Transcript of interview with Judy Laliberte by LaVaun Hendrix, February 27, 1979

UNLV University Libraries LaVaun Hendrix i An Interview with LaVaun Hendrix An Oral History Conducted by Judy Laliberte Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas Special Collections and Archives Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada, Las Vegas UNLV University Libraries LaVaun Hendrix ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2019 UNLV University Libraries LaVaun Hendrix iii The Oral History Research Center (OHRC) was formally established by the Board of Regents of the University of Nevada System in September 2003 as an entity of the UNLV University Libraries’ Special Collections Division. The OHRC conducts oral interviews with individuals who are selected for their ability to provide first-hand observations on a variety of historical topics in Las Vegas and Southern Nevada. The OHRC is also home to legacy oral history interviews conducted prior to its establishment including many conducted by UNLV History Professor Ralph Roske and his students. This legacy interview transcript received minimal editing, such as 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. The interviewee/narrator was not involved in the editing process. UNLV University Libraries LaVaun Hendrix iv Abstract On February 27, 1979, collector, Judy Laliberte interviewed local school teacher LaVaun Hendrix in her home in Las Vegas, Nevada. The two discuss how Hendrix originally came to Nevada, her occupational history, and differences between the school system in Las Vegas and other states that she’s lived in. Hendrix explains how a changing school system has affected her job as a teacher and her students. She goes on to talk about the above-ground atomic tests, Helldorado, changes to the desert, and Nevada during World War II. The interview concludes with Hendrix describing her travels through Nevada. UNLV University Libraries LaVaun Hendrix 1 3/27/1979, interviewing Mrs. LaVaun Hendrix at 1721 Ryan Avenue and I am Judy Laliberte. Okay. For my first question, I’d like to know, were you born in Southern Nevada? No. No? Where were you born? Nebraska. Why did you come to Nevada? Well, we were in Ohio and we both wanted to come west, and this job offered, opened up for my husband. We, is you and your husband? Mm-hmm. Okay, job opportunity—he’s a—? Professor of education at UNLV. When did you come to Nevada? In August 1956. Did you first come to Las Vegas? Or did you live—? No, we came right to Las Vegas. Do you have any children? One. How old? Twenty-seven. She grew up here? UNLV University Libraries LaVaun Hendrix 2 She grew up here. She was not quite five when we came. She went through all the public schools, and she went to Arizona State at Tempe. Do you have any brothers or sisters? I have two sisters. What did you do as you were growing up in Nebraska—what did you do, were there any special things you liked to do? Did you spend a lot of time with your sisters, or—? Well, no, because I was three years ahead of my one sister, and then my other sister is a lot younger than the two of us. And in the summertime we lived on the farm in the summertime, we helped with the garden and things like that. And in wintertime, we were involved in school activities. It was a little school so everybody was involved in everything. What is your occupation? I’m a teacher. What grade? Kindergarten. How long have you been teaching? Oh, well I’ve taught in Las Vegas twenty-two years. This is my twenty-second year in Las Vegas. The school system is a lot different from when you went to school. How so? Well, when I went to school there were two grades in each room, and all of the school was contained in one building. From first grade—we didn’t have kindergarten, and it was, from first grade through twelfth grade was all in one building. Were you married in Las Vegas? UNLV University Libraries LaVaun Hendrix 3 No we were, we were living in Cedar Falls, Iowa when we were married. But we were married in Oklahoma. Do you own property here? We own this home. And how long have you owned—? Twenty, oh, since 1956. Are you involved in a lot of activities outside the home? Well, I have been at various times. I’ve been involved with AAUW, and the, I’m acting in the PTA, and I belong to a chapter of PEO. I have taught Sunday school, I don’t now, but I have. Were you involved with a lot of activities with your child? She was growing up. Well I went, I took her to Sunday school, I took her to dancing classes, and we, and I was an assistant Campfire Girl later with her. Do you have a church you belong to? No, we don’t belong to a church. The changes over the years of the school system—you’ve been working in one school? Oh no, I’ve worked in two schools here. Two schools here. The changes in the system over here, have they affected your attitude towards your job or affected your job in any way? Well there, this is—you can’t make a general statement, but there are some years when there’s a lot of disturbances. You can feel the tension, it makes you more tense, and it makes the job a little more difficult. But then when that particular problem is eased off, why then, well things go pretty much back to normal. We, we push the children much more than we did, we used to. And I don’t think that’s really a good idea myself. I think many, many of our problems in the upper-UNLV University Libraries LaVaun Hendrix 4 grades is because we started pushing them so soon in school, early in school. And if we let them just more or less progress with, at their own speed, and go back to when kindergarten—they thought it was a playtime, but it wasn’t, we were teaching all the time, but we were teaching through play. Mm-hmm. And if we could go back to that, I think our children would be much happier, for the children. What were the two schools, the names of the two schools? Kit Carson and Halle Hewetson. Was there a big difference between the two schools—the children—? Yes, Kit Carson is over on the Westside, and it was a good school, and the children were delightful children, and we had lots of good students. But when Halle Hewetson first opened here, and I came and went and opened up, this was a hot—much higher socio-economic area. Now it isn’t that way anymore, the incomes, well they’re probably making more money, but it’s not buying us much. And many of the original families who lived here and moved out, moved to the Valley or somewhere else. And we, all of these apartments around here bring, tend to bring in a lower-income, people with lower-incomes. What do you do in your spare time? What spare time? (Laughs) Not much? (Laughs) Well, I like to do a little sewing, and I do a little gardening. And I read a little, and we play Bridge with a group of friends. Is the gambling a big part of your life here? I don’t mean are you a gambler (Laughs)— I mean, in your spare time, do you go out and—? UNLV University Libraries LaVaun Hendrix 5 No, the only time we ever go out on the Strip or to any of the hotels, are if we have guests in town. So you don’t normally go to the shows, or—? We used to go to the shows quite a bit, but after you’ve seen them, they get to being a little monotonous. If there’s something really special that we’d like to see, and now the musicals—we see the Union Plaza musicals every, if it’s something we really—we’re very selective, you know. We don’t just go see everything that comes. Does the gambling atmosphere of the town bother you at all? Not really, because we’re far remote from it. The only way it affects our life, of course, it provides our income. But the children that we, that I work with, they have a different kind of life, because many of ‘em have to stay up till ten o’clock to see their, one of their parents. And both of their—maybe one parent is responsible for them in the daytime and the other one at night, so that there’s really not a united family feeling. Have you noticed any changes in Nevada since you first came here in Las Vegas? Yes! The influx of people. (Laughs)—the growth is tremendous, it’s oh. It was forty thousand when we first came, and what, it’s close to right here in this area, is three hundred fifty thousand dollars. (Unintelligible) Yes, and the traffic has changed, has increased in proportion to the number of people. Now when Hank first came to the University, we knew everybody. We knew all the students and all the instructors, now we know very few of them. So that’s mostly your environmental change, what about economic? UNLV University Libraries LaVaun Hendrix 6 Well, our salaries have gone up, but so has the cost of living. We live better than we first came. Hank had just finished, he’d only been out of graduate school for two years. And we’d still have some expenses, some debt that, paying off a few debts from that. Right. Economically, and our daughter’s grown up, we’re no longer responsible for her, so we had—economically, we’re in better shape than we were. What about socially? Oh, we still do things about the same as we always did. We have some, well, the riots stopped, the Missus Riot came the same year we did, and we’re still good friends with them. We had some of our friends for a long time. Was there any big event or activity that happened in this town that sticks out in your mind? Well, they had, I can’t remember how many years ago, but it was closer to when we first came. Then, oh, it must’ve been close to fifteen years ago or longer. They had a big Aerospace Convention, and they needed—it was the largest convention that had ever been in this town, and they did not have transportation for them. So they closed school that day, and had the teachers act as drivers. We had to take all of the Aerospace people who were here for the Convention, out to Indian Springs. And of course, they—Thunderbirds, and the Blue Angels, and the Italian Flying Team, and I think a British Flying Team, and maybe a Dutch Flying team, all put on a show out there, and of course, we got to see it . And I think that’s maybe one of the things, the concerts that Eugene or Medillan, his Philharmonic Orchestra, and Leonard Burnstein and his Philharmonic Orchestra put on, were outstanding events. Especially back in those days, because just weren’t very many cultural types of things available to you here in Las Vegas. Well, I think UNLV University Libraries LaVaun Hendrix 7 the first musical arts workshop group, and their concerts, and Ed Brown’s Corralled were terrific events. Their concerts were great events. But now, if you want something spectacular? Well we saw some of the atomic, above-ground atomic energy explosions, atom bomb explosions. You’d see those tremendous masses of white and not a sound. And it was very eerie, ‘cause you just knew this force, they’re had to be a huge sound with this force—none of the shockwaves or soundwaves came over Las Vegas. You’ve been in this town for twenty years? Twenty—almost twenty-six, twenty-three, twenty-three. Twenty-three years. Have you noticed from year, to year, any special event that’s traditional, like anything that goes on the same time, every year after year? Well, Helldorado. In the spring, when we first came, those Helldorado parades, you wouldn’t miss, even whether you had a child to take to seem them, or not, you’d still—because the floats were tremendous and there were many, many floats and all the hotels had floats. And then these posses, posse groups came in with their beautiful, beautiful horses, and all their silver talking that they had on ‘em. They were gorgeous sites to see, and one year they had (unintelligible) here. And they had them in a tent, housed them in a tent up on Cashman Field. And you could go in and see them, and then of course they were in the parade. But the parade used to really be something, I haven’t seen a parade in, for years now, because well, the last few we saw just didn’t really amount to much. There were three of ‘em, there was the children’s parade, and the old-timer’s parade, and then that beauty parade, and that beauty parade— the floats in those beauty parades were as great as Pasadena, in the Rose Parade. Do they have many parades around here now? UNLV University Libraries LaVaun Hendrix 8 Well I guess they do, I think they do have—they have a parade on Veteran’s day, and the Shriners—when the Shriners come to town, they put on parades. And they still have a couple of parades I think during Helldorado. Your daughter was growing up around here. Did the gambling—or as she was growing up, the town was growing with it—did it affect her, or have any effect on her in any way? Well, it’s difficult for me to know, because I think value has changed all over the United States. And whether they changed more here, I don’t know. She’s very broad minded about things, and of course she’s of that generation that believed everybody had the right to live their life the way they wanted to. So it’s difficult to say that the town affected her any, because this was part of the culture of that generation. Their attitude towards morals and the way they really believed and lived in love-live. Is she living in Las Vegas? Yes, yes. She married? She’s divorced? She have any children? No. Okay. Do you go around to any of the museums or any of the sites around outside of Las Vegas—like up to the Dam, and they have a few museums around there. Any other—? We’ve been there, we’ve been to Overton, we used to go out in the desert lots and lots. We’d just go out exploring and hiking. I think we’ve seen practically all of the museums and things like that. We don’t make much use of the libraries, not as much as we should because we get a lot of magazines and books of our own. We’re very interested in the desert—if it’s a wild, a good UNLV University Libraries LaVaun Hendrix 9 wildflower year, we’re out nearly every weekend out looking at the wildflowers. We do a little birding, we haven’t been active with the Ottoman’s Society in the last few years, but there were a few years that we were, and we’d go out and look at the birds. The desert itself, go out—is there much of a difference year after year? I know that this year there’s supposed to be a big difference because it was a really wet season. But was there a big difference year after year or was it like three years it’s pretty much the same and another year it changes a little? Well the only time there’s a big difference is when we have a wet season and have lots of wildflowers. And we have seen, if we have a good wildflower season this spring, this will be probably be the fourth one we’ve seen. Two really great, and then two—last year was a good, good for people who hadn’t seen the wildflowers ever, but it was in no way compared to a couple of the seasons that we have seen. Otherwise the desert remains the same as far—if you just take a general overall view, but we love the desert. And we, we can always find something to go hunting or something to explore. We think it’s great, that’s why we’ve stayed here for twenty-three years. What do you think of all the construction going on around this city? I’ve been here almost a year, and I’ve noticed a difference of all the apartment houses going up—they’re just spreading out all over. The big thing is just, shopping centers, shopping malls. They’re just putting ‘em up all over. Well, this is a weird town, because much of the construction is because there are so many people in here for construction. You know, as kind of a self-perpetuating cycle. I’d much rather see it remain a little town like it used to be. Then this big town with all of its traffic and all of its people. They haven’t provided, they really haven’t taken care of it, traffic problems. They’re—if UNLV University Libraries LaVaun Hendrix 10 they don’t do something, they’re going to have some really serious traffic problems one of these days if they don’t get that other leg of that other freeway through, going on through east and west. It’s just ‘gonna be impossible to get anywhere in this town, and they need about two more, really need a good north and south freeway of some sort, or expressway. What about the changes on the Strip? I understand that your bigger hotels, they went up, they built their towers, but they haven’t been up all that long. No, when we first came here, the Fremont was the highest building, tallest building in the state of Nevada. And they spread out—they were well, I think they were really of, trying to keep from building the tall buildings in case of earthquakes. And then for some reason or other, I guess they decided they could build ‘em so they can withstand an earthquake, and hopefully, I hope they can. But then also, the land became so valuable, that they couldn’t afford to buy land to spread out. They had to—and the only way, so we’ve been told, that each hotel can compete is, there’s a regular cycle of building, and you—each hotel has to stay in that cycle and build in order to compete with the other hotels. And if they don’t—when one hotel expands, then all of the hotels have to expand, it’s a vicious circle. Think they need more hotels here? Well they claim that—the last two, this weekend this last, yesterday and Saturday, that weekend, and then I’m sure President’s Day weekend, but the weekend before, there were no rooms, and they don’t for the people who just drove in. Yes, I understand, they had a couple of big conventions here. The homeowner’s convention, they just— And they had a hard time housing. Yes. UNLV University Libraries LaVaun Hendrix 11 That weekend, they said they were, didn’t have housing for all those people, we drove up Fremont—this end of Fremont where all the motels are, and there were vacancy signs. But I guess the people didn’t want to stay that far away from the convention or something, I don’t know. So, it’s a little difficult to really know whether they really do have all the, every available motel room in use. Or whether the convenient motels are in use. I don’t know—oh there have been many hotels built since we first came here. The ones that—El Rancho Vegas, which is no longer there. The Sahara was there, and the Thunderbird, which is now the Silverbird, the Stardust had been started, but the man who started it had gone broke. And shortly after we came, someone else took it over and started building it again. The Desert Inn, and the Riviera and Flamingo, the Tropicana opened up about two years after we came. The Hacienda was here, the Frontier was the old Frontier—the Silver Slipper was there. The Showboat was here, but it was not—it was about a third of the size that it is now. Had none of the high-rise on it. And between the Silver Slipper and the old Frontier, back in the back was a western town, you know, I think it belonged to Roy Rogers—someone said it did. And then he picked, either he bought it and moved it all to Florida or he owned it and then decided to go all to Florida, I can’t remember which. But, oh that wasn’t what it was called—where the Frontier is, I can’t remember the name of it. But there was a hotel there and they closed it up and the tore down some of it and they rebuilt it, and they’ve done two or three places to make it the Frontier. There was an old Frontier but then it had another name. And of course the convention center wasn’t here—but there weren’t too many motels there. And it was you know, the Strip is fun to have there, and we’ve always been glad it’s there, because when people come to town we have somewhere to take them if they want to go. And if they want to go out by themselves, then that’s fine too. UNLV University Libraries LaVaun Hendrix 12 Are you fine that you have a lot more visitors coming out to visit you because you’re living in a town like Las Vegas? Well we did when we first came here, but not so many anymore. And many of the people who come don’t stay with us, they prefer staying at a hotel, and we go and have dinner with them or something like that. When we first moved here, we had no, in fact I thought there was a sign out there that said, out on the edge of town that said the best food town was at 1721 Ryan. Now, I know that that’s not true, but we had—everybody when they first come here has lots of visitors because all of them, like you said, all the people who wanted to, have always wanted come to Las Vegas but were afraid to because they didn’t think they could afford it when they get a friend living here, they’re going to make a trip to here, which is fine. Yes, I’ve noticed that. But it tapers off after a while. And when my own relatives come, they really come to visit us, not to go see the Strip. We used to always take ‘em out to the Strip, but we don’t anymore. They prefer not to. Most expensive part of town. (Laughs) Town, yes. How much has the university changed? Well, it, when Hank first came out here, there was no campus at all. (Unintelligible) them in the auditorium at the Las Vegas High School, and they had classes over in the Baptist Church and in Frazier Hall. And they opened up Frazier Hall, which is the one first building, and there was a huge big room, probably not any wider than this room, and probably as long as from here to maybe the end of the north end of the house, and all of the professors, everybody just had a desk in there, and that was the office. And everybody, all of the professors were in the same office UNLV University Libraries LaVaun Hendrix 13 building. If a student wanted to come in, he just had to come sit in a chair right by their desk. And we used—the faculty and the students used to do everything together. Over here on Sixteenth, right off of Bonanza, there’s a house that a girl who was a student at the university—she and her husband lived in that house. And she had the entire faculty and student body there for a Christmas party. And we’d go on picnics, everybody, all the faculty and students, and we went up on Mount Charleston, we went out to Lake Mojave, we went to Boulder Beach—we had a lot of picnics together. And for a couple of years, the whole faculty had a Christmas party at John Wright’s house. And they could all, all the faculty and their wives could come. (Laughs) And meet in this one house. Now you’d need a hall. You couldn’t get them all to come neither. But we’ve long outgrown that, but it was kind of fun. We all knew each other and we all did things together, and now, I don’t even know everybody in the College of Education. It changes fast. ‘Kay, that’s all for side one. (Tape one ends) Press go. Well, I ‘course, as a child, things looked differently. And as an adult, I enjoyed, I liked living in Nebraska. It was very cold in the winter, it was hot in July in the summer. ‘Course we had no air-conditioning in sight. When I left Nebraska, we’d gone through the Depression, and we’d gone through the dust storms, the cycle of dust storms. My father left the farm about the time that—I guess towards the end of the cycle of dust storms because farmers were having a very difficult time making a living, and he decided to go to medical school. How old were you when you in Nebraska? UNLV University Libraries LaVaun Hendrix 14 I lived there until I was eighteen. And then you went where? Then I came to Colorado to teach. You taught kindergarten in Colorado too? No, I taught first and second grade, and first grade in Colorado. The schools where I taught didn’t have kindergarten. Were there your first years teaching? First year I taught, at an old three-room, rural school, and I had first and second grade. And then I went to Mount Rose, and taught in Mount Rose for six years, first grade. And after Colorado? I went into the Army. Oh! Into the Army—what did you—? During World War II. Well, I was a recruiter most of the time, but I was also in charge of the payroll. We made up payrolls and division, but I spent most of my time—I was in the Army recruiting. How long were you in? I went in on active duty D-Day, and I got out in January after (Unintelligible) Day. Where were you stationed? I was in New England the whole time. I was in New Haven and Fort Devens, Massachusetts, and Fort Williams, Maine. And what did you do when you got out of the Army? Went to—came—I lacked a year of having my bachelor’s degree, and I got my master’s degree from Teacher’s College at Columbia University. UNLV University Libraries LaVaun Hendrix 15 ‘Kay. When did you go to Iowa? Oh I went out there in the summer of 1950 to just teach summer school at the Teacher’s College at Cedar Falls. And the minute I got there, they started—they needed a kindergarten teacher, a supervisor to go out into the—they had a lot of they, they sent a lot of their students out into small community schools, and they needed some supervisors for out in some of those community schools. So I went out to a little town out of Cedar Falls called Hudson—well we drove back and forth, we stayed in Cedar Falls, but the university paid, or the college paid most of my salary because I was a supervising teacher and they were in the process of rebuilding the Hudson school, so I had kindergarten in the Methodist church, and we had one toilet, and one sink, and they brought our water in a jar—a pot type of jar, you know, every day, and I had about thirty to forty children—I kept them all day long, and I had six student teachers. And we had a gay time all by ourselves. We were quite, three or four blocks from the school, so we just had our own little private school down there in the church. Every Friday night we had to pack everything up and put it in a cabinet, and then Monday morning, we had to drag it all out because we had to get out of the way for them to have Sunday school. How did you end up in Connecticut? Well, when I got my bachelor’s degree my sister lived in Connecticut, and I went back there after I got out of the Army to be with her oldest boy when she went into the hospital to have her second boy. It was almost impossible to get people to come stay with children at that time, because they were still busy in the defense plants and everything. Even though the war was over, they still had those jobs, so she asked me if I could come back and stay with her older boy, which I did, and then my parents lived, our parents lived in Colorado, and so she kind of wanted me to stay on, and so she persuaded me to go down to Columbia University and see if I could get in, UNLV University Libraries LaVaun Hendrix 16 and I did. And so I just stayed there—oh and then I got my bachelor’s degree, which was one year later. I had had experience teaching, and I had a degree, so I pretty well could pick and choose my jobs. And so I decided I wanted to teach at Westport. So I just, one day I got off the train at Westport and went to see the Superintendent and he had a job for me. How long were you there? Three years. And where did you go after you left there? Iowa. Iowa, and then from Iowa? Well, I met Dr. Hendrix in Iowa! And in the spring—we were married at Christmas time, and in the spring he was recalled into the Navy, and that’s why we were in Millington, Tennessee, when our daughter was born. And then he was sent from Millington, Tennessee to California, and that’s how come we lived in California. And when he got out of the Navy, then we went back to Iowa, he started work on his PhD, and but we went back to Iowa City and he finished his work on his PhD, and he got a job at the, Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. And then we came out here from Ohio. Before you came out here, did you come out here for a visit and see that you liked it? Or did you decide, “We’re ‘gonna go to Nevada,”? We went to a meeting in Denver, and the Dean of the College of Education at Reno persists—you know, this is a regional branch, this was a branch of the University of Reno for three or four years. Well the Dean of the College of Education had a job opening in Reno and at Las Vegas, and he and Hank talked it over, and they both thought the job in Las Vegas would be more UNLV University Libraries LaVaun Hendrix 17 challenging. And as I said, we always wanted to come west, we wanted to come back west to live. So we came. Did you have any problems getting the teaching job once you came here? Well the first here I was here, I did not teach, our daughter was just in kindergarten and I didn’t teach until she was in first grade. No, not really. Jobs were fairly easy to get in that kind of time. What about your husband’s job at the university—does that interfere at all with your job, or with your activities not so much—I mean like, there were picnic you went out, but I mean, I don’t know, you plan something and his job would—? No, no, it’s because I just don’t plan, you know, we work, I know when he has to work and he knows when I have to work, and on Weekends we usually do things together, but through the week, he doesn’t—I go to the meetings, and he has a one night class, but we don’t go to together very much during the week, except the basketball games. Do you help each other with problems, with teaching? There’s, there’s different levels from both of you. Well, we have a lot of discussions about different things, I presume we do help each other. We support each other. What do you think of the climate here? I mean you had snow this year. How often have you had snow since you’ve been here? Well, about three years ago—three or four years ago. Lifetime escapes me. We went to the Rose Bowl and the parade and everything, and on Tuesday morning, we picked up the paper when we were eating breakfast, we were on our way home, said there was snow in Las Vegas. And we couldn’t believe it, but when we got here, there was the remnants of snow and then the next Saturday it snowed again. We’ve seen skiffs of snow, a time or two before that, but really, truly, UNLV University Libraries LaVaun Hendrix 18 heavy snow, that was the first one we’d seen. And I now, the snow stayed on around here for around a week this year, and I had never seen that happen before. Usually, it’ll snow when the sun comes out and the snow’s all gone. But it has been much colder this winter, colder for a longer time. We’ve seen it get, as far as the thermometer is concerned, go lower, but it’ll only be a night or two that it will go lower, and then this is, two us, this has been a cold winter. The coldest winter we’ve had since we’ve been here. Do you miss the snow at all? Nuh-uh. That’s why we came out here! I like to see it up on—from here, look up at Mount Charleston and see the snow up there. No, I do not miss the snow or the cold, I spent many a year getting children in and out of snow suits and boots. What about the heat in the summer? It gets awful hot here. It doesn’t really bother us, because everything’s air conditioned. I know you have a garden, but, but, do you—well you used to go out into the desert looking around—did the heat not get you then? Oh well you don’t go when it’s that hot. Oh in June you can still go some, but you don’t go during June and July, August, unless you go down to Lake Mead and into the water. Do you spend much time down at Lake Mead? Used to, used to go down there and picnic, and go swimming, but there are too many people in the water, and it isn’t kept as clean as it was, for a long time. The influx of people has changed it just like a lot of people change everything. What about your garden? What is the— Oh, I just have a few flowers. That’s all; does the climate affect it at all? I mean— UNLV University Libraries LaVaun Hendrix 19 Yes. Gardening here is not like gardening anywhere else. The soil is different in the first place—you have to put all the food into the soil, there’s no food in this sand that’s around here. And it takes a while, I suspect we lost many hundreds of dollars’ worth of bushes and things before we learned how to make them grow. It isn’t as much fun as gardening here as it was other places, because other places, you put a bulb in, and you knew you were ‘gonna get a beautiful flower. Here you hope when you put something in—you just hope you’re ‘gonna have a flower. And in Ohio, we had a big vegetable garden too, I tried tomatoes and peppers here, and it’s just not worth it as far as I’m concerned. Other people have fairly good luck, but I don’t with vegetables. Do you travel much through Southern Nevada? Well, I think we traveled quit