This column was supposed to
be a centenarian’s birthday celebration, but now it’s almost an
obituary. I say “almost,” because Chick didn’t leave that up to me.
He
wrote it himself. In fact, it seems that in his 99 years of life, Manuel
W. Cicogni didn’t leave much up to others at all. He took things into
his own hands.
Chick was just a couple of months away from his 100th birthday when we
last chatted over decades-old photographs, newspaper clippings, letters
of commendation and other slightly yellowed items from his treasured
trove of memories. “There was something I wanted to tell you about,”
he’d say and then start into one of his stories.
They were amazing stories, like watching the flag raised at Iwo Jima.
They were sad stories, like the thousands of fellow soldiers who never
made it home. They were intriguing stories, like so many local tales in
the nearly 100-year history he lived. They were stories we had hoped to
share with his western Nevada County community in the course of honoring
a pair of milestones, the first being his 100th birthday on Sept. 12 and
the second being The Union’s 150th anniversary, to be celebrated in
2014. And they were stories, frequently peppered with punch lines, that
I enjoyed immensely.
I looked forward to many more, but my new friend passed away last week —
just about a month short of his 100th birthday party.
To be certain, there will be tears shed at today’s 11 a.m. memorial
service at St. Patrick’s in Grass Valley as family and friends support
his wife of 63 years, Sue, while remembering the man and the life he
lived. But knowing the kind of guy he was, there are also likely to be
an abundance of belly laughs as some of those stories are shared. Even
then, though, it will be tough not to get choked up about Chick.
A century of Nevada County life
Born in the “little town of Gaston, near the big
town of Washington,” Chick was a gold miner’s son. His parents, Charles
and Mary Cicogni (pronounced chi-COE-nee), emigrated in 1905 from Italy
to Nevada County, where his father and uncle soon began making charcoal
to be burned inside the mines. Eventually, his father found work in the
mines and was even featured on the front page of the March 24, 1924,
edition of the San Francisco Chronicle while working at the North Star
Mine.
Looking at that framed photo, it occurred to Chick that perhaps his
family had been subscribing to The Union as far back as 1924, even
longer than he thought. After all, he said, it was by reading The Union
that his father first learned to speak English, as the Cicognis spoke
with an Italian tongue even after landing at the mining camp in Gaston.
When Chick was 5 years old, the Cicognis moved to Grass Valley, in the
Boston Ravine area (where Mill Street meets McCourtney Road today), all
of which proved to be quite a playground for him and his friends.
Stories of sledding down Main Street, water fights along Mill, boxing
matches in an old saloon — or even making a “poor man’s kite” out of
milkweed stalks and a 5-cent spool of thread — all brought smiles to his
face, and mine.
The ease with which he remembered the details of games they played or
the memories they made showed just how sharp Chick’s mind remained,
which he attributed, in part, to taking the time to read the daily
bridge column in The Union.
“I play bridge, my wife and I, twice a week,” he said, tapping a finger
to his temple. “It works the brain.”
Work was a big part of Chick’s life; he helped out with odd jobs at an
early age before landing a job at the Barker Dairy, which used to be at
the end of Linden Avenue in Grass Valley, near the Alta and Main street
intersection.
Eventually, he went to work for Hills Flat Lumber Company, retiring
after 50 years — “and six months,” he’d say — in 1981. In talking about
his business life in Grass Valley, he occasionally dropped the names of
some of community’s most famous sons — though people he actually knew —
such as Errol MacBoyle, the owner of the Idaho-Maryland; Lyman Gilmore,
the inventor who insisted he’d flown an airplane before the Wright
brothers (Chick said he never saw it fly and thought the steam-powered
contraption was too heavy to get off the ground, but that was just his
opinion); and Bob Paine of the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad,
which connected Grass Valley to Colfax — and the rest of the world — by
train.
Chick said Paine could be quite the character himself, such as the time
he called the railroad to check on a shipment of wood he had ordered for
Hills Flat.
“Where in the heck is my lumber?” Chick asked.
“He says, ‘Well, I’ll tell ya, one of the cars is full and it’s come in
over from Colfax, and when they got over the Bear River trestle, the
engineer looked over the side at things and his hat fell off and went
down the canyon. Well, they stopped the train and went down looking for
the hat. And the last report I got was that they hadn’t found the hat
yet. And when they do find the hat, you’ll get your lumber.’ That was
his last answer. Ain’t that something? Bob Paine. He was quite a
prominent man in Nevada City. There’s a lot of history there.”
The world according to Chick.
Not bashful about sharing his opinion on most any
topic raised, there were a few that seemed to get him riled right way.
For example, the fact that the country he loved and once fought for was
trillions of dollars in debt just didn’t sit well with him. “Now you
think of it, $16 trillion in debt?” he said, leaning forward in his
seat. “As (big as) our country is, and as vast as we are, we should have
$16 trillion in the bank instead of in debt! It’s a shame. It’s a
dead-right shame. Isn’t that right? You’re darned right, it’s right.
“What the hell happened? I’m going back and see Benjamin Franklin and
talk to him. And George Washington. And Paul Revere. You know about Paul
Revere, don’t ya? You know what he said at the end of his midnight ride?
… ‘Whoa.’”
Hearing him talk about “how things were in the old days,” as he
described the community he had called home nearly his entire life, could
leave you longing for a simpler time. He spoke of how things were
different in terms of how the community was quick to lend a helping
hand, whether armed with handsaws to remove an uprooting tree that
threatened his family’s home or the family doctor offering a discount on
appendectomies and tonsillectomies to the family of a miner who couldn’t
afford the going rate.
“They take out your appendix, and it’s an appendectomy. They take out
your tonsils and it’s a tonsillectomy. Do you know what they call it, or
what the technical name is, when they remove the hair on your head?
Haircut!” he said with a short laugh and a proud smile, and then
continued on with his story.
“My father went to pay the bill — Nine hundred dollars ...
“(The doctor) says ‘You’re a miner, aren’t you?’
“(My dad) says ‘Yes.’
“Too much money for you. You give me $500.”
“That’s the kind of people we lived with in those days. That’s the kind
of town we had.”
He offered a quick and firm “No” when I asked if we didn’t still have a
town like that. His reasoning was simply that we are too selfish today,
though he certainly agreed we do have good people who make this
community a great place to live. “Oh, do we, do we ever have!” he said,
nodding. “And I know a lot of them, too. Nice people. Nice people.”
By George, I met an amazing man. Earlier this year, George Chileski
dialed me up at The Union and encouraged me to try and get Chick to sit
down and share some of his stories, most notably because he was one of
the few men still living who had seen the flag raised on Mount Suribachi
at Iwo Jima. “I guess I’d known him for around 50 years, but I really
got to know him the last 20 by playing cards with him,” Chileski said
this week. “I thought he was the last person alive who saw that flag
being raised — I can’t prove it, but I’m pretty sure he was close to it.
I just thought he’d make a good story.”
And then some. One story that still tickles Chileski after all these
years was a marketing ploy that Chick employed while at Hills Flat
Lumber. “He had this sign outside that said ‘Get your 11-foot poles
here!’ George said. “I went inside and asked, Chick, what’s with these
11-foot poles?" He replied, "Those are for the people you wouldn’t touch
with a 10-foot pole."
In 99 years, it seems unfathomable to consider the number of lives Chick
Cicogni has touched. Though he was “too busy” to ever run for public
office, he was always active in our community, whether with the Knights
of Columbus, the Sons of Retirement, the Nevada County Grand Jury, his
60 years with the Grass Valley Rifle and Gun Club or his 69 years of
membership with the American Legion.
Throw in his commitment to playing cards, and it seemed that Chick kept
a pretty full plate even in his 32 years of retirement. But, as I
learned by stopping by the house that the Cicognis had called home for
the past 40 years, without calling ahead, he still had his priorities
straight. I took a rain check while he turned his attention to helping
Sue prepare a crab dinner that night. I told them we’d have to go out to
dinner sometime soon. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t soon enough.
And, though it might seem odd after his 99 years of life, I still can’t
help but feel Chick left us way too soon, as there are still so many
stories to share.
(August 13, 2013) Brian Hamilton is editor at The Union. Contact him
via email at
bhamilton@theunion.com or by phone at 530-477-4249.
