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Carroll Dolve was born into a mining family in 1908 in Virginia City, where she attended the Fourth Ward School, graduating in 1925. Dolve recounts her own childhood in a mining community as well as the history of her family, who arrived on the Comstock early enough to participate in the nineteenth-century mining boom. Dolve was interviewed by Ann Harvey in 1984.
[When I was a child in Virginia City] during recess, we used to play ring around the rosy, hide-and-seek, and hopscotch. During the summer we mostly played around the mine dumps.
Did you just go on the seat of your pants and slide down?
We would get something to slide on, a can cover or something, and slide down that way. And we played with dolls and all that sort of thing.
Did you swim in the summer?
We didn't have a place to swim here, but once in a while we would go to Carson Hot Springs or Bowers Mansion [in Washoe Valley] and go in the water there. When we used to go to Bowers Mansion, a little car on the railroad track would take thirty or forty of us down opposite Bowers, and then we had to walk from the tracks over to Bowers. Everybody would take their lunch, and we could go in the pool for an hour.
In the winter it was sleigh riding mostly. We sledded on any of the hills. There was a hill that came down from C Street over to where we lived a long time ago, and we could always go down there. I don't recall that I ever went any further than Gold Hill, but a lot of the kids would get started at the Divide and go clear to Silver City. And a bunch of us would bobsled down Six Mile Canyon. Other than that, there was really not too much you could do in the wintertime. Maybe get out and throw snowballs at somebody. |
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