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    Twenty Miles From A Match: Homesteading In Western Nevada
    Twenty Miles From A Match: Homesteading In Western Nevada
    Twenty Miles From A Match: Homesteading In Western Nevada
    Ebook210 pages4 hours

    Twenty Miles From A Match: Homesteading In Western Nevada

    By Sarah E. Olds

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Twenty Miles From a Match, originally published in 1978, is the autobiography of an indomitable woman and her family’s twenty years of adventures and misadventures in a desert wilderness. In 1908, a venturesome woman named Sarah Olds packed up her brood and went homesteading in the deserts north of Reno, west of Sutcliffe on Pyramid Lake. Her ailing husband said, welcoming her to their new home, "There, old lady. There’s your home, and it’s damn near in the heart of Egypt." Olds tells of the hardships, frustrations, poverty, and other tribulations her family suffered from shortly after the turn of the century until well into the Great Depression. Through it all, however, runs a thread of humor, cheerfulness, and the ability to laugh at adversity. The foreword is by her daughter, Leslie Olds Zurfluh, the fourth of Sarah and A. J. Olds's six children.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Nevada Press
    Release dateMay 28, 2012
    ISBN9780874174618
    Twenty Miles From A Match: Homesteading In Western Nevada

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    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      I live about 18 miles, South East of Tule mountain. I find it fascinating to read about the homestead that was only a few miles from my home. I have ridden my ATV all over that area, never realizing the amount of hard work, determination and adventures that had taken place there. The author has a real gift for bringing the past to life!
      Truly an amazing , engrossing story from the past !

    Book preview

    Twenty Miles From A Match - Sarah E. Olds

    1978

    One

    Biff, bang, bing went the snowballs against the side of my apartment at five A.M. We were having an unprecedented snow storm in the foothills of Tuolumne County, California. I was a young girl twenty-three years old, a tenderfoot or greenhorn, right out from Iowa. It was 1898, my first winter in California. I was operating a dressmaking shop in the little mining camp of Stent near Sonora. When the storm blew up the boys of the camp had promised me a good, old-fashioned face washing to remind me of home. They were true to their word, for here they were already throwing snowballs and threatening to break in if I didn't come out and play snowballs with them.

    There were two girls living next door to me in a little home boarding house, the type of which there are always so many in any mining camp. They had promised to help me out in the fight. When they heard the fun begin, out they came. It was we three girls against a pack of rowdy boys. There were two inches of new, wet snow, which soon became mixed with red clay. What fun we had! We played and hollered till the snow melted and we all got wet, muddy, and tired.

    The camp boasted of a few dug wells, our only water supply, one of which was next door to me in front of the boarding hose. After our snow battle I crossed over to the well for a bucket of water to clean myself and my apartment, which had been tracked with red clay inside and out. While I was drawing the water, a man came out of the boarding house rubbing his eyes, and hardly looking at me he said, Why in hell don't you get down in the back yard or some back alley if you're going to yell around here like a pack of Piutes?

    As I was the only human in sight, his remarks were addressed to me. Thus were the first words spoken to me by the man who was to become my husband a few short months later. I had seen him going to and from the boarding house for months, and I knew his name was Mr. Olds, but until now we had never spoken.

    I knew who he was, for he and I had helped substantially in supporting a lady and two children a few months before. Our charitable work came about in this way. Mr. Olds had a friend, a big Scotchman by the name of Herb McNeal, who was jovial when sober, but quarrelsome when drunk.

    One night Herb got on a drinking spree, had a fight, and was shot twice through the hip. Mr. Olds hired a livery conveyance and with the help of another man got Herb to the hospital in Sonora, eight miles away. Next morning when he got home he went down to see how Mrs. McNeal and the two children were going to live while Herb was out of work.

    He found them with no means of support. He had given her ten dollars with the promise of more when that was gone. This is where I came into the picture. A little boy came into the shop one day, stood looking straight at me for a moment, then exclaimed, Miss Thompson, you have beautiful teeth.

    I smiled and said, Thank you, little fellow, thank you. Whose little boy are you, and what is your name?

    I'm Bobby McNeal, and my daddy's in the hospital. I have a little cocker spaniel puppy with a long tail. Daddy said we'd have to find somebody with good teeth to bite the puppy's tail off. You have such good teeth, won't you please come home with me and bite off my puppy's tail?

    The little boy looked so earnest that I didn't dare laugh at him. I knew he was the son of the man who had been shot. I would like to come home with you and see your puppy, but I won't promise to bite off his tail. I was curious to know what had prompted such a queer request, and also anxious to see how Mrs. McNeal was getting along without a payday, for I knew miners well enough to know that one payday barely reached the next.

    Mrs. McNeal told me that her husband thought it much better to bite a puppy's tail off than to cut it off, and had jokingly remarked, Miss Thompson, the dressmaker, has such beautiful teeth we should ask her to come down and do it. After Herb went to the hospital, Bobby became the man of the family and took it upon himself to see that the puppy's tail was properly taken care of.

    I found the family in need of help so told Mrs. McNeal that I was a dressmaker and batching and didn't have much time to cook. I suggested that I would furnish the food for all of us for the evening meal, if she would cook it. It would be a favor to me, if I could come down and eat with them. In that way Mr. Olds and I had kept the McNeal family for almost two months until Herb was able to go back to

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