Leaving a trail of blood, Fong made his way back into the kitchen and in broken English on the railroad phone got the dispatcher in Roseville to call the sheriff’s office to report the robbery. The next morning the sheriff’s officers found and followed deep foot tracks in the snow, heading toward Sugar Bowl. There were two of them, Mexican track hands that were caught hiding in the trees nearby.

I first met Fong Quong back in the late 1940s when I was working as a weekend ski patroller at the Soda Springs Ski Area. This was back when “Mad Dog Dick Buek” was the hottest skier on the summit and his father Carl checked tickets and loaded skiers on the pomo lift and rope-tow at Soda Springs Ski Area. I remember well, since my girlfriend charmed Carl into letting her ride the lift without buying a ticket. I guess we were a rag tag group of college kids with our war surplus clothing and ski-trooper white skis. A chance to eat at a very low cost was too good to pass up. The word was out. All you had to do was enter the huge dark wooden snow sheds just east of Soda Springs and walk in the dark for about one quarter of a mile to where a lone light bulb above a door marked the entrance to the long covered ramp that led down to the S.P. Commissary. The trick was to not get hit by a train that could come around a bend in the sheds with a terrible roar and noise while we clung to the walls of the shed, inches from the huge steel monster. One had to believe that there was enough space between the train and the walls of the snow shed for us to cling to life and survive this monster of a train. The noise was terrifying.

I always thought Fong must have known how poor we college kids were because a complete steak dinner, fried potatoes, canned green peas, all the coffee you could drink, and a slab of pie always cost one dollar. That was one dollar for all of us. It did not seem to matter how many of us there were, since later, when my girlfriend and I went alone, it was still “won
dallar”. The pie was always a deep-dish fruit pie, each pie cut in four pieces and a piece a whole meal by itself.

Years later, after college and two careers, my job led me to wander over old Donner Pass on Highway 40 from to time and I would stop on the edge of the highway just up the hill from the Sierra Club Lodge, walk down the steep, rough hillside to the small opening in the huge wooden snow sheds and brave the dark, to walk towards Soda Springs and the single light bulb above the door leading down to the Commissary and my friend Fong.

After I read in the paper about the robbery and injury of Fong, I hurried up to Norden to hear the story from Fong himself. I, of course, had the wonderful steak dinner, fried potatoes, and this time canned corn, with one quarter of a cherry pie. Twenty years later it was still only “won dallar.” I felt like I was home again! I asked Fong to tell me his frightening story himself and asked if he had recovered? I also wondered how he had been doing at the gambling tables in Reno. Fong’s working hours were 24 hours each day, seven days a week. He was given (or took on his own) an afternoon each month when he would take the Greyhound bus to Reno to gamble. Sometimes he won which he talked about, but he never mentioned it when his “luck run out.” This time he said his “luck veery bad” and “he go home China.” I was not sure I heard him right so I asked again and he said, “Fong luck veery bad, he go home China to die.” I heard him right this time and sat there in shock! I could not imagine Donner Summit without my friend Fong. I tried to talk him out of it, but then he explained, he “not want to die far from home.” He had been losing at his gambling, and almost getting killed by the robbers was just too much. Time to go home to die.

Fong was always very polite to us, hustled around the kitchen to fix our meals when we were kids in college and years later when we stopped by as working adults, was still very polite to everyone. The train crews that came in while we were there sometimes spoke to Fong as if he was dumb, and berated him for almost everything. A number of steaks were returned by the train crews and some nights the racial insults were embarrassing to hear. It seems that the abuse of the Chinese who worked on the railroad was not limited to the building of the railroad in the 1870s but continued a hundred years later.

Somehow I think Fong must have been received in China as someone special, and found his peace at last. He was a good human being and I still miss him and the old wooden snow sheds which are now gone. They have been replaced by concrete snow sheds and the train crews are on their own when it comes to eating at Norden. I can’t even find a steak dinner for $10.00 on Donner Summit now days.

The snow sheds on Donner Pass are still visible from old Highway 40 near Norden. The sheds are now made of concrete; the old wooden ones were torn down years ago. The Southern Pacific kitchen used by Fong caught fire and burned soon after Fong left. I went into the snow sheds recently to photograph the railroad tracks for this article and to see if the old spooky feeling I felt during the Fong days was still there. It was. In the quiet darkness the rails popped from time to time because of temperature changes. The fear of a possible approaching train was real. I wondered if the ghost of Fong was not still there too.

To see the present day snow sheds over Donner Pass, visitors should travel up I-80 east of Auburn, and just east of Kingvale, take the off ramp to Soda Springs and the ski areas.

Just east of Soda Springs and the cabins along the road, look down the hill to the south and at Norden you will see the present day snow sheds and the area of Fong’s old kitchen. Drive to the east from there and you can view the old concrete snow sheds along the sheer wall of Donner Peak, they too are abandoned and not used. Present day trains now use a tunnel through the mountain and have no need for Fong, his kitchen, or to stop and eat at Norden.