Transcript of interview with Margaret Price by Joanne Goodwin, March 5, 1997

r Lis P7S Iff? An Interview with Margaret and Frank Price An Oral History Conducted by Dr. Joanne Goodwin Las Vegas Women Oral History Project University of Nevada, Las Vegas 1997 © NSHE, Women's Research Institute of Nevada, 1997 Produced by: Las Vegas Women Oral History Project Women's Research Institute of Nevada, UNLV Dr. Joanne L. Goodwin, Director Dr. Joanne L. Goodwin, Interviewer Tamara Marino, Transcription This interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of donors to the Women's Research Institute of Nevada. The College of Liberal Arts provides a home for the Women's Research Institute of Nevada, as well as a wide variety of in-kind services. The History Department provided necessary reassignment for the director, as well as graduate assistants for the project. The department, as well as the college and university administration, enabled students and faculty to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank the university for its support that gave an idea the chance to flourish. The text has received minimal editing. These measures include 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 (housed separately) accompany the collection as slides or black and white photographs. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Las Vegas Women Oral History Project. Additional transcripts may be found under that series title. Dr. Joanne Goodwin, Project Director Associate Professor, Department of History Women's Research Institute of Nevada, Director University of Nevada Las Vegas iv Preface When farm-girl-turned-waitress, Margaret "Maggie" Price, came to Las Vegas from Ohio in 1950 with her husband, Francis "Frank" Price, she had no idea what was in store for her in the hot desert oasis. Maggie's career spanned a period of historical transformation in Las Vegas when Downtown was becoming overshadowed by the development on the Las Vegas Strip. Vaudeville and striptease acts were still alive, but the arrival of big-named acts, such as the Rat Pack, Barbara Streisand, and the King himself, Elvis Presley, were just beginning to take the lead. Organized crime was still a prominent part of the culture and brothels still operated somewhat openly. The three decades Maggie and Frank worked in Las Vegas provided them with front-row seats for the birth, transformation, and occasional death of numerous casinos, including the Sahara, the Flamingo, the Sands, the Dunes, the Tropicana, and the International. Initially going to work as a waitress at the El Rancho Vegas, Maggie spent the next eleven years waiting on visitors, movie stars, and notorious figures at several area establishments, including the Sands from where she retired in 1961. Maggie's story explains how the transition from privately-owned gaming hotels to corporate-owned gaming resorts impacted daily life for waitresses who worked the standard eight-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week shifts. With formal childcare virtually unheard of and a young Culinary Union with little to offer working moms, husbands and wives staggered their shifts and waitresses worked deals between themselves to cover shifts for each other so the children had care. The silver dollar and casino chips were the main currency of the time and tips were relied on to make-up for the meager hourly rate waitresses were paid. v Through Maggie's voice, the organizational structure of casino coffee shops, cafes, and showrooms comes alive. The roles of waitresses, maitre'ds, captains, bus boys, and cooks are discussed, as well as the way in which employees were recruited and how their jobs changed over time. While the experiences of waitresses, mothers, and friends come alive through Maggie's story, Frank's voice lends insight into the overall business of running individual or family-owned casinos versus corporately-owned gaming resorts. He shares his observations of the business and Clark County political climate, and his knowledge of the prostitution industry, including Four Mile (Formyle). Maggie and Frank were surrounded by Las Vegas' most notables of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, including Sam Boyd, Morris Lansburgh, Alex Shoofey, Benny Binion and his family, Doc and Judy Bailey, A1 Bramlet, and Ralph Lamb. From the small, intimate showroom at El Rancho Vegas to the spectacular, full-scale production venues the corporate-owned resorts offered, they witnessed the transformation of Las Vegas entertainment, too. Their first-hand accounts include stars such as Lili St. Cyr, Sally Rand, Louella Parsons, Red Skelton, and many more. Whether it was the city's movers-and-shakers, uniforms or unions, famous or not-so- famous entertainers, organized crime, or the "necessary evil" of hotel rooms and buffets, Maggie and Frank share how the transformation took place and the impact it had on those who lived and worked in Las Vegas during "the good old days" when "everybody knew everybody." An Interview with Margaret and Frank Price An Oral History Conducted by Dr. Joanne Goodwin • • Vll This is Joanne Goodwin. It's March 5,1997, and I'm interviewing Margaret Price in her home in Boulder City. Thank you for spending the time this morning to tell your stories about coming to Las Vegas and working here. Well, as I said, my husband was in the hospital and they told him to go where it was hot and dry and no surgery at the time. So, I asked my boss. I was working at a hotel, Fort Hayes Hotel, [in] Columbus, Ohio, and he said, "Well, if you don't care where you go, I might." We'd never heard of Las Vegas. So, in those days he wrote Murphy out here, at El Rancho Vegas, and Murphy wrote back and says, "Send her. I'll put her to work the day she gets here." Well, Murphy wanted to the day I got there, but I said, "Nope, gotta have an extra day to find some place to live." I had two children. So, one of the waitresses there at the hotel said, "Well, go out to Carver Park," which is no more, of course, in Henderson and, "There's places out there." So we did and for forty-one-dollars-a-month we ended up out there at Carver Park. That's where the Nellis Air Base boys lived and so-forth. 'Cause at that time there was no housing like there is today for Nellis, you know. So then, one morning the earth shook and woke us up. It was like daylight. Well, it looked like twelve o'clock noon, [but] it was way early in the morning. They said they had a bomb [go] off. We didn't know it was going off or anything, you know. Everybody run out and so-forth, you know. In those days there was only one way into Las Vegas. We went on Bond Road, which is Tropicana now. There would be one car go through there every hour, maybe one in every hour. Why was that? You know, there was no traffic. No traffic in those days. Was it a paved road? 1 Yeah, it was a paved road, you know. So we went to town on 95 to the Strip and over to the Strip to our work at El Rancho Vegas. That's how we got there, you know. And when did you arrive? 1950 in a 1937 Plymouth. A 1937 Plymouth. You brought your whole family out? Yeah, I had two kids and us. We was getting low on gas and we had to climb the hill to Boulder City. That was something, you know, from the Dam. Man, going over that Dam in those days, too. So, it was quite an experience. Oh yeah, no air conditioning and it was about a hundred. It was August. I don't know, just a date in August, and oh, it was about a hundred-twenty I think, with no air conditioning in the car. So, you had that and, 'course, in those days it was all water coolers, you know, evaporated. We didn't have air conditioning. Boy, I'd go to work and come home driving in, [nodding off gesture] like that, you know. [Laughing] Nodding off. So, then we moved to Twin Lakes, which is Lorenzi Park now, and Frank managed Twin Lakes. Then, it had a little "biggest" pool in the state and a little coffee shop-like there. Motel it was, you know, but it had managers for the hotel until he got his work at the Sahara, when the Sahara was built. It wasn't built yet. It was the Bingo Club. He had these boys from Nellis Air Base come and clean the pool all the time for extra work, you know. [Chuckle] 'Course, I don't know if I should say that or not. When you were working in Ohio, what city where you working in? Columbus. In Columbus, Ohio? Uh-huh. 2 And your job had been what? Waitress. You were a waitress there, as well, and how long had you been doing that work? Well, I got my Social Security. How long's it been? Thirty-years, thirty-years I was a waitress. And in Columbus, you started then when you were a young girl? Oh yeah, right out of high school, right out of high school. You went in? Uh-huh, seventeen. You were seventeen? Uh-huh. And that was the kind of work when you came to Las Vegas you continued? Uh-huh, and back then, in that day, I had to have my high school diploma before I got that job, the first job I got as a waitress. In Columbus? In Columbus. There was an ad in the paper and they said, "Bring your high school diploma," and out of seven girls, three of us got hired and I was one of the three, at Mills Buffet. It was down right at Town and Broad. I mean Broad and High. Why do you think they had that requirement? Well, jobs wasn't that fluent, I guess, in those days. That's what they had, right in the ad in the paper, you know. 'Course, I was an old farm girl. I had just come off of the farm, but I had other jobs when I was out on summer vacation. You mean you grew up on a farm and graduated from high school in a farm area and then moved into the big city? 3 Well, I had been both places. Yeah, I graduated from a farm place, sixty years ago. We just celebrated [our] sixty class reunion. Oh, okay. Uh-huh. I loved the farm, I loved the farm. Milk cows before I went to school and my granddaughters don't hardly see a cow. They, all three, where born here. You had, certainly, some big impressions of what this area looked like when you first drove in? Oh, it was nothing. Some of the streets weren't even. Sahara only went to the tracks out there and it was San Francisco. I look at that Sahara now-a-days, you know. We didn't have the under pass yet off of Main Street. What about just the environment compared to the lush greenness? Yeah, well, it was more desert. See, we come here and Twin Lakes wasn't built till later, you know, the houses, the development. We never thought it would come out here to Green Valley, never. Took years, and years, and years [and] now look at it. Did you think you had fallen off the end of the world? No, not really, but it was different, you know. Just kind of rolled with it. So, at the El Rancho Vegas you started working there the day after you arrived? Uh-huh. Tell me a little bit about how the whole place was set up, what it looked like? Well, it was gambling, you know, which I wasn't used to as far as that goes, but we could go out. I'll tell you a little story. We waited on a lot of stars. Sophie the Skater, something like that, Sophie Henry [Sonja Henie] and, 'course, I've waited on Howard Hughes and a lot of 4 them, but anyway, it was free. We had the silver dollars that I thought never would, you know, disappear. So, I was waiting on this Nelsen. He was a dancer. Gene Nelsen was a dancer in the movies and so-forth and he run my, I'll say butt, but in those days I said something else, for breakfast even, and he wrote down twenty-cents tip, you know. So, you had to go out the cashier and get all your tips like that, [and] take that thing in. [Gesture] So coming back, there was a dime machine there and I put those two dimes in that dime machine and hit for twenty-dollars. [Laughing] That was something, you know, yah. yeah. Can you imagine that, yeah! [Laughing] But I didn't stay on breakfast too long. I went on. I went in the coffee shop then because, see, we had an invalid daughter in between here and we lost her, you know, but anyway.. .Then I waited on the dealers at the Ranch. For one whole year, dealers only, 'til they drove me nuts. [Chuckling] I don't know if you know how men are or not, you know, but you couldn't do one little thing for this one and not the other one or they griped, you know. "Oh, you're giving him more, Maggie." 'Course, everybody knows me by "Maggie" because when I started at the Ranch there was a "Peggy," and there was a "Marge," and so-forth. So the hostess, Jerry Williams was her name, she's not with us any more, said, "You look like a Maggie to me so we're gonna call you Maggie." So, everybody out here knows me as Maggie, not Margaret, you know. So that's what I want everybody to [know]. Later on, I went into the showroom and was there about two-and-a-half years and with my partner. Hazel and I worked together, and we still correspond, for two-and-a-half years. Her husband couldn't keep from gambling, so they had to go to California. They went down to Laguna Beach. Of course, he's gone now. So, the Dunes was gonna be built. Okay, our one hostess, what was her name? Not Dorothy, but the other one. Bonnie. Bonnie says, "Let's all go and open the Dunes. Let's a 5 bunch of us go and open the Dunes." She said this [to] me and some others and [we] says, "Okay," but we didn't know we was gonna have to work with waiters. There, it was a waitress and a waiter and they wanted the waiter in the kitchen. At El Rancho, why, it was girls could work together, you know. A small place and you didn't have to carry far or heavy, you know. So, we opened the Dunes in 1957, say. It was 56 or 7,1 just forget. That was the prettiest place on the Strip and they had beautiful girls and shows, but then they got some dead ones, too. Like Marie Shavea or whatever... Maurice [Chevalier] Maurice, yeah, and Wally Cox. Did you ever hear of Wally Cox? Well, he was kind of a comedian and so-forth and they laid bombs and so-forth, but the guys in the casino was taken the money. They were "milkin' it" as you call it, you know. They were good guys. They knew [how to run the business,] but was milkin' it. So, they closed, shut it down, you know, but a lot of them went over to the Sands. The Sands come in and tried to save it, say like, but it was, I guess, too far gone. So, they took a lot of the help that wanted to go over to the Sands. I said "Oh, I want a little vacation." I wanted to go on one. So, one evening my girlfriend and I was out and we ended up over at the Sands. I don't know who we was going to see. The maitre d' there knew me and he said, "Oh, Maggie, go home and get you some shoes and come to work," and I said, "uh," but he called me at home [Laughing] and, so, I went to work for him. I retired from the Sands in '61, but I've had Liz Taylor and we had all the good shows. The best hotel for shows on the Strip at that time was the Sands. I would [have] maybe not retired then, but my daughter got sick and that was it, you know. That was in '61. So, that's been my work along the Strip. Although, when the International opened, why, 'course Frank will tell you that. He opened that and the maitre d' 6 said, "Come to work for me and be my assistant maitre d'." Frank says, "You can't pay her enough. [Laughing] [Frank speaks up from the other side of the room: Yeah, I told him he'd sutler.] Yeah, he was the [one] at the Sands and our other at the Sands, he waited for the Caesars to open. A lot of them went to Caesars with Kirk, but he's long gone, too. He passed away. I could've opened the Tropicana because the waiter, Weaver, that I was working with went, too. He said, "I'm gonna open the Tropicana. Don't you want to come?" But see, the waiters opening these places, they figured they make maitre d' or captains. They don't make maitre d' [because] you only have one, but they'd make captains, you know, and I said, "No, not going." So, both the male waiters and the female waitresses would go up to Captain or was that... No, just the waiters go to captains, but you don't have that many captains and, 'course, that's all gone now. That's not the way... No. I don't think there is a maitre d' in this town, is there? [Frank: There might be, but we don't know them.] Not in any of the older places. [Frank: You had to be male to make...] See, you had the whole thing, the dinner and everything in those days, you know. You served cocktail, and soup, and salad, and the whole works, you know. You had good people and so-on and you had to have help, but now watch. You go in and get two drinks or something, you know, and that's it. [Frank: Maggie, you only had one female.] Some of them have gone back to... [Frank: Maggie you had one female and that was at El Rancho.] Oh yeah, Dorothy Lasueor. 11 rank: And that was the only one.] Yeah, well Bonnie was, too. Let's go back to the El Rancho. You worked there how long? Five years. 7 About five years? Until I opened the Dunes. And there was a showroom at the El Rancho? Oh, yeah. Tell me a little bit about the shows that played there and if you saw them. Well, I saw all of them. I mean, working there, you know. Well there's Milton Berle as we said, and Sophie Tucker, and Lili St. Cyr, and Jack E. Leonard, and Julius LaRosa, and who's that dirty comedian went over to the Sahara? I'm not thinking of Rickles. [Frank: Buddy Hackett. It wasn't Buddy Hackett?] I'm thinking of, oh yeah, Buddy Hackett. Buddy Hackett and, as I say, Tony Bennett, and... It wasn't small? Oh, I know. What was that three people that come? We said, "We won't do no business with them." [Frank: It'd have to be a trio of some kind.] A trio, Paul.. .Mary, Paul and... Peter, Paul, and Mary? Yeah! Yeah! No kidding? Yeah, and I thought, "Oh," but we did good business with them and they surprised us. Peter, Paul, and Mary. In the early fifties? Yeah, fifties! This was still [the] fifties. I left in '57. Then we had Eartha Kitt and those dancers. [Frank: She was a dancer in those days.] Eartha Kitt. What where they called? Boy, I never missed them 'cause, boy, they could dance. Dorothy Dunham, yeah, Dorothy Dunham Dancers. [Katherine Dunham Company] [Frank: She wasn't a singer in those days.] 8 Was that an all-black review? Yeah, Eartha Kitt and, oh, I can't remember. Wow. That was a lot of entertainment. So entertainment from those early days was really quite a part of the hotel casino? Uh-huh. Well, you see in those days there weren't too many hotels out there. There was the Thunderbird, and there was [Frank: El Rancho, Flamingo] Desert Inn, and the Flamingo, [Frank: and the Last Frontier] and the Last Frontier. Four of them-like. [Frank: Five or six] Before the Sands was here? And Grace Hayes had the Red Rooster up there about a half a mile and that was the end of the Strip, you know. Peter Lind Hayes, you know him? His mother had it and that's where a lot of the bunch would go after they got off from the shows, you know. [Frank: It was across from the Sands, yeah.] Yeah. You mean the entertainers would go down to ... Well, no. Most of the entertainers now were missing something. There was the Silver Slipper. You heard of the Silver Slipper? Well, that's where the entertainers would go because they had the best comedians and shows on at that Silver Slipper. In our day, they had Hank Henry and who all? [Frank: Sparky Kaye.] Sparky Kaye, yeah. [Frank: Real slap-stick comedy.] Yeah, and boy it was good. Was it sort of vaudeville? [Frank: Yeah.] Yeah, yeah. And did they also have a floorshow of dancers? No. They might've had a girl that would kinda take it off and stuff like that. I'll tell you a place that had a good show downtown was the Mint, the old Mint. 9 Well I didn't know that... Sally Rand come there. [Frank: That's the Horseshoe today.] Yeah. And they would have entertainment showrooms? Yah Yeah, almost [a] showroom, not as elaborate or as big, but for downtown they put on a good show. Like Sally? Like Sally Rand and who all? We used to go down there. That one good singer, wasn't Howard Keel, but he sang something like Howard Keel and then the Fremont used to have a pretty good show downtown. [Frank: That's where Wayne Newton started out.] Oh yeah, Wayne Newton started. [Frank: He and his brother.] What about the Nugget? Well, they never had any shows in my day, just a good place to gamble. Okay, so it was mostly the Mint? The Mint and Fremont, those were the ones. Interesting. You mentioned Lili St. Cyr. What was her act? Well, she was a kind of a striptease, not clear off, and she started in a bath tub, like taking a bath and so-forth. Then, she got up on a track and went around and threw her pants to the audience. That little pant, you know. I never caught one of them. If I did, I would have given it to my customer, you know. [Laughing] It would have been something, but we had a kid that cared nothing about autographs or any of this. I don't know [if it was] because he was raised up in it or what. So, there's a lot of things I didn't bother about, you know, but she put on that kind of an act and she drew 'em. From '50 to 1955, while you were at the El Rancho Vegas? 10 Uh-huh. So, she is doing a striptease basically? Yeah. Some people think that it came with Minsky's at the Dunes. [Frank: She wasn't no young chicken in those days, either.] Uh-huh. No, [Frank: Scarlet Ann wasn't either.] but boy with that fan and she did it so fast that, well, I don't know if I should talk on that or not. [Frank: Might as well. Let's not go there.] Well, we was down there in the front row. We got so many comps and everything because Frank was a buyer at the Sahara, you know, and me a waitress on the Strip. They take care of their own, you know. We don't have to tip nobody, only the waitress and so-forth. [Frank: In those days, you know, everybody knew everybody.] Yeah, everybody. So, Sally [Rand] was down there doing those [fans]. She had beautiful fans and we was down in the front row. We had company from Chicago. We used to have a lot of company from back there, you know, 'cause we were here. Sally, this gal's name was Sally [too], she said, "My God, I never saw that much of my own self," 'cause she was seeing Sally Rand, you know. She said, "I never saw that much of my own self." [Laughing] How old do you think Sally Rand was when she was working here? Huh? How old do you think... [Frank: Fifty-five or sixty.] Yeah, she wasn't [young], but she was good. [Frank: She was in good shape though.] What was some of the other entertainment like at the El Rancho Vegas? 11 Oh well, you know, we had the lounge act then. We had Billy Daniels. Remember Billy Daniels, the black singer? Well, he wasn't real black, you know, and 'course at the Sands we had Louis Armstrong. You remember him, Louis Armstrong? Who else was in the lounge? 'Course, I never went back to the lounge show in that day. We weren't allowed back if we wasn't entertaining somebody or something. I know we went to the Sahara and saw Bacharach, the piano player, you know, and who was over...I guess it was Milton Berle, with this big broad over [at] El Rancho. We had a couple with us and we went over to the Rancho and, I'm telling you, that was a great show that he put on. 'Course, you say everybody knew everybody. So, I knew all the dealers and stuff 'cause [as] I said, at one time that was all I did. So, he was dealing Black Jack, Greeny was, you know, this guy. So, I just put a dollar down on there and he never even looked at my cards and handed me a five-dollar chip. [Laughing] That's how they did in those days. You weren't gonna get fired, you know. Now, I thought... You couldn't do it today, believe me, but I worked them, just for fun. I've been on the stick at the Crap table, you know, just you don't have to pay off or anything. I just raked the dice in with the stick. Now, what casino? At El Rancho Vegas in those days. Wasn't there some kind of ban on women dealers? No. I was more or less just doing it for fun. We had this one guy come down. He was from Reno or some place, and a he took the whole craps table. Nobody could play, but him when he was playing, you know. He was really a good tipper, too, but dope or something finally got 12 him. Nick the Greek was around in my day. You've heard of him, you know. He was a big gambler, man, he was a... [Frank: High roller gambler.] So, you would do a little bit of work at the dice table? [Frank: No, no, no, no.] No, the craps table. The craps table? With the stick, you know, where they make you bet the front-line or the back-line or the numbers. Let me ask you this thing about women dealers even though that wasn't your area at all. Maybe you're aware of some of the buzz that was going on about it. There was a time when women did deal cards? Uh-huh, yeah, yeah. Especially downtown? Yeah. And then, there was this ban and then, they started dealing again. What do you remember about that whole [thing] or did you know anyone of the dealers? There was a ban. I'm trying to remember, late '40s or early '50s [1958] that said that women cannot be dealers [downtown] because they were competing for the jobs with male dealers. Oh. And so it went through the [City] Commission and they said... No. I didn't even know any. I know in the earlier days they could talk to you and you could have a little fun, you know, but now-a-days you can't, you know. They have to be, you know... [Frank: That ban must not have lasted long, though.] Is that right? 13 | Frank: I don't even remember it. It wasn't that strict or bad. I don't know. How did you heard about it.] Newspaper. [Frank: Newspaper. It's no big deal, now. There was men dealers, there's no doubt about that, but occasionally you had a woman and, if they were good at it, they would let them deal.] You know the eye-in-the-sky? Right. That stops a lot of fun. We had a fella that come out from Columbus. [Whisper] Eye-in-the-sky. It was at the Sahara or at the El Rancho, I forget. [Frank: Sahara] Sahara. [End Tape 1 Side A] [Begin Tape 1 Side B] There was family there at El Rancho. Murphy, Virgil Murphy, was from the Neil House back there in Columbus, and a Beldon Katleman, [who] owned the El Rancho Vegas, Beldon and his mother and dad, but Beldon worked. He was the boss there and, of course, he dated a lot of the stars, different ones. So, gosh, I can't think of some of them now, but it was, you know, everybody was just great, you know. One little thing, when I come in there, they knew that I was there under the boss-like, you know. So, the different ones would say, "Don't bother her. Don't bother her. She's here under the boss," which didn't mean a thing really, but they was afraid that, you know, [that I'd] say, "I did this or I did that," [about them] you know. Yeah, isn't that funny? Yeah, "She's there under the boss." How long would people stay at their jobs? Would there be a real quick turn over? Not in the Fifties. No, uhn-uh. We stayed there 'til, well, say five years and most of them were not like me, but they start drifting apart-like, you know, and I don't know. Bonnie was one of 14 our hostesses and real good. She just said, "Well, let's go open the Dunes," for a change, you know, and the Rancho is getting, you know. [Frank: You didn't have turn over until the corporations came.] Yeah, no. Oh, that's interesting. And, we had the same bunch at the Dunes, practically, until they went under, you know. What kind of benefits would you get in addition to your wage? What kind of benefits? Health, retirement? [Frank: Nothing.] Oh, no, that union was piss-poor in my day. What union was it that you were a part of? The union we got. Culinary? Yeah. So you were a union member? Oh, yeah, had to be. You had to be to work here? Uh-huh. Of course, Frank was a Teamster. That's not, you know, that's better. Okay. But in our day, in my day, the union didn't mean nothing. We used to go downtown to a little old wooden building. The steps was wood up into it even. We had a boss and you know what they done to our first culinary guy, don't you? Who was that? [Frank - Brownwood] Brownwood. [A1 Bramlet] 15 [A1 Bramlet]? You know what they did to him? Tell me. Well, [Laughing] they buried him in the desert and his hand come up. He thought he was a God. Nobody could go to him, you know. He sent [them to] everybody else and, you know, they met him at the plane, took him in a van, buried him in the desert and not deep enough. His hand come up and there he was. His daughter, I think, is still around here. I think somebody interviewed her not to long ago. Really? Oh, I don't know. In the newspaper? Is her last name [Bramlet] or is it a married name now? [Frank: Married name. I don't know.] It was a married name, but you could find her under [Bramlet] I think, you know. Yeah. So [Bramlet] was running the union where you were working then? Oh, yeah. And he was killed while you were still working? Uh-huh. But he wasn't very effective, you said, in terms of getting benefits for union workers for the culinary? No benefits, even. Take in a withdrawal slip. You don't get that insurance to bury you. What is it? Two-hundred-and-some and you're paying in it all these years. I had eleven years, see, and you don't even get that little bit when you...I was only making [around] a dollar. I was 16 making a dollar-fifty-seven-an-hour, a dollar-fifty-seven-an-hour. You worked for your tips, see. And the tips got to be pretty much undeclared at that time, right? Well, the tips was pretty good, especially when the dollar was still in. Oh, the silver dollar? Yeah, and we could use [them] in my day. You [could] use a chip any place you wanted. You could use it in a grocery store, drug store, any place. I'll be darned. Your chips, five-dollar chips or whatever. I know I was working with Jack, at the Dunes, and this guy dropped one. Jack seen it and he put his foot over it. Then he helped the guy look for it. "I don't see it," [he says.] The guy walked out. [Laughing] He picked his foot up and there was the chip. You know, those nice little things. [Laughing] A lot of the dealers have talked about tips and how it has totally changed now in the way that they operate with tips. I'm not sure if waitresses would be the same, though, because it's still so independent. No. Only on banquets you would split your tips. Banquet work you would, but not individual. [Frank: You talking about money and taxes? Is that what you were referring to?] No. With dealers. [Frank: Oh, well waitresses, too.] We had to keep account. Well what the stories a lot of dealers have told me is that there was a lot of loose money in Las Vegas and tips. [Frank: Sure there was.] This is later, though. This is not the fifties, this is the seventies. 17 [Frank. Well, I was going to say it had to be a lot later, yeah.] Because the tips they would bring home would just be wonderful, like a hundred dollars. [Frank. Internal Revenue didn't start bearing down on us until about 1970, like you say. Then they had to keep track of them.] We had to keep track of ours at the Sands. [Frank: We did it before then because you never knew when they were gonna pick you up for an audit.] No. Right. When you said that you went to the Dunes and people where skimming in the casino, how familiar were other workers about that happening or would you sort of read about it in the newspaper the next day? [Frank: You kept your mouth shut.] You didn't know it until it was [Stomped on the ground gesture] ugh, and that's more-or-less, you know, what happened, but who knows. Nobody could prove it, you know. They would, more-or-less, blame it on the shows. They didn't have the right management for shows and stuff. They had beautiful girls. They had the best girls, showgirls and stuff. They had this bunch of Jap women and they come out. They had body­suits on, I think, but you could see everything-like, you know. When they come out, 'course they come out and would have to stand in the hallways before they went on in those days, but you look around in that thing and there wasn't a waiter in the room. T