Tent City - Hershel and Friends - Photo by unknown

The first year of my life in Trona was a very lonely year as I didn't know anyone there except new friends that I had met there as I was used to living in a city and had lots of friends which I had to leave to come out there to live on a very hot desert. I worked nights most of the time, and it was very hard to sleep in the daytime as it was so hot.

During the summer months the daytime the temperature ran all the way from 105 to 115 degrees. Hot enough to fry a egg, almost. It was very hard to sleep in the daytime because it was so hot.

Photo by Michael Stevens Copyright 1996

I lived in what they called tent city which they had for some of the men to sleep in. I would hurry home in the morning after getting off from work and get to bed as soon as I can and could only sleep a couple hours from about 7:30 to 9:30 and would wake up sweating so bad I would just get up, put on my clothes, and walk up town, and sit up there till the sun went down, and go back and sleep a few more hours, and get up and go to work. That was when I was working graveyard shift. When I worked swing shift I come in at night and get to bed around 12 o'clock at night. I could sleep till about 8 or 9 in the morning before it started to get too hot.

Photo by Michael Stevens Copyright 1996

We didn't know what a cooler was at that time. But later on, we got evaporative coolers in the houses. It wasn't too bad. The first year was the worst year for me being lonely and hot was almost more than I could stand. We did have a open air theater which I did attend quite a lot the first year for my entertainment. My brother Carl came out for a short time, and I got him a job in the shipping, and he worked a short time and lost his job and went to Tucson, Arizona, so I was alone again. I had taken a week off and went to Arizona to see my sister which had moved from Gary, Indiana, to Tucson and when I got back he had lost his job and had took off for Tucson, so I guess we had met on the way. Of course, I didn't see him anymore.

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