Transcript of interview with Ina Porter by Claytee White, January 5, 2010

An Interview with Ina Porter An Oral History Conducted by Claytee White Voices of the Historic John S. Park Neighborhood Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas 1 © Voices of the Historic John S. Park Neighborhood University of Nevada Las Vegas Libraries 2010 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV Libraries, Director: Claytee D. White Project Creators: Patrick Jackson and Dr. Deborah Boehm Transcriber and Editor: Laurie Boetcher Editor and Production Manager: Barbara Tabach Interviewers: Suzanne Becker, Barbara Tabach, Claytee D. White ii Recorded interviews, transcripts, bound copies and a website comprising the Voices of the Historic John S. Park Neighborhood Oral History Project have been made possible through a grant from the City of Las Vegas Centennial Committee. Special Collections in Lied Library, home of the Oral History Research Center, provided a wide variety of administrative services, support and archival expertise. We are so grateful. This project was the brainchild of Deborah Boehm, Ph.D. and Patrick Jackson who taught at UNLV and resided in the John S. Park Neighborhood. As they walked their community, they realized it was a special place that intersected themes of gender, class, race/ethnicity, religion, sexuality and gentrification. Patrick and Deborah learned that John S. Park had been listed on the National Registry of Historic Places and that original homeowners, local politicians, members of the gay community, Latino immigrants, artists and gallery owners and an enclave of UNLV staff all lived in the neighborhood. Therefore, they decided that the history of this special place had to be preserved, joined with the Oral History Research Center at UNLV Libraries and wrote a grant that was funded by the Centennial Committee. The transcripts received minimal editing that included the elimination of fragments, false starts and repetitions in order to enhance the reader's understanding of the narrative. These interviews have been catalogued and can be found as non-circulating documents in Special Collections at UNLV's Lied Library. Deborah A. Boehm, Ph.D. Fulbright-Garcia Robles Scholar 2009-2010 Assistant Professor, Anthropology & Women's Studies Patrick Jackson, Professor John S. Park Oral History Project Manager Claytee D. White, Director Oral History Research Center at UNLV Libraries iii Interview with Ina Porter January 5, 2010 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Claytee White Table of Contents Introduction: born in 1917 and grew up in Kanab, UT. Memories of her mother who attended school in Kanab and in Cedar City, UT. Mother's musical talent and piano lessons. Illness in her early thirties. 1 Growing up in Kanab, UT: piano lessons and singing with her sisters. High school and participation as a dancer in school programs. Work as a waitress at Grand Canyon, AZ after graduation (1935). 4 Great Depression: her father and his work as a trucking and road-building contractor, and later as a service-station owner. Losses in the Great Depression and World War II. 6 Attended dancing school in Salt Lake City, UT (1935-36). Worked at Zion National Park, UT (summer 1936). Married Burdell Porter and moved to Sun Valley, ID (1936). 8 Moved to Las Vegas. Burdell drove buses, first for UP and then for Greyhound. 12 Las Vegas in the late 1930s: "just a little town," safe to go out at night, did not lock doors, people walked. Social activities: movies, Mormon church, square dancing. 14 Moving to the John S. Park Neighborhood in the 1940s. 16 What Ina liked about the John S. Park Neighborhood: a home of her own, house was inexpensive, they helped build the Mormon church in the neighborhood. 18 Description of their house: originally two bedrooms and a bath, later added a bedroom, dining room, and basement. 19 The John S. Park Neighborhood in the 1940s: not too many houses. Recalls some of the residents who lived in the community. Description of the Huffey house (later the Sandino home). 21 Successful professionals from the John S. Park Neighborhood and what influenced them to achieve: higher education, upward mobility in homes and neighborhoods. 26 Building the Huntridge Neighborhood for military families during World War II. 27 People who lived in the John S. Park Neighborhood. The Gubler family and their home. 28 Importance of the LDS Church to the John S. Park Neighborhood: a good influence on the community, a large community of Mormon families, involvement of both LDS and non-LDS children in church activities. 30 Community organizations: involvement in Beta Sigma Phi sorority and Mothers' Club. 31 Feelings re: the razing of the neighborhood LDS chapel and implications for the First Ward Mormon community in the John S. Park Neighborhood. 33 Relationship between Ina Porter and her daughter Sue Ann Porter. 35 Changes in the John S. Park Neighborhood over fifty years: not as neighborly, Las Vegas was a small town. 36 iv Babysitting for celebrities' children at Las Vegas hotels. 36 Changes in the John S. Park Neighborhood over fifty years: not as safe as it used to be, many original residents died or moved away, new people moved in, and transiency of neighbors. 37 Becoming a historic neighborhood: opposition by some residents but not as restrictive as anticipated. Positive aspects: homes are better maintained, community more cohesive. 38 Memories of neighbors and friends in the community, and how neighborly people were in the early John S. Park community. Final comments. 40 V Preface Ina Porter recalls the story of choosing to move to the John S. Park Neighborhood in the 1940s. She and her husband Burdell were accustom to paying cash for everything and needed to establish credit with Sears to purchase their $5000 home, which was not considered inexpensive. They were among the earlier homeowners and soon the neighborhood grew to include a Mormon Church that would become so integral to the Porter family's life and to the John S. Park community. Ina was born 1917 in the small southern Utah town of Kanab. She describes her youth and speaks of the Great Depression. Ina graduated from high school in 1935, married in 1936 and moved to Las Vegas, where there were jobs for her husband. Finding work after his graduation from college was not easy, but because he had been a bus driver he was able to secure a position driving a bus for the Union Pacific Railroad and later Greyhound Bus Line. Years later Ina, Burdell and their family were part of the fiber of the John S. Park Neighborhood's history. Ina was joined in this interview by her daughter Sue Ann Porter, who also sat for a separate interview earlier. vi ORAL HISTORY RESEARCH CENTER AT UNLV Voices of the Historic John S. Park Neighborhood Use Agreement Name of Narrator: Name of Interviewer: AM ?o\-Ip.r We, the above named, give to thc/Ora video interview initiated on I I 5 i i Center of UNLV, the recorded . as an unrestricted gift, to be used for such scholarly and educational purpo^s a/ shall be determined, and transfer to the University of Nevada Ins Vegas, legal tide and all literary property rights including copyright. This gift does not preclude die right of die interviewer, as a representative of UNLV, to use the recordings and related materials for scholarly pursuits. There will be no compensation for any interviews. Signature of Narrator Date v LMMO Library Special Collections 4505 Maryland Parkway, Box 457010, Las Vegas, Nevada 89154-7010 (702) 895-2222 Interview with Ina Porter January 5, 2010 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Claytee White This is Claytee White. It is January 5th, 2010, and I'm in the home with the Porters today, and I'm interviewing Ina, and here with us is Sue Ann. Ina, how are you doing? Well, right now, like my dad would say, I'm still kicking but not making much dust. I've used that quite a bit lately. [Laughing] OK. So, Ina, why don't you tell me about your early life? Tell me where you grew up, how many kids in the family, that kind of thing. I grew up in Kanab, Utah, a little town about three miles from the Arizona line. I was the only child [for a while], I was six years old before I had a sister. I used to tell my mom, Dad isn't a good dad. He gives Linna lots of little brothers and sisters, and he doesn't give us any. So they'd laugh. That was a joke that we kind of kept in the family for years, because it was six years before I got another [sibling]. And then there was three girls. My mom was musical. She played the piano. She gave lessons when she was young. Now I'm telling all these crazy stories. That's great. That's what I want to hear. Her special girlfriend that she grew up with died when she was only fourteen or fifteen, and it was quite a heartbreak for Mom. She went to school over at Cedar City [Utah], They had a bigger school, and [she] was able to take extra classes over there that she couldn't get in Kanab because Kanab was just a little country town. The high school I 1 2 think was only about—oh, there was those that, if they wanted to, could graduate but most of them, if they got to the sixth grade, that was it. Anyway, Mom went to Cedar City. She had been taking music lessons on the piano in Kanab because her folks had a beautiful piano that Mom's dad had bought for her when she was a little girl, and there was a lady that gave Mom music lessons, so she was really good at it and could give [lessons] to somebody else. In Cedar City, she was able to take more music and the teacher there thought that she was one is special [students], and he was getting after her all the time to play the classical and not to get off on the popular, jazzy stuff. Well, one day the music teacher was going back to the classes and he could hear music rustling through the trees and it was Mom playing ragtime. She was playing her favorite song? Yes. And, oh, he scolded her. But the kids were dancing on the lawn and had the most fun and Mom was playing. Sue Ann: What about you? You were talking about Grandma's friend, remember, that died. Was that what it was all connecting with? Because she named you after her, right? Didn't she name you after [her friend]? Ina: Oh yes, I was named after her special friend. They thought that her friend had died of tuberculosis. Later, my mother hurt her leg up above the knee when she was only about thirty-one, thirty-two years old. [There were] no doctors in the country towns. They took her into Salt Lake [City, Utah] to the doctor up there. She was sick at home with a so-called broken leg and everything else before the doctors [saw her]. In the first place, Mom 1 3 didn't want to leave. She didn't want to go into the city, until she got so bad that there was nothing they could do. Dr. Baldwin in Salt Lake took over and [did] x-rays and everything. Then Dad wanted to take her back East to the Mayo Brothers [Clinic] but Dr. Baldwin said they'd waited too late, she'd just better stay there, and he thought that he could take care of it. Well, he did. Sue Ann: What did they find out, Mom? Ina: They found out that it was cancer, of course. They started giving her radium or whatever they gave. Sue Ann: And then they scraped the bone marrow out of the bone. Ina: Oh, they scraped the bone for six inches above the knee, as thin as an eggshell, she said, just left it thin. Oh, I don't need to tell you all this, but I'll just tell you that they cured her, and he [the doctor] said he thought she would be able to come home for Christmas. So he put a cast on her leg. They waited till the last minute to tell her because they still didn't know whether they could dare send her [home]. If he [Dad] would get a nurse to stay there with her, [she could come home]. So they headed for Kanab [on] Christmas Eve. It was snowing and they didn't think they were going to be able to make it but Mom said, We've got this far and you're familiar with the roads. Let's go. So they took off in the snow and got to Kanab. They got there at three o'clock in the morning. Me and my sister had been living part-time with our grandmothers. When they woke up, there was our momma, on a stretcher, in the living room by the Christmas tree. They had gone to the store and bought presents because Mom and Dad thought they wouldn't get there and there would be no presents under the tree, so they went up and got more. Anyway, it was the happiest Christmas ever, except the [first] Christmas a long time ago. That's a wonderful story. So, do you remember what life was like there in Kanab when you were a little girl? Yes. It was wonderful. Did you take piano lessons? Yes, but I had to watch my hands [while I was playing]. I watched my fingers so I could memorize. I didn't really get to be that good. Oh, I had fun with it, but I didn't get to play like my mother. We would sing together. Your sisters? Uh huh, and it was kind of a novelty because Corris was six years younger and Leile was the youngest. I was six years older than Corris and eight years older than [Lee Isle]. Sue Ann: You sang together, and Leile was so little, wasn't that it? Ina: Yes. She was the young one. She would sing the alto part, and [Corris] would sing the lead and I would fill in with the second or middle part. And we were good. The novelty [was that] Leile was so young, at four years old, singing an alto. We sang quite a bit for like the church programs and different things. They would know who they could come and get to sing. Afterwards I realized, well, the reason Leile sang the alto [was that] she was always sitting on Mom's lap when we were singing it, and so she was just singing along with Mom. Mom would sing alto. But I never realized that until, well, just a few years ago, because it was so unusual. So, what did you do after high school? Did you finish high school there in Kanab or did you go to Cedar City as well? 5 So, what did you do after high school? Did you finish high school there in Kanab or did you go to Cedar City as well? No, I finished at Kanab. Sue Ann: Tell her about your dancing. Ina: Oh yes. I was always moving, skipping, doing cartwheels. We had a cousin that would come up from California to visit in the summer, and he said, You're quite a contortionist. I didn't know what that meant, but I guess it meant I could limber my back. I could do back bends and flips and all of that. So that was quite a different name. It wasn't just [that] I could do tricks; I was a contortionist. And then of course that got to be something that I could [that] nobody else could, so I was always doing programs. All through school, oh, I was on all the programs, it seemed like. It was just a small school and they had to have somebody to entertain. It always scared me to death but I enjoyed it. Mr. [Yisick] was my sixth-grade teacher. He taught there for several years. He married a Kanab girl. Although he didn't live in Kanab, he was coming back all the time, so he was aware of me, and he told me one time, he says, When you graduate from high school and when your dad will let you go, that's the way he put it, you can work out at the North Rim of Grand Canyon at the lodge. You can dance on the programs. In the meantime, my folks had a cabin out at VT Park, which is on the Kaibab up from the canyon there in the forest, and I was going down to the lodge all the time and kept involved with what was going on, so they knew me. When I did graduate from high school, Mr. [Visick] told me [that] he wanted me to work out there. So I got to be a waitress. I didn't have to be a maid. I got to be a waitress, so I could make more money. I made seventy-five dollars a month. That was a lot of money. Yes. My Uncle Bill was a cowboy and lived right next door. In fact, he spent all of his life out on the range with the cattle. He was so bashful. He branded a couple of calves for me so that when I got ready to go to school, I sent those [for sale] and I was able to pay my own way. I saved seventy-five dollars from working at the Canyon. Seventy-five dollars was all I was able to save out of what I made. That was during the [Great] Depression. In the 1930s? When were you born? Nineteen seventeen. OK. Before we start talking about what you did when you left Kanab, tell me a little about your dad and the kind of work that he did. Well, let's see. Oh, the Depression came along and that's when he lost his [contracts]. Sue Ann: What did Grandpa do when you were little, before the Depression, before he lost the trucks? Ina: Well, Marysville was the [head of the] railroad there and Kanab was, oh, a little over a hundred miles on south of the railheads, so Dad had had his truck. Soon after they was married, first he was herding sheep for his dad, and then when he saved his money from that, he bought him a truck, and could go to the end of the railroad and haul the things for the grocery stores and anything else that they needed down in that end of the world. So he knew equipment. Oh, and I know he would get us a new touring car; every year he'd buy a car. So he was one of the better-off people there. Well, he wasn't 7 one of the rich ones but he made [good money and] he could take care of his family, and then he had to take care of his own folks. His dad was getting old and couldn't do [much], A new car every year? That's wonderful. He must've been doing really well. So he was also a contractor? Yes, [he] contracted for building the roads. Well, you go into Flagstaff, Arizona, and you go over to a canyon there that is real popular now. Oh, that's where he lost his shirt, because he had to build a state road down in Oak Creek Canyon down to Sedona [Arizona], It snowed more that year. Down at that barn at Sedona, it was a mild climate. It was not very many miles down there, maybe twenty or thirty, I don't know. Sue Ann: It cost him more money to build it, is that what happened? He had contracted for so much money and because of the weather [he couldn't complete the contract on time]? Ina: Oh, that's it. And he also bought another truck. He had four of them. And then when they got this job down into Sedona, he [had to put up collateral] so he could get this other truck. Sue Ann: He borrowed money on it, is that it? So he used it for collateral? Ina: Uh huh. Sue Ann: So what did he do after that, when he lost the contracting? Ina: Oh, and then everybody was going on [welfare]. Sue Ann: Then didn't he come to Las Vegas? They came and lived in Las Vegas because of the war [World War II], so there were jobs here. 8 Ina: Before he came to Las Vegas, he built his service station. He took a loan on our nice home. It was one of the nicer homes in Kanab. Sue Ann: So he built a gas station, then. Ina: Yes, but in order to do it, he had put a loan on the house, and so he had that payment each month he had to make. He was just a good guy. Of course he was. Because I'm thinking of the time a young couple were just married and they were going from Arizona on up into Salt Lake, and he found out that they had just got married, so he wouldn't let them pay for the gas and sent them on their way. That's it. He was so aware of people. He was just like his own dad, I guess, and like I tried to be through the years. Good. So the service station was a successful business venture? Yes, until the war. After the Depression, then the war came. Then people quit [driving and] couldn't go places, and so his service station went on the blink. I lived here in Las Vegas [at that time]. So when did you move to Las Vegas? I graduated from high school in '35.1 got married in '36 or was it '37? How old is Dan? Sue Ann: He's seventy-one-or-two. He's seven years older than I am. Had the war already started before your father moved to Las Vegas? Ina: Yes, because I was here. So he probably didn't move here until 1941-42. So did you get married here in Las Vegas? No. I got married at Kanab, at the house. Well, tell me something. When you used the money to go to school, that was after high school? Yes, I went right up there. Where did you go? In Salt Lake City. Sue Ann. It was a dance academy, your dance school, wasn't it? Ina. It was a big building on Main Street. It was a big mansion that they had turned into [a school], I wanted to teach dancing, because that's what I'd been doing through high school. I gave dancing [lessons] too, but I didn't have a [formal] teacher. One of the teachers there [in high school] that helped me a lot, but I couldn't say, Oh, I went to the dancing school, or did this or that. I'd only charge about twenty-five cents [for a lesson]. So then you went away to the dancing school. Sue Ann: What kind of dancing did you learn? Was it drama, too? Was it dance and drama? Ina: They had public speaking, or drama; dancing; and music. There's where I paid [a] high price for my piano [lessons], and I wasn't that good. Oh, but I was in their play that they had, and met a special boyfriend. Of course he was going to school in Logan [Utah] and I didn't get to see him very often, so it wasn't very special, but it was fun. So how long did you go to school there? Well, I went up in September [of 1935] and stayed until March [of 1936], I was anxious to get home and I figured I'd had enough training up there. Our groups had put on a program up there several times. Oh, and they had one of the best teachers up there. Of course, I wasn't one of their best students. And in fact my dancing teacher discouraged me about my athletic [ability], and they tried to get me to stop it entirely because I should 10 have started training for it when I was younger, to develop my muscles more to hold me up on a lot of the stands. And I thought, Well, I can get my tap and my other [dancing], I've got enough of it; I can do it myself. Seems like Mom got sick again, too—of course, she was on crutches all her life, and in pain with that raw sore on her knee—and I just felt like I needed to be home. Oh, and then summer was coming up and I wanted to go to the Grand Canyon again. [Laughing] Oh, to work there again? Yes. Sue Ann: And where else did you work, besides the Grand Canyon? Didn't you work over at Zion [National Park]? Ina: Oh yes, when I went back home that summer, I went to Zion Canyon. Oh yeah, because my teacher from Salt Lake came down and she says, Oh, you didn't pay any attention to what I said, because I did the same routine there that I was doing at Grand [Canyon]. So how did you leave there and come to Las Vegas? What happened? Well, I met that guy [Burdell Porter], Oh, he was a bus driver up there in the canyons. He would pick them up at the railroad at Cedar City, take them to Bryce Canyon [Utah], and then on out to Grand Canyon, and then up to Zion Canyon. It would take them about five days to make the route, and then [he would] get another [tour], [He did that] until school started, and then he'd have to go back to college. He was a star athlete in his college. Sue Ann: Did he get scholarships? Ina: Yeah, uh huh, because he was a star player in basketball and football, too, but basketball was it. 11 Also, he was going with my roommate, but we got to be special friends, and I had a crush on him, but I didn't want him to know it, so I was going out with other fellows all the time. My roommate, she had to work up at the cafeteria, and I was down at the lodge, so anyway, I was with him a lot while he was waiting for her to get off. I guess he liked to tease because I thought, Why in the world did he [act this way]? He liked me, and I liked him, and all along he would tease me. So did you take her boyfriend? Well, the next year he didn't come back. I wrote to him while he was up to school at Logan, and in a playful way we'd talk about getting married, but it was just fun. I mean I had no idea. I was five years younger than him and I just figured, well, I had other guys, too. High school boyfriends would show up every now and then. Sue Ann: So how did Dad ask you to marry him? Ina: Oh, in a teasing way. In our letters he'd talk about it just in a teasing way. [Looking at pictures] He was a good guy and I look at those pictures. But that's it. He lost his hair early. I can see him now. He'd brush it so hard. I'd tell him he was pulling it all out. But that's what I thought, because he was older than me, five years older, and I didn't have a brain in my head. So you got married. We got married. And how did you decide to come to Las Vegas? Oh, after he graduated from college, oh, he could teach, but he could make more money if he could get on the main line of Union Pacific [Railroad], and make more money driving a bus than he could teaching school. He drove up at Sun Valley [Idaho], from the lodge to the little town, Ketchum, I think. Is that where you lived when you got married? [Did you live] in Sun Valley first? Uh huh. We got married at Kanab, and then we went over to Escalante. Sue Ann: That's where Dad is from. Ina: We were married in October. They had to let him off because the summer travel [had slowed down], so he went up to Cedar City. Sue Ann: Then he got the job at Sun Valley and you lived up there for a while. Ina: Yes, we were up there till March. So from October to March. Uh huh. And we were still having to depend on the bus. We didn't have a car or anything. We had to do our traveling on that. Sid, his brother, lived in Cedar City, and that's where we went from Sun Valley down to Cedar. Sid took us over to Kanab. His dad had a pickup [truck] and my folks had a car. We figured when we got over to Kanab, we could use [one of those]. When we got married in Kanab, we went out to VT Park, out folks' place out there, for our honeymoon. They still had their cabin out there. Then we [moved to Sun Valley]. Sue Ann: What did you do after Sun Valley, Mom? How did you get to Vegas? Ina: He got the job on the main line for Union Pacific. So the main line ran through Las Vegas. Uh huh. And if he could get the [bus] route from Cedar City to Las Vegas, he would get on it. He'd been working for them, so he [had a chance]. Anyway, it was easy. 13 Oh, he and his brother, like brothers and sisters, like kids do, they wouldn't agree on things. We went over one of the rivers up there and Burdell called it one thing and Sid called it another, and they argued over what the river was called. Even now I can't think [of what it is]. I know I started crying because I thought, For crying out loud, we just got home. And then later I found out the reason I cried so easy: I was expecting. I guess Mom told me that after we got to Kanab. [Laughing] I was telling her that Burdell and Sid got to arguing over [the name of the river], I said, What is the name of that river anyway that goes down through Long Valley? Anyway. OK, So then, did you have the first baby before you came to Las Vegas? No. Tell me what Las Vegas was like when you first got here. Where did you live? It was a block from Fremont [Street], It was 131 South Fourth [Street], It was right on the corner, the very first triplex. Very nice. So he was working for the railroad. Sue Ann: No, no, no, no, no. [It was the Union Pacific, but as] a bus driver, though. He never worked with the trains. It was always the buses. So it was a Union Pacific bus. Ina: Greyhound took over. That's how the name got changed. Oh, I see. OK, so he was working for Greyhound. Did you work when you first got here? No, I didn't feel like it. I didn't know a lot of things. Was he out of town for a long period of time? No. He worked for two years on the extra board so he could be home every night. Some of them had reputations of stepping out on their wives and everything like that, having extra girlfriends, and I knew he wouldn't. That's it. He cared for me. That's why every time I look at his picture, I just.... So this was in the late Thirties. Yes. So tell me what Las Vegas looked like. Oh, it was just a little town. We weren't afraid to go out at night. I'd walk up to meet him at the garage. I hadn't even locked the front door. He got after me because we were so close to Fourth Street. The garage was just up the street about three blocks. So the bums would come down there. It was close for them to come and ask for a handout. So it's a wonder I didn't get taken care of or something. Anyway, I grew up a lot. What did the two of you do for fun? Oh, the show house was down in the 300 block, on Fremont. Is that the movie theater? The movie theater. And then we were Mormons, so there was a Mormon church that was way down at the end of the gravel road. Well, it was over here by the high school. Near the Fifth Street High School? Sue Ann: Was it the white one that they had here or was it the old church that's over here across the street from the high school? Ina: The high school is just right there, across the street. Sue Ann: Yeah, the one that's over there because that's the one I remember going to. OK, so the School of the Arts now. Sue Ann: Yeah, and it was Las Vegas High School. 15 I°a: Oh, I know we got to square dancing. OK. Where did you go to square dance? We'd sometimes square dance three times a week. We'd go to Boulder City [Nevada] on a Wednesday night, and then Las Vegas had a group on the weekend. The first group was a group of townspeople, and then later the church got a group. The townspeople taught us at the church. And then we'd go up to St. George. [Utah] Anyway, we did square dancing for several years. And shows. Oh, that's wonderful. When you say "shows," what do you mean? The movies. This one down here. Sue Ann: The Huntridge Theater too was another place [that] they [went to]. Oh, you went to the Huntridge. OK. But I wouldn't leave my kids with a babysitter. When he [Burdell] went up to Cedar, he would go to a show, the few hours he was up there. So I didn't feel like I was depriving him from his show. He could go to the show up there, and then I wouldn't have [to leave the children with a babysitter]. Mom would always say, Don't leave your kids with a babysitter. You never [know]. If anything happens, they're not going to tell you. I mean if they'd fall and bump their head or anything. And I got to thinking, That's right. And I was too cautious. How many children did you have? Four: two boys and two girls. OK, great. How long were you here before you moved to the area of the city where we're sitting right now? 16 Now that s how I tell how old Dan and David are. Dan was four years old. David was born here. We had just moved into it in May, and we were behind moving in because of the war. They couldn't get the [materials to finish the house]. So tell me about that. Had you already put the money down on the house? Yes, but we didn't have any credit. We would never charge anything. So we had to go down to Sears and start buying something so that the bank could give us a loan. It was so simple, as I think back. Well, tell me how you went about finding this house. Well, we had special friends that I had [made], the Dexters. She and I were in the hospital [together]. She had a girl, and I had another boy. It was in December. I wasn't too well acquainted with anyone in [Las Vegas] because, well, I just wasn't that [outgoing]. Sue Ann: So one of your bedmates, in a sense, roommates, [was Mrs. Dexter]. Ina: She was in the hospital with me. So we kept in contact. And her husband was a builder. They was building in this area, up here on Ninth Street especially. So, through him, we were going to build up here on Ninth, on the other side of Charleston [Boulevard]. OK, so we're on the south side of Charleston. So at that time you had thought you were going to buy on the north side. Uh huh. But then they started building here. The place was built next door, and there was one down on the corner just like ours that was being built at the same time as this was. (Because they were so much alike, the builders got some of the painting mixed up.) The people that were next door worked at the drugstore. Next door on this street, where we are right now? 17 No, downtown. Sue Ann: You mean the Palmers. Oh, where you were living before, on Fourth Street. Uh huh. So they were in here, next door, and there was nothing next [to that house]. And then they were building the Gibsons' home. The two