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By Pappy Clay - March 1st 1969 A very intimate insight into the private lives of "Crocker's Pets" during the "Golden Spike Era", 1869-1899. This writer had the privilege of being adopted into the Oriental society of the Chinamen who built and maintained the roadbed of the Central Pacific Railroad of California in a way perhaps few other Americans ever had. My name being Wallace Clay, was changed by those Orientals to "Wah Lee Melicum Boy" and I more or less lived with them, ate with them and talked intimately with them from 1889 to 1892 and only slept with my parents and had breakfast at home mostly at Blue Creek Water Tank Station during one-half of each 24 hours. Among a flexible contingent of Chinese coolies on the "Gandy Gangs" their number varied between 24 Chinamen to more than a hundred maintained at Kolmar, Blue Creek and a section house south of Corinne called Bonneville which this writer on occasion had visited, or lived at in a four or five year period of the Golden Spike Era. During that time I had dozens of very good, active, intimate Chinese friends and an occasional dormant enemy. Although these Chinamen sometimes fought among themselves, on account of belonging to rival "tongs", to the point where one Chinamen would stab another Chinaman to death, they never went so far as to cut the other Chinaman's "que" off, which in their belief, was a much more heinous crime. While with American grownups and children they were always the most trustworthy and kind and they were never known to injure either during the period I knew them so well. What was the private life of a Chinese coolie on the old "C.P." during the Golden Spike Era? This may be best answered by quoting verbatim from a "round robin letter" which this writer circulated among 68 relatives and descendants during 1966. Quote: "It was in the summer of 1891 at Old Blue Creek Station and I was just 17 years old. That was the year the Central Pacific Railroad had an extra gang of about 100 chinamen housed in a long string of remodeled box cars on the back side track during a period of "graveling" the roadbed of the main line from Balfour to Kolmar the total distance between Corinne and Promontory Summit. To fill the reader in on the situation, it was found necessary to have two very long sidetracks at Blue Creek because westbound train crews often needed to "sidetrack" a few cars out of their train in order to have the rest of the train hauled up the long, steep East Promontory Hill even with the help of a "Hog" helper engine. The train which had been "split" at Blue Creek, would often go on west without these sidetracked cars but "picking up" others at Promontory which had been "shuttled" up the hill from some previous train. Sometimes there were as many as 50 loads waiting on the second sidetrack at Blue Creek to be "shuttled" up the hill by the Hogs between regular trains, so there was a need for a third "house track" for such as the "work cars" the Chinamen lived in. They were filled with Chinamen from sun up to sundown and they were the Chinese cooks and flunkies who were on hand all times. I was a lonesome, inquisitive kid at that time but ingenious enough to practically become a Chinaman myself during that summer. You may wonder that I did it but I got myself named "Wah Lee Melcium Boy" and nearly every Chinaman there knew me by that name. Under the guise of this "transmutation" I was able to penetrate parts of their secret private lives and sacred religious beliefs. Mostly their religion was a mixture of Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism. I got to know many of them by their first names, one or two of which now comes to mind as Wong Foo and Chinaboy Ken Tee. There were a number among them I called "my very best friends". All these Chinamen were "coolies" who had been shipped to America to work hard for the "Central Pacific" as railroad section - hands for just a few years out of their lives and they had crossed the Pacific ocean with the fond hope of exchange for a great deal more Chinese money so that after a certain few years in America they would return to China as "money lords" instead of living out their lives as just plain old "coolies". Many of them never did return to China for various reasons. Some got jobs killed while others preferred to stay in the U.S. in special occupations such as cooks, laundrymen or gardeners. Most of them belonged to "tongs" which were their brand of Secret Societies which were often at odds with other tongs so that some Chinamen were killed by other Chinamen instead of the many hazards of railroad construction. The tong wars persisted throughout the early part of the Golden Spike Era, the writer having seen a dead Chinaman at Bonneville in 1894 which the section boss there, Jim Tombs, said was a result of a dispute between two "Chinese Tong Societies". Mostly the section bosses were burly Irishmen and all section laborers were Chinese coolies with maybe the "trackwalker" being a white man, and this was the rule all the way from Sacramento to Ogden. The very large "extra gang" of Chinamen, among whom were my "very best friends" were many who got homesick for their wives and children in China, so they took me in as a sort of pet and they gave as
When off work and not eating or sleeping or smoking opium most of these Chinamen were usually gambling with Chinese checkers and Dominoes and with regular American playing cards used in their Chinese type gambling games. Using Chinese money which was so cheap and plentiful that some was always getting lost in the dirt and otherwise and they would argue over the game in their sing - song Chinese language and when they had gone to work the next day I would find considerable Chinese money around their work cars and track side tables and stools. Sometimes I traded money with them out of my cigar box but they were playing me for a sucker because I usually wound up with more iron money and less brass money in the box. I learned alot about Chinese money and what the square hole in the middle of it was used for. For one thing, it was so they could string alot of it on a strong cord so as to not lose so much of it, but the main thing was that the square hole had a certain religious significance very dear to every Chinaman's heart. These Chinamens belief concerning money was at that time (1891) that each mans money was sacred alone as long as he had the money on his person no matter how it had been obtained but if had obtained by stealing or by cheating, then their devil would have the right to chase after them in order to punish them with some sickness or by causing bad dreams, etc., but (and here's the clincher) before he could catch up with them in their wickedness, the said devil would need to "squeeze himself through that little square hole in the particular coin involved in their wicked deed" before he could meet out the punishment the owner deserved. So, Mr. Devil would probably say to himself "This is going to be to much effort on my part to get to that rascal for such a small crime so I will just let him go this time, but, I'll be remembering what he did and cause him double trouble next time." Well, maybe in the meantime the said rascal would aid that devil in some way so he would say to himself "He has atoned for his sin so I will wipe the slate clean between us." The religion of a Chinaman from the Middle Kingdom area of China was more a religion of appeasement of his "devils" than it was of seeking grace with his Deities in that long ago time known as the Golden Spike Era of the Central Pacific roadbed construction. I will now describe how my Chinese friends lived at old Blue Creek Station in 1891. The antiquated box car he lived at in had been remodeled into a work car in one end of which a series of small bunk beds had been built as a vertical column of three bunks one above the other on both sides of the car end from floor to ceiling so that around 18 Chinamen could sleep in the bedroom end of the car. The other end of the car served as it's stovepipe going up through the roof of the car and with all kinds of pots and pans and skillets hanging around on the walls plus cubby holes for tea cups and big wooden spoons etc. There was also a wooden table and benches about like we now find in Forest Service campgrounds occupying the middle of the car. Those Chinamen never engaged in outdoor sports when not working like Americans workers might have done, maybe partly because they were tired after a 12 hour shift on the railroad roadbed and partly because they were often writing long letters back home using little paint brushes to make their Chinese hieroglyphics or picture writing starting from the bottom of the page up from right to left which was just opposite of the way we write. However, they often did take time to prepare for themselves a nice evening hot bath in a big steaming wooden tub of water. The only musical instrument I ever heard them play was a Chinese mandolin which only had one string and the striking of a gig gong to announce that a meal was ready. The cooks built their own type outdoor ovens in the dirt banks alongside the sidetrack and their stake pots spit alongside their bunk cars where they did most of their cooking when the weather permitted. Each cook would have the use of a very big iron kettle hanging over an open fire and into it they would dump a couple of measures of Chinese unhulled brown rice, Chinese noodles, bamboo sprouts and dried seaweed, different chinese seasonings and American chickens cut up into small pieces including, heads, legs, and all plus more water than what would seem necessary and still the kettle would be only half full. When the cook stirred up the fire the concoction began to boil then the rice would begin to swell until finally the kettle would be nearly full of steaming nearly dry brown rice with the cut up chickens all through it. Each Chinaman would have take his big blue bowl and ladle it full of this mixture and deftly entwine his chopsticks between his fingers and string the mixture into his mouth in one continuous operation, while in the meantime he would be drinking his cup of tea and still more tea. I was the curious watching kid so the cook would ladle up a little bowl full for me (Little Wah Lee) and hand me a pair of chopsticks and with them I would eat like the rest of my buddies but I never could get the knack so I ended up eating with my fingers which would make a Chinamen laugh and I would get no tea. If I got a chicken head in my rice I could not eat it due to some kind of American prejudice so in the future the cook would see that I got no chicken heads. Nearly all the food the Chinaman ate came from China, with the exception of American chickens, so about once a week a supply car would come from San Francisco and would be set out on the back sidetrack and all the cooks would come with their long tote poles or tote bars which were long sticks about 8 feet long with a notch near the each end and a padded shoulder near the middle. They would hand a box of supplies on one end and maybe a bamboo fiber sack of brown rice or raw brown sugar balanced on the other end. They would shoulder the tote pole near it's middle and trot off to their car direct from China via ship and C.P. supply car. The woven bamboo paper lined rice sacks were about 16 inches in diameter and about 3 feet high with Chinese writing all over them of which I once had a souvenir but cannot locate in now. Each full sack would weigh from 60 to 100 pounds according to what foodstuff was within it. It should be remembered that China had a very old civilization and had gunpowder long before Western Europe had entered the feudal of Middle Ages. In the shipment would be found several big square boxes of Chinese tea, the boxes made of light Chinese cedar wood with heavy paper glued over the outside all covered with Chinese hieroglyphics on all sides with bulk tea inside in a lead foil sack. I gave Patsy Clay a small package of this kind of tea which my mother had kept as a souvenir for many years and it had the same kind of Chinese writing all over it and Patsy was curious as to what the Chinese writing all over it was all about, so she took it to a Chinese interpreter who told her that it was mainly full directions as to how best brew this brand of tea so as to get the best results. When Chinamen are talking to each other their conversation goes up and down the musical scale in a sort of sing - song fashion so that the sound or word spoken in different pitch up and down the scale has a different meaning spoken in a high pitch then it does in a low pitch. This letter is getting too long so I had best conclude it with descriptions of two types of experiences I had in 1891 and record other phases of Chinese culture in some future series of papers. First a description of the typical Chinese opium den of that period which has been pretty well hidden from casual observation. The opium den I will now describe (I have been in on others) was under an old tie and dirt shack used as a bunk house. I was guided down a ladder covered by a trap door in the floor of the bunk house since I had some candy for a dear friend who was down there. The den was dimly lit and had a dirt floor and it fairly reeked with the sickening sweet smell of opium. I would guess if one was down long enough a person could go into a "happy" opium dream without ever drawing on an opium pipe. There were the usual tiered bunks around three sides of the underground den. Nearly every bunk held a Chinaman who was "doping up" his opium pipe or else he had gone into sweet slumber and the pleasant dreams of an opium addict. Several of them I recognized as being among my best friends and the friend I had gone down to talk with was not smoking opium. I could see sleeping Chinamen with big smiles on their faces because they were dreaming the nicest kinds of opium dreams. Sometimes that dream would change to a bad dream as the narcotic effect waned and my Chinaman friend would be waking up from a nightmare as was shown by the troubled expression on his face. I was allowed underground there for quite awhile that evening which showed my friends trusted Little Wah Lee who had promised not to blab to Papa and Mama. A Chinese opium pipe looked alot like an Indian peace pipe and having a very long stem so the opium juice will not reach the smokers mouth and which puts the opium bowl away out of arm's length and the heat from the burning opium pill will not burn the smoker's tongue. When the waking Chinaman becomes fully awake, he finds himself in the pangs of opium hunger so he quickly fishes out another opium pill from his wallet and puts it in the pipe and lights it with a Chinese match (the reader of this probably never saw one, which with 99 others glued together at their bases made a square bunch only 2 inches long by 3/4 across and when lit smelled strongly of sulfur.) And as the opium pill began to bubble the agonized expression on his face changed to a contented smile again. An opium pill looked alot like those little licorice pellets kids used to buy at about 10 for a penny and about the same color. When the pill is in the opium pipe bowl the flame from it keeps sputtering and boiling somewhat like a batch of homemade candy which is about to burn. Should that flame sputter out the opium smoker is quick to relight it and all the while he keeps stirring the boiling opium with a little stick so he will get the right quality of sweet smoke to inhale from the stem of his pipe. I was talking with Mickey Layne today about the queer ways of the heathen Chinese and he told his father who as once an old Ogden cop, once helped to raid an opium den underneath the old Lyceum Theater on lower 25th street in Ogden, and his father brought home from that raid an opium pipe as a souvenir and Mickey said it looked to him more like a clarinet than it did like any kind of smoking pipe. In those days most Canton Province Chinamen believed an enemy would have been much kinder and honorable in battle if he had stabbed his victim to death then would have been the case had he cut off his que. The latter would have been about the most heinous crime possible since it would prevent an angel of death from reaching down to earth and lifting one more good Chinaman into paradise by the hair of his head. While the former would only speed the victim's journey to that happy place. To end this too long letter, this writer will now describe a Chinese funeral which he witnessed in Tecoma, Nevada in the year 1896 of the Golden Spike Era. To that (now Southern Pacific System) railroading town there was a large Chinese gang under Pat Monahan and a considerable Chinese colony under "China Jim". I saw it's start from the small Chinatown north of the railroad tracks and slowly cross the tracks and through the railroad town of Tecoma headed southeast to a Chinese graveyard about a half mile above. There were about 25 Chinamen in the procession, some proceeding and the majority following a horse drawn light wagon upon which was the body of the deceased. They were all chanting a funeral dirge in sing - song fashion and certain of them had special duties to perform. Surrounding and on top of the coffin were many tasty dishes of Chinese food and some fancy Chinese clothing. The food and clothing were to be left on the dead Chinaman's grave so when his ancestors came to the grave at night to help him prepare for his journey to paradise, they would find the fine food and clothing to supply him properly for the momentous trip, while the spirits of earlier dead would accompany him to the very "Gates of Paradise". However, the purpose of the deceased friends in the funeral procession was particularly to mislead the Devils whom he may have offended, so they kept chanting that the deceased had gone in a different direction, sometimes this-a-way and that-a-way until they got the poor devils so confused that they were all on the wrong track and going in every direction except toward the graveyard. Then there was another group of friends following the coffin in the cortege who had armfuls of different colored square sheets of strong tissue paper, each about 10 inches square of colors orange, blue, red, green, and black. As they walked along they would fold a sheet two ways and then tear a very small piece out of the folded corner of the sheet so that when it was opened out flat there would be a tiny hold in a piece of Chinese money and they would bless the sheet of paper as they threw it to the winds. So each devil that was following the funeral cortege would need to compress himself to a size to crawl through that quarter inch hole, so the devils who were after the deceased to take him to purgatory as punishment for any evil deed during his life on earth, kept getting further behind in the procession all the time until they got so discouraged they finally gave their revenge altogether up, so it is very plain to see that it pays to make friends of as many persons as possible in this life so a good Chinamans chances are much better to pass through the Golden Gate into Paradise. There was one more ritual that was necessary for friends to perform, a final service to make sure that the deceased could never be dragged from paradise, and that was later to see that his bones were shipped back to China and reburied in the ancestral burial plot. Consequently, friends and relatives had a further duty to see that this was done but it was satisfactory that it could be done at a much later date, so all uninformed Americans may now understand that there was more to passing Chinese funeral during the Golden Spike Era then met the eye of the casual observer. The Devils or Kwei as some spoken of, were almost always foiled. Yours truly, "Sage of the Sagebrush Hills" Pappy W.A.Clay P.S.; This writer and another boy from Tacoma, named Jesse Jackson, went two days later out to the hill where the Chinese graveyard was located and there we saw two little red foxes out of the caves in the limestone ledges above who were eating some of the food which was supposed to be reserved for the deceased journey to paradise. However, it looked like was plenty left over for the journey away. |
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