Transcript of interview with Wayne Earl by Diane Donovan, March 14, 1981

UNLV University Libraries Earl Wayne i An Interview with Wayne Earl An Oral History Conducted by Diane Donovan 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 Earl Wayne ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2018 UNLV University Libraries Earl Wayne 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 Earl Wayne iv Abstract On March, 14, 1981, collector Diane Donavan interviewed her neighbor, pharmacist Wayne Earl (born June 21, 1926 in St. George, Utah) at the collector’s home in Las Vegas, Nevada. This interview covers Earl’s early recollections of Nevada and his life after moving to Las Vegas in 1940. Earl also talks about World War II, McCarran Airport, Nellis Air Force Base, North Las Vegas politics, Jaycees, and the Chamber of Commerce. Additionally, Earl recalls his involvement in civic affairs, social and religious activities, including his affiliation with the Mormon Church. UNLV University Libraries Earl Wayne 1 It is March 14th. The narrator is Wayne Earl. The date is March 14th, 1981, at 7:30 P.M. The place is 3120 Merritt Avenue, Las Vegas, Nevada. The interviewer is Diane Donovan, 3120 Merritt Avenue, Las Vegas. The project is Local History Project Oral Interview. Now tell me when you first came to Nevada. You want when I first came to first? Or do you want my first recollections about Nevada, and Nevada history and happenings? Well, first tell us the year you came and then tell us what you know about it and why? Okay. Well, I actually first became a Nevada resident in 1940. However, I had visited and had known something about Nevada long before that. My father, when he was a young man, used to drive a team of horses and drive freight from Chloride, Arizona, over through Las Vegas and on up into Utah. This was back in the days before there was anything here. This was before the railroad had established a definite, there were no hotels, there was the Old Fort. You drove through barren desert, you drove through sometimes hostile Indian country. Now did somebody live in that Old Fort? Oh yes. Now who? After Brigham Young had recalled the original settlers from the Old Fort area, there were people who stayed and established. That general area has long been known in the Las Vegas Valley as the Stewart Ranch. This, some of the Stewarts I recall are Dell Stewart is one of the brothers and there were, I think Tom and a few others, which they’re still around, are offspring of the Stewarts that stayed on and established a ranching type facility down there and they, there was a lot of property and very fertile property through there. Mm-hm. UNLV University Libraries Earl Wayne 2 It was on, right on the side of the old Las Vegas Wash, which was, years ago used to be quite a little stream, that run from the artesian wells out here just north and east of the Meadows Mall, right through the valley and on out to the Vegas Wash and down into the Colorado River. And did your father tell you any story about the Old Fort and the people who lived here? Oh nothing in particular. He used to tell about how he rode through here when there was nothing here and, except sagebrush and Paiute Indians. And of course the people at the fort, he’d overnight, occasionally, here. Now you’re— But there was no Las Vegas at first, say, at the time. Now you’re saying he drove a wagon? He drove a wagon, yes, and a team of horses. So I suppose there weren’t any freeways? (Laughs) No freeways. (Laughs) No. Well— Then later on, two years after I was born, my brother moved away from home and he came down here and he finished his high school at Las Vegas High. And why did he move here? I think there was some sort of an idea that he wanted to get out on his own. He was right in the middle of nine children and felt a little pressured at home so he went out on his own early. And he moved here in 1928. He worked for dad’s second cousin, whose name was Ira W. Earl. He UNLV University Libraries Earl Wayne 3 owned a Coal and Ice Company on South Main Street and about what is, would be about the three or four hundred block, which was right out on the edge of town then, and— Now this uncle, was this your father’s—? He was my, we called him Uncle Ira but he was actually Dad’s second cousin. Oh, and then why was he here to begin with originally? Do you know? Or? The Earls were Southern Nevada people. My father was born in Overton. Oh. And his parents just sort of gyrated out from there and some are still in Overton, some are buried in Overton, some are in Utah, and the rest of us just kinda got ourselves scattered all over the country now. Now when you were a young boy, you started coming and visiting this area? Yes. I’d come and visit sometimes for a month or two at a time, in summertime, usually. By then my sister Opal had married and she’d married a fellow who was a cook and they worked at the White Spot Café in Downtown Las Vegas, it was on Fremont Street between Second and Third. I recall that the telegraph office was next door to it and there wasn’t really a lot on Fremont Street then. There weren’t many casinos. I think the Boulder Club was here then and there was a place called the Cinnabar on the corner of Third and Fremont where the big Golden Nugget sign is now. Where the Four Queens Hotel is was the White Spot Drugstore and where the Shenandoah Hotel is was a market and beyond that things sort of thinned out and by the time you got to Sixth Street you didn’t even have any pavement. And the pavement only extended one block off of Fremont on either side, and I recall that on some sides you didn’t—if you were my age, you didn’t stray because North First Street was what was called the old Block 16 or the legalized prostitution area. And later on when I was here in high school it was quite the fashion and the UNLV University Libraries Earl Wayne 4 thing to do if you wanted to haze somebody into a club or just give somebody a tough time you’d get a bunch of the guys to carry ‘em Downtown and take him to the Block 16 area and take their corduroys off and let ‘em run out in their shorts. (Laughs) And this never happened to you though? (Laughs) Not to me. (Laughs) I guess you were— I wasn’t that popular. Oh (Laughs) You had to be popular. Yes. To get that kind of treatment. It’s sort of like the way the kids toilet paper yards now and put shoe polish and shaving cream all over cars. If you’re not popular it just doesn’t happen to you. It seems a little bit more innocent, the toilet paper. (Laughs) (Laughs) This Block 16, you remember how long it lasted? It lasted until the population started to explode because of World War II I believe. Oh. And then, it sort of gyrated out to the outskirts of town and Block 16 got closed down. Open came a place called Roxie’s out to, oh, it would be approximately behind where Las Vegas Honda is now, out there on the Boulder Highway. Mm. There was a pig ranch out in North Las Vegas way, which would be right about in the middle of the apartments off of Owens Street there in the northeast side of Rancho High School. UNLV University Libraries Earl Wayne 5 Now you said pigs? A pig ranch is what they called it. A pig ranch? I—I have no idea why. Oh (Laughs) alright. Maybe they originally raised pigs there but at the time I knew about it— It was a house of—? It was, yes. That’s what it was. Prostitution. (Laughs) (Laughs) Okay. When, you came and visited your sister when you were little and then you moved here and you lived with who? I lived with my brothers and sisters. My mother died when I was nine so I was with brothers and sisters a lot, all the way through my life. I remember when I’d come down and visit my brother who worked on, we always called it Boulder Dam, it’s, they call it Hoover Dam now, but, there was two brothers who worked in the cement cars that poured the cement for the dam out here and I remember Carlyle used to live out on North Seventh Street. His house, the house where he lived, he didn’t own the house, it was approximately where the parking guards station is, to the El Cortez parking garage. There were about two houses south of him and then an alleyway and then a church and the whole rest of the block, to the south and east, or south and west of there was vacant and we used to cut through the alley behind the church and then walk kiddie corner across the vacant lot to the corner of Sixth and Fremont where the pavement started and then UNLV University Libraries Earl Wayne 6 wander up town to buy caps for our cap guns or whatever my cousins who live next door wanted to do. They were the Hardy boys. The Hardy boys? The Hardy boys, yes. Scott and Martin, Martin Hardy, Scott died some years ago, Martin’s still around. He’s a local man here. (Unintelligible) But in those days my sister worked at Las Vegas Hospital, which is on North Second Street, or was, it’s a halfway house now called (Unintelligible) House. And what did she do? Was she—? She was a receptionist and she worked for Dr. McDaniel and Dr. Balcom and Dr. Woodbury. C. W. Woodbury was one of the original staff at the hospital. He also just happened to be the doctor that brought me into the world. He—I was his first St. George delivery when he got out of medical school and originated his practice in St. George, Utah. I recall, my sister said, my mother was very embarrassed about such a young doctor. I was the last of nine children and so she was a little older than the doctor. (Laughs) And she was quiet embarrassed at having a young doctor deliver her last baby. Now tell me about your brothers when they worked on the dam and their experience. Well, there’s really not much that is spectacular about it, outside of the fact that it is a unique—I mean there’s not a, you don’t run into somebody every day that used to pour cement into Boulder Dam. Two of my brothers did work on the cement cars, they’d ride the, they’d help to load the cement and then they’d ride the cars right down to the brink of the canyon where the huge cables would pick the entire car up and lower it down into the bed of the canyon to pour into the forms UNLV University Libraries Earl Wayne 7 that originally built the dam. It was a good job. It paid well at the time and they were here for a lot of years doing cement work for that man, and I spent quite a few summers visiting with them, so. When they worked on the dam? When they worked on the dam. I got to know the Peneues who used to own a little store on Ogden Street, just, well, halfway between my brother’s house and the hospital. And of course Peneues are still around, quite a few of them, and they’re well known Las Vegas people. Now when you stayed here, which is the house that had the full attic? Was that your sisters? Oh, that was after. That was after we moved here. What happened in 1939 I went to Texas for a year then I came back to Las Vegas and that’s when my actual residence in Nevada started, was in ’40. I moved here, I was thirteen years old and a freshman in high school. At that time Las Vegas High School was the only high school and the Fifth Street Grammar School or elementary or whatever they called it was the only elementary school. What was school like? Did you have different classes like we have? Oh yes. We circulated through the building and I say building because the old original building at Eighth and Mesquite is it, or Eighth and—well, anyway, the old original Las Vegas High School building is still standing and that’s the one we had now back behind it, it’s on Seventh Street, Eighth Street run clear through behind it. It’s now, Frazier Hall cuts Eighth Street off now and back behind the original building there were four handball courts and an auto shop and the old gym, which is about half the size, was half the size of the current gym, was in the position it’s in now. There’s an annex to the main building out front that was the tennis courts, that’s between the original building and Butcher Memorial Field and that was all there was to Las Vegas High School. UNLV University Libraries Earl Wayne 8 I’m surprised though. Oh, is that new? It was three stories. You entered the mid-story and there was one below and one above. And it consisted of probably, I’d say about eight or nine classrooms on either side of the main hall on each story. So that would make it about twenty-five or thirty classrooms maximum. What did the teenagers do in Las Vegas at that time for entertainment? Like I said they— (Laughs) Take their friends to Block 16 and pants ‘em. Well, certainly not the girls. I mean— Oh, the girls. You didn’t have Fremont to cruise then and I know kids do that. Oh yes, Fremont has always been cruised, ever since. Even, even then. Even when it was only six or seven blocks long. It was cruised. ‘Cause it was well-lit then. You know I mean there was—it’s nothing like it is today but it was always a spectacular sight and back in those days there was no problem with cruising up and down it. Because it was a two-way street. Now there are portions of it that are only one way now, I think. And at the west end, there was a loop that went up behind Cashman Cadillac and around in front of the old railroad depot and then right back down until Fremont Street again. So you could just cruise there all night long, you going up and back and back and forth, you know, it was no strain, and when you got past Sixth or Seventh Street you could flip a U because there’s no traffic out there, the pavement was gone. But you still couldn’t go in casinos. UNLV University Libraries Earl Wayne 9 Oh, you couldn’t go in casinos but you know there, there was always the desert out here and that’s always a fun place to go. I recall hunting rabbits closer to town than I live now and I also recall north, I think it’s, I think they call it Civic Center now or Bruce. It sort of all blends in together out there, used to have on it, what was known as Thrill Hill. Course this was not paved then and it was just desert area. Now, what was—? It was a little bit of, little bit of building on what’s called the Sunrise addition out there. But north of that it was just the desert and there was ravine and you’d go up over a hill and down into that ravine and it was, we used to do it in our old ‘34 Fords and— And that was Thrill Hill. Well, that was Thrill Hill because you’d get going forty miles an hour and go up over that hill and you didn’t, your wheels didn’t touch the ground again till you got clear to the bottom of the ravine, which seemed like a couple of hundred yards. (Laughs) But it very likely was not that far, you know. Memories, get longer as we grow older. I know you had an interesting experience with this a, with a roomer. Oh yes. And the house that— While I was in high school, living with my brothers and sisters in the house that my father built on South Third Street. We had a full attic so we’d always have a roomer or maybe even two of ‘em, just to supplement the income ‘cause my brothers and sisters all worked and you know, nobody was rich, so it was a, always nice to have some extra bucks. And we had this fellow that everybody kind of looked down at as sort of a crackpot. He had come here and professed some UNLV University Libraries Earl Wayne 10 rather wild eyed ideas and he bought some property on what seemed to everybody around here to be about halfway to San Bernardino. And on weekends I’d go with him, because he bought some old army barracks, I’d go with him and we’d go out and pull the nails out of the boards he pulled off these barracks he was going to build out there and call Alamo Airways. And now what was his name? His name was George Crockett. George Crockett. And he was a very nice fellow and I used to enjoy going out there with him and we’d take my sister’s .22 revolver and we’d pull nails for a while and then we’d shoot into the sand dunes for a while and there really wasn’t very much out there and—but George kept at it and he finally scratched himself a runway out of the desert and he got a hold of a (unintelligible) aircraft to franchise and a Texaco Aircraft (unintelligible) franchise and he just sort of built himself a nice little, make a nice little living out there, and— Now was this the first airport in town? Well, no, there was McCarran Field. Yes. Not the one you know now, McCarran Field was then out where Nellis Air Force Base is. There was a single building out there, sort of a Spanish style building that serves as the terminal for the occasional DC3 that would land here, and discharge and or pick-up passengers. Now did Alamo Airport land DC3s? Well, not at that time but shortly George got his Alamo Airways going, the war had started and the Army Air Force, as it was known then, part of the army, decided that our current McCarran Field area would make an ideal sight for an aerial gunnery training school. So they proceeded to UNLV University Libraries Earl Wayne 11 take over McCarran Airport and renamed it Nellis Air Force Base and it’s grown and is what it is now, over the years and McCarran was force facilities and so they went to George and said, “Hey George, how about sharing your runway with us?” And after two or three years and many building projects later, well, I guess it was more than two or three years but with mostly county finance improvements, McCarran Field, to the south of us, as we know it now, it grew and grew and finally the county decided that it was just—it needed it all and said, “George how about selling us the whole ball of wax? We’ll give you three million dollars.” Sold. George turned out to be not such a crackpot after all. Did you meet any other interesting people in this boarding roomers or that would stay with you? Well, a couple of ‘em that stayed with us married sisters of mine. Became relatives? (Laughs) Yes. They became relatives, yes, and they would—there were some others that I recall but their stories are not interesting enough and pertinent enough to the history of Nevada to relate here. I graduated from high school in ’44 and immediately entered the Navy and that interrupted my life for two years and when I returned here I recall it was quite a bustling town, then. They’d finally paved Charleston Boulevard and they had another street that resembled the Charleston Boulevard I used to know in my early days it was out south called San Francisco Avenue. We call it Sahara today. It was out on the edge of town then and North Las Vegas had blossomed. As a matter of fact, my sister’s husband, Horace Tucker, was the first North Las Vegas Mayor. My brother decided to build a drugstore out there and he had proceeded to build one and called it the ENT drug. He was partners with Tucker so hence the ENT and he called me up while I was in Dixie Junior High School or Dixie Junior College, rather, and says, “Hey, why don’t you go to UNLV University Libraries Earl Wayne 12 pharmacy school with me?” So this is the way both of us became pharmacists. We went to pharmacy school in Colorado and he came home to run the business and I went on the California to continue a little education down there and to get my experience that I needed to get my pharmacy license. And then in 1951, I returned to Nevada and have been here ever since without break, without the two or three years that the Navy took or the education took. And when you came back you lived in North Las Vegas? No, I actually lived in Las Vegas but I worked in North Las Vegas. I, the time that I’ve lived in North Las Vegas probably can be numbered in days and yet I was extremely active in North Las Vegas civic affairs and undercover type politics. Well, tell me about the undercover— Nah (Laughs) well. Well, you joined the Jaycees. Yes. And that has something to do with it. Yes, we talked about that. I, my brother wanted me to join the Jaycees. He said, “They’re a good organization. You don’t have to do anything, just belong. It’s a good thing to belong to.” I said, “Well, Modell, I don’t do things that way.” I says, “If I join I’m gonna be active.” I says, “Are you ready for me to be active? Can you make the concessions that will be necessary for me to get time off to do the things I’ll have to do to be active in a civic organization?” He says, “Well, sure.” He says, “We’ll work it out.” So. So, I joined the Jaycees. I was one day too late to be a charter member. I remember Jack Smith was the charter president. Guy Fredrickson a well local retired taxi driver now who’s been in the news recently, he was the vice-president, and I recall that they had a very rough first year. UNLV University Libraries Earl Wayne 13 Why was that? Oh. North Las Vegas was having problems and Jack had to change jobs and his time got short and they decided, Guy Fredrickson was too old to be in and there was some internal friction and I just told them, I said, “Let’s get this straightened out guys. This, it’s a good organization let’s not let little things break it up.” And I sort of held it together with my teeth and my claws for the first year and I was approached several times by, oh, Jim Corey and Jim Cashman and Robbie Robinson and various Las Vegas Jaycees to take over the range and run the North Las Vegas Jaycees and I said, “Nope. Not gonna do it.” I says, “Jack was president, he’s gonna finish his year and then if the guys want me then I’ll run for president.” And this of course happened, I met with them and we all got together and we kept this organization going and I think there was seven of us left at the end of the year and we met and had elections and I was elected president and Don Payne was elected my vice-president and we went from there. We had a highly successful year, during my year we instituted progress days and we reorganized the North Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce and about that time North Las Vegas had run into some serious political problems. Now what year was this? Oh shoot. I knew you were gonna ask me that. It had to be—It had to be ’53 or ’54. Okay. And what had happened is we had, we had a city government consisting of some people who were good-hearted but not all that up on what was going on in the world and they’d let somebody get them into their pockets. I suspect a local publisher but, who shall remain nameless, but we did a lot of investigation and we were pretty sure that somebody was out to try to get North Las Vegas into real bad trouble so that maybe they’d let Las Vegas annex them. And the problem of UNLV University Libraries Earl Wayne 14 that thing was that in the process of getting them into this trouble it was ruining business out there. They’d hired—they’d let themselves be convinced that the old guard, the guys like Roy Parrish and Slim Davison and some of those guys that were the original police department, they just weren’t that up on it. They needed new blood so they hired a fellow from Texas named, Will, no, Pool, Pool, what was his first name? I knew it a minute ago, anyway, his lieutenant was Wilbur McNash and the Pool and McNash combination surrounded themselves with a bunch of guys that were about an unsavory a looking police department as I’ve ever seen and they just about ruined North Las Vegas. They hassled everybody that came through, airmen, tourists, everybody. Guys showed that North Las Vegas was the place to avoid, and— (Tape ends) It just got to the point where we felt as the Junior Chamber, we had to start doing something about it. We hadn’t organized the chamber yet and there just wasn’t anybody else. There was no business men nor organization at all to try to solve the problem. So we started a committee on the police department and seven Jaycees did about three or four months investigation and we had compiled a list of twelve questions. Questions we knew the answer to but we wanted to take to the mayor of the, of this regime to let him know that we knew the questions. Now who was the mayor? Ah, I’d rather not name any names because the people involved all know who they are and anybody that’s interested can look back into that time and see who they are. Do you want to tell me what the questions were? Well, I can’t remember all of the questions, but they had to do with, did you know that the—things like, did you know that the commander of Nellis Air Force Base has instructed that UNLV University Libraries Earl Wayne 15 personnel unto that Base to avoid North Las Vegas when travelling to and from the Base? And did you know that the police department does this and that and the other thing? Now did you feel that this was, that this was a—? We felt that these were the—we were dealing with the kind of people who had gotten themselves into a pocket and they were all already, they already had their backs up. With the—? They were getting a lot of criticism. With the purpose of—? From individuals. Destroying North Las Vegas? Oh. Or keeping it from growing? Or? Well, this was, I think the purpose of the police department’s harassment was to try to get North Las Vegas in such a bad spot that they’d say, “Hey, Las Vegas come get us! We want to be annexed.” You know, but anyway, like I said it was hurting business and businessmen were hurting and we took it up from there. Now we knew that if we pressured—if we come out and said, now this and this and this is so and we want you to do something about it, all we’d get was their backs up. ‘Cause we knew the people we were dealing with. So instead of doing that we went to the mayor very quietly. But unfortunately, a month or so after we had intended to go, because just about the time we completed our investigation and got ready to go, one of the old original North Las Vegas residents, who owned the original service station out there and a bunch of his friends, a trailer park owner that I can name, that everybody would know and two or three others, they got together and they went down to pound the desks at City Hall and they said, by UNLV University Libraries Earl Wayne 16 golly, you’re gonna do this and you’re gonna do that. Well, the mayor and the city council, who were not going to be told what they weren’t gonna do, so they didn’t do any good with this tactic and we knew they wouldn’t. We weren’t too bright. We were a bunch of young kids, you know. I mean Jaycees is under thirty-five. Who knows anything when they’re under thirty-five, see, so, but we knew that the way to get to these guys was not to tell ‘em what they had to do but ask ‘em if they didn’t think maybe that something better could be done. And this is the approach that we took and we finally got to— The mayor. The mayor, on a Sunday afternoon and we asked him all these questions and two weeks later Pool and McNash were out on their ears and North Las Vegas returned to normal. Slim Davison was hired back as police chief and— Now what were your investigative procedures? What did you do? Oh, we asked questions of people and we went out at night and haunted various places where we had heard that there was harassment taking place. It was just sort of a quiet little fact gathering thing. It wasn’t really a—we didn’t gather evidence, any physical evidence, we went out and gathered some facts and we compiled the list of the questions see it was a matter of, we wanted to stimulate these people to thinking and we wanted them to get it, we wanted them to believe it was their own idea to make a change and we felt that that was the only way it could be done. So the police department wasn’t really aware? The police department wasn’t aware of what we were—they were aware of what we were doing, but they didn’t know exactly why or how we were doing it. They didn’t—? They knew we were there. UNLV University Libraries Earl Wayne 17 Did they harass you? They tried a couple of times but they didn’t dare take any steps. I recall I was out one night late after work and I had went to a bar and I stayed there for about five minutes and then I headed up North Main Street and I saw a police car with no lights on pulling in from the left side of the road, so I slowed down. Well, he pulled over into the right lane, still no lights, so I stayed right behind him. I’m figuring, well, I don’t know what he’s gonna do, he may be watching for somebody, he may be gonna make a right or a left or a U-turn. I didn’t want to get in his way if he decided to turn on his lights and scoot, see. So I stayed right behind him. He finally pulled clear off the highway, out at about where the—about the corner of Carey and Main now, and so I went on by him and proceeded out the highway at about thirty and pretty soon here he come, (siren sound) pulled me over. Well, I pulled completely off the road and at that time you could do that out there because there just wasn’t that much out there, you know. (Laughs) There’s a, there’s gravel, there’s a twenty foot gravel shoulder on the roads and nothing much else. So I got out of my car walked back to my left rear fender and this policeman who we won’t mention the name of still but he was a short chubby obnoxious character with a cigar in his mouth, which he didn’t take out when he approached me. (Laughs) And, which I thought was kind of un-, unofficial looking, and he started telling me I was tailgating him, and I says, “You know something, speaking of tailgating.” I says, “If I were you I’d get that police department car off the road before you get hit.” ‘Cause he parked right up on the, on the pavement, on the asphalt. And he looked at me and he says, “Are you telling me what to do?” I says, “I’m making a serious suggestion.” I says, “There’s plenty of room for you to pull off the road, if you want to talk to me we’ll talk but”—I says, “I fear for city equipment.” Well, UNLV University Libraries Earl Wayne 18 he stomped back to his car, got under the wheel, slammed his door, flipped a U-turn and drove away. Now the man—? And left me standing there out there in the dark. The man, the police officer, he knew you? He knew me. He knew who you were. He knew who I was. Did he know, did he know why—? He knew I was out checking on him, too. Oh. But he couldn’t, he couldn’t pin anything on me. He didn’t have any leg to stand on. When he tried to make a charge against me I came right back at him with the, a very serious and logical suggestion that he remove his vehicle from traffic, and it kind of upset him. But these gentlemen did eventually get out, though? Oh, they got out of office. I say gentlemen but— Two weeks after we went to the mayor with the suggestion that certain things were happening that shouldn’t be, well, he called a meeting at the city hall and overruled the one in the pocket of the local character and they got rid of the police department and rehired the old guard and things straightened out very nicely. And you were also involved in the road to Lake Mead? Yes. A little later when Don Payne became president of the Jaycees. UNLV University Libraries Earl Wayne 19 In what year? Oh this was in ’55, I think. Ah, maybe it was ’57. Yes, it was ’57. We formed the North Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce. This might sound a little backwards. Although the organizations have no connection at all. Junior Chamber and Chamber of Commerce are strictly just names. There’s no organizational connection between them, no ties at all. But we did form a Chamber of Commerce and Don became the first managing director of that Chamber of Commerce. And he came to me one day and said, “Wayne do you got time to take a ride?” And I said,