frontispiece: harvey wood boyce about the time of his oral ...harveywood.pdfmother and father...

Frontispiece: Harvey Wood Boyce aboutthe time of his oral history interviews.

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEWS

Harvey Wood Boyce

Ë Ë Ë Ë Ë Ë

STATUS OF INTERVIEWS:OPEN FOR RESEARCH

Ë Ë Ë Ë Ë Ë

Interviews Conducted and Edited by:Brit Allan Storey

Senior HistorianBureau of Reclamation

Ë Ë Ë Ë Ë Ë

Interviews conducted–1997Interview edited and published–2010

Oral History ProgramBureau of ReclamationDenver, Colorado

SUGGESTED CITATION:

Boyce, Harvey Wood, ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW. Transcript of tape-recorded Bureau of Reclamation OralHistory Interviews conducted by Brit Allan Storey, seniorhistorian, Bureau of Reclamation in 1997. Edited by BritAllan Storey. Repository for the record copy of theinterview transcript is the National Archives and RecordsAdministration in College Park, Maryland.

Record copies of this transcript are printed on 20 lb., 100%cotton, archival quality paper. All other copies are printed onnormal duplicating paper.

i

Oral history of Harvey Wood Boyce

Table of Contents

Table of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

List of Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii

Statement of Donation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii

Oral History Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Previously Interviewed by Woman from the Boulder

City Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Harvey Walter Boyce Is His Son . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2Born in Lovell, Bighorn County, Wyoming . . . . . 2Family Moved to Anaconda, Montana, Where Father

Worked at the Copper Smelter . . . . . . . . . . 3Memory of a School Injury in Lovell . . . . . . . . . . 3Mother and Father Divorced . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Father Sang for Radio Station KGIR in Anaconda

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Brothers and Sisters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Dad Worked with Father and Grandfather in Lovell

Harvesting Vegetables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5“It was an irrigated project, yes, but it was not

Reclamation. The Mormon Church sent mygreat-great-grandfather and his family toLovell to establish the sugar beet factory . . .”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Sent to Mother in Boulder City in 1935 with aBrother and Sister . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

ii

Bureau of Reclamation History Program

Completed Seventh and Eighth Grade in BoulderCity and Ninth Grade with an Uncle inLivingston, California . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Returning to Boulder City, Finished High School inLas Vegas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

After Graduation from High School in 1940 HeldVarious Jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Worked as a Box Boy at a Grocery . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Did Pick up and Delivery for Bill O’Hara’s Dry

Cleaners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Worked for Grand Canyon-Boulder Dam Tours . . 8Drove the Cab Between Boulder City and Las Vegas

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10“TWA set down in Boulder City, but they did not set

down in Las Vegas at that time . . .” . . . . 10Roads out of Boulder City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11Round Trip Boulder City to Las Vegas Was Two

Dollars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11“The first casino of any size was the El Cortez . . .”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12Arrived in Boulder City as Construction Ended at the

Dam and Saw the Town Decline inPopulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

In 1940 Went to Los Angeles to Work for Ralph’sMarkets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Mother Sent for Him to Help Her after the Death ofHer Husband, Charles Kelly Sweet . . . . . 14

Stepfather Worked for Babcock and Wilcox andThen Reclamation at Hoover Dam . . . . . 15

Brother Quit Working for Reclamation and Went toWork for Standard Oil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

iii


Went to Work for Reclamation on July 18, 1941 16Work on Construction of a Switchyard as a Laborer

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16Became a Janitor in the Dam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16Became an Electrician Helper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17Married February 26, 1942 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17Joined the Navy and Went to Electrician’s School at

Iowa State College in Ames . . . . . . . . . . . 17Mother Married Charles Kelly Sweet . . . . . . . . . 20Born September 4, 1921 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20Father’s New Wife Convinced Him to Send His

Children to His Ex-wife . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20“You can imagine the shock and surprise that my

mother and stepfather went through on thearrival of four children that they basicallydidn’t have room for here in Boulder City . ..” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Stepfather Began Working in Boulder City in 1931. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Sent to Sydney, Australia, to Serve in “UnderwaterDefense” in Task Force 58 . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Charles Kelly Sweet Had Served in the Navy . . . 26Believes Sweet Was a T-man Assigned to Hoover

Dam to Prevent Sabotage . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28Sweet and His Mother Moved to Kirkland,

Washington, Then Salt Lake City . . . . . . 29Sweet Died at the Sawtelle Veteran’s Hospital, Los

Angeles, California, and Was Buried in theVeteran’s Cemetery There . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Trip to Australia on an Old Matson Liner . . . . . . 31“. . . from San Francisco to Townsville, Australia.

iv


Then we left the ship . . . and took a ride onAustralia’s famous railroad line. You getabout half way to Sydney from Brisbane, youhad to unload everything from the train andcarry it down to the next train. The gaugeswere different. . . .” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Took a Bad Fall on the Cruise down to Australia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Joined the Underwater Defense Group . . . . . . . . 34“Underwater defense was the actual demagnetizing of

ships . . .” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34“A ship traveling through the water develops

magnetism. . . .” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35The Flag Transferred to Brisbane . . . . . . . . . . . . 35“I was talked into changing my status from being

with the flag to becoming an electrician onboard that powerhouse . . .” . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Went to Electrician’s School in Virginia . . . . . . . 40Transferred to the Electrical School in Washington,

D.C. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40Teratoma Cyst Had to Be Removed from His Spine

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41“I was instrumental in getting an apprenticeship

program started here on the dam [Hoover]. . ..” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

“. . . they weren’t going to let me become ajourneyman electrician just because I was inthe Navy as electrician. . . .” . . . . . . . . . . 42

Feels He Was Required to Do More than Any OtherApprentice in Reclamation’s Program toQualify as an Electrician . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

v


“I stayed with the government for a total of thirteenyears, and then I went to work for the City ofLos Angeles . . .” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

“I wound up as a working foreman for the City ofLos Angeles before I retired twenty-eightyears later. . . .” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Retired May 1, 1982 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48“. . . I was the first one in the nation to go through

this apprentice program. . . .” . . . . . . . . . . 48Becoming an Electrician Rather than an Apprentice

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49The Work of an Electrician . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51Working on a Heater in the Back Room of the

Museum Building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52Electrician Staffing at Hoover Dam . . . . . . . . . . . 53How Responsibility and Authority Were Split among

the Power Contractors and Reclamation atHoover Dam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Reclamation Maintained the Powerhouse . . . . . . 55March of 1954 Went to Work for Los Angeles Water

and Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56Went to Los Angeles Water and Power Because

Housing Was Paid for There . . . . . . . . . . 58Upon moving to Los Angeles Water and Power “I

quit working on the little stuff and went toworking on the big stuff. . . .” . . . . . . . . . 61

In Addition to the Generators They Had to Maintainthe Los Angeles Housing Units . . . . . . . . 61

Worked on Electric Ranges and Wiring inReclamation’s Demountable Housing and inthe Los Angeles Housing . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

vi


Installed a Heavy Chandelier in the Water and PowerGuest Lodge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

What Living in Boulder City Was like in the 1930s. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

Old Nig, the Dog Adopted by the Dam Workers andthe Green Hut Cafe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Cafes in Boulder City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70Manix’s Store . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71Bill O’Hara’s Dry Cleaners and Variety Store . . 72Various Other Businesses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72Theater, Sweet Shop, and Bank Owned by the Earl

Brothers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73Workers Sometimes Went to the Movie to Sleep

Because It Was Air Conditioned . . . . . . . 73Worked as a Crossing Guard in return for a Movie

Ticket and Ice Cream Treat on SaturdayDonated by the Earl Brothers . . . . . . . . . . 74

“. . . there was Central Market, which was owned andoperated by Stubbs. He went broke being tookind-hearted. . . .” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Sims Ely . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76Sims Ely Lived in a Garage Apartment after He

Retired as Administrator of Boulder City. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Boulder City News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77Working at Manix’s Store as a Box Boy . . . . . . . 77“. . . it seems to me I made around fifty cents an hour

. . . as a box boy . . . and I’d buy my ownshoes and my own clothes . . .” . . . . . . . . 79

Recreational and Social Opportunities in BoulderCity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

vii


People from the Construction Trades Built BaseballFields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

“I was always busy wherever I could find me a job. Imean, I worked at it. . . .” . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

Pushed an Ice Cream Cart Around Boulder City . 87In Anaconda Sold Newspapers for Three Cents Each

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90Had a Swamp Cooler at the House . . . . . . . . . . . 90“An awful lot of people had cars, but they didn’t

drive them much. If they went uptown, theymade sure that they had several things to do .. .” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

Boulder City Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93Assigned a Demountable [Prefabricated, Moveable]

House after the War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95Later Moved into a Three Bedroom Home . . . . . 95Added a Small Room to the House . . . . . . . . . . . 96Moved into Various Other Homes, Including a

Defense Homes Corporation House . . . . . 97In 1954 Went to Work for the City of Los Angeles

Water and Power Department and Lived inOne of The City’s Homes . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

Tried to Buy One of the Reclamation Homes WhenThey Were Sold, but Didn’t Qualify toPurchase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

Draws Retirement from Reclamation as Well asRetirement from Working for the City of LosAngeles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

When the Children Were Put on the Bus atAnaconda, They Thought They Were Goingto Their Mother in Salt Lake City–Then They

viii


Had to Proceed on to Boulder City . . . . 102Notables He Saw Driving the Cab in Boulder City

and Las Vegas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103Camp Williston Was Established in Boulder City

When the War Broke out . . . . . . . . . . . . 104Civilian Conservation Corps at Hoover Dam . . 106Worked for the City of Los Angeles for Twenty-eight

Years, 1954 to 1982 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108Worked as a Foreman for Four or Five Years Before

He Retired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109City of Los Angeles Promotions Required Written

Tests and Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109Permanent Magnet Generators and Governors on

Hydroelectric Generators’ Water Wheels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

Created a Tester for the Permanent MagnetGenerators While Working for Los AngelesWater and Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

Nature of the Work for Los Angeles Water andPower . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

“It’s a very large education to take apart generators . .. where you take the rotor out and set it in thefloor, and this is in excess of 600 ton . . .”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

Flashovers Can Occur When Insulation Deterioratesin Generators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

There Is a Fire Suppression System on the Generators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

For the Large Jobs on Generators Los AngelesWould Send in a Special Crew . . . . . . . 121

“They generally came in and did overhauls once or

ix


maybe twice a year they would bring the bigcrews in. . . .” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

“. . . using the air impact wrenches to undo couplingbolts and . . . things that have to be handledwith fifteen-ton cranes . . . just to hold themachinery in position . . .” . . . . . . . . . . . 122

Having One Screw Missing During RoutineMaintenance Can Cause Serious Problems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

Changing out the Transformers on the PowerhouseDeck . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

As a Working Foreman [Sub-Foreman], His OfficialTitle Was Senior Electrical Mechanic . . 130

Applied to Reclamation for a General ForemanPosition, but Was Not Selected for the Job. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

The Units at Hoover Dam Operated by Los AngelesWater and Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

Does Not Recall Any Accidental Deaths While HeWorked at Hoover Dam . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

Coordinating the Work of Two 300-Ton Cranes toLift Heavy Pieces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

The Overhaul Crews Imported by the City of LosAngeles Were Supervised by an ElectricalEngineer and a Mechanical Engineer . . 139

Repairing the Steel in Wicket Gates and WaterWheels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

Babcock and Wilcox Pay Stub of Charles KellySweet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

Saw President Franklin Delano Roosevelt Arrive atthe Train Station in Boulder City, but Was

x


Not Taken to the Dedication Ceremony 144Los Angeles Water and Power Had Occasional Social

Activities for Employees and Families . 148Presence of Los Angelenos in Boulder City . . . 149Dancing in the Los Angeles Water and Power

Building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150Interactions with Reclamation Employees at Work

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152“At one time, in the changing of foreman at the dam,

they didn’t change one for three months, and Ioperated the maintenance of the dam for thatthree months. . . .” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

When He Decided to Retire He Was Asked toBecome Foreman at the Castaic Powerplant. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156

He Wasn’t Paid for Serving as Foreman of the Shop and Decided to Retire When He Reached thePoint His Health Insurance Would Be Paid byLos Angeles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

Believes That Los Angeles Did Not Want toContinue to Operate the Powerplant Units itHad under Contract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

Old Nig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161The Ceremony They Had When He Graduated from

Apprentice to Journeyman Electrician . . 162How You Would Become a Journeyman Before

Reclamation Created the ApprenticeshipProgram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

Joined the Union in 1948 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168Wages at the Dam Were Lower than “Working off

the Bench” at the Union, but the Work Was

xi


Steady . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169How the Unions Worked with Reclamation to

Establish Salaries for the Trades . . . . . . 171Working Overtime at Reclamation . . . . . . . . . . 173If a Generator Broke down the Resident Crew at the

Dam Did Work Preparatory to Arrival of theCrew from Los Angeles . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

Dealing with the Bearings on A-3 and A-4 . . . . 174“. . . between A-3 and A-4, I spent six months of

working anywheres from four to maybesixteen hours a day. An awful lot of that wasovertime . . .” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

Had to Work on the Oil Filter Press to Stop Leakageas Work on the Bearings Proceeded . . . 176

“. . . you take care of oil, water, gas on the generator. Oil, water, gas. . . . that was why the rating,instead of being just an electrician, iselectrical mechanic, because you took care ofthe mechanical . . . parts involved with thegenerator. . . .” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

Shifts While Working for Reclamation . . . . . . . 179“. . . graveyard and swing people, as far as

electricians were concerned, checked themaintenance or the movement of equipment .. .” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182

“. . . the mechanic or electrician. That was the firstthing that he did . . . you started making yourrounds, and you covered every floor, everyblower, every air-conditioning system,anything, no matter what it was, as long as itwas rotating electrically . . .” . . . . . . . . . 184

xii


“. . . the idea being it is good preventativemaintenance. . . .” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184

Everyone Rotated Through the Various Shifts . 185“Los Angeles Water and Power only rotated two

[eight hour] shifts, and you would work sixday shifts and four graveyards. . . .” . . . 185

For a Time Los Angeles Water and Power AllowedYou to Take Only One Day of the WeekendOff, but That Changed over Time . . . . . 186

Appendix 1: Reclamation Press Release about Harvey WoodBoyce Completion of Apprenticeship Program . 189

xiii

1. All illustrations and documents, except the Statement ofDonation, are courtesy of the Boyce family.


List of Illustrations1

Frontispiece: Harvey Wood Boyce about the time of his oralhistory interviews.

1: Harvey Wood Boyce at home at 600 Arizona Street,Boulder City, on the day of his high schoolgraduation in June 1940 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

2: The Babcock and Wilcox steel plant in Boulder City . 213: Various passes issued to Charles Kelly Sweet and his wife.

Pay stub from Babcock and Wilcox Company . . 224: Apprenticeship graduation ceremony April 16, 1951. L.

To R.:Harvey Wood Boyce, regional personnelofficer H. H. Mitchell, Boulder Canyon ProjectDirector of Power L. R. Douglas, and armaturewinder and apprenticeship committee member JohnPhillips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

5: Harvey Wood Boyce on April 16, 1951. Journeymanstatus effective on January 28, 1951. . . . . . . . . . . 46

6: Bus gallery at Hoover Dam during construction. . . . . 577: Mary Wade Boyce with son Harvey Walter . . . . . . . . 608: Harvey Wood Boyce with his ice cream cart in Boulder

City. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 889: Powerhouse floor at Hoover during construction with two

water wheels on the right, two stationary windinghousings to the upper left, and wicket gates staged tothe left of the rear water wheel to which the stub shaftis attached. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

10: Installing stationary windings in their housing at Hoover

xiv


Dam. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12611: Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kelly Sweet standing in a 30'

diameter penstock section ready to be moved viacableway for use at Hoover Dam . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

xv


Statement of Donation

xvi


xvii


Introduction

In 1988, Reclamation began to create a historyprogram. While headquartered in Denver, thehistory program was developed as a bureau-wideprogram.

One component of Reclamation’s historyprogram is its oral history activity. The primaryobjectives of Reclamation’s oral history activitiesare: preservation of historical data not normallyavailable through Reclamation records(supplementing already available data on the wholerange of Reclamation’s history); making thepreserved data available to researchers inside andoutside Reclamation.

The senior historian of the Bureau ofReclamation developed and directs the oral historyprogram. Questions, comments, and suggestionsmay be addressed to the senior historian.

Brit Allan StoreySenior Historian

Land Resources Office (84-53000)Policy and AdministrationBureau of ReclamationP. O. Box 25007Denver, Colorado 80225-0007(303) 445-2918FAX: (720) 544-0639

xviii


E-mail: [email protected]

For more information about Reclamation’s historyprogram see:

www.usbr.gov/history

1


Oral History InterviewsHarvey Wood Boyce

Storey: This is Brit Allan Storey, senior historianof the Bureau of Reclamation,interviewing Harvey Wood Boyce onDecember the 15th, 1997, at about threeo’clock in the afternoon in the regionaloffices of the Bureau of Reclamation inBoulder City, Nevada. This is tape one.

Have you been interviewed beforeby anybody for oral history purposes?

Previously Interviewed by Woman from theBoulder City Museum

Boyce: Yes, I have, here in Boulder City. TheBoulder City Museum has a lady that isalso doing a talk and then she’ll publish itout into book form, and I did go through atwo-hour period with her. I would supposethat if you contacted the curator of themuseum, Mrs. Joe Lapin [phonetic], herein Boulder City, she could get a copy ofthat interview for you to help, maybe,expedite some of your questions.

Storey: Who was the interviewer, do youremember?

2

2. Harvey Walter Boyce also has been interviewed forReclamation’s oral history program.


Boyce: I can’t tell you her name.

Storey: Miss Woodluff [phonetic]?

Boyce: It could be.

Storey: I think Harvey gave me the name. I canput that in.

Well, tell me, Mr. Boyce, let’s getyour name straightened out.

Harvey Walter Boyce Is His Son

Boyce: My name is Harvey W., Wood W-O-O-D,Boyce, and the other one is my son,Harvey Walter Boyce.2 So that’s thedifference between the two names.

Storey: Okay. Good. Where were you born andraised and educated, and how did you endup at the Bureau of Reclamation?

Born in Lovell, Bighorn County, Wyoming

Boyce: I was born in the little town of Lovell,Wyoming, Bighorn County.

3

3. Note that in the text of these interviews, as opposed toheadings, information in parentheses, ( ), is actually on the tape.Information in brackets, [ ], has been added to the tape either by theeditor to clarify meaning or at the request of the interviewee in order tocorrect, enlarge, or clarify the interview as it was originally spoken.

(continued...)


Family Moved to Anaconda, Montana, WhereFather Worked at the Copper Smelter

My mother and father, after a few years,they met and married in that town, and theywent from there to Anaconda, Montana,where the copper mill, smelter, was inoperation, and Dad went to work for “thehill,” as we called it, operating what theycall the “slag dump” for the copper ore.

Memory of a School Injury in Lovell

My first, shall we say, recollectionof school and like that was in Lovell. Ihad my eye cut open with a swing, frombeing stupid, as young kids are, and rununderneath a swing and got clipped righton the eyebrow. Another half an inch andI would have had no eye. So that’s myfirst recollection of grammar school.

Storey: That’s back in the days when they madethe seats out of two-by-eights, right? (Laughter)3

4

3. (...continued)Words have sometimes been struck out by editor or interviewee inorder to clarify meaning or eliminate repetition. In the case ofstrikeouts, that material has been printed at 50% density to aid inreading the interviews but assuring that the struckout material isreadable.

The transcriber and editor have removed some extraneouswords such as false starts and repetitions without indicating theirremoval. The meaning of the interview has not been changed by thisediting.


Mother and Father Divorced

Boyce: Or something similar, yes. (Laughter) From there, my mother and father split up,and they did this marriage-and-split-upthing three different times.

Father Sang for Radio Station KGIR in Anaconda

Each time that they went back together,there was another child, and my father, inorder to earn, shall we say, additionalmoney, sang for the radio station K-G-I-R,Butte, singing Western and folk songs onthe radio. This was done every Saturdaynight. One of the pieces that he used tosing a lot was “Tying Knots in the Devil’sTail.” Now, I can’t begin to tell you whatthe words were of that piece of music, butit was a Western folk story.

5


Brothers and Sisters

My three youngest sisters were theresult of this marriage and divorce,marriage and divorce, and so forth thatway. I’m the third member of a family ofsix. I had one older brother, who is nowdead. I had one older sister, who is alsonow dead, as [are] my mother, mystepfather, and my father. We’re all, shallwe say, victims of cancer, and it comesand it goes.

Dad Worked with Father and Grandfather in LovellHarvesting Vegetables

Now, when we were in Lovell, Dadworked with his father and grandfather inprocessing fresh vegetables, peas, beans,one thing and another like that. Most ofthe ranches were at least forty acres, someof them as much as a hundred and sixtyacres, and you might [have] thirty to fiftyacres, maybe, in beans or sugar beets.

Storey: Was this a Reclamation project? This wasan irrigated project, then?

“It was an irrigated project, yes, but it was notReclamation. The Mormon Church sent my great-

great-grandfather and his family to Lovell to

6

4. About 1870 to 1900 the Big Horn Basin area of Wyomingbecame an area of Mormon colonization. See: D. W. Meinig, “TheMormon Culture Region: Strategies and Patterns in the Geography of theAmerican West, 1847-1964,” Annals of the Association of AmericanGeographers 55 (June 1965), Number 2, pp. 191-220. Also, The BasinRepublican, in Basin, Big Horn County, reported on January 28, 1916,that four train carloads of Mormon settlers from Iowa passed through onthe way to Lovell to raise beets “in the vicinity of the proposed new sugarfactory town,” and on May 5 it reported a “large acreage of beets will beraised this year for the Lovell sugar factory. . . .”


establish the sugar beet factory . . .”

Boyce: It was an irrigated project, yes, but it wasnot Reclamation. The Mormon Churchsent my great-great-grandfather and hisfamily to Lovell to establish the sugar beetfactory at C&H4–I don’t know, C&H orSpreckles or one of them. Sugar beetswere made into sugar right there in Lovell,and that’s what they went there for. Well,some of them branched out into harvestingthe crops, and so, as the saying goes, that’show I managed [to be] there.

Sent to Mother in Boulder City in 1935 with aBrother and Sister

From there I went back toAnaconda, Montana, and went to schoolthere. I left school in Anaconda in 1935and traveled with my brother and nextyoungest sister to Boulder City on March

7


the 15th, of 1935. That’s when we arrivedhere in Boulder City. I can show you apicture of the bus system, etc., that we,shall we say, arrived in Boulder City on. There’s one in here someplace.

Completed Seventh and Eighth Grade in BoulderCity and Ninth Grade with an Uncle in Livingston,

California

I then finished the seventh grade and theeighth grade here in Boulder City, and thenI went to California with my uncle andwent to school my freshman year inLivingston, California.

Returning to Boulder City, Finished High Schoolin Las Vegas

Coming back to Boulder City thefollowing year in high school, and wetraveled to Las Vegas by bus every day forhigh school through my sophomore, junior,and senior year, basically graduating fromthere in 1940.

After Graduation from High School in 1940 HeldVarious Jobs

Worked as a Box Boy at a Grocery

8


After 1940, I had worked during thesummertime and after school at night as abox boy with a driver, hauling boxes ofgroceries to the different houses and soforth and so on, which was a service thatthey provided.

Storey: Here in Boulder City?

Did Pick up and Delivery for Bill O’Hara’s DryCleaners

Boyce: Here in Boulder City. I also got involvedwith a dry-cleaning establishment, whichwas called Bill O’Hara’s Dry Cleaners,and I did pick-up and delivery for theclothing that was dry cleaned and pressedand so forth and so on.

Worked for Grand Canyon-Boulder Dam Tours

As school run out , I went to work forGrand Canyon-Boulder Dam Tours out ofthe airport hangar here in Boulder City,driving cab, hauling people down to thelake to put them on the daily tours by boatto the Grand Canyon and back, and I’dtake them down at seven in the morning,and I’d pick them up at 4:30, five o’clockin the afternoon, and they had been toGrand Canyon and back. So I worked at

9


Illustration 1: Harvey Wood Boyce at home at 600Arizona Street, Boulder City, on the day of his highschool graduation in June 1940.

10

5. Trans World Airlines.


that trade until somebody got too big fortheir britches and decided that he wasgoing to take it out on my chin, and afterhe done it, he decided that maybe he was100 percent wrong instead of just 5 percentwrong, because he got himself canned for,shall we say, striking a minor, because Iwas only about seventeen years old then.

Drove the Cab Between Boulder City and LasVegas

But I still drove the cab for him betweenLas Vegas and Boulder City.

“TWA set down in Boulder City, but they did notset down in Las Vegas at that time . . .”

TWA5 set down in Boulder City, butthey did not set down in Las Vegas at thattime, and a lot of times I would havepassengers who had to be got to Las Vegasto make interconnections to like SanFrancisco or something like that, and theycould not go on TWA. So they’d get toBoulder City, and that was a transfer point. So I’d take them by cab, which was a 1935Air Flow Chrysler, and take them to theairport in Las Vegas where Nellis Air

11


[Force] Base is today, and put them on theairplane, and they’d go on to SanFrancisco.

Roads out of Boulder City

Storey: What were the roads like at that time?

Boyce: Two lane, very rough, almost suicidal.

Storey: Were they paved?

Round Trip Boulder City to Las Vegas Was TwoDollars

Boyce: Just barely. Just barely, and that was downthrough Henderson. You had to go all theway in to Las Vegas to Fifth Street in orderto be able to make a right-hand turn thatwould take you out to the airport to thenorth. Then a lot of times, because ofdifferent circumstance, there would becharters at night. I would drive them toVegas to a nightclub, shall we say, andwherever they wanted to go, two dollars apop. That’s all it cost them.

Storey: From Boulder City up to there?

Boyce: From Boulder City to Las Vegas and backagain, two dollars for the car. I got no

12


specific wages out of it. Whatever I wastipped was all I got out of it, and it was notunusual to, shall we say, to drive ‘til two orthree o’clock in the morning and then getback up and take the boat trip at seveno’clock the next morning. So it was not,shall we say, a very large-paying job.

Storey: What was Las Vegas like in those days?

Boyce: Well, Fifteenth Street was out of town inLas Vegas today, I mean in comparison. Fremont Street was nothing real special. There was drugstores, hamburger stands,two or three, shall we say, small casinos,because they were all small at that time. And there was nothing on the strip. Therewas no strip–not in those days.

“The first casino of any size was the El Cortez . ..”

The first casino of any size was theEl Cortez, which was downtown– or still isdowntown in the same position. I thinkit’s on Seventh and Fremont. They, ofcourse, have expanded now where theytake up that whole city block. Las Vegaswas just, shall we say, a one-horse town.

Storey: What was Boulder City like?

13


Arrived in Boulder City as Construction Ended atthe Dam and Saw the Town Decline in Population

Boyce: Boulder City was a town that–when I cameto Boulder City was just after thecompletion or, shall we say, they werevery near the completion and dedication ofthe dam, and, of course, when everybodygot to that point, they started laying peopleoff, you know. I mean, the job hadfinished. It had run out. So I saw thepopulation, housing, and like that justdwindle down to almost nothing, probably600, maybe a thousand, people in all ofBoulder City. Then it came back up againfor a while, and then it went back downagain as the war was over like that. That’sWorld War II. And it went down a ways,and then it started coming back up again,and, of course, you can see the growth incomparison today. I suppose BoulderCity’s probably eighteen, twenty thousandnow. I don’t know. I don’t keep track ofit, I never have, tried to keep track of howmuch population there is.

In 1940 Went to Los Angeles to Work for Ralph’sMarkets

I went to work for Reclamation aftermy stepfather died. He died in 1940,

14


which was the year that I graduated fromhigh school. I had gone to Los Angeles towork for Ralph’s Markets in downtown L-A. It was at Thirty-first and Vermont. Iwas one of the people that handled theproduce, and you were on a “will-marksystem” so that your prices may changefive times during a day’s time, and you hadto have the correct price for everything,and, of course, it was all real freshvegetables, because they would come inwith a truck, and you’d unload them andput them out, and that’s the way–youknow, went like that.

Mother Sent for Him to Help Her after the Death ofHer Husband, Charles Kelly Sweet

Well, my brother had been working forReclamation after Kelly died, and–

Storey: Kelly?

Boyce: Kelly Sweet, Charles Kelly Sweet, whowas my stepfather.

Storey: That was your stepdad.

Stepfather Worked for Babcock and Wilcox and

15

6. Note that President Herbert Hoover’s Secretary of the Interior,Ray Lyman Wilbur, designated the name as “Hoover Dam.” FranklinDelano Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, designated thename as “Boulder Canyon Dam.” Subsequently, in 1947 the Congressspecified “Hoover Dam” as the official name. In this oral history bothdesignations are used.


Then Reclamation at Hoover Dam6

Boyce: Uh-huh. Now, he worked forReclamation. He worked for Babcock andWilcox, went on like that, and he was anelectrician here on the dam.

Brother Quit Working for Reclamation and Wentto Work for Standard Oil

After Kelly had died, my brother decidedthat it was time for him to seekemployment someplace else, rather thanbeing a plumber’s helper and learning atrade. So he quit and went to work forStandard Oil. They had a Standard Oilstation here in Boulder City, and he wentto work for them. Well, then, in order formy mom to continue living in governmenthousing, there was nobody working forReclamation, so she was, shall we say,forced to leave the 600 Arizona Streetaddress and moved into the apartments onB Street. So after I had been in L-A. for acouple of months, maybe three, I don’t

16


know, she came down to L-A and said, “Ineed you to come home and help take careof your three sisters and me.”

Went to Work for Reclamation on July 18, 1941

So I said, “Fine.” Well, I came backand hired out to the government on the18th of July 1941.

Work on Construction of a Switchyard as aLaborer

I started out as a laborer working forbuilding the metropolitan switchyards justat the top of the dam, and, basically, whatwe were doing, we were taking big rocksand making small ones out of them withjackhammers and like that.

Became a Janitor in the Dam

So I worked at that for a while, andit started to get cooler in the summertimegoing into fall, I asked for the possibilitiesof a job down inside the dam. Well, I wentto work as a janitor down at the dam andworked some, shall we say, three or fourmonths down there as a janitor, and fromthat I made application to become anelectrician’s helper.

17


Became an Electrician Helper

Well, my stepfather, having worked as anelectrician on the dam and like that, it waspretty easy for me, going to the differentelectrician foremen, which there wereseveral of, and applying for a job, part of itin construction, part of it in maintenance.

Well, I was hired to become ahelper. I can’t tell you the exact date, butit was, shall we say, a little while afterDecember the 7th of 1941, which wasPearl Harbor Day.

Married February 26, 1942

I was working for the constructionelectricians at that time, and after a periodof time in January, went on like that, Icalled my fiancee from up in–she was inSun Valley, Idaho, working there, andasked her if she was going to come homeand marry me or was I just going to go inthe Navy and she could shift for herself. Well, she decided that she’d come homeand marry me. So we were married on the26th of February 1942.

Joined the Navy and Went to Electrician’s Schoolat Iowa State College in Ames

18


Storey: So you had decided to go into the Navy.

Boyce: Yes. I made application to go into theNavy and was accepted, and I did, afterboot camp, went directly to electrician’sschool at Iowa State College at Ames.

Storey: Before we get into that, let’s go back andclear up a few questions here. What wasyour dad’s name?

Boyce: My father’s name was Calvin [Arowett]Ariot [pronouced are Çit] Boyce.

Storey: Okay, how do you spell his middle name?

Boyce: A-R-I-O-T

Storey: OK. Is that a family name?

Boyce: I can’t tell you. I really can’t. We havedone an awful lot of genealogy. As amatter of fact, my sister is the historian,and I have seen it spelt half a dozendifferent ways, but to the best of myknowledge that, what I just gave you, is thecorrect spelling.

Storey: This processing business for vegetables,were they canning them and selling them

19


commercially? How was that working?

Boyce: No. That was just fresh vegetables boughtfrom the farms around L-A. or downtowards Yuma and so forth and so on. They would truck it in fresh.

Storey: Into Wyoming?

Boyce: No. You said processing of vegetable. That was at a regular supermarket, shallwe say.

Storey: That was your job.

Boyce: My job.

Storey: I’m talking about your dad and granddadand great-granddad’s business.

Boyce: Oh. That was just bulk growth of, shall wesay, the particular products and dry beans,peas, one thing and like that. They wouldharvest them, see.

Storey: Not canning or anything like that.

Boyce: No, they didn’t have to do any canning. All they did was harvest them. And thenthey’d be hauled away by five-ton trucks. They didn’t have a lot of them real big

20


trucks like they have today. All they hadwas some little old four-bangers, andsometimes you have to use three pedals inorder to get that old Ford to back up thehill. But that’s the way they had to do it alot of times.

Storey: Then I take it your mother remarried.

Mother Married Charles Kelly Sweet

Boyce: My mother remarried Charles Kelly Sweetin ‘29, I believe.

Storey: So, when were you born?

Born September 4, 1921

Boyce: I was born September the 4th of 1921.

Storey: So about the time you were eight or nine.

Boyce: Yes.

Storey: And then you moved to Boulder Citybecause he had gotten a job?

Father’s New Wife Convinced Him to Send HisChildren to His Ex-wife

Boyce: No. My father married a woman who had

21


Illustration 2: The Babcock and Wilcox steel plant inBoulder City.

22


Illustration 3: Various passes issued to Charles KellySweet and his wife. Pay stub from Babcock andWilcox Company.

23


two children, and then, I believe, theyhad–I know they had three or four afterthat, but my stepmother just couldn’thandle, shall we say, basically four of us,my sister older than me, my sister justyounger than me, my brother, and myself. So she coerced my father into putting us ona bus. And without fanfare or farewell orwhat to do, we came to Boulder City.

“You can imagine the shock and surprise that mymother and stepfather went through on the arrival

of four children that they basically didn’t haveroom for here in Boulder City . . .”

You can imagine the shock and surprisethat my mother and stepfather wentthrough on the arrival of four children thatthey basically didn’t have room for here inBoulder City, but that’s the way a lot ofthings were done, I guess, in those days, Idon’t know. But that’s how I got toBoulder City.

Storey: So you would have been about fourteen.

Boyce: I was in the seventh grade, so it was prettyclose.

Storey: So your stepfather had been working herebefore that?

24


Stepfather Began Working in Boulder City in 1931

Boyce: 1931.

Storey: From the very beginning.

Boyce: From the very beginning. He helpedinstall the telephone equipment downstairswhen this building was being built, likethat.

Storey: The administration building.

Boyce: Yes.

Storey: He was an electrician?

Boyce: Yes.

Storey: Did he just work in town? Where was heworking?

Boyce: After the telephone job, the best I can tellyou is that he went to work down at thedam, and I don’t know whether he was inconstruction or whether he was in themaintenance of the dam, shall we say.

Sent to Sydney, Australia, to Serve in“Underwater Defense” in Task Force 58

25


In my later years, as I went to workfor Reclamation, as I said, as anapprentice, then I went into the militaryand went to Iowa State College andgraduated from there and became anelectrician third class, and went from thereto San Francisco, and from that point on toSydney, Australia, and became the twenty-eighth person in “underwater defense” forthe flag for the Task Force 58, which, ifyou’re any buff of history, Task Force 58was one of the prime [groups] peoples thatdestroyed the Japanese.

Storey: How did they do that?

Boyce: Flattops, submarines.

Storey: Carriers.

Boyce: I was attached to the flag in Sydney.

Storey: We’re talking the admiral’s flag?

Boyce: Yes, sir.

Storey: Which admiral?

Boyce: He was the only one-striper admiral in theNavy, Commodore Coleman was hisname. I was attached to his staff.

26


Storey: One-striper meaning he was the only onewith five years’ service?

Boyce: I can’t tell you that. I don’t have any idea,but he was the only commodore in the Navyat that time. In other words, he was a one-striper admiral. He wasn’t the second orthird or fourth. Of course, at thattime–they did finally wind up with a five-star, you know, but he was just a one-star,shall we say. I called him a one-striper,but it’s a one star.

END SIDE 1, TAPE 1. DECEMBER 15, 1997.BEGIN SIDE 2, TAPE 1. DECEMBER 15, 1997.

Storey: A little more about your stepdad, though. What else did he do, do you know?

Charles Kelly Sweet Had Served in the Navy

Boyce: He was very involved in American Legion40 and 8 and like that, because he was anex-Navy man also and had been anelectrician in the Navy. That’s really howI, shall we say, become involved in it orinterested in it, shall we say. But I can’ttell you who all he worked for, because Idon’t know. I don’t think that it wasparticularly any great amount of peoplethat he was employed by. I don’t know

27


that. I don’t think that there’s a person yetalive that could even verify what I’ve toldyou, as far as that’s concerned.

Storey: About him working there, you mean?

Boyce: Yes.

Storey: Well, the personnel records would say that.

Boyce: Oh, yes. But he went to work forReclamation someplace between ‘31 and‘35. I think ‘35-, ‘36, because, if Iremember right, Reclamation reallybecame involved in 1936, I believe.

Storey: We started building and designing ‘31,stripping out the keyway and everythingfor the dam.

Boyce: He was working as a constructionelectrician for Babcock and Wilcox, wherethe pipes were being built and so forth andso on that way.

Storey: Oh he was? Where they were millingthem?

Boyce: Yeah.

Storey: Before he came to Reclamation?

28


Boyce: Yes. Yeah, he came to Reclamation, Iwould think somewheres in theneighborhood of 1934-, ‘35.

Storey: Didn’t Harvey [Walter Boyce] tell me thatthere’s a story in the family that he had aspecial job, some sort of oversight, ormaybe, I ought to say, spying?

Believes Sweet Was a T-man Assigned to HooverDam to Prevent Sabotage

Boyce: He was, to the best of my knowledge, a T-man.

Storey: T-man?

Boyce: Treasury Department. He was sent herefrom Salt Lake. He was working in SaltLake when the dam got started, and he wassent from Salt Lake down here to be anundercover man for sabotage, etcetera,etcetera.

Storey: What kind of sabotage? Do you knowanything more about this?

Boyce: I have no idea. I really do not have anyidea, but that is something that, should wesay, was given to me in confidence. Thevalidity of it I cannot tell you, but that’s

29


what I was told.

Storey: Where’d he meet your mom?

Sweet and His Mother Moved to Kirkland,Washington, Then Salt Lake City

Boyce: In Anaconda, Montana. They, shall wesay, left together and took my two babysisters with them. One was a baby, theother one was about two, and they movedto Seattle, and that was where he wasfrom. Actually, he was from Kirkland,Washington. They stayed there for awhile, and then they went to Salt Lake, andthen came here.

Sweet Died at the Sawtelle Veteran’s Hospital, LosAngeles, California, and Was Buried in the

Veteran’s Cemetery There

Actually, he died in the Vets Hospital inSawtelle, and that’s where we buried him.

Storey: Where is that?

Boyce: In Los Angeles. It’s on the outskirts ofLos Angeles, but that was the name of thehospital and veterans’ graveyard, isSawtelle.

30


Storey: He died of natural causes?

Boyce: He died of–he had sinus trouble very bad. Mom and he and my two youngest sistershad left on vacation, I think the first weekof September or very close to thatparticular time, and they went toEnglewood–

Storey: California?

Boyce: Yes. He was operated on through the noseinto the sinus cavities up over his eyes,something like that. Now, the doctoreither done one of two things: he either cuttoo much, or he didn’t cut enough. Well,in three days he was dying of spinalmeningitis, and that’s what he died of,about four or five days after the[surgery]–because when Mom found outwhat was going on, she had Sawtelle comeand pick him up and take him to theVeterans Hospital, where he died, and thenhe was buried there.

In the meantime, Mom had comeback to Boulder City and took all of usback down to the funeral services and likethat. I’ll be buried in the veterans’cemetery down here and so will my wife.

31


Trip to Australia on an Old Matson Liner

Storey: So you had decided to join the Navy, andyou ended up in Sydney.

Boyce: Right. When I went over, we took an oldMatson liner that had come out of the scrappile, and it took us twenty-eight days totravel from San Francisco to Townsville,Australia.

“. . . from San Francisco to Townsville, Australia. Then we left the ship . . . and took a ride on

Australia’s famous railroad line. You get abouthalf way to Sydney from Brisbane, you had to

unload everything from the train and carry it downto the next train. The gauges were different. . . .”

Then we left the ship while they unloadedsome supplies and then traveled down toBrisbane by ship, and there we left the shipand took a ride on Australia’s famousrailroad line. You get about half way toSydney from Brisbane, you had to unloadeverything from the train and carry it downto the next train. The gauges weredifferent. They could only go so far. Now,this is God’s truth. They could not travel. You had to unload everything from thistrain and carry it to the next train.

32


Storey: Not even a station?

Boyce: Well, I don’t really recall much. It was atnight. At that particular time, Australiawas not a very populated place. Matter offact, during our stay–I think we were threedays in Townsville–I pulled guard duty outon some lonely Y in the road, an Armyprivate and myself, as armed guard, just incase the Japanese decided to come ondown from Cairn to further infiltrateAustralia.

Took a Bad Fall on the Cruise down to Australia

From there, as I say, we went bytrain, and from that point we went on downto Sydney, went to what they call “thereceiving station,” which was actually inan old hotel, and we were, shall we say,sent out on work parties and so forth andso on like that from that particular point. What I didn’t tell you earlier, that fourdays out from San Francisco on that slowboat that we were on–I think it could makeabout five knots, but they had over twothousand troops on it and some Navypeople, I think it was a hundred and one ofus, that they were transporting to get downthere.

33


I took a fall at night and wound upwith a separation between my fifth andsixth chest ribs. It tore the cartilage apart,and I had a tumor grew up in just a matterof days. I had a tumor sticking up in mychest like this.

Storey: The size of an egg?

Boyce: No, not that big.

Storey: Smaller than that.

Boyce: Yeah. So when we got to Sydney, I wentto sick bay because there was no sick bayon the [ship]–that’s where I spent all mytime getting my ribs healed up, went onlike that, until we got to Townsville. Iwent to sick bay, and the doctor who wasat the sick bay, which was a Navy doctor,they sent me to the Army 116th general forobservation, shall we say, andrecommendation. They sent me to aorthopedic surgeon, and the orthopedicsurgeon says, “There’s nothing the matterwith you. You can go back to duty.” Andhere I am with this growth in my chest andsome massive sore ribs. So he decided thatthe best thing for me to do, because I wasscheduled to go to Melbourne and becomepart of the PT squadron at Melbourne.

34


Joined the Underwater Defense Group

So there was a fellow that had justjoined the underwater defense group, whowas an electrician, so he was transferredand I was put in his place at the Navy base. I did run into that man forty years later inSydney. We were on a cruise. They wereout a little bit earlier than we were, and,actually, it was the last day of the cruisethat we were there, and I did run into thatman, and he says, “So you’re the characterthat took my job.” (Laughter)

Storey: What did you do at the base there?

“Underwater defense was the actualdemagnetizing of ships . . .”

Boyce: I received, categoried, itemized equipmentfor underwater defense. Underwaterdefense was the actual demagnetizing ofships or changing their demagnetizerswhile they were in port, and this was alldone by, shall we say, a chart that is madefor each quadrant of the latitude, longitude. There’s a different setting for every sectionof the ship, and it all had to be taken careof. So I was one of the twenty-eightoriginal underwater defense people.

35


Storey: Tell me why you care about the magnetismof a ship.

“A ship traveling through the water developsmagnetism. . . .”

Boyce: A ship traveling through the waterdevelops magnetism.

Storey: It becomes a big magnet.

Boyce: That is correct. Magnetic mines was whatthe Japanese used, so in order to combatthe magnetic mines, they installed thesecoils of wire which they impressedelectricity through so that they wouldneutralize the actual passage throughwater, the magnetism that comes from that. They had special coils in the forebay, inthe tailbay, in the midships, and all the wayaround the interior of the ship. Now, Iknow that may sound a little bit strange,but that’s an actuality.

Storey: How long were you there in Sydney doingthis?

The Flag Transferred to Brisbane

Boyce: Gee, I think somewheres in the process ofmaybe ten months to a year. From that

36


point, we transferred to–and that was theflag itself, transferred to Brisbane. Thereagain, as we went by railroad, we did thesame thing. We unloaded all of the flagand transferred it over to the other trainand went back to Brisbane. (Laughter)

While in Brisbane, they wereputting together a Australian riverboat,seagoing. It was twenty-eight foot wide,fifty-two foot long, and only drew aboutfive or six feet of water, but it had two bigold triple steam engines, and that was ourpropulsion. But actually what they weredoing, they were building a floatingpowerhouse. I was [an] electrician,basically in charge of, other than the chief,I was the next in command, and we wereinstalling the electrical equipment as wellas the storage batteries. We had fivehundred and twenty submarine storagebatteries, so we could use anywheres upto– 440 volts at 3,000 amps was ouroutput. But we also had a sixteen-cylinderLeroy– that’s one of them long ones,too–gasoline-driven motor generator set,which would produce the same amount ofpower as our battery bank. So we couldhook up any kind of power, shall we say,up to 3,000 amps at 440 volts. As I say,we were just a floating powerhouse.

37


Actually what we would do with that isthat we would connect it up to the differentships so that they could demagnetize. See,a submarine coming in off of the run, he’sloaded magnetically. So we had toneutralize him.

Storey: So, Brisbane was a submarine port?

Boyce: Yes. Brisbane at that time was the SouthPacific submarine base. There was a manfrom Boulder City that I knew, particularlyhis brother, his mother and father, like that,and he was stationed at the submarinebase, so it was, shall we say, right nextdoor.

“I was talked into changing my status from beingwith the flag to becoming an electrician on board

that powerhouse . . .”

So at least there was somebody that I knewthere, and, shall we say, I was talked intochanging my status from being with theflag to becoming an electrician on boardthat powerhouse with the, shall we say, giftin hand to get me to join that, because Ihad to request it. They couldn’t justaugment me and say, “Hey, you’re mine.”

Storey: Not from the flag’s staff.

38


Boyce: Not from the flag staff. No way. He saidthat I would get my chief’s gear, the chiefwould be sent back to the States, and Iwould take over the crew and kind of likethat. Well, we didn’t have, actually, askipper or, shall we say, a skipper’sassistant or whatever you want to call him,executive officer. He was only an officerin charge, and his name was T. I. McGill,Timothy McGill. He was an engineer. They sold me this bill of goods, and Ibought it, and consequently, I retired fromthe Navy as an electrician second class. Ihad taken all my tests and all myprogression workbook, shall we say, likethat, because that was part of the way theygot the guys to train to move up.

So when the President signed theorder that, after having been overseas atleast eighteen months, that you couldrequest transfer back to the States forreassignment and thirty days’ vacationleave, well, of course, I put in for a thirty-day vacation. There was no getting aroundthat. The day that I was to leave the ship,the officer in charge was standing on theforecastle with a chief’s cap in his hand. He says, “It’s yours if you’ll stay.”

I said, “You know, I already bit that

39


sour apple one time, and I’m not going tobite a second time,” and I walked over theside, because he couldn’t do anythingabout it. I had my orders. So that was alittle of the stuff–you know, I mean a lot ofthat stuff went on in the service.

Storey: You started out as an electrician second?

Boyce: No. I started out as an apprenticeelectrician, fireman third class, and wentthrough Navy schools, and I graduatedfifty-fourth out of two hundred, andreceived my electrician third class rating. Then I left from there and picked up mysecond class in Australia and took all mytests and so forth and so on for my thirdclass and chief. You didn’t have todifferentiate between the two– those twowent together.

The base that was there, which wasSeabee, they had decided that the chief andthe XO [executive officer] for the Seabeebase, they would be the governing body forany promotions for people like us on thatYDT-5. The result of it was that they fixedup a test, all right. I took that test, andabout halfway through it, I said, “There isno way that I can pass this test, and I don’tthink there’s an electrical engineer alive

40


that can pass that test.” So I made themleave all of the stuff right there on thetable. I went and got the skipper of theship, electrical engineer, brought him overand says, “All right. Now you figure thattest out.” In five minutes’ time he threwup his hands, he says, “There ain’t no wayanybody’s going to pass that test.” Butthey had written it so that they couldcontrol the people on board ship, Seabeebase. But that’s, again, the way the cookiecrumbled.

Storey: How did you get back to the States? Yousaid you came back to the States forreassignment and thirty days’ leave.

Went to Electrician’s School in Virginia

Boyce: And thirty days’ leave, yes. I got back tothe States. I got assignment to electricianschool at Camp Prairie, Virginia, and itwas an electrician school. I went there,took my family with me, Harvey and hismother, and I was there, I guess about ayear and a half.

Transferred to the Electrical School inWashington, D.C.

But after the first six months, I was

41


transferred to Washington, D.C., to theelectrical school there, which was thehighest one the Navy has. You actuallyaccomplish an electrical engineer degree,even though you’re still only a, shall wesay, a chief electrician or first classelectrician by graduating from it.

Teratoma Cyst Had to Be Removed from HisSpine

I had a teratoma cyst on my spine,and I had to have it operated on, and theresult of it was–it just didn’t heal up theway it should and went on like that, and Icouldn’t sit for hours at a time, you know,in the school, and, believe me, they had theinformation.

“I was instrumental in getting an apprenticeshipprogram started here on the dam [Hoover]. . . .”

After I got out of the Navy and went onlike that, through the apprenticeship thatyou read about, I was instrumental ingetting an apprenticeship program startedhere on the dam [Hoover]. I was the onethat forced, shall we say, Reclamation tohave an apprenticeship on the dam. Theyswore up and down that never on God’sgreen earth were they going to ever have

42


an apprenticeship program on the dam.

“. . . they weren’t going to let me become ajourneyman electrician just because I was in the

Navy as electrician. . . .”

I went through the VeteransAdministration down in San Bernardinoand had taken all the tests and so forth andso on to get this thing started. I mean, theyweren’t going to let me become ajourneyman electrician just because I wasin the Navy as electrician. A man by thename of L. J. Hudlow [phonetic], who wasthe director of the project, he said, “Thereain’t no way in hell it’s going to ever be aproject,” and like that.

So the Veterans Administrationcame back to Boulder City with me, andwe had a conference, and the VeteransAdministration man said, “Mr. Hudlow,are you part of the federal government?”

He said, “Yes, we are.”

Feels He Was Required to Do More than AnyOther Apprentice in Reclamation’s Program to

Qualify as an Electrician

He said, “Well, then, under Public

43


Law Sixteen, you will establish and operatean apprentice program on this project. Either that or you might as well draw yourtime. You’re done.” Consequently, I wasthe prick that created a problem, andbecause of the amount of schooling that Ialready have had, I was required to take anelectrical engineer degree as my studycourse. No one else who has come upthrough the apprentice program inelectricity was ever required to do any ofthe type of studying that I had to do. Iwent through ICS, and I hold three-quarters of a degree through ICS. Thething that stopped me was I was not able tohave any lab time. In school you wouldhave lab time. In correspondence, you donot.

Storey: ICS is–

Boyce: It’s a big school system that is still inoperation today.

Storey: It’s a correspondence school.

Boyce: A correspondence school, InternationalCorrespondence School[s] of Scranton,[Pennsylvania].

Storey: Oh, okay. Now, I hate to appear ignorant,

44


but tell me what it means to have anapprenticeship program.

Boyce: An apprenticeship program is that in orderto be qualified as an electrician, we had toqualify in eighteen different phases ofelectricity: light, power, crane operation,industrial putting in of equipment andhooking it up, and so forth and so on. Sothere was eighteen different degrees ofschooling that I had to have. I had to haveeight thousand hours apprenticeshipcoverage of those eighteen subjects.


Storey: This is Brit Allan Storey with HarveyWood Boyce on December the 15th, 1997.

... because of the schooling you hadhad.

Boyce: Yeah. I was required to take this type ofcorrespondence course as an electricalengineer. It actually states right in theagreement, and I have the originalagreement between L. J. Hudlow[phonetic] and myself that it would requiredivisions 1 and 2 of a four-part schoolingin order to be qualified. I come back to

45


Illustration 4: Apprenticeship graduation ceremonyApril 16, 1951. L. To R.:Harvey Wood Boyce,regional personnel officer H. H. Mitchell, BoulderCanyon Project Director of Power L. R. Douglas,and armature winder and apprenticeship committeemember John Phillips.

46


Illustration 5: Harvey Wood Boyce on April 16,1951. Journeyman status effective on January 28,1951.

47


work in ‘46. I completed the number ofhours in 1951, actually earlier than that,and then they made me wait until 1951 tobecome certified as an electrician, as thenews release states.

Storey: So that’s what it means to be ajourneyman?

Boyce: That is correct.

Storey: That you’re a full-fledged electrician.


Storey: Rather than?

Boyce: Rather than being an apprentice or ahelper. An apprentice or a helper cannot,shall we say, overhaul equipment, take itapart and put it back together again.

“I stayed with the government for a total ofthirteen years, and then I went to work for the City

of Los Angeles . . .”

Now, in later years, I stayed withthe government for a total of thirteen years,and then I went to work for the City of LosAngeles and moved my toolbox from oneroom to another room in the dam.

48


“I wound up as a working foreman for the City ofLos Angeles before I retired twenty-eight years

later. . . .”

I have been known to tear them biggenerators down and put them backtogether again. I wound up as a workingforeman for the City of Los Angeles beforeI retired twenty-eight years later.

Storey: What year did you retire?

Retired May 1, 1982

Boyce: I retired May the 1st of 1982.

Storey: 1982.

“. . . I was the first one in the nation to go throughthis apprentice program. . . .”

Boyce: Yes. May 1. As I said, I was the first onein the nation to go through this apprenticeprogram. No one, to the best of myknowledge, has ever had to fill therequirements that I was required to fill inorder to get this program started. And Iwas the no-good rat who forced somethingon the engineers here at the Reclamationheadquarters.

49


Storey: Well, how would they get electriciansotherwise?

Boyce: Hire them outside.

Storey: Who determines that those people arequalified electricians?

Becoming an Electrician Rather than anApprentice

Boyce: Well, you know, the guy that was incharge, particularly of the electrical crew,who I knew, I asked him one day, I said,“When am I going to get my license andbecome a journeyman electrician?”

He said, “Oh, I’ll get around to itone of these days. I’ll write you up a test.”

I said, “Okay, fine. But the day thatyou require me to answer that test, everyother electrician in this powerhouse, everyone of them, must write the same test Iwrite, because I’m not afraid to put mybrain against their brains.”

Well, there was never a test made, Ican guarantee that. But that was mystipulation, that if they were going to do itto me, they were going to do it to

50


everyone.

Storey: Just to make sure they were qualified.

Boyce: Just to make sure that they were qualified.

Storey: So you entered the apprentice program in‘46?

Boyce: Yes. It was in the fall of ‘46, yes.

Storey: So it took about five years.

Boyce: Yes, which normally an apprentice programshould take, shall we say, normally, aboutfour to five years, I would imagine.

Storey: What happened when you became anelectrician? Did it mean a pay increase?

Boyce: Absolutely.

Storey: Did it mean change in responsibility?

Boyce: Yes. Absolutely.

Storey: What’s the difference between being anapprentice and being a journeyman in termsof the kinds of things?

Boyce: Well, an apprentice is a trainee. He’s

51


learning the trade. You learn the trade bydoing with your hands and learning in yourbrain. There is no steps or grades inelectrician. In an apprentice program, bywhat you learn and what you do, you aregiven wage increases by increments untilyou become a full-fledged electrician. Now, in my particular case, I had about ayear and a half [before] I was at the top ofthe grade. They really didn’t want to giveme my diploma, but there was informationon the wire that someone else who hadstarted an apprentice program after I hadforced this one to be, was about tograduate.

Storey: Somebody in Reclamation?

Boyce: Somebody in Reclamation on anotherproject. So, consequently, then they veryrapidly got things straightened out, and Igot my license. But that’s what, shall wesay, the crux of the whole thing was.

Storey: What was the difference between the kindsof things you could do as a journeymanand an apprentice? You’ve alreadymentioned taking machines down andputting them back together.

The Work of an Electrician

52


Boyce: That part’s true, but the foreman wouldsay, “You go to so-and-so and so-and-soand overhaul that motor, blower, whateverit happened to be, “and put it back inservice again.” Which you had to takeyour own clearances, get disconnected,take it apart, service it, put it back togetheragain, put it back on the power line, makesure that it works. An apprentice cannotdo that; he wouldn’t know how to.

Working on a Heater in the Back Room of theMuseum Building

Well, we had an instance of wherethey had air heaters in the after part of themuseum at the dam. There’s a dieselgenerator back in that back room. Also,during World War II, they kept that as asleeping quarters for the guards on thedam. One guy took one of the heatersdown because it quit working. He took itapart, and I guess they ordered thenecessary parts for it, because they didn’thave them. When they finally got theparts, that man was no longer at the dam. So, me being the fresh one off the block,was given this to reassemble, and I hadnever seen it before in my life. So, as ajourneyman electrician, I was able to put it

53


back together again and get it operating,but none of the other guys in the shopwould do it. They wouldn’t touch it.

Storey: How many journeymen would there havebeen in the shop?

Electrician Staffing at Hoover Dam

Boyce: Well, let’s see. We’d have two electriciansand a helper or two on the elevators. Therewould be probably two and two on thecranes, the big cranes, the wing cranes,central section crane. There would bemaybe three or four others that were, shallwe say, assigned out to take care ofmaintenance problems or, like I said, torepair or service a motor, blower,whatever, that way, and generally everyone of them would have a helper. So theremight be sixteen to twenty electricians andhelpers.

Storey: These were Bureau of Reclamation staff?

Boyce: Bureau of Reclamation staff.

How Responsibility and Authority Were Splitamong the Power Contractors and Reclamation at

Hoover Dam

54


Storey: At the time that the generating plants werebeing run by non-Reclamation folks?

Boyce: That’s true. They were under contract.

Storey: So how was responsibility and authoritysplit up there?

Boyce: L-A Water and Power was responsible forthe oil, water, gas, electrical on all of thegenerators on the Nevada side, all eight ofthem, including the powerhouse generator,NO and AO on the other side.

Storey: That’s the little one that provides the localelectricity.

Boyce: That’s right. That’s the house generator. There’s one on each side. In between thetwo, there’s a power bank that feeds offfrom the bus of the output of the biggenerators, all 16.5 kilovolts. We alsohad–and I’m talking about L-A Water andPower–we also had A1, A2, A3, A4, A9and the house unit on the Arizona side. SoI think that gets us–let’s see–nine, ten,eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen,sixteen. I think sixteen or seventeengenerators. And you took care ofanything–oil, water, gas or electrical.

55


Storey: As a Reclamation employee?

Reclamation Maintained the Powerhouse

Boyce: No. As a [L-A] Water and Poweremployee. Now, Reclamation, in themeantime, took care of all of themaintenance of the powerhouse. They tookcare of the maintenance of the powerhouse,not the generators themselves, but thepowerhouse. That would be the elevators,the cranes, the lighting system. Everythinglike that was all handled by Reclamation. So they were working in conjunction with[L-A] Water and Power, not crossing eachother’s lines, shall we say. [SouthernCalifornia] Edison Company had A5, 6, 7,and 8 out of the dam. Edison took care ofthose four.

Storey: Were there ever situations that you wereinvolved in where there was confusionabout who was responsible for what?

Boyce: No, no. No, no. No, that’s all spelled out. It was all spelled out in contractagreements. This was all worked outahead of time, even before the dam wasbuilt. This contract was made out thatway, and they had a fifty-year contract.

56


Storey: And everybody understood it.

Boyce: And everybody understood it. There wereno questions about it. There were neverany arguments about it. It all went just asit was programmed fifty years in advance,as we say.

Storey: Now, in ‘51 you became a journeyman?

Boyce: That’s correct.

Storey: How long were you a journeyman withReclamation?

Boyce: ‘Til ‘54.

Storey: So, another three years.

March of 1954 Went to Work for Los AngelesWater and Power

Boyce: ‘54–I’m trying to think. Yeah, it wasMarch of ‘54 that I went to work for Waterand Power.

Storey: Los Angeles Water and Power.

Boyce: Los Angeles Water and Power.

Storey: How did that change happen?

57


Illustration 6: Bus gallery at Hoover Dam duringconstruction.

58


Went to Los Angeles Water and Power BecauseHousing Was Paid for There

Boyce: A bulletin was sent out by the City of LosAngeles to be posted on the labor bulletinboard, whatever you want to call it,specifying that there were going to beposition openings in electrical at variousand sundry places. Basically, Water andPower paid exactly the same money thatyou did at Reclamation. Now, our housingat Reclamation, we had to pay for. All ofthe employees had to pay for their housing. At the particular time, I think that mybiweekly, shall we say, house rent,utilities, etc., were all handled–I think Ipaid $54 every two weeks. So, by going towork for Water and Power, we eliminatedall of that cost. So it was just like a raise tome of $54 every two weeks.

So I made application, took theirtest, and the person who was in charge ofthe maintenance, as far as Water andPower was concerned, came to me andasked me if I would be interested if I were,shall we say, chosen to become part oftheir staff. I said, “Yes.” I said, “Hell, it’s$108 a month money that I don’t have topay out.” Because they furnished, undercontract with the government, housing, the

59


power, the water, the sewer, the garbage,whatever. That was all furnished bycontract. So I said, “Why not?” So itcame about, and I was asked if I wouldaccept a job. I told them, “Why not? Iwould.”

Storey: Do you happen to recall what yourbiweekly pay would have been in thosedays?

Boyce: Oh, no, I can’t tell you.

Storey: But I’m surmising $54 was a fairly majorpart of it.

Boyce: Fifty-four dollars, well, it wouldprobably–I might be earning as much as,maybe–as a matter of fact, I think I have athome actually my pay scales forReclamation. My wife worked for theBureau of Mines, and that was part of herjob, keeping track of the time, leave, and,you know, like that, payroll, for the Bureauof Mines. So she always kept track ofmine, also. She’s a retired thirty-yeargovernment employee. As I say, I hadthirteen years with the government. Butthe extra money made a lot of difference tous.

60


Illustration 7: Mary Wade Boyce with son HarveyWalter.

61


Storey: How did your job change when you wentover to Los Angeles Water and Powerfrom Reclamation, or did it?

Upon moving to Los Angeles Water and Power “Iquit working on the little stuff and went to working

on the big stuff. . . .”

Boyce: Yeah. I quit working on the little stuff andwent to working on the big stuff. (Laughter)

Storey: Meaning?

Boyce: Meaning the big generators, like that. Doing the service work of overhaul andmaintenance of the associate equipmentconnected with the generators. And, now,like I said, gas, water, oil and electrical allfalls in that category. But besides that, wehad probably, I think, somewhere in theneighborhood of maybe 100 to 150employees here for the city of LosAngeles.

In Addition to the Generators They Had toMaintain the Los Angeles Housing Units

Consequently, we had that many housesthat we had to take care of. Anything thathad to do with the house, electrical, we

62


were responsible for. As far as theplumbing and so forth and so on, that wasall responsibly taken care by Water andPower.

The other trades were just as wellrepresented the same way. The city had usoverhaul the necessary equipment. Someof the wiremen and so forth that they hadworking for them, none of them really hadany experience in the overhaul or servicework of electric ranges, a lot of residentialwiring and like that. Well, in myapprentice program, I went through a lot ofthat. As a matter of fact, at one time, rightafter the war was over, Reclamation heretook fifty houses from Vancouver,Washington, dismantled them and sentthem down here, and we put them backtogether again.

Storey: That would be from the shipyards, maybe?

Boyce: I can’t tell you. They were, shall we say,basic to very substandard housing. Therewas a group of us. Let’s see, there wasone, two, three, four–I think four or fiveelectricians, and me as an apprentice andsomeone else as a helper was workingrestoring these houses back to normalagain.

63


Worked on Electric Ranges and Wiring inReclamation’s Demountable Housing and in the

Los Angeles Housing

One of my jobs, because I was theapprentice, was to service all fifty of thoseelectric ranges. And let me tell you, someof them fifty ranges were the greasiest,dirtiest, nastiest pigs that you ever saw inyour lifetime. But I went through everyoneof those fifty units.

So as Water and Power said whenthey hired me, they said, “We do not havea journeyman electrician who has theknowledge to do house wiring, electricrange repair, and so forth. That’s why wewant you.” And it was under those termsthat I went to work for them. But you canimagine setting down and overhauling fiftyelectric ranges in one setting, but that waspart of my apprenticeship training. Iinstalled probably 80 percent, maybe 90percent of all of the refrigeration systemwiring in all of those same houses. Someof those houses were all knob and tube,which is the, shall we say, foremost wiringsystem that they used in olden days.

Storey: When you say knob and tube, you meanthe porcelain insulators that stand up a

64


couple inches and then hold the wires as itgoes through and it’s strung out in theopen?

Boyce: Yes. Right.

Storey: With the old fabric covering on the wire?

Boyce: No. No, they didn’t even have fabriccovering on them. Well, they did havesome. It was a black rubber with a meshbraid on them. It might be in red, whiteand black, and that’s about the size of that. When it had to go through a wall orsomething like that, they used what theycall as a tube, which was a porcelain with alittle donut effect on the end of it where itcould push against and, shall we say, holdstill. It wouldn’t go through the hole. Youhad to drill a hole, put it through there, andput the wire through it. The knobs werethe ones that held it up, held the wire up sothat it didn’t lie on the two-by-fours, therafters, or whatever the case may be.

Storey: Were you replacing all of this or what?

Boyce: No. We were adding to.

Storey: Oh, you were just making sure it was safeand adding more?

65


Boyce: Yeah.

Storey: Knob and tube?

Boyce: No. I didn’t put any knob and tube in. Bythat time, we had, shall we say, BX, whichwas a metal clad covered wiring or, as theyears went on, of course, they went toplastics, TWR or whatever, plastic stuff. In a lot of the houses that we had, therewas no heat system in the bathrooms, sowe put heat systems in the bathrooms. Depending on the size of the house, we puteither two or three refrigeration units tocool the house in the summertime ratherthan using swamp coolers, which couldbog down on you. Particularly in thehumid time, they wouldn’t do nothing. Sowe gradually converted all of our housingto refrigeration systems.

Storey: Now, we ‘re talking about Reclamation–we’re talking about L-A Water and Power?

Boyce: L-A Water and Power. We’re talkingabout the couple of hundred houses thatthey had here. As a matter of fact, in thelodge up here on the hill, that way on thehill, they have–

Storey: To the east of us.

66


Installed a Heavy Chandelier in the Water andPower Guest Lodge

Boyce: Yeah. Water and Power Lodge 1, whichwas a guest house that the City of LosAngeles maintained for visiting V.I.P.s,whatever, and they decided to buy a newchandelier, and I got the job of installingthat chandelier with the wiring hid andconnected up. That chandelier probablyweighed maybe 100, 150 pounds, and Ihad to put that in the air on a gabled roofand suspend it from that center rafter.

Storey: Tell me what the housing pattern was like. Were all of the Los Angeles Water andPower houses in one area, or were theyscattered all over or what?

Boyce: Scattered all over, wherever they couldbuy them. See, now, right below theadministration building where we are rightnow, where the new post office is–

Storey: Across this little park out here.

Boyce: Across this park, right. We had housingthat covered that whole area there down tothe business houses and all the way over tothe next–to C Street. From California to CStreet was all covered with houses that

67


Water and Power had. They had boughtthem from B&W, Babcock and Wilcox. This is during the time of the turnoverfrom the contractor to the government andWater and Power, because they had to takeover at the same time that the Reclamationdid. There was houses that were, shall wesay, brick, that were purchased. Therewere houses that were purchased fromDefense Homes Corporation at the end ofthe war.

Storey: That’s the magnesium plant?

Boyce: No. Defense Homes Corporation was herein Boulder City and built houses to takecare of, shall we say, Reclamation people. I never lived in them while they wereunder the government. I never lived inthem while they were under Water andPower either, but I’ve been in every atticthat there is in them, and they’re still theretoday. As the saying goes, that’s the wayit went. Now, any other questions thatyou’d like to ask at this point in time?

Storey: Well, I’ve got a bunch of questions, but Idon’t think we have time for much moreright now.

Boyce: Okay.

68



Storey: I’d like to ask you whether you’re willingfor information on these tapes and theresulting transcripts to be used byresearchers.

Boyce: I have nothing against it in any way, shapeor form.

Storey: So that’s a yes?

Boyce: Yes. At the end, I would like to have acopy.

Storey: Okay. Good. Thank you very much.


Storey: This is Brit Allan Storey, senior historianof the Bureau of Reclamation,interviewing Harvey Wood Boyce at theLower Colorado regional office of theBureau of Reclamation in Boulder City,Nevada, on December the 17th, 1997, atabout 9:45 in the morning. This is tapeone.

What Living in Boulder City Was like in the 1930s

69


I’d like to talk more about living inBoulder City when you moved down herefrom Montana. Could you tell me aboutthat, please? What was Boulder City likein those days?

Boyce: Boulder City was a small community. Theparking area for the bus was alongside ofthe [tourist bureau] florist shop, which wasnext to the large cafe that was on thecorner that was operated by Winnes. Thatis the last name. W-I-N-E-S. I can’t evenremember the actual name of therestaurant, but there was that restaurantthere and the one across the street in thenext block, which seemed to be thefavorite of most of the people that were,shall we say, having breakfast out, or theirnormal meals out.

Old Nig, the Dog Adopted by the Dam Workersand the Green Hut Cafe

That’s where they had– Old Nig, that washis favorite place, and maybe you don’tknow what Old Nig was, but Old Nig wasa dog that traveled on the double-deckerbuses down to the dam, spent the daydown there. He carried his own lunchfrom the restaurant. They fixed him a

70


lunch, a brown bag. He carried it down tothe dam. When it was time for lunch, hehad lunch with the crew and like that, andhe was basically down there all day untilthe double-deckers went back home atnight. But he was fed there by–I believethe man’s name was Ferguson that was theowner of the Green Hut Cafe. Nig isburied down at the dam. They put in aconcrete burial spot there down at the dam.

Storey: Did you know Nig?

Boyce: Yeah, I knew Nig.

Storey: What was he like?

Boyce: I suppose he was one of Heinz 57 brands. Where he came from I have no idea, but onthe weekends if the guys weren’t workingand like that, you could always find himoutside the Green Hut Cafe waiting for hismeals, and he got three meals a day. But itwas just one of those things. All of theconstruction people and like that, theypetted him, and helped feed him, and likethat all the time.

Cafes in Boulder City

The business district, other than the

71


two cafes that I’ve mentioned, there was athird cafe down on the corner of Wyomingand Boulder Highway, which was operatedby Mrs. Ida Browder [phonetic], and theyhad a little, shall we say, exercise roomwhere a lot of times in the evenings wecould go down, and a jukebox [was]playing and like that, and we’d havedances. I mean, this is teenaged kids, rightin that building. That was, shall we say,just across the street from the Los AngelesWater and Power Building, which is stillthere today.

Manix’s Store

Manix’s store was just about the–well, there was two grocery stores, both ofthem small, but Manix’s store was right onBoulder Highway, and they had a meatmarket, as well as fresh vegetables, and allthe canned goods, and like that, but it wasalso a clothing store–men’s shop, women’sshop, kids’ clothes, like that, shoes, all ofthe few sundries that we could come upwith. I was employed by them as a boxboy during my after-school time and othertypes of activities, you know, that went on.

Storey: How do you spell that name?

72


Boyce: M-A-N-I-X. Manix, J. C.

Bill O’Hara’s Dry Cleaners and Variety Store

Across the street on B Street was a littlevariety store and a dry cleaner’s operatedby Bill O’Hara. After school, after I gotout of school and like that, I worked forBill as the driver, pick up and delivery ofthe dry cleaning. People would just call inby phone and say, “Well, I have somethingthat needs picked up,” and I’d go to thehouse and pick it up and get it dry cleanedand pressed and like that. Then I woulddeliver it back to the homes and collect themoney for it. I worked for him that wayfor, I would say, the better part of a year.

Various Other Businesses

There was a men’s store in town, adrugstore on the corner, where, shall wesay, B Street and Nevada Highway cross. B Street actually comes across NevadaHighway at an angle. Next to the drycleaning shop was a Lawbeck’s [phonetic],which was the recreation tavern, had pooltables, and card tables, and the bar, andlike that. Of course, all you could buy wasthree-two beer. There was no hard liquor. It was just the beer.

73


Next to the tavern was a barbershopthat had, I think, four chairs. A man by thename of Higgins opened a shop there andlike that, and then next to that was themen’s store, which was opened by Jorjeson[phonetic]. Then basically there was a gasstation on the corner. Where the real estateoffices are located today was a gas station–Texaco, I believe.

Theater, Sweet Shop, and Bank Owned by the EarlBrothers

Workers Sometimes Went to the Movie to SleepBecause It Was Air Conditioned

The business district of town wasn’tvery big. It was, shall we say, that oneblock on both sides of the street, and thenturning onto Arizona Street after you gotby the hotel was the theater and sweetshop. Across the street later was built thebank by Earl Brothers, who also owned thetheater, and the theater where, most of thetime in the summertime, because it was sohot and no air-conditioning, that the menwould come in and buy a ticket to go to themovie and go in and sleep in an air-conditioned theater, just sleeping in theseats. But that was one way that they wereable to get rest, because there wasn’t any

74


air-conditioning in that particular time ofthis city or probably any other city. Theyhad big swamp coolers and like that, butthere was no air-conditioning, shall we say,as we know it today.

Worked as a Crossing Guard in return for a MovieTicket and Ice Cream Treat on Saturday Donated

by the Earl Brothers

When I first came to Boulder City, Ihad worked as a crossing guard, and EarlBrothers gave each one of the crossingguards for the school kids a movie ticketand an ice cream treat at the sweet shopevery Saturday. That was your totalincentive for being a crossing guard. Itwas at least something to do, you know. You could always go to the movie onSaturday afternoon, and, of course, we hadall of the serialized little films of the LoneRanger and Dick Tracy and a lot of thosetype of movies like that that were juststrictly for education or entertainment, andit was only on on Saturday.

Storey: Buck Rogers.

Boyce: Buck Rogers. Well, Buck Rogers got inthere a little later. (Laughter) It took alittle time. The corner where the Texaco

75


station is today was a large restaurant, as Imentioned, that was Wine’s, butunderneath that, because of the angle of thestreet and like that, was a doctor’s officeand several other little apartment-typethings. So it was basically a two-storybuilding that the restaurant was the topstory.

“. . . there was Central Market, which was ownedand operated by Stubbs. He went broke being too

kind-hearted. . . .”

If you went down onto WyomingStreet, then there was Central Market,which was owned and operated by Stubbs. He went broke being too kind-hearted. Hegave credit and went on like that, andpeople just walked out and left him after hehad probably supported them maybe for ayear, two years, whatever, keeping them infood. Actually, they just broke him.

But that was, shall we say, all of thetown that there was. Where the ParkService building is today, the constructioncrews and like that built what they calledthe American Legion Hall, and it was avery large building with a huge dance floorand like that, and there was musiciansaround that came and played. They played

76


music, and, of course, they had theirdances there all the time. But all in all,there really was not much as far asbusiness houses, shall we say.

Sims Ely

Being a government town and likethat, they had to get permission from thegovernment in order to put in a business. Consequently, they were very regulated. Ifyou didn’t get permission, you sure didn’tget anyplace. There was an old gentlemanby the name Sims Ely who was the, shallwe say, administrator of Boulder City, andhe ruled Boulder City with an iron hand,believe me.

Storey: Did you know him?

Sims Ely Lived in a Garage Apartment after HeRetired as Administrator of Boulder City

Boyce: I met him on many occasions. After heretired, he did have a house here just belowthe administration building here on UtahStreet. He had a house that was assigned tohim. But after he retired, he lived in like agarage apartment on the corner of B Streetand Wyoming Street in back of LizaCarter’s house.

77


Boulder City News

Liza Carter and her sister Jane Cookstarted what is known as the Boulder CityNews today. It was all done bymimeograph, and every Saturday morning,bright and early, I carried thosemimeographed sheets of paper and likethat and delivered them to every house inBoulder City, but it was done early in themorning so that you were all finishedbefore the heat got on. It was the, shall wesay, social news and coming events, shallwe say, that they knew of, and it was alldone on mimeograph. So they did havesome news or physical means of gettinginformation other than by radio. Not verymany people had radios. It was, shall wesay, basically before the popularity of radio,and it was all AM and very grainy, veryscratchy, and you really didn’t get muchout of them.

Is that any other particular partyou’d like me to refer to at this particulartime?

Storey: Let’s talk about Manix’s some more.

Working at Manix’s Store as a Box Boy

78


Boyce: Manix was basically just a generaldepartment store.

Storey: What did you do as a box boy?

Boyce: A lot of times I would stock. I’d bag thegroceries, carry them out to the cars for thepeople and like that. We had a deliveryservice, and one of the men that wasemployed was the driver, and we’d haulthese large orders of groceries. We’dmake basically two trips a day or threetrips a day, depending on how the ordersstacked up. We had a one-ton van, and wehad rigged it so that it was two layers, andit was not unusual to see us make two orthree trips at a time, whether it was in themorning or whether it was in the afternoonor the last one at five o’clock at night. Wemight have to make two or three trips inorder to handle all the boxes of groceriesthat had been purchased by the men andtheir wives here in Boulder City that livedhere.

Storey: How did they pay for those groceries?

Boyce: Well, out of their wages. That’s all I cantell you.

Storey: Did Manix allow charge accounts, for

79


instance?

Boyce: Yes, he did. Yeah, he had a chargeaccount for anybody. I don’t know that heever charged any interest, but he made surehe had the business. Even the butchershop and everything was right there in thebuilding. When we’d take our orders out,they’d be boxed up, shall we say, on thecounter right by the register with thepeople there present, and then when itcame time, if they didn’t take the meathome with them, there was a tag put in thebox up on top for it to be seen that therewas meat that had to go, and the meatwould be kept in the refrigerator until suchtime as that order went out, and then themeat was picked up and put in the orderand taken on to the houses.

“. . . it seems to me I made around fifty cents anhour . . . as a box boy . . . and I’d buy my own

shoes and my own clothes . . .”

I know my mom bought dresses inthe dress shop and like that. Even myself,working, I don’t know, but it seems to me Imade around fifty cents an hour,something like that as a box boy, utilityworker, or whatever you want to call it,and I’d buy my own shoes and my own

80


clothes and like that, just off of the moneythat I earned that way.

Storey: Do you remember how they kept track ofthe credit?

Boyce: A copy was made, a written copy, and theperson had to sign what they had got, andit was a lot like a rent receipt book exceptthat they used it for groceries, and it madea carbon copy. They took the original, andyou had the carbon, or vice versa.

Storey: But they didn’t list every single item; theyjust put a total on it?

Boyce: Basically, they put items on it. They mighthave two or three sheets at a time that theywould fill out, and it was probably aboutfour inches long, and it had its own basiccarbon inside so that it wrote on the nextsheet, like that. They were requested tosign for having received it so that they had,shall we say, a much better idea of whatthe merchandise was and, you know, whatit was for.

Storey: And then each month they had to pay?

Boyce: Well, they had to–I assumed that theywould–they may not pay it all off each

81


month. They might have a balancehanging on month after month, dependingon, shall we say, their own establishedcredit limit. I was never involved in any ofthat kind of business. That was all handledby one person, and he kept the books rightthere in the office of the store.

Recreational and Social Opportunities in BoulderCity

Storey: What other kinds of recreationalopportunities were there? You mentioneddancing, I believe, at one of the cafes.

Boyce: Yes. That was basically a teenagesituation because Mrs. Browder had adaughter, and that way they could–she wasnot the most beautiful girl in the world–butget boys there and other girls, like that, sothey could have a dance. We used to dothe polkas and, you know, a lot of thingslike that. Normally the American LegionBuilding and like that, the folks, shall wesay, the elder people, would have parties,card games, dinners of one kind or anotheror for one purpose or another there, andthey’re use it as a money-raiser, just sothat, you know, they could, shall we say,add on to the building or makeimprovements or like that.

82


Storey: What about Reclamation things? Werethere any Reclamation-sponsored thingsthat your family went to?

People from the Construction Trades BuiltBaseball Fields

Boyce: I really don’t remember. In theconstruction trades there was enoughpeople that were involved, particularly inthe summertime, in baseball, and webuilt–I say “we” because I wasinvolved–baseball fields. We had one forsoftball and one for hardball. They got aleague started, and they played teams fromLas Vegas and Kingman or wherever thecase may be, and they had some mightyfine baseball players, believe me. Theywere– yeah, they were construction stiffs,but they’d really come down andparticipate in the–a baseball game mightgo on until ten-, eleven-, twelve o’clock atnight. They got together and put up thelighting system, and it’s just like the ballfield, what they call Bravo Field now herein Boulder City at the high school. Theyhad a softball field there, and then we builta hardball. While I was serving myapprenticeship, I got all of the linemen,electricians, and like that together, and weput up all the lighting system on these

83


eighty-foot poles, and I was the one thatcoordinated and got everybody together todo the job.

Storey: So that would have been after the war?

Boyce: Yes.

Storey: What about when you were a kid inBoulder City?

Boyce: Being, shall we say, a newcomer, comingin 1935, in comparison to a lot of theothers who had come there in, shall wesay, ‘31, ‘32, I was not involved with the,shall we say, the clique, because there wasdefinitely cliques in town in participatingin sports or anything like that. I just don’trecall any participation at that particularpoint in time; it really wasn’t there. At theback of the school where the rec buildingis today, was a very large two-court tenniscourt, and we could go down and playtennis at night. If you were dumb enoughto go out there in the summertime, youcould get yourself a heat stroke, too. (Laughter) We played tennis. We playedvolleyball. Of course, where the cityoffices are today was the grammar school,and the recreation center wasn’t even thereto start off with. There was nothing there

84


other than, like I said, the tennis courts.

Storey: I guess I had thought there was a recreationcenter in town.

Boyce: No. They called it a recreation center. Itwas called Lawbeck Recreation Center,but that was strictly for beer and adults. They had pool tables, card games, and likethat, but that was all that there was thatway.

We had a track team up to theseventh-, eighth grade here, and it wasright down here, above, shall we say, theold grammar school, which was verysmall. As I say, it now contains the cityoffices of Boulder City, but I recognize itas a grammar school, where I went togrammar school when I came here.

Storey: You mentioned cliques. Were therecliques within Reclamation kids?

Boyce: I really don’t think it was too bad. Theydid have kind of two-caste system here asfar as the Reclamation employees wereconcerned, like that, and most of theengineers and, shall we say, higher-educated people, they kept to their side ofthe street, shall we say, and the

85


construction workers kept to the other sideof the street. A lot of that, shall we say,rubbed off on the children, so that thechildren kind of operated that way also. But there really wasn’t a lot of things forthe children to do here in town. There wasnot any recreation facility, shall we say,specifically other than the tennis courts ora volleyball game or something like that. That was basically all that there was–


Storey: What about the contractors’ kids?

Boyce: I don’t know. They were just basicallyconstrued as to be in construction orengineering, whatever, and they just didn’tcross the line.

Storey: Tell me what you mean by construction.

Boyce: Blue-collar workers at the dam.

Storey: So this would be electricians?

Boyce: Yes. Electricians, carpenters, plumbers,whatever the case may be.

Storey: Who was your best friend when you were

86


in–it went up to eighth grade here?

Boyce: Yeah.

Storey: Up to eighth grade.

Boyce: Really, I was pretty much of a loner. As Isaid before, being, shall we say, new to thetown, ‘35 and ‘36–in ‘36 I graduated fromgrammar school. So I wasn’t here longenough to become associated, really, withmany children or people.

“I was always busy wherever I could find me ajob. I mean, I worked at it. . . .”

I was always busy wherever I could findme a job. I mean, I worked at it. It’s downlike where the new police court is nowhere on the corner of G Street and Arizona. A chapel for the Mormon Church was onthe corner, and right next door to it was aDr. Little. That was his home. So he wasonly a block, at the most, from thehospital. I got a job working for him anddug up his entire backyard and took all ofthe Bermuda-grass roots and like that outof it so that he could plant a clean lot. Thistook me the better part of a summer. So Iwasn’t involved with other kids in thedaytime and like that. At nighttime you

87


were too damned tired to do anything.

Pushed an Ice Cream Cart Around Boulder City

Like I say, during that time, I also had ajob of pushing an ice cream cart aroundtown and selling ice cream. Peoplewouldn’t go to the store to get it, but if itwas brought around by the ice cream kids,they were, a lot of times, very happy tohave an ice cream or a Popsicle orsomething like that.

Storey: How much would you be selling those for?

Boyce: It seems to me around a nickel or a dime.

Storey: And you were working for someone?

Boyce: Yeah, a man by the name of Smaltz, S-M-A-L-T-Z. He had, I think, three or four icecream carts, and he kept the ice cream coldby dry ice. I know I pushed that ice creamcart all over this town a jillion times,particularly up there around ColoradoStreet, Utah Street, up and down each oneof the streets. You didn’t have a bell thatwas ringing or anything like that. You hadto hawk it yourself, calling out, “Icecream,” you know, like that, and thepeople became used to it, and they’d hear

88


Illustration 8: Harvey Wood Boyce with his icecream cart in Boulder City.

89


you hawking the wares, and they’d comeout and, “Oh, bring me one of this,” or,“Bring me one of those,” and you’d leavethe cart sit in the road, and you’d toddle onup to their house. It might be some thirty,forty, fifty feet up from the street level tothe house. A lot of the houses were up on,shall we say, floorings were elevated fromthe ground, almost like a basement, shallwe say. Some of them did have basementsunder them, but they were private-ownedhouses, private-built.

Storey: They were up on pilings sort of?

Boyce: Yeah, floor joists, whatever, so that youhad a firm foundation for them and likethat.

Storey: Did you have an assigned territory, just gowhere you wanted? How did it work?

Boyce: Wherever I could sell ice cream. Now,like in the afternoons, like that, I’d coverthe entire town, because Boulder Citywasn’t that big.

Storey: But were there other ice cream carts?

Boyce: There was two or three carts, but notnecessarily in operation. So you just took

90


off and went wherever you felt that youcould sell ice cream. As I say, we didn’tget very much money for each one of thosepieces we sold, but it was a means ofmaking some money.

In Anaconda Sold Newspapers for Three CentsEach

Coming from the copper mine country upin Anaconda, Montana, like that, therewasn’t any big money there either. I soldnewspapers at three cents a copy.

Storey: Up in Anaconda?

Boyce: In Anaconda, yeah. Three cents a copy fornewspapers.

Storey: It must have gotten awfully hot pushing anice cream cart around.

Had a Swamp Cooler at the House

Boyce: Yes, it did. You could say that two orthree times, because the weather–at 600Arizona Street, where I lived when I cameto Boulder City in 1935, and we had athermometer, a stick thermometer, readingin Fahrenheit, and it would hang all theway across the length of the house from

91


the front of the house to the back of thehouse. On the back of the house was aswamp cooler, which was an eighteen-inchfan with water dripping through excelsiorout into the back yard.

Storey: Sort of wood shavings.

Boyce: Yes, and drawing the air through that. Andthat’s all the cooler that you had. One dayI saw it 116 degrees hanging on the wall. Now, that’s how hot it was in the house atthat particular point in time. So, as yousaid–

Storey: In the house?

Boyce: In the house with the fan blowing fromacross the room all the way across. Now,if you could get into the flow of air, youcould get a little bit of evaporation, shallwe say, of your skin heat, but otherwise itwas a warm mother.

Storey: You mentioned that you were a crossingguard. Was there a lot of traffic in BoulderCity?

Boyce: No, not really, but in a sense, this is oneway of Earl Brothers–of getting kidsinvolved in doing something rather than

92


being hateful at going-to-school time andcoming-home time, because that’s the onlytime you were there. It took about an hourgoing to school and about a half an hourgoing home from school and like that, soyou didn’t have a lot of time involved. One of the first points I ever got was sixpoints down here at Utah, Wyoming, IStreet. There’s three streets, and they allintersect at one point. When it was timefor the kids to go back and forth to school,of course, they wanted the, shall we say,larger children to be the crossing guards tohelp the young ones across the street. As Isaid, I was in the seventh grade and eighthgrade during that period of time. I wasprobably tall for my age. The pictures inthe album shows me when I graduatedfrom grammar school, and my brother wasfour years older than I. He stood six-three-and-a-half. So I was pretty close to theheight I am today, and that is very near tosix feet. So they just wanted the–becausethey would be recognizable.

“An awful lot of people had cars, but they didn’tdrive them much. If they went uptown, they made

sure that they had several things to do . . .”

An awful lot of people had cars, butthey didn’t drive them much. If they went

93


uptown, they made sure that they hadseveral things to do uptown before theywent uptown, as the saying would go. A lotof the business houses, if you had three orfour vehicles parked, you were busy. Youdidn’t go and just commute about as inshopping and like that. You went and gotwhat you had to do, and you got backhome again. Of course, a lot of peoplewere able to walk back and forth because itwas that close to the business district.

Boulder City Schools

Storey: What about school lunches? How did youeat lunch at school when you were inschool?

Boyce: Well, while I was in Boulder City I walkedhome for lunch. There were a few childrenthat were brought in by a small van fromoutside of town. Like out at Railroad Pass,there was a family that lived at RailroadPass, and there was two or three children,and they were brought into town by that,by the school. The school was allgovernment. Teachers were hired by thegovernment, fired by the government,whatever the situation might be. They didnot, until, shall we say, after Boulder Citybecame separated by the government, they

94


released, shall we say, the city, they set upa perimeter around the town and said,“Okay. This is the city of Boulder City,and it’s entirely on its own now. We don’town Boulder City anymore.” It becamepublic domain.

Storey: They sold it off.

Boyce: Yeah, they sold it off. But there were notmany children that, shall we say, came inby bus, and they were not connected to theClark County school system.

Storey: Was the school large enough that eachgrade was separate?

Boyce: Yes. Each one had its own particularroom.

Storey: Just one?

Boyce: Yes. In the seventh and eighth grade andlike that, we circulated from one room toanother room during our school day. Thechildren moved; the teacher didn’t.

Storey: They had an assigned classroom.

Boyce: Yeah. Right.

95

7. This refers to pre-fabricated houses.


Storey: Do you ever remember hearing anyconversation about housing and how it wasassigned by Reclamation and how it wasdone and all that kind of thing?

Assigned a Demountable [Prefabricated,Moveable] House after the War

Boyce: No, I don’t. I really don’t. I do know thatafter the war when I come back to BoulderCity, my wife and my son, we wereassigned a demountable house.7 There justwasn’t any housing available, shall we say,but we were assigned a demountablehouse.

Storey: Which meant?

Boyce: Which meant that it was, shall we say, abathroom, a bedroom, a kitchen, and adining room-living room, very small.

Storey: Why was it called a demountable house?

Later Moved into a Three Bedroom Home

Boyce: Because it was not a permanent house. Itcould be taken down in sections andmoved, sold, or otherwise. Then later on,

96


the houses–as I spoke earlier of the fiftydemountable houses that they purchasedfrom Vancouver, Washington, I madeapplication for one of the three-bedroomhouses and was told, “Okay. Fine. Move.”

Added a Small Room to the House

Well, I moved down there. Now,while Harvey [Wood Boyce] was–let’ssee. Harvey was four-, five, somewherealong in there. I asked the people that be ifI could build a small bedroom right next tomy bedroom that would be big enough tohave a little bunkbed for my son to sleepin, which they allowed me to do. I built abed and put it all together and like that, andI got parts and pieces from the carpentershop and so forth and so on. I mean, theywould say, “Well, I’m through with thatpiece of lumber,” and that piece of lumberwould disappear into the back of myvehicle, and I’d bring it home and I’d put itto use in building this additional[room]–and it did make it very nice for usin the fact that we had a room for him to beby himself when it was necessary, and hehad his own bedroom, basically. But I wasthe only one that had one like that. It wasall tar-papered and so forth and so on,

97


because it wasn’t finished and painted, itwas tar-paper finished.

Moved into Various Other Homes, Including aDefense Homes Corporation House

Then, like I say, I moved downthere on Sixth Street, 825 Sixth Street,before the high school was built downthere. Then I moved from that house into aDefense Homes Corporation house on KStreet, and actually I lived right next doorto L. R. Douglas, the project manager, whobecame a regional director. They werewonderful neighbors. Then I moved downinto–they built some new houses–

Storey: When you went to the–what was it?

Boyce: Defense Homes Corporation.

Storey: That was Reclamation homes, still?

Boyce: Yes. After Defense Homes Corporationbuilt these houses in order to help with thehousing situation for Henderson as well ashere in Boulder City, I can’t tell youexactly who Defense Homes Corporationwas, but it was somebody that came in andthey built a lot of houses on streets thatwere there but there was no housing on

98


them because the houses had been, shallwe say, torn down and done away with at,shall we say, the decline of construction. Those houses were all disappeared, shallwe say, and just open dead streets. Well,then Defense Homes Corporation came inand put housing on them again. After thewar was over, Reclamation just took overpossession of that housing. I don’t knowwhether they swapped dollars here orwhere or whatever they did, but thatbecame Reclamation housing, andReclamation was, shall we say, expandingquite a bit. There was so much moremaintenance that was having to be takencare of and so forth that way at the dam,they needed people in order to do it.

I lived in a Defense HomeCorporation house for, oh, I don’t know,maybe a year was all. The governmenthad a contractor build, it seems to me,about fifteen to twenty concrete-blockhouses, and I asked for one of those housesand got a two-bedroom house and like thatat 632 Sixth Street, and lived in that until Iwent to work for the city of Los Angelesand I moved from down there to up here. That’s the way it was.

Storey: So at that time all these houses were still

99


government-owned?

Boyce: Yes.

Storey: That would have been until about 1950 orso when you moved over to Los Angeles.

In 1954 Went to Work for the City of Los AngelesWater and Power Department and Lived in One of

The City’s Homes

Boyce: I moved over to the city of Los Angeles in‘54. The government here in BoulderCity– maybe I should say “Reclamation”rather than “government.” It’ssynonymous. The city didn’t become aprivate entity until after ‘54.

Tried to Buy One of the Reclamation Homes WhenThey Were Sold, but Didn’t Qualify to Purchase

I can’t tell you just exactly when, but itwas probably anywheres for maybe ‘58-,‘59, I don’t know, before the governmentput those houses up for sale. They weresold to the people that were living in themat the present time if that was what theywanted. My wife was working for theBureau of Mines, but as far as they wereconcerned, I was ineligible to bid for oneof the houses that wasn’t going to be

100


bought, you know, that the occupant wasn’tgoing to buy. That’s the way they sold thehouses. If they weren’t sold to the actualoccupant, then they were put up for sale tooutside, but they tried to get them to othergovernment employees and like that. So Imade application for one, but they told meI couldn’t qualify. I wasn’t the employee;my wife was. So that’s the way it goes,you know.

Draws Retirement from Reclamation as Well asRetirement from Working for the City of Los

Angeles

Storey: I guess you would have been withReclamation a total of about–

Boyce: Thirteen years.

Storey: Thirteen years. Did that qualify you for apension?

Boyce: Yeah, I draw a retirement.

Storey: From the U.S. Government?

Boyce: Yes, I do.

Storey: So you didn’t give that up when you went.

101


Boyce: I did not. My wife worked in personneland payroll, and she was, shall we say,sharp enough to know that maybesomeplace down the line it would be wortha little income. So that’s what we did. When I went to work for the city, ofcourse, I told you before that it was thesame as 108-dollars-a-month raise just bymoving from the Reclamation housing toWater and Power housing because I didn’thave to pay rental. So, consequently, thesmall amount of money that I had in thegovernment retirement system wouldn’treally make a hill of beans, because a lot ofmy time was at very low wages.

I think when I left Reclamation,Water and Power was paying exactly thesame, dollar for dollar, as Reclamationwas. So, monetarily I didn’t take any cutin pay or I didn’t get any particular raise inpay other than I no longer had to rent ahouse. So, to me, a hundred-dollar-a-month raise is a hundred-dollar-a-monthraise, you know.

Storey: One of the things that was going on whenyou first came here, the dam was stillunder construction, right at the end, ofcourse.

102


Boyce: Just right to the end or very close to theend.

Storey: A lot of people were coming to see Hooverbecause it was receiving so muchpublicity. Were you aware of Hooverbefore you came down here?

When the Children Were Put on the Bus atAnaconda, They Thought They Were Going to

Their Mother in Salt Lake City–Then They Had toProceed on to Boulder City

Boyce: No, not really. Not really. When my sisterand my brother and I left Montana, wewere only going to Salt Lake, and that’sbecause that was where my mother andstepfather, I’d last heard from them. Theywere in Salt Lake. We got to Salt Lake,and they weren’t there, so then wecontinued on from there down herebecause somebody somewhere told uswhere they were, and then we came on toBoulder City. As I said, Las Vegas wasn’ta very big place. It was a wide spot in theroad.

Storey: Did you see any visitors of note that youremember?

Notables He Saw Driving the Cab in Boulder City

103


and Las Vegas

Boyce: If you’re referring to people who camehere to visit, Frances Dee, Joel McCrea,Donahues [phonetic], who was aprofessional photographer, Kate Smith.

Storey: That’s a name from back in my memory.

Boyce: Right. I hauled her in my cab from thehotel down to the lake and put her on theboat and like that, picked her up at night,and brought her back here. These arepeople that I met as a cab driver, shall wesay. Of course, I was only a kid,seventeen, eighteen years old, but I wasdriving cab for Grand Canyon BoulderDam Tours.

Storey: Any others?

Boyce: Not that I can readily bring to mind. I’msure that there were more, because they’dcome up by plane and land at the airport,and I’d go pick them up and bring them upto the hotel. What they did from there, alot of times, I suppose, they had madearrangements for a vehicle of some kind,but a lot of times, also, they madearrangements for me to haul them to, shallwe say, Las Vegas and take them to

104


whatever there was there and then bringthem back to Boulder City again. Thenames don’t stick in your mind like–amovie star is a movie star, you know, andso I became quite acquainted with thosebecause they were around several times. But other than that, I just don’t rememberanybody, the names.

Storey: After you got out of high school, you wentto L-A, then you came back.

Boyce: Yes, I went to L-A. I was only gone abouttwo or three months.

Storey: Then you came back, and then the warbroke out.

Boyce: Yes.

Storey: What kinds of things were going on inBoulder City when the war broke out? What happened?

Camp Williston Was Established in Boulder CityWhen the War Broke out

Boyce: Boulder City very quickly became a

105

8. Also known briefly as Camp Sibert,


military base. We had Camp Williston8

here in Boulder City. We started out withbasically all white soldiers, and they werehere as a guard, convoy and like that forthe dam and the facilities. Then theychanged it to all blacks–well, all but theofficers. I don’t think there was very manyblack officers. They were still all white,but it’s, shall we say, kind of a raw spot forsome people. Having colored peoplearound was something that had neverbothered me, because, living in Montana,there was a lot of colored people thatworked on the smelter, as my father did. So I’ve stood toe to toe and nose to nose,knife in hand, with Negroes, myself.


Storey: This is tape two of an interview by BritStorey with Harvey Wood Boyce onDecember the 17th, 1997.

Boyce: So, as I say, I’ve stood nose to nose andtoe to toe with them.

Storey: Yeah, but was there a lot of tension inBoulder City?

106


Civilian Conservation Corps at Hoover Dam

Boyce: No, no. The military were forced, shall wesay, to keep their distance. Actually,before the military got here, they had C-C-C [Civilian Conservation Corps] camps. There was a C-C-C camp here in town. They did a lot of building of the parapetwalls down to the dam and like that. Asyou see the rock, it’s all been fixed at theside of the road. When they had a parapetwall, that was basically built by the C-C-Cboys.

Storey: They would have been about your age asyou got older.

Boyce: A little bit older than me, probably, amatter of probably no more than three tofive years. I know one of my four sistersbecame quite attached to a young soldier. They never did get married, but they werequite attached with each other.

Storey: When you say Camp Williston was here,how large are we talking about? Wherewas it?

Boyce: It was below Fifth Street, out into thedesert, like going on down to Adams Streetnow. That was where the Williston base

107


was. It seems to me that there was, shallwe say, their headquarters unit, there wasprobably eight two-story barracks.

Storey: So we’re not talking thousands of peoplehere.

Boyce: No, no, no, you’re talking maybe of closeto a thousand soldiers. And they, shall wesay, they kept theirselves isolated as wellfrom the people of Boulder City. Yes,there was several girls that met several ofthe C-C-C boys and married them andraised their families here when they got outof the C-C-C camp.

They were basically constructionpeople. I know one in particular, he popsin my mind that he was a cat skinner. Helater went to work for Reclamation as a D8cat skinner or like that, and he worked forthem for years and retired.

Storey: A Caterpillar operator.

Boyce: Yes, a D8 cat.

Storey: “Cat skinner.” I haven’t heard that for along time.

Boyce: You know, I’m not that much of an

108


educated person. I’ve had a lot ofschooling, as far as that’s concerned, somecollege courses, but it’s just a slang name,shall we say, that you associate withdifferent trades.

Storey: When did you go to college? When didyou take college courses?

Boyce: Right here in Boulder City. I have acollege course in fire-fighting, under thegovernment. We had an instructor comefrom Flagstaff, came over, and would puton a fire-fighting school and like that. Ihave a certificate saying that I had so muchcredit for college course. Basically that’swhere I– there was several things, and Ican’t, for the moment, think of what theyare.

Storey: Day before yesterday, we talked aboutyour transition over to Los Angeles Waterand Power. How long did you work forthem altogether?

Worked for the City of Los Angeles for Twenty-eight Years, 1954 to 1982

Boyce: Twenty-eight years.

Storey: So from ‘54 until what’s that?

109


Boyce: ‘82.

Storey: You were an electrician.

Boyce: That’s right.

Storey: How long were you an electrician? Well,let me put it differently. How long untilyou were promoted? Because youmentioned you became a foreman.

Worked as a Foreman for Four or Five YearsBefore He Retired

Boyce: I became a working foreman in 19– I wasgoing to say 1980, but it was before that,because I retired in ‘82, and I was aworking foreman for quite some time, Ithink probably four or five years, before Iretired.

Storey: How did that transition come about, frombeing an electrician, was that it? Werethere different levels of electrician in L-APower?

City of Los Angeles Promotions Required WrittenTests and Interviews

Boyce: Yeah. If there were a group of electriciansworking on one particular project, not

110


being a massive project, but a small projectwhere there were required–a lot of times inwiring a building you might have four-,five, maybe more, electricians plus theirhelpers, and one person would be in chargeof that group. In other words, he’s a sub-foreman. For the city of Los Angeles,everything is done by a test that is givenwith a proctor for, shall we say, the abilityto do that job, and it was a two-part test,because after you had passed the writtenpart of it, you had to have a personal, face-to-face interview with a group of three tofive people who were in the trades.

I’ve had engineers from the R-K-OStudios, movie theaters, differentconstruction companies in different partsof L-A or its suburbs. The city would hirethem for a day, two days, no matter howmuch time it took to personally interview. Actually, what I had to do was you go inthere and you have to sell yourself verballyto those people so that they would say,“Well, yeah, I’d hire that guy for thisparticular job.” So this is, as I said, thiswas something that I saw the bulletinboard for the city while I was working forReclamation where it said that they werelooking for electricians. Well, I was prettycocky because I have had a lot of electrical

111


education. So I said, “Well, hey, I’mgoing to take that test just as a lark to seewhat I can do with it.”

Well, I took the written exam and Iwas sent notification that I would have anoral interview in Los Angeles at such andsuch a time, such and such a day. So Iwent to it. Well, there were some 200 orso electricians that took that writtenexamination, and I think I came outsomething like about number eight or nineout of that group of people. The result of itwas, in the oral interview either I was wellloaded and could really rattle my teeth,because I drew the highest rating of all ofthem verbally. They might ask you anyquestion in the world.

Storey: Where was the written exam given?

Boyce: The written exam was given here inBoulder City.

Storey: And in Los Angeles?

Boyce: And in Los Angeles or several other placesat the same time. All of the tests werewritten the same day, the same time, nomatter where they were. They might be inInglewood, they might be in Glendale,

112


Hollywood, downtown.

Storey: But then when it came to the verbal–

Boyce: You had to go downtown to the City Hall,and they had a conference room set up,microphones in the ceiling and everythinglike that. Everything was copied;everything was taped. Not one exam that Itook–and I have taken a lot of them intwenty-eight years–after the first fouryears, I started taking promotional exams,and each one of them I qualified for oralsbecause I was never beaten on my oral. Ialways came out the top. So, like I say, Imean I either had a good line of somethingthat I could sell myself.

Storey: Tell me about how you progressed throughtheir hierarchy. You first job was as anelectrician.

Boyce: Then my next job was as a workingforeman.

Storey: This is sort of the sub-foreman.

Boyce: Yes.

Storey: And then the next?

113


Boyce: No. That’s as far as I went. But I tookthese exams every year or every two years,whenever they came out, just because anytest that you would take and try to get apromotion out of, you had to be ready for itwhen it came out, because there was nogiven day that you knew that it was goingto be. It was strictly when they decidedthat they would go ahead and put out acall, “We need to hire so manyelectricians.” Well, you’d just better beready to take the test when it came. But Ialways took the tests and like that.

When the affirmative action cameout, I was number two on the list,promotion list, for a full foreman’s job. You might be over maybe twenty-five orthirty people, different projects and likethat. In the case here at the dam and likethat, it was a pretty fixed, shall we say,routine, and everything was basicallyprogrammed out in front of you when youstarted out, that what needed to be done,you know–if it was today you remove,overhaul, and return the P-M-G off [of] A-5 or N-1 or whatever.

Storey: What’s a P-M-G?

Permanent Magnet Generators and Governors on

114


Hydroelectric Generators’ Water Wheels

Boyce: Permanent magnet generator.

Storey: What does that do?

Boyce: It produces the power that is used toactuate the governor.

Storey: A lot of power?

Boyce: No. No. Very low voltage, D-C.

Storey: Tell me more about that. You mentionedyesterday P-M-Gs, I believe.

Boyce: Well, as I say, a P-M-G is a permanentmagnet generator. The generator part, theturning of the water wheel causes it to turn,and the voltage that is produced istransmitted to the second floor of the dam,where the governor is. Now, the governor,through the speeding up or slowing downof the water wheel, the oil pressure, whichis basically 300 pounds to the square inch,to move the actuator arms of the wicketgates, and that’s how it’s regulated, isthrough that P-M-G. That’s the littleculprit.

Storey: I believe you talked about the P-M-G, but

115


after we were off tape yesterday.

Created a Tester for the Permanent MagnetGenerators While Working for Los Angeles Water

and Power

Boyce: Yes. Well, I said that a machinist assistedme in building a P-M-G tester, because,under normal conditions, up until that time,a P-M-G must be put back on the unit andthe unit started in order to regulate how thegovernor would react. Well, I figured thatif I could produce some force to drive theP-M-G at the required speeds, that wecould accomplish it so that you didn’t haveto run the generator, waste the water. Youdo it by the tester that I built. I had it sothat you didn’t have to spin the magnetitself. All you had to do–see, the magnetinside the housing is a very huge magnet.

Storey: On the stator arms.

Boyce: On the rotor. (Storey: Okay.) The field ison the outside. But if you didn’t have tospin it, you don’t have to spin it. So bytaking it apart and building this machine, Icould get the control down where I couldattach a half-inch drill motor, a portablehalf-inch drill like you’d go to drill a holein the wall, and using a variac to vary the

116


speed of that motor, I could vary the speedof the driving spindle. By controlling thespeed of the driving spindle, and they arerequired to turn at specific R-P-Ms–I can’tthink of the exact R-P-Ms, the differentones right now, because most of them aredifferent depending–it’s depending on thevoltage that is being produced by thegenerator itself. But by varying that, likethat–and we had a voltmeter attached to itso that we knew exactly when we got to theexact desired speed that you had to have inorder for that generator–like one of thehouse units, I think it’s 300 rpm that youhave to be able to get to in order to get thatP-M-G set to work at its required speed. It’s the same on all of them, but, well, themain generators are 180 rpm. The A-9–

Storey: This is the ninth generator on the Arizonaside?

Boyce: Yes. That’s the ninth generator on theArizona side. It seems to me that it wastwo and hundred forty-three and a halfrpm. Well, if you don’t have somethingthat you can regulate up or down, you’renot going to get to that desired speed. It’sgoing to turn only at the fixed speed of thedrill or whatever, or, by the same token, bythe water input through the whole

117


generator. So I don’t know whetherReclamation uses that tester down thereanymore today or not. I have no idea whatthey do.

Storey: So you created this working forReclamation?

Boyce: No. I created it working for Water andPower.

Storey: Because it was work on the generator, andthat was a responsibility of Los AngelesWater and Power.


Storey: You mentioned, day before yesterday, thatone of the primary differences betweenworking for Reclamation and Los AngelesWater and Power was that you got to work“on the big stuff.” Could you talk moreabout that? What was your first bigproject?

Nature of the Work for Los Angeles Water andPower

Boyce: Well, generally on about a month to two-months basis, you were required to checkand test the pressures of the carbon brushes

118


that slide on the collector rings to feed thepower down into the generator, and that’scoming from the pilot exciter and the mainexciter above. The P-M-G, as I said theother day, is isolated so that it onlyproduces power for the governor. That’sall it does. Then a voltage is impressed onthe pilot exciter that can be varied, and it’sdone by a resistance adjustment. Itproduces down at 125 volts D-C to themain exciter, which is 250 volts D-C,which is also adjustable. That, in turn, goesdown and feeds to the coils on the rotor,and then the rotor produces lines of fluxthat are cut by the field on the outside forthe production of power at 16,500 volts. So you’re talking about going fromnothing up here, starting with a batterybank to produce power to the pilot exciterat 125 volts, from thence to 250 volts, andthen from 250 volts to 16,500 volts.

Now, we would have to overhaulthe oil pumps that the governor systemuses, and each pair of generators isconnected to two consecutive governors sothat they can be cross-fed from one to theother. You don’t necessarily have to haveall of the P-M-Gs doing all of the differentthings at all the same time.

119


“It’s a very large education to take apartgenerators . . . where you take the rotor out and

set it in the floor, and this is in excess of 600 ton .. .”

It’s a very large education to take apartgenerators, and I mean you take them rightdown to where you take the rotor out andset it in the floor, and this is in excess of600 ton that you’re moving at a time, andgoing in and, shall we say, re-wedging,repairing coils or replacing coils that mighthave become damaged–you may have had aflashover–then putting it all back togetheragain. It’s a tremendous education,particularly a person of trades that isrequired to work on this stuff. It’s notsomething that you just walk in off of thestreet and do. You have to learn it.

Storey: What goes wrong with generators? Youmentioned “flashovers.”

Boyce: A flashover, yes.

Storey: What’s that?

Flashovers Can Occur When InsulationDeteriorates in Generators

Boyce: Insulation breaks down on the winding. If

120


the insulation breaks down, it’ll flash overto ground, and actually it will start a fire.

Storey: Did that ever happen?

There Is a Fire Suppression System on theGenerators

Boyce: Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. But you have yourown CO2 [fire suppression] system. You’ve got banks and banks and banks ofCO2 systems that, if something goes fault,it automatically–

Storey: It automatically fires the CO2.

Boyce: The CO2. Right. Bus [bar] goes to ground. It’s happened.

Storey: Does it happen a lot?

Boyce: No. No, it doesn’t.

Storey: Why?

Boyce: Because of the insulation factor.

Storey: Is that because the O&M is done in such away as to avoid those kinds of problems?

Boyce: That’s what you do them for. You’re

121


looking for those kind of problems beforethey happen.

Storey: So how often, for instance, would LosAngeles Water and Power take apart agenerator to rewind it?

For the Large Jobs on Generators Los AngelesWould Send in a Special Crew

Boyce: Only with the agreement of Reclamationon the replacement schedule. Generally agenerator would not come down for re-wedging or something like that anywheresfrom, I think, probably five to seven years,something like that. Then Los Angeleswould bring a crew in from L-A and takethem apart and put them back togetheragain after the work was done.

Storey: This is where you have to pull the rotor.

Boyce: Uh-huh.

Storey: So it was a fairly common, routine thing.

“They generally came in and did overhauls onceor maybe twice a year they would bring the big

crews in. . . .”

Boyce: They generally came in and did overhauls

122


once or maybe twice a year they wouldbring the big crews in.

“. . . using the air impact wrenches to undocoupling bolts and . . . things that have to be

handled with fifteen-ton cranes . . . just to hold themachinery in position . . .”

You know, you start talking about usingthe air impact wrenches to undo couplingbolts and like that, you’re talking aboutthings that have to be handled with fifteen-ton cranes or something similar in orderjust to hold the machinery in position to beable to put the air pressure on it at 125pounds per square inch to undo thesecouplings, and they take it all the waydown. See, a lot of times, because of thewater wear, they will have to repair thewicket gates or they will have to repair thebottom of the water wheel. Well, theywon’t necessarily take the rotor out, butthey’ll take the intermediate shaft out andthen take all of the bottom works, and itjust goes down until it’s just nothing but asteel slide right out to the river. It’ssometimes a very scary but enlighteningsituation when you open up the scroll caseand go down inside the scroll case andwalk around where the water comes in outof the great big penstock pipe, thirteen foot

123


in diameter, throwing water at you, andthey, a lot of times, leak and leak quitebadly. They have to go in there withwetsuits and adjust those wicket gates. Alot of times they are able to schedule downa penstock, a whole penstock, and thenthey can do a lot more, shall we say,massive overhaul of equipment in thescroll case, which would be–


Boyce: ...bring them into the machine shop, chuckthem up on the big lathe. Actually, theycall it a boring mill. It’s nothing but alathe turned on its bottom. You say you’regoing to turn a sixteen-foot-in-diameterpiece of steel that might weigh, oh,probably thirty, fifty tons, and you cut it,machine it, weld on it, do whatever youhave to do. So there’s a lot of heavyequipment involved.

I know they’ve had the old boringmill out and have just got it back in serviceagain down there now. Harvey was tellingme that they had got it back into service. There are only three boring mills of thissize on the entire West Coast: one here atHoover, one in L-A, and one in Bremerton,

124


Washington.

Storey: At the naval shipyard, I’ll bet.

Boyce: I would believe so. That’s the only placethat there is equipment that big, big enoughto handle, shall we say, water wheels, wearrings, and like that.

Storey: But that kind of stuff doesn’t sound like anelectrician’s responsibility to me.

Boyce: No, that part is not. The electricians’responsibility, of course, would be in thewindings, the field pieces.

Storey: When you say it’s overhauled, does thatmean it’s completely rebuilt, completelyrewound?

Boyce: In some instances it has been. I mean,you’re talking about the ultimate. But N-8,that’s Nevada Number 8, which is the lastone in the Nevada wing, I think they haveprobably rewound it twice. Once was partof the upgrading, but the first time that itwas rewound, it was because of a failure. The winding failed. N-8 is an oversizeunit, but it just wouldn’t produce, shall wesay, on a long sustaining run the poweroutput that the others were producing.

125


Illustration 9: Powerhouse floor at Hoover duringconstruction with two water wheels on the right, twostationary winding housings to the upper left, andwicket gates staged to the left of the rear water wheelto which the stub shaft is attached.

126


Illustration 10: Installing stationary windings in theirhousing at Hoover Dam.

127


Like in the case of Arizona 3 and Arizona4, I think they rewound them twice, and it’sa situation there where it went phase-to-phase ground, come in and strip it out andstart over again. One of them, I think theygot to the point where they even unstackedthe core iron of the rotor, put it all backtogether again.

Storey: Did you work on that kind of work?

Boyce: To a point. I worked on the electrical partof it, but there’s all kinds of machinists andheavy gang workers, and they’re probablyin the machinist trade, that were involvedin the actual mechanical parts.

Having One Screw Missing During RoutineMaintenance Can Cause Serious Problems

Just as a silly for-instance, somehowduring one of the nighttime service jobsthat the operators did, when they went toput the screens back over the air spaces,they found that they were one screw shortfor all of the screws that go in to holdthese, shall we say, like a louver screen, airlouver, but one of those was missing. Thatgenerator cannot run. It’s shut down. It’slocked out. With the crane operator, I wasin charge, and we disconnected the P-M-G

128


up on top, took the outer housings off allthe way down to the thrust bearing, theyhad people searching all of the deckspaces, all of the floor. It was finallyfound on the floor, that screw. Then weput it back together again.

Storey: Explain to me why.

Boyce: That one item–

Storey: This was a little screw maybe an inch anda half long we’re talking about?

Boyce: Yep, yep. With a wing nut on it so thatyou could hold it to thread it into the–itmight be a half-inch, thirteen thread, whereit goes into the housing. You’ve got to beable to turn it so you weld a wing nut ontothe top of the thing so that it can thread inand hold. But if that were to get caught inthe winding, magnetically it would pick itup [pop sound] just that quick. And thenjust imagine what kind of damage that itcould do in one revolution.

Storey: See, I don’t know. Tell me.

Boyce: It could tear a winding apart. It could shortthem out. It could, shall we say, basicallytotally disintegrate the use of that generator

129


until it could completely be rebuilt back tonormal. But that’s just a for-instance. Thatdid happen.

Changing out the Transformers on thePowerhouse Deck

Now, the huge transformers thatwere out on the ramp, 179 ton, we hadchanged them out one by one. It might beone here and maybe a month later or twomonths later you’d put another one in, ormaybe that one back into another hole andreconnect it to the bus, put it back inoperation, but you’d have to take one out,to get it out of the way first, bring the otherone, bring it back, put it back in the hole,put it back together again. As a workingforeman, I’ve changed out a whole bunchof them, and I knew my crew well enoughthat I could get the cooperation and changeone of them out in about fourteen hours. Normally it would take two to three days. A waste of time, but we got it down to apoint where we’d start at about the crack ofdaylight, and we’d be back in service,heating the iron up, like that, five-, sixo’clock at night. But no one ever hadchanged out a transformer that way in thelength of time that I could get my crew todo it. Other people had tried it, and it

130


would take them anywhere from two tothree days.

Storey: Now, when you became a workingforeman, how many people were yousupervising?

Boyce: Five journeyman wiremen and twohelpers.

Storey: Were there a lot of crews like that?

Boyce: No, that was all there was here.

Storey: So you were the foreman.

As a Working Foreman [Sub-Foreman], HisOfficial Title Was Senior Electrical Mechanic

Boyce: Well, they call them a senior mechanic. Now, the official rating is an electricalmechanic. All right. An electricalmechanic for the city of Los Angelesrequires that you be able to work onanything oil, gas, water, or electric. Sothen, when you’re promoted to, shall wesay, working foreman status, you’reactually a senior mechanic. In otherwords, you’re one cut above the normalmechanic, but you work just the way theywork, and you do the supervising of that

131


group while you’re at it. It’s just addedresponsibilities.

Consequently, you get paid moremoney. But from there you went to thefull foreman if you had two crews, threecrews, something like that, you would havea senior mechanic over each one of thesecrews, see?

Storey: Did you become a senior mechanic?

Boyce: No, no, never did. I was a senior mechanic,yes. I was a senior mechanic and was paidfor it, but I never did become a fullforeman in that sense of the word.

Storey: Did you work for a full foreman?

Boyce: Yes.

Storey: Who was that?

Boyce: There was about four or five at differenttimes, because they would transfersomeplace else. Or for some reason they’dretire.

Storey: We’re talking about Los Angelespersonnel here.

132


Applied to Reclamation for a General ForemanPosition, but Was Not Selected for the Job

Boyce: Uh-huh, we are. I did, at one time, makeapplication to come back and go back towork for Reclamation. They had a G-F,general foreman, who was retiring, and Imade application for it. I felt that myexperience working with the generators,which they never did, would beadvantageous to the Reclamation to have,shall we say, a G-F that had this additionaleducation and information. I submitted mypapers, and like that, and they decided thatthey would promote in-house and not hireme back, which was fine. It didn’t worktoo bad for me. I got out anyway.

The Units at Hoover Dam Operated by LosAngeles Water and Power

Storey: Los Angeles Water and Power, which unitsdid they operate?

Boyce: Nevada, O Unit, which is the house, 1, 2,3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Arizona, A-1, 2, 3, 4, 9. Those between, 5, 6, 7, and 8 wereoperated by [Southern California] Edison,and we took care of the Arizona house unitthe same way, A-O.

133


Storey: Were there any major accidents while youwere working down at the dam?

Does Not Recall Any Accidental Deaths While HeWorked at Hoover Dam

Boyce: I don’t recall. I don’t recall any.

Storey: No accidental deaths?

Boyce: No.

Storey: No accidental injuries?

Boyce: Oh, there were some accidental injuries,yes. But as far as deaths were concernedor, shall we say, a major mutilation orsomething like that, I don’t recall any. One guy lost a finger off of his hand. Hewas a rigger, he, shall we say, got it in thewrong place at the wrong time, it was justpinched off by a heavy piece of equipment.

Storey: What’s a rigger?

Coordinating the Work of Two 300-Ton Cranes toLift Heavy Pieces

Boyce: A rigger is a guy that does the attachmentof the cables to, shall we say, to turn apiece of equipment over or to pick it up

134


and put it on the boring mill or put it in thelathe. That’s his job. He has a craneoperator up here. He does all the signalingand regulating how it’s picked up, turnedover, whatever happened to be and thatway. Like I say, I’ve seen an awful lot ofequipment, large equipment, picked up andmoved and no one get hurt. It’s reallyquite a feat, to me, to see all of this–now, ifthey were going to pull a rotor or pull thehousings and like that in order to getdeeper into an overhaul or something likethat, I, a lot of times, was assigned to, shallwe say, just be on standby to makewhatever corrections or whatever situationmight be in case of problems. Thegovernment would have at least one,generally two, electricians up on thecranes, the big cranes. Them are 300-ton. There would be one man on each cranebecause they have to operate in unison.

As a matter of fact, when they’regoing to make a major lift, like a rotor, likethat, they time the operating relays to makesure that they are perfectly in time becausethey work in steps–bang, bang, bang, bang,bang (clicking fingers with each “bang”),just like that. Everything is 100 percentoperation or 100 percent stop, and all ofthose time relays have to pick up in

135


sequence or they throw it out of balance. If it don’t work together, it ain’t no good.

Storey: So, picking something up with the crane ispretty complicated and delicate.

Boyce: It is a major . . . Yes. Like I say, whenyou say you’re going to pick up 600 tonbesides the lifting beams, the main liftingbeam itself weighs in excess of 60 ton. The saddle that pick up the lifting beam tohook to the main crane units, they’re somesixteen, eighteen ton each. The liftingcollar might be eight ton. So you add of allthem tons up, and you’re talking about–actually, you’re lifting in excess ofprobably 700 to 800 ton.

Storey: And you were saying it’s a 300-ton crane.

Boyce: It’s a 300-ton crane.

Storey: So you have to use two separate cranes?

Boyce: And you have to use two separate hooksalso. That’s why you use a bridging beamto hook the two together. Both of those150-ton hooks have to work in unisoncoming down and coming back up again.

Storey: Otherwise you unbalance your connection

136


and whatever you’re lifting.

Boyce: You can believe it or not, there’s a guy upthere with an instrument level, and hechecks–that’s how close it’s checked that itis perfectly level. And when they go tolift, you have two operators.

Storey: In two different locations?

Boyce: In two different locations, one in eachcrane, one in each bridge, and everyoperation is 100 percent on or 100 percentoff, and let the time delays do all the work,time-delay relays, and that’s where you getyour lifting power. It is really aninteresting major feat.

Storey: When you say that you have time delays,how long are these delays? Are they likeseconds apart?

Boyce: Just seconds apart.

Storey: Minutes apart?

Boyce: No, seconds, just seconds.

Storey: So it lifts a little bit then it stops?

Boyce: No, it does not relax. It keeps increasing

137


in speed as it comes up, see. That’s theway they click. They just click just likethat. You can be down on the floor andyou can hear them (makes finger-snappingclicking sound) just like that.

Storey: What kind of a mechanism is used?

Boyce: It’s a mechanical device. They’re called amercury time delay. In other words, it isthe amount of liquid mercury that willtravel through a certain orifice to areservoir, and that’s how they time it.

Storey: And how do they connect it together sothat they’ll both . . .?

Boyce: I would hesitate to try and tell you howmany relays there are in each step of thepick-up. I don’t know, but there’s severalin each level. There’s not just one part. There are maybe eight, ten, twelvedifferent relays that are allowing power tosurge on into the resistance banks as itcomes up in speed. It’s not just one; it’sseveral. And that’s on each hook in fourpositions, and those are operated by one guywho’s generally the rigger foreman. Tworiggers in the cranes, crane operator, andyou might have two or three or four downon the floor. Like I say, it is a major feat.

138


Storey: It sounds very complex. One of the things,you’ve mentioned that they send in anoutside crew to do major overhaul work.

Boyce: Heavy-duty maintenance work was part ofthe contract between Reclamation andWater and Power. Water and Power had acontract to maintain the overhaul, theservicing, all of the equipment in the damthat was pertinent to the dam. Theauxiliary equipment to that, the motors andblowers and lighting and this and that andthe other thing, like that, is all handled byReclamation as their part of the contract,but the other–it’s just like there was afence drawn down there, and you’re on thisside and I’m on that side. You didn’toverlap into other people’s property orcare.

Storey: When these crews came in, were sent in byLos Angeles, were they Los Angelesemployees?

Boyce: Employees. They worked for the city inthe city, possibly on steam units.

Storey: How was responsibility then split up? Whohad authority for overseeing the overhauland that sort of thing?

139


The Overhaul Crews Imported by the City of LosAngeles Were Supervised by an Electrical

Engineer and a Mechanical Engineer

Boyce: There was an electrical engineer and amechanical engineer on board.

Storey: At the dam?

Boyce: They were brought here to take care oftheir crews, and they made theassignments.

Storey: So they came with the crew that came in. They weren’t permanent staff at the dam.

Boyce: They came with the crew. No, no, not atall.

Storey: They knew what they were supposed to do,and then they had full responsibility.

Boyce: That’s exactly right.

Storey: Did they ever come to you and say, “Weneed you to work on X,” or did theygenerally stick to their own crews?

Boyce: They stuck to their own crews.

Storey: Interesting. So they would come in from

140


L-A, Los Angeles.

Boyce: Oh, yeah. They might have maybe thirty-,forty people that they would bring in.

Storey: And how long would they be here?

Boyce: Oh, they might be a month. They might betwo months, three months.

Storey: It just depended.

Repairing the Steel in Wicket Gates and WaterWheels

Boyce: Depended on what they run into. In a lotof cases, they might have to do weldingrepair on the wicket gates, they might haveto do a lot of rot. The water wheels,particularly like the one that’s right downthe hill down here, if you could look at itclosely, you’ll see that there’s big divots ofsteel that’s just torn out. It’s done bywater. They have to go in there and cutthat all out, either air-arc it out or they usea chipping gun, air-operated, and just chipit out with a chipping gun, like that, untilthey get down to raw iron or steel, and thenthey completely refill and regrind untilthey get it all smooth, back up again.

141


Storey: That one’s pretty obviously been repaired.

Boyce: Many times. And those, unless they runinto trouble, are done normally probablyon about a five-year basis, for a waterwheel. But they’re inspected, generally,once a year. We did the inspection.

Storey: When you say “we,” you mean yourselfpersonally?

Boyce: No. They would send an engineer in, butwe would unwater, open up the scrollcases, and so forth and so on, and then hewould go in and make his analysis. Thenthat would go back into the file, so forthand so on, the work that is programmed todo at such and such a time.

I have got to go to Las Vegas in justa little–

Storey: Since you have to leave, let me ask youagain whether or not you’re willing for theinformation on these tapes and theresulting transcripts to be used byresearchers.

Boyce: Oh, absolutely.

Storey: Great. Thank you very much.

142



Storey: This is Brit Allan Storey, senior historianof the Bureau of Reclamation,interviewing Harvey Wood Boyce onDecember the 18th, 1997, at about teno’clock in the morning in the regionaloffices of the Bureau of Reclamation inBoulder City, Nevada. This is tape one.

You know, in that picture albumyou showed me, you had a pay stub fromHoover Dam.

Boyce: From Babcock and Wilcox.

Storey: From Babcock and Wilcox. Tell me aboutthat, if you would.

Babcock and Wilcox Pay Stub of Charles KellySweet

Boyce: This pay stub was a receipt of earnings forthe previous week and what charges weretaken out from it before the final payat thebottom–his take home pay. It listed it forhospital benefits. I believe it was a dollarand a half for hospital benefits, and thatcovered the entire family at thegovernment hospital over here on the side

143


Illustration 11: Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kelly Sweetstanding in a 30' diameter penstock section ready tobe moved via cableway for use at Hoover Dam.

144

9. See the pay stub in the illustration on page 22.


of the hill. That belonged to Charles KellySweet, who was my stepfather, and hecame here to work on the dam in 1931,was employed by Babcock and Wilcox.9 Idon’t know, I think there was anothercompany, for Six Companies,Incorporated, that he actually worked forbefore going to work for the Reclamationproject, which I think started in about ‘34-,‘35, when they started taking over a lot ofthe work in the dam. You know, when thecontractors was finishing up.

Storey: What about the program for thededication? Whose was that?

Boyce: That was brought home by my mother ormy stepfather because they were inattendance.

Saw President Franklin Delano Roosevelt Arriveat the Train Station in Boulder City, but Was Not

Taken to the Dedication Ceremony

I was not in attendance at that thing,although I was down at the railroad stationhere in Boulder [City] and watched thePresident [Franklin D. Roosevelt] andeverything like that coming off the train

145


and being transported to the dam for thededication and like that.

Storey: So he came out in a train.

Boyce: Yes, he came out in the train.

Storey: To the dedication. Did you see him getinto his car?

Boyce: Not on the return trip, no, or even on thedeparture there. They brought him off thetrain and on like that, and they could comeoff, shall we say, at dock level, and thenthey had a ramp down so they could getdown to the vehicles.

Storey: Was he walking?

Boyce: I just don’t recall. I just don’t recall. Itseems vaguely that he was in a wheelchair,being escorted down the ramp, shall wesay, so that they could put him in a vehicleto go to the dam.

Storey: Was there a lot of activity in town for thededication?

Boyce: Well, there seemed to be a lot of people,but, after all, Boulder City was, shall wesay, a very small, government-regulated

146


town, and there was not a lot of things todo or people to see or anything else, as faras that’s concerned.

Storey: Was there a particular reason you didn’t goto the dedication?

Boyce: It wasn’t my mother’s and stepfather’sdesire to take me. Actually, by the time ofthe dedication, I was just starting myeighth-grade year. My wife came witha–from St. George, Utah, by five-ton truck. A bunch of kids from the high school andcollege in St. George transported down tosee the dedication at the dam itself, but Iwas not part of it.

Storey: You mentioned that your family was anLDS family.

Boyce: That’s true.

Storey: Did you remain LDS?

Boyce: Yes.

Storey: What part did–what is it, a stake here? What part did the LDS church play in thecommunity here for you all?

Boyce: It was, shall we say, a small community of

147


people. Of course, as a very early teenagerand like that, I wasn’t really interested inany church, really, as far as that part’sconcerned, but, yeah. we went to church onSundays, and we went to primary, as theycall it, during the week on Wednesdays inthe afternoon after school. That’s justbasically the sum and substance of it at thatparticular time.

Storey: So there wasn’t a lot of social activityaround that church?

Boyce: No, not really. Now, the old chapel house,the meeting house, was trucked intoBoulder City and set down on the cornerthere at G and Arizona and Utah. In lateryears, it was sold and was trucked back toLas Vegas and is in operation in Las Vegasin some other church associationaffiliation, not Mormon.

Storey: It’s not LDS any longer.

Boyce: Uh-huh. But that was after they built thelarge chapel at Fifth and G. I can’t tell youjust exactly when it was put in operation. Iknow at the time that it was built and likethat, that I was [an] electrician and Idonated a lot of time to assisting the wiringand on like that at the church. It was

148


donated, shall we say, time in lieu ofmoney. But an awful lot of churchbuildings and on like that were made bythat kind of a situation where it wasdonated labor in lieu of cash.

Storey: Los Angeles Water and Power, did theyhave social activities among theiremployees here?

Los Angeles Water and Power Had OccasionalSocial Activities for Employees and Families

Boyce: Only maybe once, maybe twice a year. Yes, if somebody was retiring or leaving,shall we say, and going back to service inL-A, they might have a little party. Eachyear they would have what they called apicnic, and it consisted of horse rides forthe young children, different feats of skill,horseshoes, all different games, drivingnails, women particularly driving nails tosee who could drive one down thequickest. And fly casting or bait castinglike if you were going fishing, andhorseshoes. These went on all afternoon,and there were prizes for the winners ofeach one of these different events.

When I was a working foreman, Iorganized and was the chairman of the

149


picnic and dance and everything like that,that was put on one particular year, matterof fact, in 1976. At night they would hirean orchestra, and be dancing, and theywould have a midnight buffet, and it wasall handled and paid for by the EmployeesAssociation out of Los Angeles. They stilldo it in Los Angeles, but they don’t comeup here and do it anymore.

Presence of Los Angelenos in Boulder City

There’s not that many–yes, there’s quite afew retired L-A people, not just Water andPower, but police departments and firedepartments and like that. There are lotsof them in the Las Vegas metropolitanarea. Even after we were all retired andlike that, they used to have one here.

Now, Water and Power has activeemployees, I don’t know, maybe ten,fifteen employees, still in Boulder City. Some of them live in Henderson or someof them live in Vegas or they live inBoulder City, and they travel the powerlines and do the maintenance and upkeepof the power station down at what they callMcCullough, and the marketplace is theother one. There are two different mainswitchyards down there.

150


Storey: Would Reclamation employees be invitedto these also?

Boyce: Certain ones would, yes, the projectmanager and their spouse, I mean certain,shall we say, key people. They would notnormally be blue-collar. They wereinvited by the Department [of Water andPower] to come and participate and enjoy.. . They’d have, shall we say, a barbecuedinner about 3:30-, 4:00 o’clock, andeverybody was invited to come. Theywould have drinks, Coca Cola, Pepsi, orlike that, a little three-two beer and thelikes of that. That was basically on allafternoon. You could go get a beer to cooloff, because it was on the little triangleproperty as you go down NevadaHighway, just across the street from theWater and Power building that’s still here.

Dancing in the Los Angeles Water and PowerBuilding

The dance and everything was held in thatbuilding. It has a nice parquet floor and alittle, shall we say, alcove for orchestra tobe out of the way, and a lot of meetingswere held there. As a matter of fact, I usedthe building as a teacher of Red Crosslifesaving school and like that, which I

151


carried a emergency supply kit in the trunkof my car for a good many years to renderemergency aid in case of an accident orsomething like that, but I also taught thefirst aid class.

Storey: Did you socialize with any Reclamationfolks besides at those kinds of events?

Boyce: No.

Storey: Besides your son, maybe.

Boyce: No. He probably a lot more than me. Mywife worked at the Bureau of Mines, andwe became quite friendly with one of theengineers, and I can’t tell you whether hewas a physicist, a chemist, or what he was,but he and his wife. We a lot of timeswould go out on picnics on a weekend andone thing and another like that, but once ina while we’d get together with several ofthe guys that I worked with, and we’d goto a show at the hotels in Vegas orsomething like that. The sorority wouldput on a spaghetti dinner or something likethat, and everybody would be sitting therewith white shirts on and trying to makesure that you didn’t get any red sauce onyour shirt. (Laughter)

152


Storey: The sorority?

Boyce: Beta Sigma Phi Sorority. They had agroup of it here in town, and my wifebelonged to it. This was a favorite sport,to get everybody all cleaned up and thenfeed them something like spaghetti, soeasily wind up with little red spots all overyour shirt.

Interactions with Reclamation Employees at Work

Storey: What about when you were down at work? Was there a lot of interaction withReclamation employees?

Boyce: No, not really. Now, I knew an awful lot ofthem. A lot of the other guys that workedfor Water and Power maybe did not knowthem. I knew them for having workedwith Reclamation thirteen years, and theywere never associated with them. Youknow, they’d say hi or, you know, theyknew them in that sense, but they didn’tever socialize or have activities outside ofwork. Even during work time, yes, if theycame in the shop, they’d be checking theelectrical equipment in our shop, and wewould be, shall we say, in and out gettingdifferent tools or whatever it happened tobe that we needed at that particular point in

153


time.

Storey: You were together but not together.

Boyce: We were together but not together, right.

Storey: I’m a little confused about the steps thatyou went through when you were workingfor Los Angeles Water and Power. Youstarted as an electrician.


Storey: Then you mentioned a sort of anintermediate step where a person wouldsupervise maybe four or five people, as Irecall.

Boyce: Yeah, or it could even be more than that.

Storey: Did you move up that step?

Boyce: I moved up that step.

Storey: And was that a promotion?

“At one time, in the changing of foreman at thedam, they didn’t change one for three months,and I operated the maintenance of the dam for

that three months. . . .”

154


Boyce: That was a promotion. It generally,probably, maybe a dollar an hour moremoney than the other guys received. Butyou took on the responsibility ofsupervision. If the foreman was off, youfilled in. You took over his job. At onetime, in the changing of foreman at thedam, they didn’t change one for threemonths, and I operated the maintenance ofthe dam for that three months.

Storey: Oh, you mean one left and he wasn’treplaced?

Boyce: He wasn’t replaced for a period of threemonths. So I had all the experience, shallwe say. I bid the equipment out to do themaintenance work on it and on like that,and we had special forms that we had tomake out, and they had to go through thechain of command and be signed and soforth and so on.

Storey: What was the title of that position?

Boyce: Senior electric mechanic.

Storey: How many senior electric mechanics werethere?

Boyce: One.

155


Storey: So there was only one crew of four or fivepeople.

Boyce: I think we had a machinist and six or sevenelectricians and two helpers, and that wasthe size of the maintenance crew.

Storey: Then what did the foremen supervise,besides that crew?

Boyce: He would be over the top of me andeverybody else in the shop. That’s all.

Storey: So that would be the machinist and–

Boyce: Yes, and the rest of the electrical crew.

Storey: And there wasn’t an intermediate stepbetween that senior position and theforeman position.

Boyce: No, there was no intermediate step.

Storey: When did you become the senior electricmechanic, was it?

Boyce: I believe that it was in ‘78. There’s twodifferent things that are in my mind, andactually I want to say February the 8th of‘80, but, actually, that’s the date mybrother died. But other things happened to

156


me on that same particular day that weremomentous, you know, in my lifetime. Ican’t say definitely that it was not thatparticular point in time that I was made asenior mechanic.

Storey: I’m a little confused, because a fewminutes ago you said in ‘76, when youwere foreman, you supervised the picnic.

Boyce: When I was a working foreman or seniormechanic. It’s synonymous.

Storey: Okay. Then you became a full-fledgedforeman?

Boyce: No, never did.

Storey: You were a working foreman through yourcareer, then.

When He Decided to Retire He Was Asked toBecome Foreman at the Castaic Powerplant

Boyce: Throughout the rest of my career, yes. When I had made out my retirement papersand like that, the power engineer from L-Acame and specifically asked me if I wouldtake a job as foreman at the Castaic

157

10. The powerplant is located north and slightly west of Los Angelesand the San Fernando Valley.


Powerplant10 and take care of all themaintenance at Castaic Powerplant.

Storey: What’s that?

Boyce: It’s a reservoir-type powerplant. Theydischarge the water from the lake abovedown through the generators in order toproduce power. At night, when the powerload is down, the demand, they pump itback up the hill and put it back in thereservoir.

Storey: Where is this?

Boyce: At Castaic. C-A-S-T-A-I-C.

Storey: Okay. It’s another L-A facility?

Boyce: It’s another facility in L-A, yes.

Storey: I believe you told me you retired in ‘82.

Boyce: ‘82. May 1, ‘82.

Storey: Why did you decide to retire?

He Wasn’t Paid for Serving as Foreman of the

158


Shop and Decided to Retire When He Reachedthe Point His Health Insurance Would Be Paid by

Los Angeles

Boyce: After having, shall we say, serving thatparticular for three months’ period of time,and I was not paid any extra money for thethree months that I covered the foreman’sjob. The situation, to me, became a littlebit unbearable, and at the time of myretirement, there was an economic stepwhere my health insurance is paid for bythe city of Los Angeles today, and once Imet that plateau, which was twenty-eightyears, then I could retire, and I retired with59.9 percent of my base salary, base salarybeing the neighborhood of twenty-seven-,twenty-eight hundred a month. I had justfinally got to the point I was fed up witheverything, and I decided I wanted out. This put me forty-one years working in thepowerhouse. So, I felt that, you know,that’s a lifetime of work–forty-one years.

Storey: Plenty of time to put in, huh.

Boyce: That’s right. So I do draw a smallretirement from Reclamation. Of course,your retirement at, shall we say, the 60percent bracket, just about per month youwould draw the equivalent of about two

159


weeks’ pay that you would normally earn,and, unfortunate, for me, not being awareof what was going on in the sense that theywere bargaining for wages, the first of Julythey got a 10 percent raise and thefollowing year they got a six and a halfpercent raise. So if I’d stayed on anotherthree or four years, I would havemonetarily have boosted my salary quite abit.

Storey: If you’d stayed on five years, you wouldhave run up against the end of the contractwith Los Angeles Water and Power.

Boyce: That’s true. Right.

Storey: Did you have any contacts that gave youinsights into the way Los Angeles Waterand Power reacted to not being renewed, tothat contract not being renewed?

Believes That Los Angeles Did Not Want toContinue to Operate the Powerplant Units it Had

under Contract

Boyce: The only thing that I know is that it wasmentioned around in the crew thatsomeplace down the line, Reclamation isgoing to be back asking us [meaning theCity of Los Angeles] to take it back, which

160


I believe actually happened, but they said,“No. We’re fed up with it. We don’t needit any longer, and we’ll buy our power atthe power station.”

Storey: What else do we need to talk about, aboutyour career with Reclamation and [L-A]Water and Power?

Boyce: I don’t really bring anything to mind thatwould be something that you would desireto have on tape. I can’t think of anythingright offhand that I ought to get on record.

Storey: It just occurred to me, you ran the taxiservice.

Boyce: Yes.

Storey: Did you ever taxi any of the Reclamationor the construction people like FrankCrowe?

Boyce: No. That was in 1940-‘41 that I did that. That was before I went to work forReclamation. I went to work forReclamation–

Storey: So it was too late.

Boyce: Yes.

161


Storey: You wouldn’t have gotten somebody likeBrig Young.

Boyce: No.

Storey: Okay, did you ever meet any of thosefolks?

Boyce: No.

Old Nig

Storey: You told me about Nig yesterday. Whatwas he like? Was he a really friendly dogor what?

Boyce: Very friendly, and there was not a man thatwas on any crew that didn’t basically, shallwe say, love that dog. They always madesure that he had gotten his lunch and goton the double-decker and down to the damor coming back again. He was notboisterous, was not an agitating type ofdog. He was very quiet. [He] kneweverything that was going on, but he wasjust a quiet dog. He never barked at peopleor anything like that.

Storey: He didn’t roam around town a lot, stuckright around that café?

162


Boyce: Stuck right around the Green Hut Café.

Storey: Well, if you don’t have anything furtheryou want to talk about–

Boyce: At this point in time I really don’tremember anything, you know, that wehaven’t discussed.

The Ceremony They Had When He Graduatedfrom Apprentice to Journeyman Electrician

Storey: I have another question I want to ask you. Did they have a ceremony or anythingwhen you graduated to be a journeyman?

Boyce: Yes.

Storey: What was it like?

Boyce: It was a situation where the regionaldirector, the project director, and someother people besides the crew and theforemen and mechanics and–I’m talking ofall different trades–all met on the balconyon the Nevada wing, and the presentationwas made by the director.

Storey: The regional director.

Boyce: Yes. L. R. Douglas. That was all handled

163


at that particular point in time, it wassomething that went on, probably, for halfto an hour of time. It was very interestingfor me, I mean in the fact that I was therecipient. It gave me a lot of pride that Iwas being recognized for the effort that Ihad put in, in getting it accomplished.


Storey: You were very pleased with that.

Boyce: Oh, yes.

Storey: What other avenue would you have had tobecome an apprentice and then ajourneyman if you hadn’t had this formalprogram within Reclamation?

How You Would Become a Journeyman BeforeReclamation Created the Apprenticeship Program

Boyce: The normal procedure up until the startingof the apprentice program was a manwould hire out in the electrical crew andbecome a helper and, shall we say,basically learn the trade from the mechanicthat he was working with. The apprenticeprogram did provide, shall we say, abetter-trained electrician than you would

164


normally run into, because they wouldonly be working in, shall we say, oneparticular type of work at a time, where theapprentice was required to cover eighteencategories of the telephones, cranes,lighting, like that, so that you had thetheory behind it by correspondence school,and you got credit for the hours that youput in in that category, and it was theforeman’s responsibility to make sure thatyou got in all those different categories,and you worked with whoever he felt wasthe best qualified electrician to teach you.

Storey: Now, you got this program going?

Boyce: Yes.

Storey: Were there other people who then got intothe program at the same time you were inthe program?

Boyce: They got into the program probably withina matter of six months to a year. They gotinto the program, but mine was the onlyone to start off with that was–and theydecided that they needed to havemachinists, plumbers, carpenter,automotive mechanic the same way,because they had, shall we say, the oldgarage, the government garage, they had,

165


shall we say, maybe twenty-five, thirty,maybe more, vehicles that were picked upand used every day and then brought back,and they were serviced at night, and thelikes of that. If it broke down someplace,they went out and took care of it and got itback going again.

Storey: So it sounds to me as if they saw anadvantage to using this apprenticeshipprogram.

Boyce: Yes, because it gives them basic bettertrained people.

Storey: Because they can insist on thequalifications.

Boyce: Right, and the schooling that you had tohave in conjunction with the actual work,normally, the Electricians Union in LasVegas, they had an apprentice programgoing. Almost every union shop in thenation has an apprentice program, butReclamation never had any. As I said inthe previous record, I forced it to be.

Storey: Say you had used the traditional route tobecome an electrician. Who would thenhave decided that you were an electrician,sort of given you your flight wings, as it

166


were?

Boyce: It would probably be–the foreman wouldtalk to the electricians and on like that,“Well, how’s he doing? How’s hequalified in this particular phase of thework? Does he know enough to go on toanother part?”

My sojourn in the military, I went toelectrical school at Ames, Iowa–Iowa StateCollege–and graduated fifty-fourth in aclass of two hundred and two. Then, afterbeing overseas for eighteen months andmore, I came back and went back toanother electricians school, and from thatone, which was a preliminary to the, shallwe say, the master’s school at Arlington,Virginia. And basically you were takingan electrical engineer degree in ninemonths, and let me tell you, they justalmost open the head and pour it in,because it is tough.

Storey: They pushed on it, huh?

Boyce: Oh, yes. So when I got the programstarted here, I had to, shall we say, getcopies of my hours of training and so forthand so on from the Navy Department togive to Reclamation, and it was my

167


responsibility to do it, not theirs, at leastthat’s the way it was put to me, and I hadto go to the Bureau of Naval Personnel inWashington and get copies of my record. So actually, as I said before, the amount ofhours in training was eight thousand hours. Well, the schooling that I had had and theother work that I had done as a helper andlike that all counted against that maximumtimeframe. So I think that I hadsomewheres just over three thousand hoursthat I actually had to complete in order tohave my apprenticeship time in.

The apprentice program got started,I believe, in 1946, or if not ‘46, it wasstarted in ‘47, but I believe it was ‘46, andafter even I completed the amount ofhours, they wouldn’t promote me up, theyjust held me in the 90 percent bracket until,shall we say, basically they were forced todo something about it, because anotheragency [office] of Reclamation was aboutto graduate somebody else, and that wouldrob them of being the first in the nation toaccomplish this.

Storey: When you became a journeyman, did youget a promotion?

Boyce: Oh, yes.

168


Storey: And a pay increase?

Boyce: Yes.

Storey: So your title went from–

Boyce: From an apprentice to a journeymanwireman. I am a qualified journeymanwireman. Now, a journeyman wireman isallowed, through, shall we say, the unionto work in construction or maintenance,either one. Now, most of the apprenticesin electricity that came behind me, theywere not required to take the study coursesthat I took. They were allowed to take,shall we say, powerhouse electricianschooling or something else, but they didnot basically cover the schooling that Icovered.

Storey: Um-hmm. Were you a union member?

Joined the Union in 1948

Boyce: Yes.

Storey: When did you join the union?

Boyce: 1948.

Storey: So that would have been after you came

169


back to Reclamation, a couple years or so?

Boyce: Yeah. Because I came back in–I think itwas November of ‘45.

Storey: What union did you join?

Boyce: I-B-E-W.

Storey: International Brotherhood of ElectricalWorkers.

Boyce: Local 357.

Storey: Did you have to join that union?

Boyce: No.

Storey: Why did you choose to join that union?

Wages at the Dam Were Lower than “Working offthe Bench” at the Union, but the Work Was Steady

Boyce: I don’t know. Almost everybody that wasin the electricians’ shop all belonged to theunion. Shall we say, I think that my uniondues were something like four dollars amonth, and it does carry an insurancecoverage as well as retirement. Havingworked the required time and worked inmaintenance, you draw a different

170


retirement income than you would if youworked as a journeyman wireman outside. The wages at the dam was always lowerthan they were working off of the bench inLas Vegas or going to the test site orsomething like that. You paid a lot higherdues. You also receive a much higherpension.

Storey: When you say “working off the bench,”you mean–

Boyce: That’s in, shall we say, union vernacular. If you’re on the bench, in other words,you’re sitting on a bench waiting to get anassignment for somebody who calls in andwants to hire a journeyman wireman. So ifyou were on the bench, you wereunemployed. You were there to, shall wesay, to get a new job.

Storey: So they got better pay but not as steady, Iguess.

Boyce: That’s right. I had several opportunities togo to the test site as an electrician. I said,“Well, there’s one thing about this, itmight not pay as much as you guys get, butI get the same check every month. I’m noton the bench, off the bench, on the bench,you know. I get the same amount of

171


money no matter what. Yeah, I pullovertime and like that.” But that’s the wayI felt about it, that I would take the lesserpay and I could survive with it, shall wesay.

Storey: How did the union affect your work forReclamation? Or how did the unioninteract with Reclamation maybe is theway I ought to put this.

How the Unions Worked with Reclamation toEstablish Salaries for the Trades

Boyce: The union and Reclamation would puttogether a “wage board,” and then theywould meet and adjudicate the possibilitiesof a raise or whatever conditions that theywere, shall we say, working for. Otherthan just strictly the adjudication of, shallwe say, job conditions and the likes of that,that’s where it was all handled. It washandled through a “wage board.”

Storey: Were there other unions represented atHoover?

Boyce: Oh, yes, Teamsters, Plumbers andPipefitters. There’s the possibility thatthey had one in the Rigging and CraneOperators and like that, and they had to be

172


certified, so they were generally all unionpeople.

Storey: How did the unions decide or demarcatewho did what and who didn’t do what?

Boyce: I don’t know. I do not know, but it wassomething that they would sit down andarbitrate, you know, shall we say, in ameeting right here or maybe in the Bureauof Mines conference room or maybe somehotel in Las Vegas or some place wherethey could have enough space to handlethe–because internationals would sendrepresentatives as well as the localrepresentatives, the business agent andgenerally the president.

Storey: I keep hearing scattered stories aroundReclamation about fairly complex projectswhere you have different unions involvedand, you know, it’s a matter of–

Boyce: Jurisdiction?

Storey: Yeah. Did those kinds of things come up?

Boyce: Not in any way that I know.

Storey: Tell me about overtime when you wereworking for Reclamation.

173


Boyce: Working for Reclamation, now, in mostcases the overtime was not–because youhad an electrician and a helper on dutytwenty-four hours a day. So we workedthree shifts, eight-hour shifts, so if therewas something of emergency nature orsomething like that, then you might worksome overtime. But it was not a verycommon thing with the government towork overtime. I worked hundreds ofhours for Water and Power in overtime.

Storey: But not for Reclamation.

Boyce: But not for Reclamation, no.

Storey: If you did work overtime for Reclamation,were you paid for it?

Boyce: Yeah, one and a half times your pay.

Storey: Do you remember any specific situationswhere you worked overtime?

Working Overtime at Reclamation

If a Generator Broke down the Resident Crew atthe Dam Did Work Preparatory to Arrival of the

Crew from Los Angeles

Boyce: I was trying to run that around through my

174


skull here. Sometimes when you wouldhave a generator breakdown, you mightpull some overtime then. Sometimes itmight be the fact that the breakdownoccurred, shall we say, in the afternoon. Well, you just don’t shut everything downat four o’clock and go home. You keep ongoing until you, shall we say, get down towhere–by the same token, something likethat with Water and Power, they wouldimmediately have a crew on the road, andthat crew would be here in Boulder City inone eight-hour day, they would be hereready to go to work, and then they wouldjust take over. All you were doing as aReclamation employee was assisting themuntil their arrival. There were certainthings that they knew that they could do. The electrician for Water and Power woulddo the disconnects for them and like that,and they could go ahead and start takingthe generator down.

Dealing with the Bearings on A-3 and A-4

There was a problem with the start-up of A-3 and A-4, and, matter of fact,they wiped a lot of bearings. I don’t knowwhether it was a bad mix or what, becausethe bearings had to be poured and thenmachined.

175


Storey: Poured and machined.

Boyce: Yes. Liquid. It was put on the bearingbase so that the bearing would run on arunner plate. It is delicate enough youonly touch it with a Kleenex tissue. Youdon’t rub your hands on it. You don’t usea rag on it. It is a very precision piece ofmachinery. We had a lot of trouble wipingout bearings. They were working on A-3,and Water and Power was in charge of theoil filter system. They set up a filter forReclamation, and at four o’clock they shutdown. I was called, and they asked me if Iwould come down and take over the filterpress and operate it for a few hours so thatthey could get ready to kick the generatorover and let it run with oil being filteredout and back in again to see if they wouldpick up any metallic or anything like thatout of it.

“. . . between A-3 and A-4, I spent six months ofworking anywheres from four to maybe sixteen

hours a day. An awful lot of that was overtime . ..”

Actually, between A-3 and A-4, I spent sixmonths of working anywheres from four tomaybe sixteen hours a day. An awful lotof that was overtime, just operating that

176


pump, filter press.

Storey: Come down and help us out for a fewhours.

Boyce: Um-hmm. Yeah. Even on my weddinganniversary date, I had made a date withmy wife to go out, and I told my boss, whowas Water and Power, that I was going totake off, I’m going to go home. I said,“I’m not getting any rest. I’m just too tiredto rest, and I’m going to take her out fordinner.” By the time I got home fromdinner, they were on the phone. Theywanted me back down at the powerhouseagain. I went down and worked anothereight-hour day. All of that was overtime.

Had to Work on the Oil Filter Press to StopLeakage as Work on the Bearings Proceeded

I mean, I drew some tremendouschecks, believe me, but it was a realstruggle in the end before they finally gotwhere they decided that they couldleave–we had a Kingsbury man right herein the powerhouse keeping track ofeverything, and he told them, after Ihad–the filter press operates at a prettygood pressure, so oil will leak very easily,and when I came down to start operating

177


the filter press for them, there was oil leaksall over everything. Well, you can’t haveoil leaks all over the steel decks and likethat, and you’ve got to move around andkeep track of things. I told the man fromKingsbury, I said, “You say I can’t shutthis thing down, I’ve got to keep itrunning.” I says, “I’m going to shut itdown.” I said, “I can’t have all of this oilleaking around on the floor or on the deckof the generator and like that. It’s got to becleaned up. It can’t get into the generator,because it would just foul everything.”

He said, “Yeah, I can understandthat.” He says, “Well, go ahead and shut itdown,” which I did, and I repiped it, put itback together again, and I had no leaks. So his decision was, from that point on, “Ifthere’s any overtime going to be done,you’re the only one that’s going to do it.” And that’s why–I mean, I couldn’t evenhave one of my own crew or the othercrew that was working to come over andrelieve me. They had to take care ofeverything else, and I had to take care ofthat filter press, and it run, shall we say,twenty-four hours a day.

Storey: What’s a Kingsbury man?

178


Boyce: The bearings that the generator runs on,which is 800 tons of mass riding on one-eighth segment of the bearing, and thatbearing is made by Kingsbury. That’s whyI referred to him as the Kingsbury man. He was the engineer that was here forKingsbury proper to oversee the work thatwas being done.

Storey: For instance, you said you repiped thismachine.

Boyce: Made, shall we say, basically all newconnections. These are steel hoses, andthey’re put together with union couplings.

Storey: But, that sounds like a plumber’s jobinstead of an electrician’s job.

“. . . you take care of oil, water, gas on thegenerator. Oil, water, gas. . . . that was why the

rating, instead of being just an electrician, iselectrical mechanic, because you took care of themechanical . . . parts involved with the generator. .

. .”

Boyce: That is one of those things that where itsays you take care of oil, water, gas on thegenerator. Oil, water, gas.

Storey: I see. So there are responsibilities that

179


look like they overlap into other trades.

Boyce: Oh, yeah. But that was why the rating,instead of being just an electrician, iselectrical mechanic, because you took careof the mechanical end or the mechanicalparts involved with the generator.

Storey: Was this when you were a workingforeman or was this when you were . . .?

Boyce: This was when I was just a electricalmechanic.

Storey: So you were not technically an electrician;you were an electrical mechanic.

Boyce: That’s right. My badge, going back andforth in the dam and like that, it waslabeled right on my badge and my pass thatI was an electrical mechanic. Well, Imight be electrical mechanic, but I’m ajourneyman wireman before that, first andforemost.

Storey: Uh-huh. Tell me about shifts during yourReclamation period.

Shifts While Working for Reclamation

Boyce: Well, I worked ten on and four off, ten on

180


and four off, and whatever shift you wereassigned to, you might work that for threemonths, and then you would rotate aheadone notch, whether it was from swing todays or whether it was from swing tograveyard, you know, but you workedthese periods, and basically about half ofthe crew was tied up with these ten andfour schedules while the other guys wereworking a normal work week of Mondaythrough Friday with Saturday and Sundayoff.

Storey: What’s a ten and four schedule? Thismeans you work ten days in a row?

Boyce: Ten day on and four days off. That wasfor the upkeep, and as I said, you have tobe there twenty-four hours a day in orderfor the, shall we say, the overlaps of thecrews going from one section to anothersection and on like that. They did it all ona ten and four schedule.

Storey: Then what were the hours of the threedifferent shifts?

Boyce: Normal shift was from eight o’clock tofour o’clock.

Storey: That was eight in the morning ‘til four in

181


the afternoon?

Boyce: In the afternoon, and the same for–fromfour o’clock until midnight, and frommidnight to eight o’clock.

Storey: And everybody was rotated through thoseshifts?

Boyce: At one time or another. There would onlybe so many allocated. There would be fourjourneymen and four helpers and a shiftforeman. Your normal twenty-four-hourday, the day shift man was responsible foreverything that went on, but the swing shiftand graveyard shift foreman, yes, he wasresponsible for everything that was goingon, but he had no people. If somethingbroke down, then he had the authority tocall somebody to cover that situation.

Storey: Sort of a skeleton crew.

Boyce: Yeah.

Storey: And then most of the work done during theday shift?

Boyce: Yes.

Storey: So the swing and graveyard shifts were the

182


. . .


Storey: This is an interview with Harvey WoodBoyce on December the 18th, 1997.

Boyce: Refresh me what we were talking about.

Storey: We were talking about the differencebetween graveyard and swing and whatwas done during the day shift.

“. . . graveyard and swing people, as far aselectricians were concerned, checked the

maintenance or the movement of equipment . . .”

Boyce: Well, the graveyard and swing people, asfar as electricians were concerned, checkedthe maintenance or the movement ofequipment–it might be a pump. it might bea blower–during the off hours. Itamounted to almost a five-mile trip coveringthe penstocks and everything else in thedam that had rotating equipment running.

Storey: So you mean they would walk around,make sure everything is doing what it wassupposed–

183


Boyce: Everything.

Storey: –that they could see it. It’s going aroundthe way it’s supposed to, that kind of stuff.

Boyce: And with your hand you would check thetemperature of the bearings and on likethat to make sure that they were notoverheating, because if they wereoverheating, then it needed to be taken outof service so that they could work on it thenext day on day shift, say. You spentprobably two to three hours just doing thecheck-up. We had lights on the ends of thewings in the powerhouse on each side, andyou had to go down and physically turnthem on at night as it got dark, and then, asit got daylight, you had to go back and turnthem off if you were on the graveyardshift. They were started on swing shift andthey were shut off on day shift, or regularshift. And you traveled the penstocks. That’s before they ever had the alarmsystems in there for water and like thatnow, as they do.

Storey: You mean you walked along the catwalks?

Boyce: Walked the catwalks.

Storey: Kept you in good shape, I’ll bet.

184


Boyce: Yes.

Storey: Was this one person or a group of people?

“. . . the mechanic or electrician. That was thefirst thing that he did . . . you started making your

rounds, and you covered every floor, everyblower, every air-conditioning system, anything,no matter what it was, as long as it was rotating

electrically . . .”

Boyce: One person, the mechanic or electrician. That was the first thing that he did rightafter he got into the shop, put his lunchaway, and you took off and you startedmaking your rounds, and you coveredevery floor, every blower, every air-conditioning system, anything, no matterwhat it was, as long as it was rotatingelectrically, the pumps. You checked allof them pumps, and there’s a lot of them.

Storey: Yes, I guess there were. Did you ever finda problem?

“. . . the idea being it is good preventativemaintenance. . . .”

Boyce: No, but the idea being it is goodpreventative maintenance. It isn’t sayingthat there might have been problems that

185


someone else run into. I didn’t say that. But I never did run into a problem that hadto have an emergency take-care.

Storey: When you were with Reclamation, did youdraw an unusual number of night shifts orgraveyard shifts or anything?

Everyone Rotated Through the Various Shifts

Boyce: No, no, no, it was strictly a balanced timeschedule. Six months of the year youwould be on the ten and four schedule andsix months of the year you’d be on theregular day shift schedule. So, shall wesay, everybody in the shop went through it.

Storey: Everybody rotated through it.

Boyce: Um-hmm.

Storey: Was there a similar system for LosAngeles Water and Power?

“Los Angeles Water and Power only rotated two[eight hour] shifts, and you would work six day

shifts and four graveyards. . . .”

Boyce: Los Angeles Water and Power only rotatedtwo shifts, and you would work six dayshifts and four graveyards. This was

186


established, shall we say, during the warbecause they could get some of the unitsoff the line, and they would be there forservice work, for servicing the brushes andblowing them out, checking what could bedone in, shall we say, a normal eight-hourday. You did an awful lot of work in theeight-hour day, but it was, shall we say, agraveyard shift. So you’d work six daysdouble back.

Storey: What does “double back” mean?

Boyce: We got off of work normally, the day shift,at four o’clock. You were back on bymidnight. That’s a double back.

Storey: So you were still on a ten and fourschedule.

For a Time Los Angeles Water and Power AllowedYou to Take Only One Day of the Weekend Off,

but That Changed over Time

Boyce: Still on a ten and four schedule. At onetime, Water and Power would only allowyou one day of the weekend, Saturday orSunday–Thursday, Friday, Saturday,Sunday, or Sunday, Monday, Tuesday onthe other side. In two years’ time after Iwent to work for them, they agreed to let

187


us have the full weekend off so we’d haveThursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday off. Sundays, you’d always go back Mondaymorning on the normal day shift and go sixdays, and then you would finish up withthe four graveyard.

Storey: When you say they only ran two shifts,does that mean two twelve-hour shifts aday?

Boyce: Two eight-hour shifts.

Storey: So there were parts of the day when theyweren’t–

Boyce: Not with Water and Power. They were notdown there.

Storey: They weren’t there, and what were thehours for those shifts?

Boyce: Eight o’clock until four o’clock, andtwelve midnight ‘til eight o’clock, butthere was no swing shift.

Storey: So there were eight hours when thereweren’t any–but they were always on call,I presume.

Boyce: Yeah. Always on call.

188


Storey: Interesting. Well, I’d like to ask youwhether or not you’re willing for theinformation on these tapes and theresulting transcripts to be used byresearchers.

Boyce: Yes. That’s perfectly all right with me.

Storey: Good. Thank you. I appreciate it.

END SIDE 1, TAPE 2. DECEMBER 18, 1997.END OF INTERVIEWS.

189


Appendix 1: Reclamation Press Release about HarveyWood Boyce Completion of Apprenticeship Program

190


frontispiece: harvey wood boyce about the time of his oral ...harveywood.pdfmother and father...

Documents