party tonight”  Oops, there was that word “party”!  Sue who had been waiting to walk with me back to school was all over it now.  “Yeah, Chere, take him.  I want to go with you guys.”

I did not have a car in high school, but I would often “steal” my mother’s Chrysler

Newport station wagon when she was out of town on business.  This happened to be one of those times and Danny knew it.  If I didn’t do as he asked, he could tell on me when she got back.  I questioned further.  “We’ll miss class.  What will we tell them?”  Danny rationalized, “We’ll just be a little late, Chere.  It’s only fifteen minutes out and fifteen minutes back.  We’ll only be late for one class.”  “Yeah, come on Chere, let’s go!” Sue pipes in.

So we pile into the wagon, Sue and I in the front seat and Danny in the back.

 There was no room in the front seat for Danny because the middle was taken up our purses and by my rolls of toilet paper.  I had a terrible cold.  I had never been to Perk’s Slough, but my brother obviously had.  He knew exactly where we were going. (the little party animal that he was).  Mom’s blue battleship floated down the highway, sailing along to discover new lands.  Sue was singing the latest hit to the radio, Dan was pointing out directions and I was blowing my nose almost non-stop.

Perk’s slough was out on the Mason Valley Wildlife Refuge.  In other words out in

the sticks.  As we approached the slough from the back seat, Danny yelled “Stop!”.  “”Why, I don’t see the slough.” I questioned as I pulled to a stop at the top of a little knoll.  Danny flings open the back door and commanded me.  “Stay here, I want to make sure the ground is hard enough for the car.” Sue and I watch him walk quite a ways towards the slough.  Then we looked at each other and I said, “I’m not walking that far to see the slough are you?”  “Hell no!” she exclaimed.

With that, I revved up the wagon and gunned it.  At the sound of the car reve, Danny turned around and like an airplane flagman began waving his arms frantically and yelling, “NO, NO, NOOOOO!” Too late, the car sunk into the mud spinning wheels and all.  Danny came running back to the car in a rage. He

rounded the car in an Indian war dance, yelling and cursing me out.  Finally, he decided to try and push us out.  No luck.  I decided I would try and help him push.  I could barely get the door open we had sunk so far in the mud.  When I stepped out, I sunk down to my knees.  The mud oozed into my pantyhose (we wore dresses to school back then).  Sue sat with pursed up lips and refused my pleas to help push.  She wasn’t going to get dirty and besides it was too cold.

When Dan and my energy was well spent to no avail, Danny decided he would be the hero of the situation and run back to town to get some help.  I was worried about him as the afternoon wind was getting colder and he only had a light jacket on.  His hands were freezing from trying to push the car.  I decided that I would wrap his hands in toilet paper to try and keep them warm.  And so off he ran in his TP mittens.  I figured it would take him a few hours to get to help if a bobcat or wolf pack didn’t eat him.

It was freezing, so I would turn the heater on for a few minutes at a time to conserve gas as it was getting low.  My muddy nylons dried and caked to my legs as my nose continued to run which I wiped on my coat sleeve.  I looked like hell, but my “best” friend did not have a hair out of place.  She sat like a princess on her thrown commanding when to turn the heat back on.  My resentments were growing with each sniffle.  After about 20 minutes, I looked in the rearview mirror and saw a jeep coming.  I jumped out to try and flag it down.  To my surprise and relief Danny jumped out with discarded toilet paper mittens.  He had run into the game warden.  Fortunately, his jeep had a hoist and was able to pull us out of the mud.

We hurried back to Yerington, washed the car down and rushed back to school just in time for last period. I forget what excuse we gave for our tardiness because

I had another crisis.  I needed to raise some money for gas as the car was almost empty and when Mom go home she would surely notice.  I decided to panhandle my classmates for “a worthy cause.”  I did not dare tell them why as in a small town word spreads like wildfire and my mom could know before she even got back home.  When I finally reached $2.50, I put ten gallons of gas in Mom’s car and parked it in her driveway.  My mother was none the wiser and I felt I had gotten away with murder.

Thirty years later while Dan & I were reminiscing with my mother about Yerington days.  I decided to come clean on this story and tell her.  “Oh, you stinkers,” she exclaimed.  “I chewed the mechanic out for always blaming you kids for all my car problems.  I had to have the power steering repaired and he said, ‘But Mrs. Barnett the whole under carriage is encrusted in mud.’  I just figured he didn’t want to do the repair.”

(Note:  I never did party at Perk’s Slough or see Perk’s Sough.  Now I hear that Perk’s Slough is no longer there.  I do have it on the greatest authority of YHS partiers that Perk’s Slough did exist and was a great party spot.)

Rumble At Anaconda Lockout

Rumble At Anaconda Lockout

The 1965 Saturday night dances in Yerington,  Nevada became my responsibility quite by accident.  

My best friend, Sue, was a dynamic personality and had a powerful voice. She and four other high school classmates formed a band called the Sabras , but they had no place to practice. Our living room just happened to be very large, and so it became the band practice spot and hangout. My mother worked late, so at first I neglected to even tell her of my afternoon activities, but when she did find out, to my surprise she was supportive.  

As the band improved they started talking about performing. They decided they needed a band manager to help get them some gigs.  Sue at this point volunteered me. I was fifteen years old. I did not have a clue about finding the band engagements, but I was working on the school newspaper that year and so promoted them with little news articles.

It finally occurred to me, to rent the VFW hall and have a town dance.

Because Yerington was a small town where everyone knew everyone and because my mother was the hospital administrator and because I had a reputation of being “a very responsible young lady”, I was able to rent halls, enlist chaperons and get the police to give us their help and blessing.

For two years, the Sabras and another band, the Quids, whom I had started managing,

performed twice a month at town dances, proms, and parties. The Sabras performed at the battle of the bands in Reno, coming in third place and performed on KOLO TV.  Sue “Hot Lips” Hatton had such a powerful voice that when one night at a dance while she was singing “The House Of the Rising Sun” the microphone went out. She kept belting out her song and was still heard over the drums, electric guitars and the shuffling feet of about 75 dancing couples. At a KOLO recording session, when she started singing the sound technicians grabbed their headsets and threw them on the desk. They came running on the set to adjust the mikes and instruct Sue on how to hold the mike far away from her mouth to keep from destroying their eardrums.

As I approached my senior year, I had gotten quite good at arranging town dances and promoting them with fliers and newspaper articles both in the school paper and the local paper, who’s logo was “the only paper that gives a damn about Yerington”. As summer was wearing down, I rented the Eagle’s Roost for a back-to-school dance.  I did my usual promotion and was expecting a good turnout. The turnout was even better than I hoped for.  

About half way through the dance four surprise visitors come in. They were black soldiers from the naval base in Hawthorne located about 60 miles away.  We were at the height of the Vietnam War and there was a large ammunition depot in Hawthorne.  They had read about the dance in the paper and driven all that distance for a little recreation. Now Yerington at that time had only one black person in the town, a lab technician, who my mother had hired. No one in town would rent to her, so the county rented her the apartment above us. She may have been the only black person who had ever lived in Yerington up to that point.  

Needless to say, the farm and miner boys did not take kindly to these black boys asking their dates to dance. Many of the girls did dance with them. They were very good dancers. After about an hour of “tolerance”, the white boys could take it no longer and challenged then to a fight.

The dance came to a halt as everyone grabbed their coats and purses and headed for a well known local spot, the Anaconda Copper Pit Lookout, an open pit copper mine viewpoint, for the fight.  As cars and trucks sped out of the parking lot, I left the chaperons to close up the dance  as I caught a ride to the pit.  I was scared what might happen and felt responsible if someone got hurt since it was my dance.

By the time I arrived at the lookout, there were about forty vehicles parked helter-skelter.  The four black soldiers had their back to the pit with a 200-foot drop. Their trunk was open and they pulled out some chains and a crowbar. One had a small pocketknife and another had a church key with the pointed end out. Slowly approaching them were about twenty-five white boys with their fists up in Cassius Clay style. Some of the football team took their tackling positions.  This was going to be a war of two types of fighting styles: clean vs. street, rednecks vs. rumblers.

My heart was sinking as I realized someone was surely going to get hurt. I was trying to reason with them to stop but to no avail.  As name-calling prevailed the spectators rooted, yelled for action, some girls cried.  

Suddenly a pickup truck roared up the gravel road and came to a screeching dust encasing stop. A sixteen-year-old farmer’s son jumped out and retrieved his 22 rifle from the rear window gun rack and headed to the line of skirmish. “Oh my God, he is going to shoot those black guys!” I panicked.

Before I could take another breath, he discharged his gun in the air and was shouting for everyone to leave before the police came. He really didn’t have to tell them, because at the sound of the gun’s boom, there was a mass exodus to the cars. The jackrabbits could not have out run them as they scurried down the lookout road in a cloud of dust that made the atomic bomb look tame. Thus ended the one and only rumble in Mason Valley to my knowledge.

The black soldiers were never again seen in Yerington. Sue moved to California shortly after the rumble, as did one of the other band members, one joined the Navy and headed for Vietnam, and thus ended my band management career. I was now 17 years old and preparing for college.