Will O’Neill, Korean War Veteran

Photo Credit: Montana Standard

Oral History Transcript of Will O’Neill

Interviewer: Ellen Crain
Interview Date: May 4th, 2018
Location: Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives
Transcribed: December 2022 by Adrian Kien

[00:00:01]

Crain: You ready? I'm ready. Okay. This is Ellen Crain and I'm here today interviewing Will O'Neil.  And Willie, would you say, hello? And then I'd like you to verbally say that we have permission to use this tape for public use.

O’Neill:  Yeah. I'm William O'Neill. Hello. And you do have permission to use anything I say at this that I can think of.

Crain: Okay. And Willie, if you say anything that you're not comfortable with us making public, we're happy to edit that out for you. So, Willie, tell me when you were born.

O’Neill: I was born August 25th, 1933, and I was born in Walkerville in the family home.

Crain: Oh, really?

O’Neill: Yeah, I was a second child and my brother was born in the hospital two years before me. And my mother had a lot of problems and she wouldn't go back to the hospital to have me, so I was delivered at home.

Crain: Oh really?

O’Neill: And my father, my dad and his brothers idolized their mother and they all wanted a daughter. And when I was born, my Uncle Ed was there and my dad was really disappointed because I wasn't a girl. And my uncle asked him, "What are you gonna name him?" And he said, "I don't care." So my uncle Ed said, "Why not name him after Father Bill?" He had a cousin in Seattle who was a priest. Father Bill, they called him, Father Bill. He was William O'Neill. So I was named William. And then I got my middle name Louis, because I was born on the feast day of St. Louis.

Crain: Good. So what was your, what did your father do?

O’Neill: My dad was a hoisting engineer.

[00:02:08]

Crain: And where did he work?

O’Neill: Well, he worked in all different mines. In fact, I think it was 1929, he was operating the hoist at the Moose mine. He come on shift and relieved his partner and the indicators show where the levels were in the mine was stuck and he didn't know that. So he got out. The station tenders were on surface, but the indicators showed that there were four on the 400 foot level of the Moose. So they rang three bells on surface was to go to the upper landing. There was an upper landing on the gallows frame. And so he got the three bells, thinking that they were on the 400. That's what, and he pulled them into the shivwheel and killed both of them.

Crain: Oh my goodness.

O’Neill: So he quit running hoist then, and he went to work underground as a track man, but after a few years of work and underground, he went back to running hoist, operating a hoist.

Crain: Did he? That was a pretty dramatic incident.

O’Neill: He never ever talked about it. And I did look it up and seen where it happened and where he testified at the coroner's hearing. But they never spoke about it, you know? They didn't speak about much of anything, you know?

Crain: So did your dad go to World War I?

O’Neill: No. World War I, my mother, brother Joe and her uncle Frank were both in the First World War.

Crain: Oh really? Your mother?

O’Neill: No, my mother's brothers.

Crain: Oh, your mother's brothers.

O’Neill: Yeah. Her brother Joe was in the First World War and her uncle Frank. In fact, her Uncle Frank and his obituary shows where he was 45 years old when he joined the Army. He lied about his age and he joined the army at 45 years old. Frank Carey was his name.

Crain: Oh, interesting.

O’Neill: He was one of the first groups to go to Europe and he was one of the last to come back. He was an ambulance driver and he come back and he wasn't back long and he got pneumonia and died. My grandmother had to bury him.

Crain: Oh, not good. So did your mom ever work or did she just . . .

O’Neill: Yeah, she went to St. Mary's School. She was raised in Muckerville. She went to St. Mary's and there were so many kids in her class that she skipped one grade and didn't go to, she skipped a year of school because it wasn't room, there wasn't room enough for all them in the school. And she didn't go. I think she went to high school for a year and she worked for [inaudible] down on Brad Street is where she worked.

Crain: And what did she do there?

O’Neill: Ah, secretary work.

Crain: Okay. And then when did she meet your dad?

O’Neill: She met my dad when she was, she met my dad at her girlfriend's marriage. Her girlfriend was Mary Small. And she was marrying Dick McGraw from Walkerville. And my dad stood up for Dick McGraw and my mother stood up for Mary Small, and at the time she was engaged to marry a Jew, Dave Cohen. And my mother loved the Jews.  But she was engaged to Dave Cohen at the time she met my dad. But that ended the engagement. In fact Dave Cohen's family owned Rosenstein's. And Minnie Cohen, I remember I used to go in  there and Minnie Cohen said to me, "Oh yeah, I was almost [inaudible]"

Crain: Oh, funny. So your mom and dad got married and had your brother in the hospital and then you.

O’Neill: Then me.

Crain: How many other kids?

O’Neill: Then in 1936, my sister Ann Marie was born. And in 1941, my sister Natalie was born.

Crain: Oh, so your dad finally got those girls he was so anxious for, your dad finally got those girls that he was so anxious for. So, tell me where you went to school.

[00:06:57]

O’Neill: Well, I'll tell you the first thing I can remember as a kid was funerals. Going to Duggan's mortuary and I don't know whose his funeral it was, upstairs in Duggan's and it was hot out and all you, all I can remember, it must have been my grandmother's funeral, but all I can remember is the smell of flowers and I still hate it. And them saying, and I must only been three or four years old, you know. And then when I was five years old, I had the measles, I had Scarlet fever, and then I got the measles, then I got Scarlet Fever again. And they said that wasn't unusual because I didn't break out in a rash from the Scarlet Fever. But I got real sick and they had to take me to the hospital.  I can remember actually going to the hospital, laying in the backseat of the car with my head on my mother's lap. I went to the Murray Hospital. It was right over here on the corner. It was in June. I had 107 and a half temperature.

Crain: Oh my goodness.

O’Neill: They packed me in a tub ice and told my parents I wouldn't live the night,  but I did. I had13 blood transfusions. I put the whole, I spent a whole month of June in the hospital. I can remember still it rained. It rained every day, that whole month of June. And you still remember being in the hospital and looking at the rain. I was in a corner room and the window was curved. And I can remember just laying there watching the water spray hit the thing. Anyway, from there they never did find, they lanced my throat and they never did. They sent my blood to Atlanta, to Hamilton, and they never did come up with a dime. But I lost my, all my hair fell out, all my skin peeled and my fingernails and toenails I can remember laying and peeling the skin and throwing it off. So  I survived that. So that was . . .

Crain: And this is all before you went to school?

O’Neill: This was, I was five years old.

Crain: Wow.

O’Neill: My first trip to school, my brother was two years ahead of me. And he had to take your little brother to school. And I was bald. I lost all my hair. And I wore a hat. And I remember, I'm only five years old, I still remember sitting in the desk and the nun saying, Harold, that was my brother's name, tell your brother to take off his hat. And he said, "Well, he won't take off his hat. He doesn't have no hair." And all the kids laughed at me. So the nun come down and grabbed my hat and she, I hung on, and she actually lifted me out of the seat, but I didn't let that hat off. So that's my first encounter with the nuns.

Crain: And were you at St. Lawrence School?

O’Neill: St. Lawrence School.

Crain: Which was in Walkerville.

O’Neill: Walkerville. Right. And then I went to first grade, second grade, I don't really remember too much. I do remember, I don't remember getting in trouble. But when I got in the third grade, the nun was Sister Margaret Edward. And I really liked her. I thought she was great. But [inaudible] Shea was a buddy of mine and I don't know why, but we jumped this kid. He was a couple years older than we were and we jumped him and kind of punched him around. So I got home, we went home for lunch and I walked in the door and my mother was screaming at me. I don't wanna mention the kid's name or the family, but then my mother flipped out and my dad flipped out. I didn't even get lunch. "Get outta here, you!" So I headed up the street and I was crying and I went, Maggie Darcy lived on Daily Street and she was really a good friend of my family. She said, "Well." I was crying, I remember that. And she wanted to know why, you know? And I told her, she said, "Your dad got mad at you for fighting?" And he grew up with her kids and she called my dad and chewed his ass out.

[00:11:58]

Anyway, I got back to school and there was the probation officer over there, [inaudible], and he grew up with my dad. [inaudible] he was the juvenile probation officer and the kid's mother and his two sisters and the nun. And they had us out in the hallway and they were all hollering at me and we never really hurt the kid. He was a couple years older. He was there too. He didn't, we didn't really beat him up. Anyway, Sister Margaret Edward, the sister, slapped me in the face and gimme a bloody nose. My nose started bleeding. The kid's mother slapped me and both of his sisters and Ike Sheehan and that was his name. He threatened to take me to Miles City. So that's my . . .

Crain: So, oh my God. For your first fight, for your -

O’Neill: Well, it wasn't the first fight I got into. First one, I got in trouble over, but I mean, I think that incident there kind soured me on school. So from that day on, I grew up, I hated school. So the fifth grade I had Sister Berena, and she taught my dad, she was a little nun. She had one tooth with a gold ring around it. She'd make you put your hands out and beat your hands with a drum stick. So I got through there. I didn't have too much trouble. But then when I hit the seventh grade, I was an altar boy and the nun that I had, Sister Jane Francis, I hated her. I thought she was an old bitch. My mother would say, "Don't speak ill of the dead." But she was an old bitch. She didn't like my brother. And she really didn't like me. But I had a paper route. I had a paper route when I was 10 years old. And I asked her, I told her I wanted the 5:30 mass on Sunday. Because you had to have the papers delivered by six o'clock. So she told me, I said, If I can't have the 5:30 mass, I don't wanna be an altar boy. She says, "I'll give you the 5:30." So it comes up to, she said, she gave the 11 o'clock mass and that you had a paper route, you get up in the morning and then you had to wait all day and 11 o'clock mass was a high mass. And then they had the, you got the sermons and you prayed the rosary. You had to wait until 11 o'clock to serve, after delivering papers. So I quit. I told her I quit. I'm not serving mass. And she said, get outta here and she said to get out in the hall. I went out in the hall, she'd come out and slap me in the face and told me I was, I was a seventh grader and I was supposed to set an example for the younger kid, you know?

Crain: Right.

O’Neill: So that started a conflict I had with Sister Jane Francis and she, if you dropped a book, you got 10 demerits. You could work the demerits off by paying a penny, it cost your demerits, you could pay off the demerits for a penny. And that went to converting the pagan children. And if you chewed gum, you got demerits. And I got where I had, I owed quite a bit. But thinking back, I had my paper route. I went and collected money. I was playing football and we were gonna play Blaine and I really wanted to play there, but I had to stay. You could work off here, you could pay up or work off staying in after school or doing chores or all this stuff. So I went and collected money on my paper, I had a paper route that I had to collect and bring the money home and give it to my mother, and she'd gimme an allowance, but I went and collected, I don't know, maybe a dollar or so, and so I give her the dollar which quite a bit of money. Then they thinking she'd let me go play football. And she told me, "Well, you're not gonna go play." I said, "Well, I paid the dollar." And I thought I could go, you know? And she said, "Well, you're not going." I said, "Sister, sister?" I said, "the only difference between you and Al Capone is you wear the nun's garb." So I got smacked over that. So I didn't get to go play football. But then they wouldn't let me go to manual training and she wouldn't let me take art. And I told them, my dad that, you know this, it's a week later or two. So I told my dad, I said, She won't, they won't let me go to manual training. And they made me go sit in the fifth and sixth grade room and that would manual training was at the Blaine. So my dad said, "You just you go. You go to manual training." So it's time to go to manual training. And the nun said, "You go over there." I said, "No, I'm going to manual training. My dad told me to go to manual training." She wouldn't let me go. She pushed me in the music room and locked the door in the music room.

[00:18:15]

So I'm locked in the music room and the fifth, the sixth, the seventh and eighth grade were gone to manual training. And I'm locked in the room. So it's the St. Lawrence school that's still standing, and it was a second floor in grade school and she's pacing up and back and forth. So it was right after, during the second World War.

So I went, "Heil Hitler!" And she'd grabbed her keys out and she was trying to open the door. So I opened the window and dropped out. I dropped out of the window and went home. I took off. So I come to school on Monday and she was, she was a bitch and I wasn't too good of a kid. That's kind of, I was a little asshole, I guess. But they locked me in the library and that was a little higher up, so I thought, I'm not, I opened the window and I dropped out of there. It's a wonder I didn't break a leg or something. Because I dropped like 10, 12, I don't know how many feet. So the next day I come, they took me over and locked me in the laundry room in the convent, and they forgot about me. So I couldn't get, I couldn't get no window open. I was locked in there. So I didn't go home. My mother called over there looking for me, but they were praying and doing their [inaudible] and everything. So I didn't get out of there probably till six o'clock. And I went home and I got really got the riot act read to me. So, I had some more problems. I got in trouble on my paper route by collecting, like I collected money for the paper route to pay the nun that one time, but then I'd go collect and I'd spend a quarter and I didn't tell my ma and she's taking care of the books. So I quit the paper route and I owed. The books didn't jive with the card. You had to punch their card. You had a paper route, you spend all day Saturday collecting. It was the Montana Standard.

[00:20:46]

Crain: Oh, so it was the Montana Standard.

O’Neill: Yeah. And you spend all day. So you spend all day Saturday collecting when you had to punch the card and I had to bring the money home, give it to my mother, and she'd gimme an allowance. Anyway, so after I collect the money to pay the nun, I'd go collect and I'd get another quarter or something. I'd spend it. I didn't mark it in the book. Well, I knew I was in trouble. And I didn't know how I was gonna get out of trouble. In fact, I put a couple of dimes in the slot machine at Cortese's Drug store trying, thinking I might get some money. Anyway, I quit the route. And the kid who was breaking in on the route was with the Standard guy. They'd come back to the house and they said, the books, the cards didn't match the book, you know? So I said, "Well, it should." And I lied. My dad got in an argument with the guy from the Standard, and they almost got into a fight. And I told, then I admitted to everything. So my dad flipped. He beat the shit out of me. I thought he was gonna kill me. He really give me a beating. And when I think back, I had to forfeit my bond. But I had paid everything. I paid my bill every month, but they made me forfeit the bond because the book, all I would've had to do is write in the book where they paid. So that was the end of my paper route. So I got trouble there. My dad almost killed me.

Crain: How old were you when you quit the paper route?

O’Neill: I was 10 years old when I took the paper route.

Crain: And so when did you opt out of the paper route?

O’Neill: Probably I was in the seventh grade, eleven or twelve. When I talk about growing up, I remember Pearl Harbor Day, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. I can remember that like it was yesterday. We went to the dream theater in Walkerville, which was in the Masonic Temple.

Crain: And where would that be? What street would that be?

O’Neill: The Masonic Temple? It was right on Main Street. When you go into  Walkerville now, when you go up Main Street that there was, Main Street where it is now, where the road going into Walkerville dead ends, where you turn at the Friendly Tavern. There was a gas station there, the Shell Gas station. So the Dream Theater was on Main Street. We got out of the Dream Theater and we went into the drug store. Henry Hunter had the drug store in Walkerville. And I remember and the guy saying, "Well, yeah, I told you there we'd be in the war by the first of the year." And we said, "What happened?" They said, "The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor."

We didn't know nothing about the Japanese or Pearl Harbor. But then when I went home, we were all sleigh riding on Fourth Street. I couldn't sleigh ride. I just, the whole day I kept looking at the Highlands waiting for the Japanese planes to come over and bomb Butte. So I had the paper route. Then I had the paper route during the Second World War. I delivered papers on V.E. Day and D-Day, and I deliver the thing, the Second World War was, a lot of my memories, the Second World War, there was four guys, kids from Walkerville that got killed in the Second World War. And I delivered papers. There was a Bolton. And, let's see, there was Roy Driscoll and Patty Bolton and Charlie Mooney. I delivered papers to all of their mothers. They died in the Second World War. Then it was a [inaudible] that got killed in the Second World War. And there was a Frank Tamietti which would be a cousin of my wife, he died in, Leonard, I think it was Leonard or Frank Depo. And [inaudible] there was three of them died in the Second World War. And Dave Fitz, he lived, I knew him really good. He got washed off merchant marine ship. So there was eight, eight guys from Walkerville that died in the Second War. It seemed like everything in everything surrounded, there was always people dying.

Crain: And people talking about the war. And the war was really a big deal at that time.

O’Neill: Well, everybody was involved. Everybody was involved in the war. But you didn't know anything. The only thing you knew about the war is going to the movies and you would see the movie news and what you could read in the paper. But it was tough.  Everybody was involved in the war. The people that had kids in the service would have things hanging in the window, like a little flag, red, white, and blue with a star in it. And that meant they had a kid in the service. And if the kid got wounded, they had a silver star. And if the kid died, they put a gold star in there. They'd have the gold star in the window. That's where the Gold Star Mother's in the Second World War, where the women that hung their flags in the windows.

Crain: So that's interesting, Willie.

[00:27:02]

O’Neill: And I was an altar boy and really probably the coolest thing about being an altar boy was Val Johnsburg, she owned the Alpine bar and that, and her dad had the bar in Walkerville.

Crain: What bar in Walkerville?

O’Neill: Shawnsberg’s. The building is still there. Val married an army colonel and we served the mass and it was just to be up on the altar with two army colonels and their dress uniforms. I really thought that was really cool because you'd never see an army. All the local guys that I knew that went to the service, like I had a cousin in the Navy and different people that they were all enlisted men. So to be on the altar with two, they were bird colonels, you know? Oh, that was quite, that was, that was the only thing good I can say about being an altar boy.

Crain: So did you go to high school, Willie?

O’Neill: Yeah, I went to Boy's Central.

Crain: Did you?

O’Neill: I didn't want to. Well, I quit St. Lawrence. I never did finish that part of this story. I finally got, my dad let me quit St. Lawrence and that was one of the times I was happy when I quit St. Lawrence. Then I went to Sherman and I went there half of the seventh grade and I graduated from Sherman. But I was informed when I was a kid, my dad said, you and your brother are gonna go to Central, Boys' Central. And you'll go there until you graduate or until you're 21 years old. Because my uncle Ed who my dad was actually his guardian, he went to Central and he punched a brother, and the brother and the brother chased him clear over town. My uncle Ed, my uncle, he ditched him in that Simon's store, but he wouldn't go back to Central, my uncle.

Crain: So you went to Boys' Central. Did you graduate?

O’Neill: Yeah, I graduated in Central. I hated Central. Actually going to Boys' Central was like going to prison for me. I don't really, I hated school. I actually hated going to Central. I wanted to go to Butte High. I couldn't. All my friends went to Butte High, and I don't have any good memories of going to Central.

Crain: Well, the brothers were not noted for their kindness.

O’Neill: Actually, a lot of them brothers were bastards. And I remember as a freshmen, I was scared of the brothers. And you heard the story. You heard all the stories. Well, if the kid got tough, the brother would take him down to the handball court and beat the shit out of him. You know? Well, that guy's 24 years old and you take a 14 year old kid down to handball courts and beat the shit out of him, doesn't make that much of a man outta you. I remember Brother McKenna, I was a freshman, he was gone out of the room and we had a wad of paper and we were shooting baskets, and I picked the wad of paper up to shoot a basket, and he opened the door and he goes, "O'Neill!" and he gave me the finger to come over and he punched me right in the face and knocked me right out the door. And I remember bouncing off of the lockers. I was actually out on my feet. So that's the first time I got punched. Next, Brother Pylon. I got in trouble and he gimme the leather.  They had a leather strap where they would make you put your hands out and they'd give you so many shots on the hand with the leather strap. He gave the leather seven times on each hand, and he even hit my wrists where the wrists were swollen. So, and it was over, I skipped his class and he gave me seven shots on each hand. So the next class, I forget which brother it was, he said, "Why aren't you writing?" And I told him, I said, "I got the leather from Brother Pylon." He said, "Well, if you were being good, you wouldn't have got the leather. Come up here." And he pulled his leather out and gimme three shots on each hand because I wasn't writing in his class.

Crain: Oh my God.

[00:31:45]

O’Neill: Brother McMahon slapped me in the face. Brother O'Dwyer slapped me in the face. Brother O'Dwyer was great friends with my dad's family up in Seattle. In fact, my dad's, who I'm named after, was counselor of the Bishop in Seattle, I remember I had to go in and see him. And then it was, he was teaching a class of seniors. So you gotta go in and he gives me a big lecture about what would your saintly cousin, Father O'Neill in Seattle think of you and what you've done and everything, you know? And he says, "Put your hand out." You know your hands. I put my hands out. He said, "You want the left or the right?" He pulled the leather out of his pocket and  I took the left hand, I remember that. Figured I probably wouldn't get hit as hard. He gave me three shots on each hand in front of all the seniors in that class. So I don't have any good memories. I think the Irish Christian Brothers were a bunch of bastards.

Crain: Yeah, they were really tough.

O’Neill: Yeah, they were tough, but they weren't men. You know, beat up some kid. Yeah, I was a senior and Brother Byer was there, and this was during the Korean War and he was from New York City, the Bronx, and he hated Butte as far, he gave us a big lecture about, "Oh, you Butte kids think you're so tough." He said, "You wouldn't even last in the Bronx." And he hated Butte as far he, he gave us a big lecture about, “Oh, you Butte kids stink. You're so tough." He said, "You wouldn't even last in the Bronx," and all this. So I didn't like him. And like we were in the class and one of my, it was religion class, and one of my buddies said something and I laughed and he said, "Get your mind out the gutter, O'Neill." And it wasn't nothing. I said, "It ain't in the gutter, Brother." I said, "Speak for yourself." He said, "You'd look good over in Korea with the side of your head blown off." I said, "Well, rather me than you, Brother, because you wouldn't have guts enough to go to the service." And he said, I had to come down there. And I would've fought him. He didn't. I was a senior. They didn't push seniors as much as they did freshmen. So I don't have any good memories of St. Lawrence School. Or I don't have any good memories of Boys' Central.

Crain: So when you were in high school, Willie, did you work?

O’Neill: Yes, I did. I had, in fact, it seemed like I always had a job. When I got out of the eighth grade, I worked at the Boyington gown shop.

Crain: The what?

O’Neill: Boyington Gown Shop.

Crain: Is what?

O’Neill: Right on the corner of Broadway and Main where it almost is now.

Crain: Oh, sure.

O’Neill: That was the Boyington Gown shop.

Crain: And what did you do there?

O’Neill: You had to clean up and dust and deliver packages. It was pretty upscale.  Maud Boyington was of the Poor family. She was a Poor and her husband was Boyington. During the Second World War, it was Pappy Boyington and he, they made a TV series about the Marines, Pappy Boyington, and that was her husband's nephew. And he was quite rowdy, Pappy Boyington, and she was kind of, I asked her about Pappy, because this is right during the Second World War. And she wouldn't even talk about him. But you had to deliver packages and you had to take a whisk broom, clean around in there, and they deliver the packages. They give you two tokens and you'd have the package, a dress or a coat or that, and you'd go catch, get on the bus. They tell you which bus, I was only like 13 years old. So you'd catch the bus, you'd tell the bus driver where to leave you off and then you'd wait for the bus to come back. And so that was my first job, was working at the Boyington Gown Shop. And you even had to clean the windows. That was a big job. I remember cleaning the windows with the big squeegy out there. And when I was going into my sophomore year, I worked for the Stop and Shop grocery. It was Wigginstein's.  They had the Stop and Shop grocery store over on Granite Street. In fact, father Wigginstein had just died. It was his grandparent. Well, his dad and his grandmother lived in the back of the store, the building is still there. It was a Stop and Shop grocery.

Crain: So, where on Granite Street would that be?

O’Neill: It was over on Granite and Emmett. The building is still there.

Crain: Oh, Granite and Emmett. Okay.

O’Neill: I think it's Emmett. But it's right.

Crain: Good.

[00:37:03]

O’Neill: Yeah.  I was driving a grocery, they had a 1940 Ford Coup with a box built on the back of it. It was a coup car. I was delivering groceries, 14 years old. I didn't even have a driver's license. In fact, the way I got the job was my brother had it, and he got a job working for the Forest Service up in Libby for the summer. So he was teaching me how to drive the car, and I mean, I killed the motor in the middle of Excelsior Street. That was the main highway coming into Butte at the time. I blocked all the traffic, and my brother started hauling there at me. So I punched him and walked home. But I took the job and didn't even really know how to drive, but I learned to drive and I delivered groceries. And I worked six days a week, about four hours a day, delivering groceries.

Crain: And you would go there after school?

O’Neill: Yeah. Well, this was the summer, and then I had it for a while after school. And I don't know what happened, either I quit or they might have, I don't know. You delivered groceries and I made like $6 a week and I'd have to bring the money home and give it to my mother, and I'd get an allowance. But I'd walk, you'd have to, I'd walk home from Granite Street to Walkerville.

Crain: And how long would that take you?

O’Neill: Oh, I don't know, probably 25 minutes. A half hour. You'd walk everywhere. You'd walk to high school, you'd walk to school. I walked there. That was going into my freshman, sophomore year. Going into my junior year, my mother, I got a job at Rosenberg Furniture. I went to work on the furniture truck and well, Jack Rosenberg, his wife was the next door neighbor of ours in Walkerville. She was a Dennehy. A guy broke his legs. So I got the job working on the furniture truck. I was only 15 years old, working on hauling furniture. And so I worked there for about two and a half months. I remember making $18 a week for 48 hours and they'd gimme my check on Saturday at noon. And I'd go over and I'd cash it. Minnie Cohen would cash my check at Rosenstein and I'd have a milk shake and buy a pack of cigarettes. I smoked.

Crain: And where was Rosenstein's?

O’Neill: That's right on the corner of Hamilton and Broadway is where it was. That's where Minnie Cohen worked. That she was the one that, or Minnie was,  she was a Rosenstein. She was married to a Cohen and my mother was engaged to her nephew. So I worked on the furniture train and it was tough. It was hard work, and I was only 15 years old, so I worked two and a half months, and then school started. I went out for football and I kept getting nosebleeds. So I didn't stay on the clock for football. So my mother got me a job at the Safeway store on Granite Street. I worked Friday after school and then all day Saturday at the Safeway store. And I worked there. Then my whole junior year I worked Fridays and Saturdays, and then going into my senior year, I worked the whole 48 hours a week at the Safeway store. And then I worked all my senior year. I worked from four to eight and all day Saturday for my senior year. So I worked the whole senior year. I'd get up, go to school at 8:30 in the morning. I'd get home about 8:30 at night. So I did work there and I didn't, I had to bring my paycheck home and give it to my mother. And you got an allowance.

Crain: Did she give you a raise every time you got more money?

O’Neill: No, actually. And that's how things were years ago. If you had any money, you'd give it to your mother and then you got allowance. She didn't wanna, so I worked there at the Safeway store.

Crain: So, Willie, when you graduated high school, what did you do?

O’Neill: I graduated, I had been working at Safeway. I quit Safeway. The first thing I did [inaudible] I got a job at the Brentwood Egg Company. The Brentwood Egg Company was down on Nevada Street.  And it was a Safeway's egg plant.

Crain: Oh really?

O’Neill: And that's where all the eggs come in. And there was, let's see, there was three guys. It was a job just filling in for a guy that was, he got hurt there, but I worked there. They had about eight women that candled the eggs there. They candled all the eggs. And there was my job was the eggs that come out on a conveyor belt on a big disc. And you would separate the eggs and put 'em in the cases. And there were like grade A and grade double AA.

Crain: And, so did you determine the grade of the eggs?

O’Neill: No, they did that. The ones that candled the eggs, they graded the egg too. They'd look at it and see if the egg was clear and then they graded them. They had, and they'd come out in the different cartons. So you had the cases there. You would take the eggs and put 'em in the different cases and then you would make up the egg cartons, when they need it. Then you put 'em in machine and it pop 'em all out and you'd send them in too. It was a good job. It was teamster's wages and you worked a half a day on, you worked five and a half days.

Crain: Teamster's wages. Do you remember what the wages were?

[00:43:58]

O’Neill: Oh, not really. Probably 12 bucks a day. So I worked there until the guy come back and then they laid me off. You could go up to the Teamsters' hall, the Teamsters' office and they'd send you to work different places. Maybe you'd get a shift or two shifts, or you can go to the Laborers' hall and they'd send you out to a job.

Crain: Okay. I want to have you clarify a couple things. So you joined the Teamsters' union?

O’Neill: You didn't join, you didn't have to join the union.

Crain: Oh, you didn't?

O’Neill: No, not unless the job was permanent. You were covered. I got Teamster's wages, but I didn't belong to the union. They didn't make you join the union unless the job was permanent.

Crain: So you would go to the various union offices and they'd get you a couple of days.

O’Neill: They'd say, "Yeah, you could go . . ." Like the Laborers' hall right now was at the Carpenters'. You could go down there at 7:30 in the morning and if they needed you, they'd send you out to work.

Crain: So I wanna ask you something about that, that would not, they would never send you to the company, would they?

O’Neill: No.

Crain: So those union offices would never send you to a mine or to the Anaconda Company. So these would be jobs within the community. The teamsters and laborers knew?

O’Neill: Yeah. I remember one time at the Teamsters, there was the Butte Ice and Cold Storage on Montana Street and me and this one buddy of mine, they sent us down there and we worked down there two weeks. It was a big, I think the buildings still there, but they had a contract to store meat for the Air Force and the meat come in on refrigerated cars. And we unloaded 'em, put 'em in the lockers down there. But I worked down there a couple of weeks and that's all we did is unload meat and haul it in and put it in the lockers. The lockers were ice cold.

Crain: And then would you load it back on cars to go somewhere for the Air Force?

O’Neill: No, we didn't. They had the contract with the Air Force to store the meat. So you just unloaded the box cars and then you'd put the meat in the storage. And I worked there for two weeks. I also worked in the Safeway warehouse. I worked down there for a couple of weeks. These were part-time jobs and everything there in the Safeway warehouse, you unloaded the boxcars by hand. You loaded all the box and you put it on a great big hand truck. And you wheeled a hand truck in with all the cases on, and then you unloaded the cases and you stacked them right to the ceiling by going up, like in steps. And you would stack the cases right up to the ceiling. By steps, you'd put the cases down and go step by step by step.

Crain: Oh, so you think you'd build a staircase?

O’Neill: Yeah. You did. You stacked up. I worked there for a few weeks. I worked Northwest Supply. I remember we worked a week down there unloading septic tanks.

Crain: Where's Northwest Supply?

O’Neill: Northwest Supply was down on Front Street is where you make the curve. The building is still there, before you go under the overpass right there on Front Street. Okay. So I worked there. Then my dad got me on as an oiler. I went to work for the company as an oiler.

Crain: Okay. So how old do you think you were when you got that job, Willie?

O’Neill: Oiling?

Crain: Yeah.

O’Neill: You had to be 18 to go to work for the company. This is 1951. You could go to work. I had buddies that went to work for the company by getting fake baptism certificates. And they went to work for the company when they were 15 years old. There was a priest up at St. Lawrence, Father O'Brien, would give you a fake, if you wanted a fake baptism certificate, he'd give it to you. And I had, they'd go, went to work with the fake baptism certificates and go to work for the company. Their offices were in the Pennsylvania mine actually. And you had to have a rustling card.

Crain: So you were 18 when you got a rustling card?

O’Neill: Yeah, and I went oiling on the hoist. I started out at the High Ore oiling.

Crain: So I wanted you to explain what a rustling card is, and then I want you to explain what an oiler does.

O’Neill: The rustling card was the card they gave you. You had to get on and sign up, register with the company, and once you were signed up, one of 'em, they'd give you a rustling card and to work in the mines them days, to hire out like an oiler or machinist or any of that, you went through like the card office, but once you got your rustling card, if you wanted to work underground, you would go to the mine. So like the Mountain Con would hire at noon, 12 o'clock. You'd go up there and you go through the line and they'd have the, the boss whoever was there and you'd ask them if they had any motor jobs or drift jobs or mining jobs, and you had to have your rustling card. So they would hire you the mine, if you had a rustling card. But that was only for the miners, underground workers. The crafts, machinists, all them, they were hired through the rustling card office where they didn't, the mine didn't hire the crafts. The crafts were sent to the mines.

Crain: Okay, thank you.

O’Neill: So, like George Lilly, he was head of all the crafts and he was right at the, his office was right here at the Original. There was offices there. That's where George Lilly was. He was over all the crafts. And that would be your machinists and boilermakers. He was the main man.

Crain: Okay. So your first job was an oiler, right? What does an oiler do?

[00:50:50]

O’Neill: Well, oilers was, you were like an, you were actually an apprentice hoisting engineer. So you oiled the hoist, how you cleaned the hoist, you oiled and greased them, and you learned to run the hoist. So all your hoisting engineers started out as oilers. So I oiled at the High Ore. I was there about six months, and then they transferred me to the Anaconda Mine. The Anaconda Mine then was just the chippy hoist at the Anaconda. The chippy hoist was, in the mines, you had a double drum hoist, was the main hoist. And the chippy hoist was a single, so they talk about hoist houses. There's no such thing as a hoist house. If you said to an old engineer, "Oh, you work in the hoist house," they would ran you out of there. It was the engine room. And so you had your main hoist and the chippy hoist. And the chippy hoist got its name, the chip, the, the main hoist did, hoisted all the rock, all your ore, all your rock was loaded on the skiff before that cars, but your main hoist did all the hoisting, all your ore and rock.52:16 All your rock was loaded on the skiffs before the cars, but your main hoist did all the hoisting of all your ore and rock. The chippy lowered everything. The chippy got us named from a woman, a chippy woman, a chippy was a gal who was in competition with the prostitutes, actually. It was a woman who would go to the bar and pick up anything. That's where the word chippy come from. So the chippy hoist did all the running around and picked up everything.

So that was your main hoist and your chippy hoist. So I went there. I worked at the Anaconda two months, and then they transferred me to the Leonard.  I went to Leonard. I had straight day shift for eight months. So they transferred me to Leonard and I had to go graveyard shift.

Crain: Now were you still working as an oiler at the time?

O’Neill: Yeah, I was an oiler. This is when I was an oiler. So I went to the Leonard and I was graveyard. Well, they had the electric hoist and the chippy hoist. And the chippy hoist was an air hoist.

Crain: Now explain what that means.

O’Neill: Well, you had your different hoists, you had an air hoist. The air hoist ran on compressed air. And then you had your electric hoist. The Emma mine was a steam hoist, and that was still operating. And a lot of your air hoists originally were steam hoists and they converted them to air. So you had an electric hoist and an air hoist. The High Ore Mine was an air hoist and it was a flat cable. It wasn't a round cable, it was a flat cable about six inches wide. And so that was the difference. You had your air hoist and you had your electric hoist and the Emma was a steam hoist. So I went to Leonard and I was straight graveyard. I worked, I had Monday off, I worked Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday Friday graveyard. Then I had to short change and come out afternoon Saturday. So I get off at six o'clock in the morning and catch the bus over to Walkerville and be back to work at 2:30 on Saturday. And then Sunday I had to work day shift. So, and then I had to, I had to make two short changes, that week. This was before unions put in where you, they didn't pay anything extra for that. Later on you get it where if anything worked within 20, if you work more than eight hours in a 24 hour period, they had to pay a time and half. But they didn't do that then.

Crain: So this was in the early 1950's.

O’Neill: This was 1951.

Crain: And so when you were an oiler, did you belong to a union?

O’Neill: I belonged to the Stationary Engineers' Union. And that was inter. . . , it was Mine Mill, you had the Miners' Union and you had the Stationary Engineers' Union.

Crain: And you were under the United Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers.

O’Neill: We were in the Mine, Mill and the International Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers. And the original union I joined was the Stationary Engineers' Union. In fact, if I remember correctly, Henry Young, that was president of the union that time was a Spanish American War veteran. I can't verify that.

[00:56:03]

But they had their office in the Miners' Union building with the Stationary Engineers' Union. Okay. So I worked the Leonard. The chippy hoist, they had a skip, used a skip on there for transferring sand for the cut and fill stoves. And they really worked the hoist too hard. It wasn't built to be hauling real heavy stuff. And the two oilers that were on, worked the chippy before me, they fired them and you couldn't keep the place clean.

They worked it so hard. It would melt the grease in the cups. And I remember the first shift I worked at the Leonard was graveyard shift. I went up and the station tender got killed, the first shift I was working there. And the chippy was up on the sheets. The sheets were what would the, all around your oil, the entrance to the shaft with the sheets. That was the metal sheets they laid down, where you could move carts and everything on and they were steel sheets. That's what's called the sheets where you would line up before you went. Every mine, they had the sheets. Anyway, they brought the body up and it was on a timber truck and it was there for four or five, all the time I worked before the coroner and they to come down to get the body. I remember looking. Looking out the window, and there was the guy's body there just laying out there all by itself on a timber truck.

It was in the stretcher. The stretchers in the mines were like a straight jacket. When you got hurt in the mines, the stretcher was, you had, you had your stretcher, and they had a canvas wrapping on the stretcher. So when you were injured under in the mine, they would put you in the stretcher and then they would wrap the canvas around you and strap you in there.

And the reason for that was, is you couldn't lay a stretcher down on the cage. If you were injured or dead, they stood you on the cage when they brought you up. So they taunt the stretcher and they stood it on the cage and then two station tenders would ride with you up. I worked as a station tender too, but you would hold a stretcher in place and bring the guys up out of the mine. But it was just, he was out there. It was all I, I didn't go over and look at the body, but that was my first shift at the Leonard. So I lasted about,  I'd come out to work, I got off work and went out. I'm 18 years old. You drank. And I had kind of a hangover. And I went to work Sunday morning and the boss machinist come down there and he said, "O'Neil, get your work done down here and get your ass up and get that chippy shining." He said, "George Lilly is coming down here tomorrow and I want that chip to be shining." I said, "Well, you can't keep it. You can't even keep it clean." He said, "You get it shining or else." So I thought, F-you, went down, took a shower and come up and he said, "Where are you going?" I said, "I'm going home." I said, "You stick the chippy up your ass [inaudible]." So I quit. I had to go down and see George Davis and I told him, like he said, "You go back to work down there." Davis hired all the engineers. In fact he'd be Ron Davis from KBOW's grandfather.

He hired all the oilers and he was in charge. He said, "Go back." I said, "I ain't going back down there." But anyway, when I come home that Sunday morning after quitting and my mom and dad and my two sisters were getting ready to go to church and I walked in. My dad said, "What are you doing home?" I said, "I quit." And he was, he didn't speak to me. "What are you gonna do now?" I thought, I think, I'll work under, I was gonna join the Navy anyway. I tried to join the Navy when I was a senior in high school. Two of my buddies joined the Navy when the Korean War broke out, and I wanted to go with them, but my parents wouldn't sign for me. So I had all the intentions when I graduated of joining the Navy. So I told 'em, I'm gonna go underground. I'm gonna go work for the mines for a while, and then I'm gonna join the Navy. So I talked to Dotty Galey, was this guy. In fact, I said, "You need a partner?"  And Dotty says, "Yeah." He says, "I can get you on up at the Lex." So he had talked to the boss with Bob Petley. He put my name in to the office and I hired out and went to work as a motorman up at the Lexington. There was no training or nothing. You just went you just, you went to work. All you had, all you needed was a hard hat and a mine belt and hard-toed boots.

So I went to work up there at the Lex. My dad went up. Bob Petley was my boss. He was a Canadian, in fact, he was an officer in the English, Canadian Navy chasing subs in the Atlantic. He was a great guy, Bob. I worked there with him. So I remember, I went to work on the 500 of the Lex and I wasn't there, oh, maybe a couple of weeks. I went to work on a Saturday night and there was a, I was the only motorman, the boss says, Go with the, this old Irishman, Patty Crocken. And he says, You go with Patty and help Patty. He was going to do some cleaning up and repair work. He said, Go with Patty and help Patty. And we were the only two guys on the 500 foot level. And he was an old gruffy, old Irishman. And he wouldn't even speak to me, never spoke. I'd go to help. "Go sit down, kid. Go sit down, kid. I'll do it myself." You know? So I put eight hours in with Patty and I come to work on Monday. And then I told the boss, I said, "Geez," I said, "Don't put me with that old bastard again. I said, he wouldn't let me help him. He wouldn't work.  He wouldn't let me help and he wouldn't even speak to me."

He said, "Well," he said, "You don't have to worry about Patty. Patty come in and said, 'Don't put that Okie kid with me no more.' He said, 'That kid wouldn't do nothing. All he did is sit on the motor and whistle all night,' you know?" So he called me an Okie. So I went, he was standing out there and I went over to him and I said, "Hey, I went down, worked with you the other night, and I offered to help and you wouldn't let me help." And I said, "I'm not an Okie. I was born and raised in this town." "What's your name?" I says, "O'Neill." He said, "Well, who be your father?" And I said, Harold O'Neill. I don't know him. Who be your grandfather? I said, Shoemaker, Dan the Shoemaker. Well, Shoemaker Dan was my grandfather and he was foreman of the Never Sweat for a while. "You're the Shoemaker's grandson?" He goes, "John! John!" Called this other Irish man. "This is the Shoemaker's grandson." And so I was in with Patty and John. They thought I was pretty good kid then, you know.

Crain: Tell me about where your grandfather got his name.

O’Neill: Well, he got his name Shoemaker. He his name was Dan O'Neil.

[01:05:02]

And he come from Ireland with his two brothers. But his father in Ireland was a cobbler, a shoemaker. So there was probably a couple of dozen Dan O'Neill's in Butte. So he was called the Shoemaker.

Crain: And he worked just at the Speculator. Where did he work, did you say?

O’Neill: Well, he was a shift boss at the Anaconda mine and he was foreman at the Never Sweat.

Crain: Oh, at the Never Sweat.

O’Neill: And then the [inaudible] O'Neill was the superintendent of the Never Sweat.

Crain: Yes.

O’Neill: The Rimmer fired my grandfather. They got in an argument over which way to drive a drift and he fired my grandfather. So my grandfather then was the surface foreman of the Badger.

Crain: So was your grandfather a miner in Ireland?

O’Neill: I have no clue what any of 'em did in Ireland.

Crain: Other than the shoemaker, the cobbler.

O’Neill: He'd come here with his two brothers, but that was his name, Shoemaker Dan. He's mentioned in one book about, I remember that one about the Ancient Order of Hibernians.

Crain: Oh, the Butte Irish.

O’Neill: Dan O'Neill. Yeah. The only thing I know about my grandfather is they lived in Walkerville and I know when he was a foreman and my dad said when he'd get off the street car, there'd be all kinds of guys waiting for 'em, looking for a job. And he'd have to chase them away, some of the guys with a sample pick, because all the bosses carried sample picks. But that's all I know about 'em. Nothing else. He was a foreman, a surface foreman at the Badger. My dad wouldn't go to high school, so he got my job. My dad's first job was shoveling coal at the Badger mine. And because my grandfather wanted him to go to high school, but he wouldn't go. But that was all I know about my grandfather was.

Crain: So underground, were the motorman, Patty Grogan, was he a motorman?

O’Neill: He was a, Patty was an, they had these different guys. They'd go around, cleanup guys, they were old guys. They would keep the ditches open and do repairs and clean up sloughs where you'd have little caves, you know. But the thing about Patty is him and John Caul lived together in the Maryland Boardinghouse and the Maryland Boardinghouse was right in, right here.

Crain: Next to this building. The fire department.

O’Neill: And  they lived together, Patty and John. Patty would be working and John would go on a drunk. And they'd keep their, go for two weeks, you know. And like Patty wouldd say, "Oh, John." Where's John? "Oh, he is on a toot." He's gonna kill himself, drinking. But then John would come back to work. Patty would do the same thing. You'd say to John, "Where's Patty?" "Oh, Patty. Patty's on a toot. He's gonna kill himself." They lived together. But anyway, Patty had a bond a week taken out of his check. You would save war bonds and then saving bonds. He had a bond a week taken out of his check and he died. And John had silicosis, when Patty died. Patty let, the government got to keep all of his bonds. He had them made out to him and a fictitious woman and nobody, the government got to keep the money. Like John said, he could have left me the money. He never left John, or, you know.

Crain: Well that was a shame. So you worked as a motorman for how long did you work there?

O’Neill: I worked until May and I got drafted. Ray Pizzani and I joined the Navy earlier and we got put on a waiting list to go to the Navy and Ray got drafted and he went to the Army. Then I got drafted, well I talked two other of my buddies. I was on the waiting list and I talked Tom Lowman and Jack Barn in to joining the Navy. So we went down to the recruiter and I told him Ray Pizzani  got drafted and I said, "I don't want to go by myself." I said, "How about putting these guys with me?" And the recruiter says, "Okay, fine." So about two weeks later, Barn and Lowman got called to go to the Navy. So I went down to recruiting office and I said, "What's going on?" I said, "I was on the list ahead of them." He said, "Well, what I did is I scratched your name and put their names down and then put you behind them." Well, then I got drafted, so which was great anyway, because I only had to put two years in the army where I had to put four years in the Navy. But I got drafted, I took basic infantry training at Fort Lewis and MP training at the Presidio in San Francisco. And then I went to Korea. I was in Korea, well, seven, well I left here in October 53 and come back in April of 55. They weren't fighting when I got over there. And so I didn't see any combat.

Crain: So were you, were you an MP?

O’Neill: Yeah, I was an MP. We seen lots of stuff, but we did a lot of traffic control and most of our traffic control involved Koreans getting run over and killed. A lot of Koreans believe in demonism. If you're having bad luck, they would figure there was an evil spirit behind them. So they'd run out in front of a vehicle and the vehicle just missed them and they figured the evil spirit got run over. But nine out of 10 times, they'd get hit and they'd always blame the American vehicles. So anytime there was a Korean got hit, we'd have to, well we had to, the police station patrol had to go out there with the interpreter and ask them what the bumper mark were off of the vehicle. And there was so many of them that we had originally, we would call an American ambulance and send them to the American, what medical facilities we had, but it overloaded that. So the government no more, if you can't prove it, they weren't hit by a, by an American vehicle. Don't don't send them. You can't send them, you know.

[01:12:14]

And one day, a woman, she got hit by the vehicle and we went out there, me and the interpreter. An American vehicle pulled up and there was two American women in the vehicle. And there was a couple of army colonels. And they got out, they said, "What are you gonna do?" I said, "Nothing." They can't prove. I said, "I have orders. We can't take care of the body." And they got all over me and shit was flying. And I called for an ambulance. They ordered me to get an ambulance. I called, got an ambulance, and then I had to go with them and follow the ambulance. And then the colonel in charge of the hospital, they all got, it was kinda enjoyable to watch them argue. But you couldn't treat them all.

Crain: Right. Especially, if they were jumping in front of moving vehicles.

O’Neill: One thing about that Syngman Rhee. He was the president of Korea. He was a dictator. And he got sick and they put him in the Army Hospital over there and we had to go, we took over the whole security for the hospital. And my job with Syngman Rhee was, me and my partner, we were in the waiting room outside of his room.  And if any, he was a dictator and they were afraid of anything happened to him that it would come down on us. They flew doctors in from Japan and Okinawa to treat him, but his wife was an Austrian and she couldn't speak Korean and he couldn't speak Austrian, so they conversed in English. I met her. I never got to see him, but that was two weeks we had to watch him. But outside of that, it was a normal police work - wrecks, car accidents, a few murders.

Crain: A few murders.

O’Neill: Yeah. It was regular police work. The biggest thing though was venereal disease. We were in different places in Korea, but they moved us into this area where it was like 50,000 troops and first Marine Division headquarters and an airbase, and the VD rate was high. And we put everything off limits where they couldn't be in the houses. If you were on the vice squad, the first thing was you went to the infirmary for sick call. Everybody that had venereal disease would tell you where they got it, who the girl was. We would go out with the national policeman and try and pick the girl up and bring them in and treat them for the venereal disease. But once they found out you were looking for them, they'd take off. But that was one of the biggest things, was trying to control venereal disease.

Crain: Wow. That's an unbelievable. So, Will, you were in the Army for two years in Korea, and then you came home?

O’Neill: I come home, I went to work at the Lexington and I quit. Went to work at the Anselmo for a while and I quit there and I went to work out at the Mapleton that was out of, manganese, out behind Big Butte. That's when they were mining the manganese and the government was buying all the manganese and they were stock piling it down there at the mag plant right behind the Winter Garden.

Crain: Okay. So the Winter Garden, bowling alley.

O’Neill: Yeah. Behind there that was the mag plant.

Crain: So that would be on Centennial Avenue, correct?

O’Neill: Well, yeah, Centennial. Yeah. It's where your tailings are now. The black wall, that's the tailings from the original mag plant. So the government bought all the mag and they stockpiled it.

Crain: And why did they do that?

O’Neill: Because it was considered a strategic material and they had the import and the only, the only places that they could buy the manganese was from South Africa or Russia. So they were buying it here and stockpiling it. The Emma mine was a manganese mine. And the manganese from the Emma was of such high grade, they shipped a lot of it back east and they used it for making cosmetics. But the manganese the government wanted was a strategic material because they've used it for hardening steel.

Crain: Perfect. So you worked at the Mapleton, which is between Tech and Rocker.

O’Neill: Yeah. Then I went to work at the company warehouse on the bowl gang.

[01:17:42]

Crain: On the what gang?

O’Neill: The bowl gang. The bowl gang. We unloaded all the cars, box cars. We were the bowl gang. So I worked there and I got fired. We weren't getting, we weren't getting differential pay for running the forklifts, so they said, Let's all, let's refuse to run the forklifts and unless they pay us the differential pay, which was a dollar more a day or so.

Crain: So were you working as a teamster?

O’Neill: No, we were in miners union at the warehouse. In fact, I turned the grievance in that we weren't getting the differential pay. And we never had a job steward up there either. A job steward would be your union guy. So we all, everybody refused to run the Heister. And the boss said, well, it was Emmett Thornton. I know you know him. Emmett was, he was a boss. He was like the pusher. He said, "Well, what's going on?" We told him. Okay, stick together now. So he went and got the assistant foreman and he come and told me to get on the forklift and I didn't and nobody else would either. So he went and got the foreman. And so the foreman come and he said, "O'Neill, get on the forklift." He said, "I ain't running it." I said, "I'm not running the forklift, we're not getting the differential pay." He said, "Go pick up your time. You're fired." So I thought everybody else refused and they all knocked me down, just about knocked me down, climbing on the forklift. So I got fired there. So I got back, I went to, I worked up the Lex at the station tender. So I was working at the station tender at the Lexington.

Crain: What does station tenders do?

O’Neill: You were the guy on the other end of the, you rang the bells, you loaded the skips and then, and the station tenders worked in the shaft. You had your engine room, your engineers, and on the other end of the cable was the station tenders. So you had station tenders and shaftmen. You unloaded everything. You ran the cages and the skips underground. You were on the end, you rang the bell and the buzzer. And so I worked there. Then the Lexington shut down.

Crain: And do you remember when that was?

O’Neill: 57.

Crain: 1957.

O’Neill: Yeah. And they shut the Lex down and they transferred me to the Kelley and I didn't like it. The Kelley was just a different world. The Kelley mine was completely different than any of your mines. All your mines in Butte were vein mines, regular vein mines, the Kelley was a cave block mine. And it was just completely, it was like going into a different world. I didn't last there. I quit.

Crain: Can you tell me why? Why? What made it a different world?

O’Neill: Well, the cave block was a different system. Your regular mines were a drift, which is a tunnel. And then when you got into your lead ore, you drove raise, you drive a raise from level level, and then you would stope the ore out and then you would fill the stopes. That was cut and fill mining. The Kelley was a cave block system where they drove finger raises and they'd cave block the whole area.

Crain: So a big giant removal of earth.

O’Neill: Yeah, but they caved it. They caved the whole block.

Crain: So a cave would be a big fall.

O’Neill: Yeah. They would fall into the finger raises and then the rock, they would go into an intermediate and they would slush the rock out, which is like, a  slusher was at like a drag line, and then they would load the cars. But it was a cave block system. And there was a Kelley, in fact, one of their cave blocks caved the surface. They were only like five, 600 feet underground. And this is in the area of the pit now. The F&S had a contract in the pit to remove overburden to get to the ore. The F&S was owned by company big shots, actually, Finlen and Sheridan, but the company big shots had that, it was a contracting company.

Crain: And they all truck.

[01:22:41]

O’Neill: It was a construction outfit for roads and building roads. It was Finlen and Sheridan, originally was Finlen and Corette. And then it was Finlen and Sheridan. But Rinwell owned part of it. The was superintendent of the, he was vice president of the company. The F&S was dumping their overburden into the, the Kelley was pulling, the rock was gone down in the Kelley, and they were pulling and sending it down to Anaconda. So it, but everybody, the big shots knew about it, but that was the cave block system. So I quit the Kelley, I worked for a little while at the Emma. And then it was kind of tough getting jobs and I had a couple of buddies going to school in Missoula. So they talked me into going to college. So I went to the U for two years, from 57 to 59. And I hated that too. I hated college. And that's where I first discovered the Butte Rats. You read all about the Butte Rats. A Butte Rat to me, when I grew up was some kid at Central that stitched off to a brother. It was a real rat. The Butte Rats were fraternity teams. They weren't fraternity teams, they were intermural teams. So I played with the Butte Rats at Missoula.

Crain: And what sport did you play?

O’Neill: I played touch football and I played softball. I wasn't good enough to get on the Butte Rat basketball team. But you had the fraternity league and you had the independent league. So the Butte Rats were in the independent league. And there were, the other teams, were "I felt the thigh," you know? Thigh Alpha Alfalfa. The Golden Godboons were spit to. There were some of the other teams. They'd talk about the Butte Rats. And I remember they say, oh, they had the big old article in the Standard where the guys coming out of the mines looked like rats. Well, you wouldn't have went and told no miner that he looked like a rat coming out of the mine. But the Butte Rats started after the Second World War, and it was because of the veterans. The only Butte Rats were in Bozeman and Missoula and they were sports teams.

Crain: That is a great, great story. I am so glad you told that story, Willie.

O’Neill: But there were no Butte Rats.

Crain: Thank you.

O’Neill: A Butte Rat was a snitch at Boys' Central.

Crain: Thank you. So you went to college?

O’Neill: Yeah.

Crain: And then you came home.

O’Neill: I was gonna be an astronaut. They told me I took up space for two years.

Crain: Well, Willie, my father would love that.

O’Neill: I went to school there for two years and I come back and I went to work that summer. I went to work at the Anselmo. And then we went on strike.

Crain: Oh, sure, the 59.

O’Neill: We were on strike for six months. And after the strike I went to work up the Mountain Con in the slime plant. The slime plant was, they fill all the stopes with slime and that the slime was the tailings from the concentrator. They, all the slime was the tailings from Anaconda. They would bring it in on railroad cars and we would wash it out of the railroad car into a tank and pump it down the mine and they would fill the stopes. A stope was, you had your drift, was your tunnel, then you had your raise from one level to the next level. Then the stopes is where they would cut out the whole block ore. You would take out one. It would be like one set, would be like a 10 feet. They would take that block of ore out, they would put a wooden wall in the, you had a raise, a shoot and a manway. And they would put a wall in the manway and they would burlap it. Then they would pump the tailings, which they called slime, into the stope. Every so many feet on your wall, they would have a gap and they burlapped the wall and then they would melt the water through the burlap and that tailings would set right in there. Then they would go right in the next day. Once the water drained off, they would just blast down the next block of ore, and they would slush it out and that was cut and fill mining.

Crain: And that slime would dry like concrete?

[01:28:03]

O’Neill: Yeah. Yeah. You could walk on it the next day. It was tailings concentrates. So yeah, we would pump it on the mine. They had a four inch rubber line pipe. We would just pump it over to the shaft. The slime went down, gravity fill, and there would be so much pressure on them lines that you would push up for 200 feet, some of the stopes and it was rubber lined. And if you ever were in a shaft when one of them started leaking, it would get right into you. It was a mess. But that was a cut and fill. The slime. I worked there, oh, it was 1963. Well, 62, my Uncle Dan died and in December of 62, and my uncle come up from California for the funeral, and he wanted me to come to California. Why don't you come down there? So I didn't pay no more of it. And then it was a 42 below zero for about a week. And you washed the slime out of the cars with a fire hose. Well, Saturday night, they left the car on the, what we called the pot, where you washed it out and it froze.

And we come out to work Monday morning and we had, we couldn't move that car. We would take three loaded cars, which would run, I don't know how many, 70, 80 tons to a car. We would pull the three cars back, but we had a hoist with a cable and, try to knock that, we couldn't move that car off the pot. It was froze. And they kept calling and they kept calling and it was miserable. It was outside, 42 below. I quit. I went down, I said, I quit. I haul my stuff out of my locker. I went home. I bought a bus ticket and went to California. I went down there. Before I went to California, I took the test for the post office here and I was on the eligibility list. So I went down there. I was there about two days and I went in the lock, was in the post office. And I asked the postmaster if they were hiring. He said, Yeah, we're hiring. And I said, Well, I passed the test in the post office in Butte. Well, just call them and have them transfer eligibility down here. So I had my mother call Dan Corver with the assistant postmaster and he mailed my eligibility down there and I went to work for the post office.

Crain: Where in California? Where were you?

O’Neill: La Crescenta. It would be in between on Foothill Boulevard between Burbank and Pasadena and north of Glendale. It was actually a suburb of Glendale. And I was only there like four months, carrying and I was a regular carrier, and it took almost two years to become a regular carrier in Butte. I was delivering mail the day John F. Kennedy got assassinated. I was on a 3400 block at Mount Rose Avenue in La Crescenta, California. I'll never forget it, because when I was a kid, you couldn't become president if you were a Catholic, like they'd tell you, you know. But anyway, it broke my heart, in fact, I went over, a woman came out and said they just shot the president.

[01:32:04]

And I said, "What's the rest of the joke?" Because that area, California was pretty conservative and most of them were Republicans. In fact, the American Nazi Party's headquarters was in Glendale, and the Birch Society was in La Canada. So it was a fairly a Republican area. And in fact, a lot of the carriers that they had AUH2O bumper stickers on their cars. AUH2O-64 was Goldwater for president. And I got a little JFK 64 license plate. And I would put that on my, on my, when I had my route, I'd put my JFK license on there and the superintendent of the mail, I didn't like him. He'd come over, "You can't have that. You can't have that Kennedy thing in here." I said, "You got a Goldwater bumper sticker on your car and you park in the parking lot." So I got, they knew I was a Democrat. And I come in, after packing my route, when Kennedy was assassinated and I was broken. In fact, I saw it on tv. I went to where I ate lunch. They had a little store where you'd go on that route I was on. You would go in there and buy a bottle of pop and eat your lunch if you had it or buy a sandwich. And I watched Walter Cronkite. They had a little tv in there. Anyway, I go in, went in and I was putting my stuff away in this one, Stuart, he was a clerk.

[01:33:56]

He said, "Oh yeah, they're celebrating. I hear they're celebrating Kennedy's death on Monday." And the guy said, "What?" He said, "They're celebrating Kennedy's death Monday." And he said, "Who is?" He said, "The Catholics." And I came unglued. I said, "Stuart," I said, "You don't mean they're celebrating the mass of the dead for Kennedy Monday?" And he said, "Oh, I don't know. It's something like that." I said, "Well, Stuart, where I come from, they say, show him you're a Republican and I'll show you a penis." But that ain't the word you use. And I said, "Out of all them penises, you're the biggest one I've ever seen. You phony son of a bitch." I said, "If you ever say another word to me, I'll punch your head in." You know? And he walked away. So it was only like two weeks later, me and this one carrier, we went out and we got off work and we went and got drunk.

[01:35:10]

And he called in, reported off that he wouldn't be in. And he said, "Call off. You better call off." They asked him to come in and just case the route, you know. So I said, "No, I'll just tell them I slept in." "No, no, no call in." So I called in and it was the superintendent of mails. He said, "Where were you last night?" I said, "It's none of your business where I was last night." He said, "I heard stories about you." He said, "You don't come in today, you bring a slip from your doctor." I said, "[inaudible] you know what you can do?" He said, "What?" I said, "You can stick the job up your ass." So I quit the post office. So I went in there that day and I jumped him about it. "What did you hear about me?" And he said, "I didn't say that." I said, "You . . ." And him and I got in an argument. And Stuart, he'd come over and turned the radio up so they couldn't hear me and Cardinelli arguing. And I said, "Get your hands off there. You phony son of a bitch. You're confessing this too."

So I told Cardinelli what I thought of him. And so the assistant postmaster come over and it's a good thing he did because I was about ready to punch Cardinelli. He was a superintendent of mail. So the superintendent come over and "Calm down, Willie." He said, "Just go home. Come to work Monday." I said, "No, I'm not gonna come to work." He said, "Well, you gotta come in Monday and see the postmaster." So I went in Monday and the postmaster says, "Oh, just take today as your day off and come to work tomorrow." And I said, "No, I quit." And he had Cardinelli there. He said, "Well, no, no, just do that." I said, "No. It's a Christmas rush starting now. It's December." I said, "I'm done." I said, "Besides if I hang around," I said, "That phony Deigo bastard there will probably fire me." So I quit. That was the end of my postal career. So I got on the plane in Los Angeles and it was 82 above, and the reason I went to California was 42 below. I remember it was the 12th of December and I got off the plane in Butte and it was 28 below. What an idiot. So then I went to work at the Badger mine in the slime plant. I went to work at the slime plant at the Badger, and so that was in 64.  Maybe I'm talking too much.

Crain: No, I think you're doing great, Willie. One of the things that I want to know, I don't wanna lose you, so keep going. So you went to work at the Badger?

O’Neill: And then Tom Lowman and I took the Hitchin' Post bar over.

Crain: Oh, really?

O’Neill: We ran the Hitchin' Post bar for five months, and that's the worst job I ever had was tending bar. So when we give it up, I told him, he could get somebody else. I didn't it. So I went back to work at the Badger. I got back on at the slime plant and then I got on as a boilermaker. Joe Welch got me on as a boilermaker, so that would be, I worked at the Badger, let's see, 60, I got on as boilermaker in 66. And that's the same year I got married.

Crain: And how old were you?

O’Neill: 33.

Crain: And who did you marry?

O’Neill: Well, Janet Tamietti.

Crain: And how did you meet her?

O’Neill: She was a Walkerville girl. She lived up the street, a couple blocks up the street. Originally, when I was a kid growing up, my first, when I talk about people dying, my first girl I had a crush on that I really liked was Margie Tamietti. And Margie died when I was a freshman. She died of kidney disease. So that was my big first big crush was Margie Tamietti. And she died.  I was a pallbearer for her. So that was my first big crush was Margie.  Then in January, I'll get back to getting married, in January, I played intermural basketball with Eddie Meagher. He was from St. Mary's Parish. We played basketball Friday night. I went to school Monday morning and he was dead. He died. He died within two days. In fact, Judy Jonart, the superintendent of mails would be his niece.

When I was altar boy, Leonard McNulty, he lived in Centerville. In the summer, you had to serve mass all week. And then if you had to serve funerals, I remember him and I serving the funeral, and I went down to his house and we had breakfast and he had rabbits. So I served mass with Leonard all week. Then he had rabbits, he got a foot infection, he died. So there was Leonard McNulty, Margie, and Eddie Meagher, they all died within two years. Like Margie and Eddie Meagher were within three months of each other. So never did I think when I was a kid that I would then, I never had a girlfriend. I never had a crush on a girl again.

[01:41:23]

I went to high school. I didn't know any girls. You went to Boys' Central, you didn't socialize with Girls' Central. So I never had a girlfriend, really. I never went with, well, we were around girls, but, so I met my wife. We went together for a year. We were engaged a year, and we got married in 66 and I worked as a boilermaker from 66 to 83.

That's when they shut everything down. During my tour, I was very active in the Boilermaker's Union. I was a business agent for a while. I was recording secretary. I was financial secretary, business agent. That was in 74 that I was the business agent in the union. There was a big disagreement with the guy that had the job before me went over to the district lodge and then he wanted to run the local and I was actually the business agent, so there was a conflict between him and I. And it went on and on and we ended up and I quit because of him. And we ended up, the union, we ended up in a receivership where they took the local control away from us and they sent a, the district man in to run the union. Anyway, we got that all ironed out in, 197..., he, the guy that was ahead of me, his kid, if you disagreed with him, his kid was gonna beat you up. He was kind of a bully. I don't wanna mention their names, but anyway, the bully, he would, him and I didn't get along too good. In fact, we had a couple of run-ins. And then in November, the second, 1979, him and I got into it up in the boiler shop, got in a fight. We even knocked the water cooler over. And anyway, we got in a fight. He filed assault charges against me, and they fired both of us . So he filed a lawsuit against, he filed assault charges against me, and then he filed a lawsuit against the company and the Boilermaker's Union for $3 million. And I went to arbitration.

He filed assault charges. I had to get, I had a lawyer. Don Robinson was my lawyer. And the bully picked on, I had 30 affidavits that I took up and had notarized up at the courthouse and took them to the county attorney who was Gary Winstead. And he dropped the charges. So anyway, I went to arbitration and it took six months. I was off six months. I worked out at MHD for a while and I got unemployment. I had trouble getting the unemployment because they charged me with gross misconduct. But I beat that and I got unemployment. We went to arbitration. We arbitrated on past practice and past practice is anything in the union you gain through usage or custom. It's past practice. So if you did something over the years and it was a practice, it was the same as having it in your contract. So we negotiated. We went to arbitration on past practice and the arbitrator was the retired dean of the College of Puget Sound in Tacoma. He'd come in and we arbitrated that fighting was an accepted practice, of fighting on the Butte Hill. And we had went back 50 years in arbitration, had guys testify about fights on the Butte Hill and showed there was only three people ever fired on the Butte Hill for fighting, was me and the guy I got in a fight with and a guy that beat up a boss.

So the arbitrator ruled that the Anaconda Company . . . Well, in fact, two weeks before I got in a fight, there was two guys down the concentrator got in the fight and the one guy beat the other guy with a hammer and he ended up in the hospital and they'd give them two weeks off. But the reason we were fired is because of my union activity. But I got reinstated with six months back pay. So I went back to work. Then they shut down and I was 49 years old when they shut down. And it was kind of hard finding a job. So I went to work at the prison.

[01:46:44]

Crain: Just as a guard. So Willie, I wanna go back to that past practice for fighting. My father always used to say, you had to fight. You had to fight. You had to learn to fight when you were a kid over your paper route.

O’Neill: Well, I got in lots of fights when I was a kid, but the past practice was in the unions. It was something, a past practice was something the unions had. It's like when we had the Christmas parties in the boiler shop. And the company stopped. They wouldn't let them have the Christmas parties no more. And the unions went to arbitration. The metals trades. The company wouldn't let the unions have the boiler shop party, Christmas party, but they still let the big shots and all them have the parties at the company. So the unions went to arbitration over the Christmas parties in the boiler shop were legally past practice. So it took two years in negotiations. We walked off the job for two years at Christmas, Christmas Eve. We walked off the job at noon, the guys in the mines, in just the shops where the party was. And then we won that arbitration and that was after that, that Christmas Eve was a holiday for anybody that worked in the boiler shop or in the machine shop. But not any other, not the mines or any of that. It was just for the ones that worked in the shops where they had the party. And it was one due to past practice.

[01:48:40]

Crain: Fascinating.

O’Neill: So, you wanna get outta here?

Crain: No. So you got married. How many kids do you have, Willie?

O’Neill: I have two kids. My son Jim, he's a curriculum director for the Butte school district. He was national principal of the year when he was at Marge O'Leary. He taught in Fallon, Nevada for three years before he got on in Butte. His wife is Tracy Panisco.  She works for the hospital.  You gotta admire Tracy. She got a BA, a master's and a PhD while raising two kids and holding down the full-time job. She works for the St. James. She's the facilitator for the physicians and all that. They have the three kids, Mackenzie, who will graduate next year in mining engineering. Kade, he's graduating from Butte high this year. He got the president. He's got one of the presidential scholarships to Tech, which is four years, all his tuition is paid. He's a sophomore. He'll be a sophomore, but Kade is really a smart kid. He wants to be a doctor and that scholarship, his school is paid for, for four years plus it even includes spending money. It's worth like about $64,000. He's got that scholarship.

[01:50:32]

Crain: That's a big, that's a big scholarship.

O’Neill: He's got that scholarship. And all three kids are pretty smart and they don't take after grandpa. I have a daughter, Katherine, she went to beauty school here. She is a beautician. She married Steve Johnson, who's a Butte kid.  I don't know if you know Joanie Cassidy? That's her son, Steve Johnson. They live in Nevada.  Steve works for Newmont. He's superintendent of the two mines down there. He's superintendent of production of dewatering at the Gold Quarry mine in Carlin. They've done well. They have two kids. George is 16 and Sharon is 12. So I have five grandkids.

Crain: Wow. Good. So Willie, I wanna ask you, when you think back on your life and your career, it's pretty marvelous. This has been a marvelous story. And what were your favorite jobs that you held?

O’Neill: Favorite jobs.

Crain: Yeah. What was the favorite?

O’Neill: Station tender at the Lexington and boilermaker. And what the worst was bartending. And the second worst was being a prison guard.

Crain: Yeah, those would be, yeah.

O’Neill: But the prison guard really wasn't the inmates, it was the people you had to work with down there. I never worked around a [inaudible], well, I'd say 80% of the people in the prison, I couldn't stand them. And one of the things is, is a lot of people hire out as guards. And they think they have a lot of authority and they think they're pretty hot shit. And all you are is a babysitter.  You work in the prison and you tell these guys come in there and say, the inmates can take this place over anytime they want. And the only reason they don't is that they can't keep it. And I was down there when we lost maximum, when they killed the guys in maximum. I was down there that day. I was in, in fact, I went in, they told me that this one inmate was dead. And I went in to make sure and they hung him over the rail and we had a lot of trouble with them. And he was one of the inmates that we had problems with, but I went in to make sure he was dead. And there was another inmate, they broke the sprinkling system and the water was, he was floating in water.

Crain: The water would be like about three or four feet deep.

[01:53:18]

O’Neill: Yeah. It stepped down. The floor stepped down, and they broke the sprinkler system and he was floating.

Crain: And this was a maximum security area of the prison in Deer Lodge.

O’Neill: The maximum security is the building where the people are locked down 23 and a half hours a day. It was a breakdown in security. It was a screw up. They let some, you could go out and work, and they had a cage, it's outside for recreation, and they let a couple four inmates out and I don't remember all of it, but they jimmied the door and they could, they got, they took the, the guards were on duty, were on one block. They went and hid in the shower actually. But the guys in the two control cages down there, when they, when a bunch of 'em got out, they took, and they broke the windows in the control cages, but the windows were covered, when they broke, the two guards in the cages went up and they bailed out. They went up on the roof. But the inmates in, they broke into the infirmary and they got an oxygen tank and they had to burn the holes into the actual windows down there to get in the control cages. Then they got the control cages open, they got in the control cages. It was just a real screw up. But they got in the one block where the PCs were, they were protective custody. And they killed four of them, murdered them. The only ones that survived were the ones that jammed their doors, because the inmates got control of the cages. We went on shift when they took the building back over, when they brought the inmates out.

Crain: Wow. Yeah. That’s an experience -

O’Neill: Well, then we had to go, anybody that seen the dead bodies had to be interviewed by a psychiatrist.

Crain: And how'd that go for you, Willie?

O’Neill: I said it didn't bother me. I said I went in to check make sure the one inmate was dead because I hated the son of my bitch.

Crain: Yeah. So, interesting. You've had a marvelous, marvelous career. And you tell a great story, Willie. I really appreciate you coming in today and Clark Grant is the guy who will tidy this up. One of the things that I wanted to ask about is when you first went underground, were you scared?

O’Neill: No.

Crain: And what was your first impression of being underground?

O’Neill: I don't really even remember having an expression.

Crain: Yeah. We listened to an oral history of a guy named Dennis Murphy, and I don't know if Dennis Murphy's been dead for a long time. You may have known him. He talked about the smell underground and I thought that was so fascinating because I've never heard anybody else who worked underground comment on that.

[01:56:58]

O’Neill: I can tell you about something, about the smell is where I was down. My son-in-law in Nevada, he worked at two gold mines and then he was superintendent at a copper mine. And I was out there at the copper mine and we were in one area and I kept smelling. I thought, what do I smell? I could smell, you know. It was copper. I could not believe that it was copper because you grew up in Butte and the smell was there, you know? Yeah. And underground probably Dennis Murphy probably talked about when they had the mules in the mines and when they had the mules in the mines, you had . . .

Crain: Lots of odor.

O’Neill: And then when they had the mules, they had lots of mice. Mice all over the mines, you know. But the smell, you could smell underground, but I can actually relate to smelling the copper because when I was a kid growing up in Walkerville, that was nothing really. There was six bars and five grocery stores and four or five mines and 10 or 15 mine dumps. And they had the trains come over and backed up on Missoula Avenue. You always heard the trains and you could hear the skips dumping at the Lexington. The skips dumping at the Anselmo. The Moose fan. The Moose Mine was the exhaust shaft for the Mountain Con. The only time you ever noticed the Moose fan is when it wasn't blowing. You were so accustomed. So you went out in the day and the Moose fan wasn't running. You figured the mines were shut down or something was wrong, but that's the only time the Moose fan was off. But Butte was dirty. There was no trees in Walkerville or nothing. Going to the Gardens was, that was a joy because there was no trees around or no grass or nothing. Mine dumps. And when I was a kid, most people in Walkerville had an outhouse. So everybody had, we had an outhouse when I was a kid and they had a slop jar in the house. They kept them in one room where you'd go take a leak in the slop jar. And so they put that sewers into Walkerville in around 1940. My dad was the mayor. He was the mayor of Walkerville, and he got beat by Jimmy Shea for reelection, but he was the mayor of Walkerville. When they got the approval for putting in the sewers, they put the sewers in Walkerville, the WPA put 'em in and they dug it. Everything was by hand. They dug everything by hand. They put the sewers in in 1940. And Missoula Gulch in Walkerville, we called that the gutter and the sewage ran right down Missoula Gulch. Missoula Gulch where it runs right down from Walkerville down to the creek. Yeah, the sewers ran right through there so everybody had outhouses and ice boxes.

We were pretty rich. We got a refrigerator, but we never had indoor toilet until I was, about probably 1940.  You went out and sat on the old potty out there at 40 below And that's why it didn't bother me so much. And I lived in a tent for 16 months in Korea. I lived in a tent and used an outhouse, so I was already used to it.

Crain: Alright, Willie. Thank you. This was great. Really great.

[END OF RECORDING]