Transcript of interview with Joyce Moore by Claytee D. White, January 22, 2013

CT 'Z.M"! KM An Interview with Joyce Moore An Oral History Conducted by Claytee D. White The Boyer Early Las Vegas Oral History Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ©The Boyer Early Las Vegas Oral History Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2012 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV - University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Editors: Barbara Tabach, Joyce Moore Transcriber: Kristin Hicks Interviewers and Project Assistants: Barbara Tabach and Claytee D. White 11 The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of Dr. Harold Boyer. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank the university for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader’s understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Boyer Early Las Vegas Oral History Project. Claytee D. White, Project Director Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University Nevada, Las Vegas ORAL HISTORY RESEARCH CENTER AT UNLV Boyer Early Las Vegas Oral History Project Name of Narrator: Name of Interviewer: Use Agreement ,lA1T£e XL We, lhc above named, give to die Oral Lhstory Rcseardi Center of UNLV, die recorded intcrvicw(s) initialed on //<nA, <£0 {3 along widi typed transcripts as an unrestricted gilt, to be used /or sufh scholarly and educational purposes as shall be determined, and transfer to die University of Nevada Las 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, nor die narrator to use the recordings and related materials for scholarly pursuits. I understand diat my interview will be made available to researchers and may be quoted from, published, distributed, placed on die Internet or broadcast in any medium diat die Oral History Research Center and UNLV Libraries deem appropriate including future forms of electronic and digital media. There will be no compensation for any interviews. Library Special Collections 4505 Maryland Parkway, Box 457010, Las Vegas, Nevada 89154-7070 (702) 895-2222 1 Preface Joyce Moore’s family moved to Las Vegas from Chicago in 1953, when she was eight years old. She attended Rancho High School, married and had three daughters, and currently lives in Las Vegas. Joyce’s father was in the gaming industry and her mother was a nurse. Growing up in Las Vegas meant going to shows with her mother, spending summer days in the pool at the Showboat Hotel, and riding horses to the Last Frontier. While a teenager at Rancho High school, Joyce worked at several movie theaters including the Huntridge, went to school dances and marched in the Heliodorado Parade. After her divorce, Joyce returned to work to support herself and her children, first at the Daily Fax then later on the Strip at the Aladdin and Circus, Circus doing a variety of office and accounting jobs. As a lark she and a friend applied to work as cocktail waitresses at the MGM; she was hired and spent the next five years in a job that was by turns interesting, exhausting, frustrating and fun. This interview covers several periods of Joyce’s life - her childhood, teen years, and early adult life - and what it was like to grow up, live and work in Las Vegas in from the mid-1950s until the mid-1970s. 2 So Joyce, tell me about your early life. I want to know starting from Chicago and how the family got to Las Vegas. Could you do that? Well, I was bom in Chicago. We lived in an apartment building that was run by my great-grandmother. She was very entrepreneurial and during the war, the Second World War, when all of the men went off to serve in the military, my great-grandmother—her name was Cora Goodale—she went to the owner of the apartment building and talked him into turning this into a girls' club where young girls whose men—boyfriends, husbands, whatever—had gone overseas—we even had some kids in the building. Of course, we were in the building, but that was because my great-grandmother ran it. So she did that during the war. So that's where we lived and that's where I was bom. So how did it operate? It was just the girls paid rent. Well, the apartment building was built in 1918, so they were all shotgun types. You needed to ring the doorbell to get into the foyer and then somebody had to come and open that door. Our apartment was on the right. So when you walked in, there was a huge entry foyer and there were three rooms up in the front. They were designed to be a living room, a sitting room, whatever, but they made them into bedrooms. Everything was a bedroom. And then you walked down the hall, there was the bathroom. And then in the back was where my family lived. There was a bathroom, a kitchen. They didn't have kitchens up front, although my mother did a lot of cooking for them. So we had a living room and a bedroom, one bedroom, where we all slept, and a bathroom and a kitchen. We actually had an icebox. And then we had a porch in the back and then the backyard. Although I don't remember a lot of the other apartments, I do remember ours. It was up on the first floor. There were three floors to this apartment building, no elevators, of course. A woman up on the third floor had a little boy. He was two or three years old. And she 3 used to pay me to come and play with me, a quarter, a lot of money. And he had great toys. So I was all about it. So I'd keep him busy. And then my great-grandmother, she lived on the first floor across from us and she had the whole apartment. She had the whole thing to herself. So we spent a lot of time over there. So why did the family decide to leave Chicago? And who was in the family at this point when you get ready to leave Chicago? Well, I'm the oldest. And my brother Royce, who I always called Bud, Buddo when he was little because I couldn't say brother, but Bud, he was one year younger than me. And then Steven came along six years after I was bom. So he was only a couple years old when we moved to Las Vegas. We came out here so that my dad would do what he was doing anyway but legally. He had connections. He had met one fellow in particular when he was in the service who was very connected. He got my dad in the casino business. Would you like to tell us who that is? Well, I don't remember. My brother would remember his real name. I remember just Itchy. And I always thought it was because he had a very bad skin condition. Oh, he had terrible acne, I guess, and no treatment in those days. So I just assumed that it was this. But actually it was this [demonstrating]; that's a little trigger finger. He kind of got my dad involved in that and they came out here. Did your father come first and then send for the family? No. We all came at one time. How did you travel? We traveled by car. We had a Ford that someone in Chicago owned and they were now in Los 4 Angeles and they wanted somebody to bring the car. And so I know that we all piled in that car and came out here in that. So now, tell me about your mother's occupation. My mother was a nurse, always been a nurse. She went to nursing school in Buffalo, New York, where she was bom and raised. She, I think, went into nursing school because they lived there at the hospital at the time; all the nurses in training lived in dorms. Her mother had died; her mother was diabetic and she passed away. And her father was a total alcoholic, drunk, and very, very abusive. And so I think she just wanted to get away and this is what she did. When she had been there about six months, I guess they did the autopsy room and my mother almost fainted or did faint and the head nurse called her in and told her to quit now because she was never going to make it, and that was the spur that made my mother complete it. And she loved nursing; she loved it. She worked actually at the Millard Fillmore Hospital after she graduated in Buffalo and she worked in the TB ward, never got TB, but I got it when I was nine—or I was eight, I guess, when I got it. She was going with this fellow, Abe Weinstein. He was also there during his residency. He was a urologist, ended up being a urologist. They were going to get married. And his family came to my mother and said, “If you marry our son, who is our only son, we will bury him; he will no longer be mentioned in our home,” because they were Jewish and my mother, of course, was not Jewish. So she broke up with Abe. It was very sad. One day she was walking down the street and she saw the big “The Army wants you,” and she walked in and joined. And so she was stationed in Memphis, Tennessee. My father was also in the service. She was a first lieutenant and he was a second lieutenant. I think a second lieutenant is lower, right? I'm not sure. But whatever he was, he was a rank lower than my mother. He was serving 5 in North Africa in the tank corps and he got a bunch of shrapnel in his stomach and so he was sent back to this hospital, Kennedy General Hospital in Memphis where my mother was the nurse. So long story short, that's how they met and got married. Then, of course, during the service he had met Itchy. My brother knows his name; I'll have to find out for you. And you came to Las Vegas. How did the car get from Las Vegas to California? I have no idea. This is what I do know—and I should clarify this because it really wasn't Itchy who got us here. My father had another connection who I don't know who that was and he died of a heart attack on our way from Chicago to here. So we got to Las Vegas. We had no money. My father knew no one because this guy was his connection. We were starving. We were living in a place called Robbie’s Motor Inn right there on Fremont Street, right where the federal building is now and we were about to get kicked out. We were living on tomato soup. And my mother every day would take me to the phone booth on the comer and she would call any relative regardless of how remote and she would say the same thing, please send money and get me out of this God forsaken hellhole, which being bom and raised in Buffalo and then living in Chicago and coming here in—actually, it was 1954 by this time because we came right at the end of the year. There was nothing here. There was nothing. We picked Robbie's Motel because the school was across the street. Which school? Fifth Street School. Oh. So now I know where it is, okay. So my brother and I could go to school. And I wore the same thing every day because all of our clothes came in a trunk on the railroad and we had no money to get the trunk. So one day Bud and I are walking across the street to come home for lunch to our tomato soup and my dad is 6 standing out there, outside Robbie's Motor Inn, and Bud starts crying immediately, “Oh, no, we got evicted. What are we going to do? What are we going to do?” And I'm looking and I said, “But look at Daddy; he's smiling; he's happy.” And so we ran across the street and my dad had a silver dollar and he flipped it in the air. Of course, my brother and I both killed each other trying to get it. He said, “Go buy yourself some lunch.” Well, right down the street about four buildings down was a place called the White Bunny. The White Bunny is where all the kids that had money, which a lot of them did, they would go eat. For fifty cents you could get a hamburger, fries and a milk shake. And my brother and I, we ate like it was our last supper. To find out, my aunt called my mother—or when my mother called whoever, because that's what she was doing, they told her that her dad, my mother's father, had died, who she always hated with a passion. He had died and they had been looking for her for six months. She got a check for twenty-six hundred dollars. Well, twenty-six hundred dollars in 1954 was a lot of money. And so that night we were going to the Fremont Theatre to see a movie. I think it was the Fremont or it may have been the El Portal because I don't even know if the Fremont was there; I can't remember. But we were walking down Fremont Street and my dad spotted Itchy across the street—or Itchy spotted—whoever spotted who. Well, it was this grand reunion. The next day my dad went to work at the El Rancho. So all was well and we bought our house. How much did the house cost? The house was nine thousand eight hundred dollars and we bought it from John Foley. So where was the first house located? And is John Foley the Foley family? Of the Foley family, yes. It was located on Wengert, which was right off Eastern, like behind the Showboat Hotel. They were building the Showboat Hotel or it had just opened when we bought 7 the house. My mother wanted to buy there. It was either there or Twin Lakes. But Twin Lakes was not finished and they had no sewer out there yet. My mother was worried about the bus; she never drove. And she was working at the Las Vegas Hospital—well, actually first, she got a job at the county hospital, which she absolutely hated and she worked there about six months and then she went to work at the Las Vegas Hospital. Where was the county hospital located? It's Memorial, Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital, UMC. It's still in the same place. Okay, good. And then she went to work where? At the Las Vegas Hospital, which was on Eighth and Ogden. So she picked that house because of the Showboat Hotel and she figured that if there was a casino there, there would be bus service. And as it turns out, the bus came down Eastern. And the bus driver for the whole time my mother worked down there, his name was—I don't know what his name was, but they called him Whitey because he had real white hair. He would wait for my mother if she wasn't there because he knew she was coming. Anyway, that's how we ended up in that house. So Joyce, tell me what Las Vegas looked like to you. You're old enough to probably remember because you remember the fifty cents and all of that. What did it look like? There was not a lot here. It was very desert. There was Fremont Street and that was the only place to hang out. I can remember the library sat in the middle of the park where the City Hall is now; all of that behind there was a huge park and the library sat right in the middle of that park. And I remember going to the library. We walked everywhere. Of course, when we bought the house then we were living way out. Across the street from us on Eastern it was all desert. My brothers used to go build forts. There was a lot of kids in our neighborhood, none of them very respectable, as it turns out. However, we just walked everywhere. We didn't have what they 8 have today. So the Showboat pool, we would go swim in the Showboat pool all summer long because my dad would always have—oh, and the El Rancho. The first year that we were here, the summer, because he worked at the El Rancho, he would take Bud and I—Steven was too young—he would take Bud and I to the pool in the morning. I just remember this like it was yesterday. He would flip the lifeguard a five-dollar chip, a red chip, and for that we could stay there all day and have lunch. And so we spent a lot of time there. What did the family do for entertainment, your mother and father separate from the kids and what did you do together? We did very little together as a family. My father had no interest in doing family things. He did a few things with my brothers; he would take them golfing and stuff like that. But with me, no; my father and I did not have a relationship at all. But because my dad knew people, my mother loved to go to the shows. And so we went to all of the shows. And her favorite one was Gale Storm, who had the TV show at the time “My Little Margie,” I think. Oh, my goodness, we must have seen her—she knew my mother. And we would always sit right down front. And she would always say, “Hi, Agnes.” So what did your mother drink during the show? My mother didn't drink. My mother never drank, never smoked. I think in her entire life if she put in a roll of nickels, I'd be surprised. Oh, wow. So what did they serve the kids during the show? Oh, we had meals. We had full meals. I often said Bud and I just went for the food. So where was Gale Storm appearing? Mostly at the Thunderbird. 9 So we had the El Rancho. We had the Thunderbird. What other hotels do you remember, downtown and the Strip? Well, I remember the Last Frontier because of the village. Tell me about the village. Well, they had and old-time western town, village. By the time I got in the eighth grade, which was about '57, even before that I think, '56, there was a riding stable way out on Charleston, like there was nothing out there. It's about where the water company sits today but on the other side of the street. And the guy that ran it, his name was Buck, and he would bring in these horses from Montana, mustangs, and we'd break them. How we would do that is we would get on and the horses would take off running and when they didn't buck us off, they were broken. I was thirteen. And your parents let you do that? My parents did not know. We cut school to do these kinds of things. I loved horses; I always loved horses. I had a friend in grade school, Deanna Humbert, and one of her relatives had a ranch out on Charleston, probably about Lamb, I'm assuming because there was nothing out there. But he had one of the Buttermilks, which was Hopalong Cassidy, because they had many horses. They all had to just look the same. So I got to ride that horse a lot. But I loved riding horses. But anyway, back to the Last Frontier, what we would do is we'd take off with the horses and we'd have to go out in the desert—there was nothing there—and then over the railroad tracks and then we could see the Last Frontier village. And we would go and literally tie up our horses and walk around the village. If we had any money, we'd get something to drink or candy or something. 10 Did the person who you were breaking the horses for—did you know that you were working? Oh, no. We were having fun. He was letting us ride these horses and that's what we wanted to do. And he didn't pay you, of course? Oh, of course not. No, no. We thought it was—I would mostly go out there with a girl named Linda Bamum. She was a change-of-life baby, I guess you would say; her parents were both well into their forties when she was born. Her dad was Indian. I remember he was a great big guy. She pretty much did whatever she wanted. And so I hung out a lot with Linda because we could do whatever we wanted. So you were thirteen at this time. As you became an older teenager, what kinds of places did you go to eat, to dance and to have fun with other teenagers? Well, when I got into high school, like we went as freshmen, they had a place out at Nellis Air Force Base called the Teen Beat. How did you get to Nellis Air Force Base? Well, we always knew somebody that was a year or two ahead of us that had a car. We would go out there on the weekends and that was a whole lot of fun. We always went to movies. We would go downtown to eat. There was the Melody Lane, which was next to the Fremont Theatre, which was right there on Second and Fremont, Third and Fremont. They had another place called the Circus Room. I think a variation of that still remains today. Where was it located? Right there on Fremont between Fifth and Sixth. And they had the best hot dogs in the world for twenty-five cents. And then the Orbit Inn, which was on I think Eighth and Fremont, had a little 11 coffee shop. And one of the gals that I went to church with—well, she was my Sunday school teacher—worked there as a waitress. So we used to go there a lot. Then when I went to work at the theater, of course, I was sixteen, and I did a lot of my eating at the theater. What about the Blue Onion and the Green— The Blue Onion was the Rancho hangout. Oh, the Green Shack. That was more of an upper-class place at the time. So we would never go there unless you went with your parents. I would go there with my dad and mom as a family. But as teenagers that was way over our budget. The Blue Onion we went a lot, when we could afford it. And tell me what the Blue Onion was all about. The Blue Onion had a restaurant inside and it also was a carhop place. Originally, the waitresses were on roller skates. I think they stopped that about 1960, '62, or somewhere around that. They just walked; they got rid of their roller skates. But originally they did. And from the Blue Onion, which was way down on Fremont almost at Five Points where Charleston and Fremont and everything comes together, we would start there and we would cruise all the way down Fremont and then we would go through the train depot and then come all the way back and end up at the Blue Onion. Tell me how people who used to do that feel about Fremont Street today when you can't drive all the way down. I was down there last year, maybe two years ago, with a girlfriend of mine, my very best friend all the way through school. She now lives in Colorado, so we went down there. And I wanted to cry, seriously. I looked around and thought it's just gone; everything is gone. And I remember standing there saying that and I was in front of some kind of a booth, and the guy said to me, “Well, there's some of the tile left in the back of the store from the El Portal.” And I thought that 12 was no consolation. It was very sad. I mean now it's just an attraction. We remember what we remember and the rest of it is gone. What was your best friend's name? Bonnie Thompson. You just said that you worked at the theater as a teenager. I did. Tell me about that work and what did some of the other kids do for high school employment? I worked at the Huntridge—well, I worked at all the theaters, actually. I worked at the Huntridge the longest and then I went to the Fremont and then I went to the Guild. I can tell you when I went to the Guild it was way ahead of its time. Lloyd Katz, who owned the theater, he had a cappuccino bar. Like in 1960? Nobody did that. But today it would be standard. So he was way ahead of his time. He did a lot of artsy films. His offices were upstairs from the Guild. Where was the Guild located? On Second and Carson. Is that Carson, the one right off Fremont? I'm getting old. So there is Bridger. It wasn't Bridger, because I think Bridger is two streets down. I think it's Carson. Carson. So I remember when I was working there we didn't really have an aisle person. Like at the other theaters, there was somebody always worked the aisle that had the flashlight to show people where there were seats and things like that, but not so much at the Guild. I was on a break and I went in and this movie was playing; it was German and it was subtitled because these were all foreign and art films that he showed. Although it showed nothing except you knew 13 what was going on, this girl was being raped, that affected me so badly that I never went inside that theater again. I mean it was different times, really different. When I was fourteen years old and we were crossing the desert looking at Rancho High School out in the distance, we were still trying to figure out how babies were bom. It was just different, totally different than it is now. I still remember that. I don't remember the name of that film and I never watched—this was in the opening. Like bushes were rustling and then these guys came out; I mean it didn't show anything, but I knew what happened. And it just...things you remember. Yes. It is amazing. Some of your friends, what kind of work did they do? Working in the theater was kind of the thing to do. You worked in the theater or you worked at Woolworth's. Woolworth's was a big employer. There was Woolworth's and there was Cornet’s, which are both dime stores. Comet's was on Fourth and Fremont and, of course, Woolworth's on Fifth and Fremont. So a lot of my friends worked there. But the mayor's daughter, Shirley Gragson, worked with me at the Huntridge. She used to come to work in her pink Cadillac, too funny. I love it. What other department stores or dime stores did you have downtown, dress shops? Oh, there were all kinds. Everything was downtown. There was C.H. Baker, the shoe store, which that was the ultimate; you had to get your shoes at C.H. Baker. There was Hecht's and Chic Hecht's. Chic Hecht's was more for the younger set and Hecht's for the older set, the father and the son. I'll just go down that side of the street first. And then there was Lemer's and Albert's. What is Albert's? Just like Lemer's, another dress shop type. And then there was Baine's and Fanny's, the two very 14 high-end stores. I remember saving two paychecks to buy an outfit at Fanny's. Then on the other side of the street you had Ronzone's and Johnson's, which was next door. Johnson's was a clothing store like Ronzone's. There was Christensen's, which was a men's store. Oh, and on the other side was Marv's—Merv's. Marv’s or Merv's, which was a men's store, also. And then Penney’s and Sears. So there was lots of the shopping. Great. Where did you buy groceries? We bought groceries at a place called Johnny's Market, which is now I think a triple-X store or something on Charleston. On Charleston and Eastern there was a strip mall on the southeast side of the street, which was anchored by Fisher's Pet Store. And then there was something there, I don't know what. I'll have to tell you this story, though. Then there was Sally's Liquor. And then there was the Lullaby Shop, which was a baby shop, then a jewelry store and then Johnny's Market. I may be leaving something out, but basically that's what it was. And we did all our shopping at Johnny's Market. Fifteen cents for a loaf of bread. So my mother would walk down and she'd usually take one of us so we could carry groceries back. You carried groceries all the way back from— Well, it was only about three or four blocks; I mean not long blocks. There was Ballard, Peyton, Houston, Franklin, Wengert; so that's how it went. But they weren't long blocks. Tell me more about the gaming industry. Your father was working in the industry. What kinds of stories did he tell? Oh, my dad told me no stories. Okay. So did you ever hear him tell the boys, your brothers? The boys have shared a lot with me. I mean that's how I found out about Uncle Itchy. He shared everything with them, but I didn't have a relationship with my dad at all. My dad like totally 15 ignored me like I didn't exist. I understand it now because when I was working at the MGM as a cocktail waitress—that was my seventies life—I had a floor man by the name of Clayton Graham, very sweet man. And he knew my dad real well; they worked together at the Showboat. My dad worked at the Showboat for a while. One day I was working in the dice pit and he clapped and I walked in the pit, because when the floor man claps that means he wants you to take an order from a table. So I walked in and he was standing there with his hands folded and he was just looking at me. I said, “What?” And he said, “Somebody just told me that you're the Mouse's daughter.” That was my dad's name, Mousey or the Mouse. They all had those names. And I said, “Yeah, I am.” And he just stared at me and said, “You know, I knew the Mouse for 35 years; I never knew he had a daughter.” I almost started to cry it hurt me so. But then Clayton told me, he said, “Don't you realize I just gave you the best compliment I could possibly give you?” I said, “How is that a compliment?” because I didn't understand this. He said, “Because in your dad's business you parade your sons, you hide your daughter. And the fact that I didn't know he had a daughter meant he was doing his job.” Wow. Amazing. So there you have it. I remember one time when I was in high school we went to—it was the junior prom, something, some dance and we went to the Flamingo to see the show. So we go and there's four of us. We walk in there and I see my dad down in the pit. And I'm saying, Daddy, Daddy. And my dad came flying across that casino and said get the F out of here. Okay. I mean it broke my heart, and embarrassed me. So we got in there and here comes a bottle of champagne. And I was maybe fifteen, sixteen years old. And you got into where? The showroom at the Flamingo because he had made our reservation. He gave us a bottle of 16 champagne. I mean we're kids. But I understand that now. He didn't want me being a visible being. So yeah, it was— It was a strange life. But those men lived. Yes. And the fact that he hid it all from me is a good thing. Now I wish I knew more. My brothers know more. But he was very old school. My brothers will tell me stories and it just makes my hair curl. But anyway, that's their story to tell. Good. So tell me about your mother's work in the hospital. What kinds of stories did she tell about hospital work here in Las Vegas at that time? She loved the Las Vegas Hospital. It was a family hospital; it was doctor owned. Originally it was Woodbury, Hardy, Sylvain and—not McDonald. Martin? No. One other one whose name I can't remember. She worked there from 1955—she went to work there because she worked at the Memorial Hospital first—until it closed in 1976. It closed because they could no longer meet code because it was built in 1931. The first floor of the hospital when you walked up the stairs there was a waiting room on the left and then there was the counter right in front of you and the doctors' offices on the right. The surgery room was in the basement. And all the doctors' offices were there. My mother worked the graveyard shift, third shift, which is what she loved. She worked it her entire life. So we're talking from what time? Eleven at night till seven in the morning. To tell you the truth, when Steven went to kindergarten he went to Crestwood School and we went to Sunrise Acres because Wengert was like the dividing line and then they changed it by the time Steven went to school. That's when we found out his mother worked. He didn't know Mom had a job because she was always there to get him 17 up in the morning and she was there when he came home and he was asleep when she went to work. He never knew she had a job [laughing]. You work? But my mother had pretty much free reign. And Dr. Hardy, who was related to Hardy of Laurel and Hardy and looked just like him—they were cousins, but they looked exactly the same. He was a big, rotund kind of guy. He would call my mother at night. He would go down to the Fremont Hotel and play poker. He loved to play poker and drink milk shakes; that's what we did. So he would call my mother and say, “What’s going on, Ag?” Well, this is happening and this person is this. He'd say, “Well, you take care of it.” And that's just the way it was. My mother was the charge nurse. All three of my children were bom there. They had one labor and delivery room and they had a little nursery in the back that held about three or four babies. Oh, that's great. I want to know about the opening of a hotel. So 1955, we had the Dunes and all of those places. Do you remember as a teenager or a young adult what happened when hotels would open, the fanfare? Did you ever participate in any of that? I don't really remember any of that. All the hotels were just opening. I remember going out. My mother's favorite hotel was the Desert Inn because they had the dancing waters. You see, we just keep reinventing ourselves bigger and be