It was sometime in the fall of 1947 or thereabouts.
I was six years old and at the Battle Mountain Auto Camp, alone in the office. My grandfather, Ole Melby, was outside tending the gas pumps. My grandmother, Bess, was somewhere in the house.
All of a sudden a man walked into the office. He was about fifty, dressed shabbily. He looked around a little, stepped behind the counter, and looked at me.
“Where’s the cash register?”
I went behind the counter and pointed at it for him. It was called a “till,” actually — underneath the counter. There were levers underneath that you had to pull to open it. I didn’t know what the levers were, and he started yanking on it.
Bess came into the office.
The man turned to her abruptly. “Get over there, ma’am, and you won’t get hurt.”
She looked at me, pointed to the corner on the other side of the room, and said, “Charlie, go over in that corner.”
So I did.
The man asked my grandmother to open the till. When she did, he took the money and went outside.
Bess got straight on the telephone. You didn’t dial in those days — it was one of those live operator who said, “Number, please” arrangements. She just said over and over: “Get me the police. Get me the police. Battle Mountain Auto Camp. Get me the police.”
Then she looked outside. The men had taken off. The other one had been holding my grandfather, Ole, at bay with a rifle.
Long story short, I didn’t worry about it until afterward. Then I thought, WOW! What was that?
Apparently they caught the two guys later that same day, up near the town of Hermosa.
But that’s the story of the great Battle Mountain Auto Camp robbery.
~ Charlie Jett