Ines Anderson Gino Busato Dick and Dalia Guzzi Pasquale and Maria Perri

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Q: I remember them yes even when they were in Michel I remember them.

A: Then old MacKenzie used to be running the Dinky up above. They’d work five days and have three days off. But on a Saturday he’d go up and service this little steam engine what they called the dinky. And there was Butch Bonin he just died too aye, Ray Marchi, he’s gone, Door Quarin’s gone. Danny Gregorek’s still living and myself - we’d watch Mr. MacKenzie there cleaning up taking the clinkers out cause they burn coal aye we’d watch him what he’d do back and forth finally we figure well that’s nice by God. When he takes off to go home we’d be up and down firing this God damn dinky going like hell aye, back and forth oh we had lots of fun. Mike Crawl comes and we seen Mike Crawl we jumped off and let the dinky go. It’s a good job when they go in the tipple to load their cars aye the rails were bent forward and that dinky was just a rattling there like the devil not going any place. Oh yeah.

Q: And he knew who it was of course?

A: Oh God yes he knew it was us. And he come to our folks, come to my dad, look your son did this and that - yeah uh hm - and then by God you know my dad peaceful as hell til he got close then he grabbed me by the cuff of the neck and shake up a little bit. Clink me a few times in the head. You better quit it - Oh yeah dad I’ll quit. Oh yeah until next time. We were always in trouble. Then Mr. Latka used to look at the horses up at the mill that was about a mile from town and they didn’t work on a Saturday and Sunday either. Holy Christ we figure hell we’re going for a ride. So we went up there harness these horses hooked them on a wagon and went way up number 8 camp where they used to (inaudible). We got up there then we couldn’t turn the wagon around. Holy God what are we going to do now. Hell with it. Let’s take the horses and bring them back and leave the wagon there. Dick Truant was the mill boss. Monday morning looks there’s no wagon, where’s the wagon, where’s the wagon... the wagon was way up number 8. But we got away with it scott-free.

Q: How old would you have been?

A: Oh about 11 to 12 oh we were in trouble all the time God almighty. Even old Louis Altomare used to deliver ice cream and he’d send Butch usually he was short of sherbicles "Butch go to my place and bring me two boxes of sherbicles." Boys, "Okay Louis." Cause Butch had a bike he’d go down and he’d tell Mrs. Altomare, "Well Louis wants four boxes of sherbicles." Come so far he’d drop two and bring two to Louis. Christ we were having a good feast out of that aye. Then we’d have go behind the Coke Ovens across the tipple there was a trestle there and you’d go up there to go up Michel. By God us kids figure we’re gonna get some ice cream alright. We got a sheet iron went across the trestle up above, and old Louis come by with his horse old Nelly we dropped this damn sheet iron in front of the horse. The horse (inaudible) broke the shafts the horse took off. Louis gets out runs after the horse and us kids were there, he had two barrels of ice cream aye - take the lid off and we were in there with our hands just having a hell of a good time by the time Louis got back there was nothing left. Oh God we used to do some awful things. Yep.

Q: Sounds like you had a lot of opportunities.

A: If it was nowadays we’d be locked up. Yeah we did a lot of things here. We used to have our own skating rink in winter by the Coke Ovens we had water there. It wasn’t too wide but the length we could have gone three - four hundred feet. We used to flood that and that’s where we’d skate. Sleigh ride up the hill. I even had a dog he used to pull my bobsled up the hill and then coming down he’d lie on my back cause I used lie down steering it.

This oral history transcript is extracted from the Elk Valley Italian Oral History Project undertaken for the Fernie and District Historical Society in 1998-99. The Heritage Community Foundation and the Year of the Coal Miner Consortium would like to thank Leslie Robertson and the interview team and the Fernie and District Historical Society, which is a member of the consortium, for permission to reprint this material.