By Forrest Newton
WINNEMUCCA - Before Winnemucca was the "City of Paved Streets" there was equipment operator Maurice "Butch" Mariluch.
Mariluch, 83, was helping maintain the streets in Winnemucca when First Street was the only city street in town that was paved. He was one of those who helped build the street system that we count on today to get us comfortably from one end of the city to the other.
"I used to blade streets, you know, grade 'em, mostly what I did. That was a lot of work," he said. "I liked running the blade the best and I ran it the most, too."
Born and raised in Elko he worked at some of Elko's surrounding ranches as a teen, primarily haying.
"I used to do a little buckarooing before haying, but only a little. I wasn't a very good rider," Mariluch said. As a youngster he also worked on the 25 Ranch north of Battle Mountain haying for a contractor.
He's the eldest of three. His brother Adrian died in World War II and Pete died just a few years ago.
"Between the three brothers, we served over 10 years in the Army," Mariluch said.
He said that playtime in his era was being shooed outside by his parents to get the kids out of the house.
"These people today don't know how to play," he said.
Mariluch graduated from Elko County High School where he much preferred the industrial arts classes where he could get his hands on things.
"I took mechanical drawing and drafting and I liked them and I did well in all of them," he said.
World War II had ended only the year before he joined the Army in 1946 where he received training on becoming a medic. Just the year before the United States was still drafting and enlisting men into the Armed Forces to finish the German and Japanese wars, but now men were being discharged regularly and the need for new enlistees was small. Mariluch found himself assigned to hospital duty in the states.
"I was scheduled to go to Europe, but I didn't get there," he said.
He would rather have been assigned to an engineer battalion, but at that time the Army was in the habit of just putting men anywhere with little thought to their skills and interests, Mariluch said.
After he was discharged he ended up working for the Nevada Department of Transportation, first as a surveyor and later in maintenance.
Mariluch remembers well the winters of the late '40s and early '50s when snow blanketed northern Nevada and piled up several feet deep.
In the winter of 1952 an Air Force C-47 crashed in the East Humboldt Mountain Range, killing all aboard during a snowstorm.
"We had a lot of snow that year. A lot of ranchers were snowed in," he said. "Some of them had hay, but they couldn't get to it."
There was so much snow during those years that Mariluch remembers it was necessary to fly hay to many ranches in an effort to save as many cattle as possible.
The military sent in some 50 pieces of snow removal equipment once to help keep the roads open. Much of it was brand new and Mariluch had an opportunity to help truck some of it around, but they didn't have the comfortable driver's areas they have today.
"In them days they didn't have cabs or anything," he said.
But ever the innovators, snowplow drivers developed their own cabs by wrapping themselves and the engine in canvas and reversing the radiator fan, thereby blowing the engine heat back on the driver.
He said that one year the snow was high enough to cover the fence posts, and in areas where the snow had drifted across the road it could be 25-feet deep.
"I went from Elko to a little place called North Fork. It took me all day widening the road so they could bring them Cats in. It took me all day to go 50 miles," he said. "I used to put in some days 16 - 18 hours a day." He said it was some six weeks before they were able to get all the state roads open again.
Sometimes we forget, but the ability to talk on a radio to someone while in a vehicle was a relatively new idea then and snowplows in the '50s didn't have any. It could be a lonely job sometimes out on the roads for hours with no communication with the office.
"But I enjoyed it. I loved plowing snow," Mariluch said.
It was in 1951 when he moved to Winnemucca where he initially worked for a liquor company for a few months before getting on with the city street department where he stayed for 36 years, retiring in 1989.
"They (city maintenance) don't do the work we used to do now. They have a construction company that does a lot of the city work," he said. "They abolished my job when I got out of there.
"They (construction companies) can run (large) crews of men where we just had a small crew," he said. "Most of the time in later years when I worked for the city we just had four men on the street crew."
Mariluch has seen a lot of changes during his years on the road crew, such as the buildup south and east of town with the areas around Lowry High School and Water Canyon Estates becoming major residential areas since he retired.
"I helped put in a lot of curb and gutter in this town. I used to cut the grade," he said. "In those days it was put in with forms. Now they use curb machines."
There were no streets beyond a couple of blocks southeast of the hospital to Highland when Mariluch came on board.
"We cut all those out of the sagebrush," he said.
From his view as a street man Mariluch thinks that the biggest change in the city since he has lived here has been paving the streets.
But city streets were not his only responsibility during his time at the department.
"I helped build the golf course. I helped build the Rodeo Grounds," he said. He also helped to build most of the city parks.
Before the Winnemucca Events Complex began to take shape the Rodeo Grounds was located where Raley's Supermarket is at today, and Mariluch was around to help tear the old grounds down.
He said that a lot of the dirt from what became Raley's Shopping Center was used across the street to fill in some large holes and level out the area next to the Model T.
He surmises that the city was probably half its present size when he first moved here in 1951.
The day after he retired from his city job Red Sheppard called him and ask if he could help him out and he worked off and on for him for the next several years.
"We built Jungo Road. There was an old road there, but not like right now," Mariluch said.
The Elkoan found his way to Winnemucca when he found the girl of his dreams, and in late 1951 married Frances Alcorta.
It was while he was in Winnemucca playing Town Team Ball in the basketball league that he met his future bride through a teammate. They dated a couple of years, primarily going to movies and dinner, before being married.
When he met Frances she was a telephone operator working in the building at the corner of Melarkey and Railroad across from the Martin Hotel.
"When I went to work for the city I didn't make a lot of money, but neither did anybody else," Mariluch said. "My wife was making more money than I was. It was tough, but we made it.
"This was a fun town in those days. There were more businesses in Winnemucca in those days than there are today," he said. "You know people didn't get up and go to Reno like they do today.
"All your business in them days was right down Bridge Street," he said. "It ran right by the lumber yard probably up to the courthouse."
The marriage with Frances turned out two daughters, Adrien Smith and Anita Hasart. Smith is employed with the Humboldt County School District as school secretary at Winnemucca Grammar School and Hasart is with the school district in Bend, Ore. The Mariluchs have four grandchildren.
"I never had any trouble with my kids," he said, admitting that he was the disciplinarian in the family.
The Mariluchs have been married 60 years. Three years ago his wife had a stroke and is at Harmony Manor where he visits her at the same time every day like clockwork and encourages her during her physical therapy.
"If I'm here she works at it harder," he said. "The lady that gives her therapy likes me to be here. They treat her good here (at the Manor)."
His advice to young people contemplating marriage is pretty basic, but without it the relationship is sure to fail.
"They've got to learn to get along with each other," he said.
Of course, over his almost 84 years there have been a lot of changes in the world, but perhaps one of the most noteworthy has been the value placed on someone's word.
"In the old days I never signed a contract," he said. "I bought lot of things through the stores downtown and I never signed a contract. They trusted me. You don't see that today.
"There's worse places than this, I can tell you that," he said. "Our streets are just as good as anybody's."
And to the good people of Winnemucca Mariluch said, "Thanks for a wonderful life. There's some good guys around here."
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