Transcript of interview with Myrtle Hancock by Russell Oakes. February 26, 1980

UNLV University Libraries Myrtle Hancock i An Interview with Myrtle Hancock An Oral History Conducted by Russell Oakes 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 Myrtle Hancock ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2019 UNLV University Libraries Myrtle Hancock 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 Myrtle Hancock iv Abstract On February 26, 1980, collector Russell Oakes interviewed beautician, Myrtle Hancock (born January 1st, 1921 in Craig, Colorado) in her residence in Las Vegas, Nevada. This interview covers the narrator’s occupational experience as a wardrobe dresser in the entertainment industry in Las Vegas. She also discusses family life, life on a ranch, Downtown Las Vegas, Helldorado, and Nevada’s hot weather. The interview concludes with a discussion on the development of Las Vegas and the projected future growth.UNLV University Libraries Myrtle Hancock 1 Interviewing Myrtle Hancock. 1924 Sweeney Avenue, Las Vegas, Nevada. By Russell Oakes, 1925 Sweeney Avenue, Las Vegas, Nevada, also— I’m Myrtle Hancock, I was born in Craig, Colorado. My Name was Robertson. I was one of three children, we lived on a Ranch near Craig, where I grew up. I went to country school, rode horseback and sometimes walked to school but mainly we rode horseback to school. We rode about two miles one way. And our horses were put in the stable and fed and cared for during the school hours. Then we’d saddle them up and rode home again. (Laughs) How about that? And I went to the country school until I was a sophomore. I had my sophomore year in—no, I finished my sophomore year in the little country school and then I took the junior and senior year in Craig and graduated in 1939. Life on the ranch was never, never dull. We did a lot of riding. We had cattle. My father had both cattle and sheep and we had to herd the sheep a lot when we were little. Like going up on the hill, and watching to see that the herd didn’t drift away, you know, during the day. And we would ride the pastures for the cattle and see that they had salt. This was another duty that we did during the years when we were growing up. I milked cows, had what we called bum lambs. They were little lambs that mother—the mother had died or for one reason or another, she wouldn’t claim it. So some summers I would have as many as twenty bum lambs that I’d teach to drink, you know, out of a little pan, and you’d feed them and they’d have milk night and morning. And then, in the fall, it was always sad. (Laughs) ‘Cause you’d put ‘em with the herd and they went off to the markets, you know. And we—my brothers and I all did this. And one of my brothers, my older brother who is five years older than I, he trapped in the winter time. He had a trap line. He trapped beavers and coyotes and fox and of course, he had to skin them and put the pelts, you know, pack the pelts on the boards and dry them. And we just did, I guess things that all rural people do, you know, lots of picnics in the summer time. And swam in UNLV University Libraries Myrtle Hancock 2 the river, soon as the ice was melted. We put up ice. And putting up ice was waiting until it was frozen about two feet, and then they’d saw it with saws, you know, and put it in houses and in an old log house in layers, put straw in between and put another layer on and continue to do this until (Laughs) the ice house was full and the straw would insolate that and keep that ice. So we would have—that was our refrigeration. Because we didn’t have rural electrification at that time. They got it just shortly after I moved away. But—well, we had ice cream every Sunday because we had cows and good cream and all that and good life, you know. And as I say, we rode horses to school. Had to maintain, take care of our horses, and I never did work out in the fields. A lot of the girls in my area did, but I didn’t. My mother didn’t want me to. (Laughs) So I was—pardon me, I was one of the lucky ones. After graduating from high school, I went to work up in Steamboat Springs, which is now a well-known ski resort. I worked up there at a little hospital for one year as a nurse’s aide. And I loved the country up there. It was very beautiful. Snow was a bit deeper than I’d been accustom to in the wintertime because it was actually tunneled during the winter, and you’d walk around in these tunnels like it was a whole different world. Then at that time it was—it was getting a little reputation as good ski country and they would be—they’d have a ski carnival they’d call it usually in January. And from there I went to Denver and I attended Beauticians College there for about a year and a half. And back to Craig where I operated a little shop. And I think the first few months that I worked, I made about twenty-two dollars a week, which I thought was just really big money. And that was during the time when they used the heat on the rollers to achieve the permanent wave, and finger-waving, all that type of thing that’s now coming back into vogue (Laughs) and the prissy permanents that today—as being very stylish. And I worked there until I was married to Hap Hancock that also grew up here in Craig, Colorado. His family were construction people. And he was four F when he went UNLV University Libraries Myrtle Hancock 3 to take his examination for the Army. So he couldn’t go off to war, and that was during the time of the Second World War. We went from Craig to Provo where my husband worked for an amusement game. And we were there probably almost two years, a little less than two years. It was real beautiful country. However there was gas rationing in that time because of the critical energy shortage of gasoline for domestic use during the war. So we didn’t really get to travel very much, so we were pretty restricted to just living right there in Provo. At that time the big steel mill was being built there, so we met a lot of people from out of state. A lot of people from back in the east and then from Pennsylvania and back through there. We came on to Las Vegas and we came into here in early March and it was extremely hot that day and we decided we’d be here just a few weeks perhaps and go back to Provo or Colorado. (Laughs) And I just wrote down, thirty-five years. (Laughs) I can’t believe that it’s the first time I really thought about how long I been here, you know. So my husband worked here for the man that he worked for in Provo. He had a—purchased an amusement game company down here so my husband did that for a short while and then he went to work in the—at the Golden Nugget, at the time it opened, or just shortly after it opened as a slot supervisor and he was there in that capacity for twenty-seven years. When I came here I couldn’t work as a beautician for six months because we were required by law to be here six months before they would issue a beautician’s license. I’m sure this was to protect the local workers from people, in the influx of divorces that would come and go. I’m sure that’s still about but they maybe still do that, I don’t know. I worked four years—I worked in a little shop on Carson, Fifth—right at the corner of Fifth and Carson. And we did what we thought were the celebrities. I guess they were the celebrities at that time because they would be people that work at the two Strip hotels and the Strip was—that was it. There were two hotels at that time. There was the—the Old Frontier and the El Rancho. The Old Frontier was on UNLV University Libraries Myrtle Hancock 4 the site—was on the site where the Frontier Hotel is now, today, out on the Strip. It’s about twice—it was two different hotels built there, until finally, this one now, that’s standing in that location. And the El Rancho burned some time back in the late fifties I believe. It was a very beautiful hotel. And the town was fifteen thousand when we came here, including North Las Vegas. It was like a little hamlet. Everyone pretty much knew everyone, you know. And on Saturday nights you’d ride Downtown and park your car and just kind of see people that came in to town, playing in the casinos and enjoying Las Vegas. It hasn’t changed, in that respect, that much, other than now you know very few people here. Lucky if you do see someone you know. (Laughs) It’s very rare because of the population growth and influx of tourists. I worked until our first child came and then shortly, couple years later we had another little son. We have two sons and I never really got back to being a beautician. (Laughs) I was always going to work again but I never really found the time. And I didn’t work until our sons were graduated from high school and one was in college and one was in Vietnam. And I work as a cosmetician, one year. Loved the work but then again, they started coming back from Vietnam. (Laughs) And I never found time to go back to work. The town was—I felt was a good town for youth as much as any town. We—there used to be little clubs. I think one of them was called the Wildcat Lair, where they—youth could go and dance on the weekends and play ping pong and that type of thing and I don’t know whether there are any places like this now or not. I really don’t know. It seems to me there aren’t. The youth, I think since the beginning of Las Vegas, always got in their cars, if they had cars, and they cruised Fremont Street on Saturday night down where the clubs were, you know. And I know that ours did that. And it was sometimes frowned upon but until just recently, they were allowed to do that. Now I believe there has been an ordinance passed that keep cars off of Fremont on Saturday night. But we had a—we had a cabin cruiser up on the lake, on Lake Mead. UNLV University Libraries Myrtle Hancock 5 And as our boys—from the time they were about toddlers, we spent about fifteen years boating on Lake Mead, which was a real nice diversion for us. And kept us out of mischief (Laughs) and the gambling clubs, I guess. And we—I think that Vegas probably is no different than any other place to raise a family and spend your time. We finally sold our boat and started seeing the desert in our dune buggies. And this we did a great deal of—we had two dune buggies and we’d go out with quite a few different friends and see different areas of the surrounding countryside. And that’s when you really begin to love Las Vegas, or the—you know, the desert, because it would—we’d come up on in ravines and canyons, we’d come up on old mining shacks, places that you couldn’t believe that people had lived. But they had spent no doubt a good deal of their lives there, trying to grub out a big strike, you know. And we found delightful springs in the desert, up in the ravines and it’s just real surprising the things we run into, you know of the—up from kind of yester—things that are left behind from days gone by, you know, particularly sardine cans (Laughs) and oh, canned milk. We decided that that must be about what the old prospectors survived on, was sardines and canned milk. Because that seemed to be what there would be mostly remains of containers that this type of thing had been in. I keep— Were there any relics that you picked up in your dune buggy expeditions? Well, some bottles, some, some bottles that are now collector’s items. And we found barbed wire, some. I have a few pieces of barbed wire and that is a collector’s item, also, now. Different barbed wire. In the beginning barbed wire was a very, very crude type of thing, you know, and the barbs were, oh, kind of like it had been , they’d been put on in a handmade fashion. And then, as time went off, they became a little more sophisticated looking, you know, the barbs and you could see that the machinery had improved for making this wire. We have things like the cans and the containers, you know, that things were in, that type of thing. But other than that, oh, UNLV University Libraries Myrtle Hancock 6 you—occasionally around the mines we’d find old, there’d be old mining equipment, you know, pieces and things that had been left behind. And we used to—one time when we were out—we came up on a cabin that was just delightful and there was a spring back in the mine shaft that you walked into, kind of like a tunnel, and it had a pale and a dipper where some water dripped down. And the water was just pure crystal. It was just delicious, you know. And we went to the cabin door and it had a latch on it, the door, it was still intact. And there was a note there (Laughs) that read, “Would anyone using the cabin, please leave some food behind.” (Laughs) In case someone was hungry that came there, you know, that should have been lost or something like that you, or a storm came up. And it—there was canned goods in there, and there was a bed and mattress, such as it was, you know. And it was like a relic, definitely a relic of the past. It was over in the York Mountains, kind of southwest of Searchlight. Many miles over there in our dune buggy, any four wheel drive could go over there. We were so impressed with that because there had been no vandalism at all. It was kind of like a nice way to handle and then there was a little note thanking the person that left last time, you know, the time before that. And people—there was a little book there where you registered, you know and wrote down any comments that you might want to. (Laughs) And I always wanted to go back there and never have, you know. That was down in—by Lipton, which was I guess at one time, maybe an old mining town, I’m not sure, a railroad town, that what Lipton was, it was a railroad town. Okay. We did a lot of that. We probably used our dune buggies on the desert for about probably ten years, I imagine. Something like that. So I hope again that Craig will get ours resurrected and we can use it again. Right now it is in not very good repair. And I—my husband died as a result of a motorcycle accident for years ago. And I hadn’t worked in quite a long time, so I was a bit confused as to what I would do for a livelihood because I needed to work for financial and emotional reasons. UNLV University Libraries Myrtle Hancock 7 And my sons mainstage hands, they had encouraged me to go in—in wardrobe behind some of the shows and work as a dresser or a seamstress and since I can sew but don’t classify myself as a seamstress I was really very reluctant to do it, you know. And one son said, “Well, I don’t really want you doing that. Because some of the people don’t talk very nice. And I don’t think you’d like that very well, you know.” (Laughs) Well, (unintelligible) about nine months after my husband’s death, my other son came home one night and he said, “They’re needing wardrobe people. One of the fellows, one of the stagehands had to go home and get his mother to dress some of the girls last night, before they could go on stage.” He says, “They’re giving tests over at the union hall. I want you to get over there.” (Laughs) (Laughs) So, pardon me, so I went the next day, and took the test, which was a test on just very basic sewing like snaps and feather stitching and hooks and eyes, just, just very simple work like that. And they made it very, very easy. So they said, “Well, now, you’ll be getting a call to go in to work.” (Laughs) And I thought, yes, that would be about six months, you know. (Laughs) They called me the following night. I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t have my little sewing kit or my scissors or anything ready but I—I went. I was called in to the MGM. And didn’t have the foggiest idea how to get in to the place or where to go. So I went and parked my car in the parking lot and went in, found a security guard and he took me to the—to the basement, where the wardrobe is, behind Hallelujah Hollywood. And this was something to see—I felt like I had fallen into a big circus, because the show was in progress by the time I got there. Because I had been called in because someone didn’t come in to work or was the (unintelligible) one reason or another. And I fell into that with the elephant being taken up the stairs. He was walking up the stairs on all four and I thought, well, what has, what have I fallen into? (Laughs) UNLV University Libraries Myrtle Hancock 8 (Unintelligible)? I first worked just part time. I’d work like just nights, as relief person when someone wasn’t available that was regular and I’d maybe work like five nights a week. This was for the first month or two that I worked there. And I didn’t really want to work full time. I didn’t want anything that tied me down quite that much. But I finally had to—well, I worked about a year part time but the part time developed into—to six nights a week, and I was sometimes not even answering the phone because I didn’t want, really want to work that much. But at that time, they were in need of—of wardrobe people. So I finally had to say that I would work full time. Our work consisted of sewing and mainly we would go in where we arrived there a half hour before show time. And during that half hour you’re doing some kind of basic repair that needs to be done on a costume for a girl to wear or a fellow. I am a dresser for the—in the girls’ department but occasionally women do go in and dress the fellows if one of the male dressers happens to be out for a night. But during that first half hour, you do some repair, mend tights, whatever there is that needs to be done. And then, at show time call, each dresser will have certain cues that she’ll perform like if you’re a swing person that is relieving the regular people you’ll do a different set of cues every night. And this consists of sometimes—it might be staying down in wardrobe, there are all the entertainers are in different, in sectioned off rooms. There’s dress dancers, there’s showgirls, there’s nude dancers and that doesn’t mean they’re totally nude. Mm-hmm. They have costume changes and jewelry and that type of thing. And then there are principals, for the, who are the main people in the show, the main singers and dancers, male and female, and in this show there are approximately a hundred and twenty-five entertainers plus the animal acts, which are perhaps an (unintelligible) team or something like that but fills in between the dance UNLV University Libraries Myrtle Hancock 9 and singing routines. So one night you’ll do something different than you did the previous night. You’ll have to preset costumes, which means setting them by an elevator. And you’ll set a—put out a set of costumes for the girls to get into. You might then take a back piece up a flight of—two flights of stairs, have another costume change up there and then you will put them into one, you’ll put them into the one upstairs and then you’ll go back down, downstairs. Wait for them to come off the elevator when they’ve done their act and change ‘em, take that costuming off. The back piece, head piece, whatever, and then put them in another outfit. Put the original, the first costume away, go back and help them into another, out of the costumes, and then into another change. And this goes on like, for six to eight acts and the shows area—approximately two hours long or a little bit less than two hours long. And in between the cues, when you’re not running on costume changes that type of thing you’ll no doubt, there’s always some kind of repair that’s needed to be done on a costume or on a headpiece or back piece. And—you, you would do undressing, you assist them in dressing, and undressing. And that is—it can be anything from an old fashioned kind of a St. Louis dress, to maybe, just jewels that are on basically put on with ribbon to give them structure. And then, perhaps just a hook around the—you know, that it hatches the whole amount at the neck and at the waist. And these costumes all have to be—they all have to be kept in good repair, because they can’t be coming undone or unzipped or whatever on stage. So there is a continual striving to keep things in repair. Twice a week we go in on what is called a work call. This is do to larger repair that can’t be done on the break, little breaks we have in between the either getting them in or out of the costume. So it’s a very busy thing, and there’s approximately, it’s a large production show, so there’s approximately twenty-three people working as seamstresses and dressers during the show. And then, there will be the people that are off for the night. There’s usually from three to four people off each night, on their UNLV University Libraries Myrtle Hancock 10 regular nights off. So it—besides the entertainers, it’s, there’s almost a family of dressers and seamstresses. So it gets to be like a little town in itself, you know. Would you like—when and after, when a stage person would come off from doing the show, and would you unzip their suit and take—and help take it off to get them into another suit? Oh yes. This is, this is part of our duties. This is, doing this type of work and we—we don’t have—because it is a production show, we basically have the same people for six months. Because contract changes are for—new contracts are renewed by six months. And that doesn’t mean that we always have totally new cast, but there will be some people leaving and new people coming. So that’s always—we never have anything too permanent. There are always changes. There are people that’ll be coming all during the show that have their—have to be substitute for—we have under—there’s understudies that work—that work also the entertainers have understudies that are in and it’s a continually changing procedure, and yet, a lot of people have been with the show for six years, when it opened. And we—at present time, there, the show it’s, the show that we’re working now will close in October and there will be a totally new show. All the costuming will have to be done for a new show and it’s supposed to be as large production as the one that’s now there. Now there are—also there’s an elephant act that’s been there ever since the beginning of the show. So at the present time, a man with orangutans from Australia, that’s really a, quite an exciting act. And there’s, there’s a juggler, that’s been with them, I believe since almost the beginning of the show. So, it’s exciting, you meet a lot of different people that are just like—(Laughs) they’re just like people. There are some that are easy to get along with and there are some that are difficult. But mainly, they’re very nice. Most of the entertainers have had education. Some of them are college graduates. Some of them could be UNLV University Libraries Myrtle Hancock 11 trenching if they weren’t doing what they’re doing and it’s just—it’s just a real cross section of America, right there. And it’s an exciting job. It probably would be very boring to do anything else after being there. I think just sitting and having about three or four people that you worked with all the time would just be really stifling after having all these different people. I work—I’m a swing dresser, mainly. And that means that I relieve a different woman in wardrobe, every night. So that my six nights a week, no two nights are the same. Because I’ll be with a different group of—working with a different group of girls for helping them dress and get on stage and what have you. One set of cues that I relieve, it means going up and down stairs, forty-two times a night. (Laughs) And I’m fairly agile, I guess to be able to do this or some of the women my age and older that work this job, and sometimes, because of their weight or incapacities, you know, physically, that they can’t do the stairs. So I feel really lucky to be able to go up and down them. At the present time I’m working in the principals’ room, which is the male—female principals of the show, there’s, let’s see—two singers and three dancers and they are the lead singers and dancers in the show. And then there’s another room of what is called singers and there’s the female singers and the male singers. And each in separate rooms and they are—there are two principals in the female singer’s room and the others are understudies that go on for the stars or the lead singers when they’re not there. And so there’s just never a dull moment. It’s very interesting. I hope that I’ll be working the new show. I think it’ll be exciting to help put together costumes for a new show and see it take place before your eyes. (Laughs) It should be really fun. Okay. Working behind stage with all these actors, I once was backstage at Caesar’s Palace and I was shocked at the way some of the actors were nude and practically, or they just walked around like if it was—no matter, how did you react to this situation when you was confronted with it? UNLV University Libraries Myrtle Hancock 12 Well, perhaps because right out of high school I had worked as a nurse, you know, as a nurse’s aide, that somehow the nude body wasn’t that much of a shock to me. Because I had learned to bathe both male and female patients right in their bed, you know. And because of that I think this wasn’t really totally that much of a shock to me. It—it was a little difficult at first accepting the fact that male and female entertainers might be running around with only their g strings on, you know, and somehow I’d kind of had always thought of it as being more of a segregated thing. But they have their modesty and somehow you get accustomed to just seeing nude bodies all over the place, you know. (Laughs) But that part of it didn’t really bother me that much because most of them are— (Tape one ends) Side two interview still Myrtle Hancock. One experience I had that was interesting to me, that I’m really glad I had the opportunity to do was—we call ‘em commercials and occasionally we’ll have personalities like Dinah Shore that will come and do taping there at the MGM. Like the type of show that she—well, it’s her shows that are telecast. And because we are in that hotel we had the prerogative of doing the work and we are a list—our names are on a list and we rotate them for the commercial calls, which is what this is. And when my name came up in October to do the Dinah Show, it isn’t always the Dinah Show there might be—recently the Pepsi-Cola people came in and they had, they had the rooms, the showroom, the big showroom at, the—celebrity room at the MGM. And they put on, they put together a big show for their employees that came from all over the world, I guess. And you know, they’re top executive people that type of thing. And this was like an eight day commercial because the dressers helped these celebrities that were chosen from people here in town, like Cher, and people like that you know, that are appearing at different hotels that came in and did UNLV University Libraries Myrtle Hancock 13 the show for their executives. And so, they needed a dresser. They in fact, I think they ended up having three dressers that worked eight days with this group of Pepsi-Cola people, getting you know, getting—redoing dressing and undressing for rehearsals. Sewing, pressing. These are all the things we do, you know. So for that large a show and that many days, why it took quite a few girls. And it pays like we get double time for working that type of thing. So it’s something we all like to do. And when they don’t come around often enough because there are like twenty-six of us, including the male dressers, so it takes quite a while to rotate around, you know. And so, when my turn came it was to do, to be a dresser for Dinah’s show. Now she has her own dresser but our union requires that when these shows come to town that they must hire local people. Otherwise they’d come in with their own staff of people, do whatever they are, and leave no money behind, you know, basically. It’s to try to help the economy locally, is why the union puts this demand on them. So this one time in October, I was her dresser and she was—I worked five days, I would go in at noon and then the taping would begin about one o’clock. So I would be responsible for maybe seeing that somebody’s shoes were cleaned or had polish put on them. What Menlo? What was his name? He was on. And he needed—he had new shirts that hadn’t been pressed. So I keep wanting to say Jerry, but is it Jerry Menlo? I’m not sure. I’m not up on the late stars. He’s a singer. Anyway, I pressed his new shirt that he brought in and just different things that you do for them. Shecky Greene had a little stain on his cuff of his shirt. So you’d get a stain remover and you know, do that, and little things, pre—you know, before the show, before they go on. And then, I would press Dinah’s, her dresser, Dinah’s dresser would bring the dresses in that she was ‘gonna wear, or the dress that she’d be wearing for that day, early, when you came in at noon. And you’d press it or do whatever it needed to have done for her to get it on for, to go into the showroom for the taping of the one o’clock. And it would go on until five UNLV University Libraries Myrtle Hancock 14 o’clock. Course there’d be various breaks with different people coming and going on the show, you know. And it was really interesting. There was Glen Campbell and Lonnie Shorr and Ipi Tombi, which is a dance review from Africa that’s appearing at Silver Bird and there was a segment of their show on one day, and Shecky Greene, Wayne Newton, was there one day, you know, Mr. Las Vegas. And then, the big—the big attraction was Ginger Rogers, was there one day. And she was in and wanted to use the full length mirror and she was very lovely and very shapely yet, you know. And of course, all the people—the show people themselves were really excited about seeing her, you know, and being on the show with her. And that was a really nice experience. I—it was difficult because if you take a commercial you also have to go in to work that—each night. You can’t take a commercial and say, “Hey, I’m not coming in to work.” You have to go. To get the commercial, that’s part of your commitment, is that you still have to go in and do your regular job in the evening, when the commercial isn’t on. So it’s kind of difficult sometimes, you know. Because it makes you put in long hours. But it pays double. We get stagehand’s pay. Our pay is only half a stagehand’s pay, we belong to the same union. But we weren’t—we didn’t always. And textile workers, our wardrobe people basically came from way, way down the scale, moneywise you know. So we—it has nothing to do with stagehands, it’s just that they were in the union longer and they have notoriously gotten more money for their work and women are kind of gradually getting there. But it’s very gradual and so when we do a commercial we’re really pleased because we get, like double time. And if it’s a live show, like if you’re dressing or been doing work for a fashion show that is live on stage—now Dinah Shore isn’t—when we worked that, isn’t considered live. It’s considered a taped show. It is live at the time, you’re doing it. But it isn’t—it isn’t for that audience per se. It’s being done for a taped TV show. So you get ten, if you were doing a live show, you’d get time and a half, double time and a UNLV University Libraries Myrtle Hancock 15 half. Because it’s a different scale of work. So this was interesting. And these are the fun little things that break up the monotony in the regular routine, you know. In the early days, I can remember when we’d go out to dinner to the a couple or three hotels that there would be, the celebrities like I can remember Bob Hope being there, just mingling right in with the dinner crowd