Transcript of interview with Walter John Ritzau by Elizabeth Garrison, February 25, 1977

UNLV University Libraries Elizabeth Garrison i An Interview with Elizabeth Garrison An Oral History Conducted by Walter John Ritzau 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 Elizabeth Garrison ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2018 UNLV University Libraries Elizabeth Garrison 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 Elizabeth Garrison iv Abstract On February 25, 1977, Walter John Ritzau interviewed Elizabeth Schneehagen Garrison (born 1943 in Las Vegas, Nevada) about her life in Southern Nevada. Garrison first talks about her schooling in Las Vegas and her first homes in Las Vegas. She also discusses the atomic testing, the Devils Hole in Ash Meadows, early church involvement, recreational activities, and some of the environmental aspects of Las Vegas. Garrison later describes her work for the Central Telephone Company before describing the Helldorado parade and some of the early activities designed for children. In the latter part of the interview, she describes her father’s garden, the changes in the city environment and building, shopping locations, and more about her home life. UNLV University Libraries Elizabeth Garrison 1 Name of person being interviewed is Mrs. Elizabeth Schneehagen Garrison. Date of interview is 25 February, 1977, eight o’clock p.m. Place of interview is 5513 Flower Circle, Las Vegas, Nevada. Name of the collector is Walter John Ritzau, 5513 Flower Circle, Las Vegas, Nevada. This is local history project for History 117, Dr. Roske, professor. How old are you, Elizabeth? Thirty-four. What’s your present address? 1136 Laurel Avenue, Las Vegas. And your telephone number? 457-2927. Were you born in Southern Nevada? Yes, I was in Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital—it was Clark County General Hospital then. Okay, and you went to Clark County schools? Yes, I went to Vegas Heights School from kindergarten until the fifth grade, then I went to Highland Elementary from sixth grade through the eighth grade, and then I went to Bishop Gorman High School till I graduated. And what’d you do after you graduated from high school? I worked at the telephone company for fifteen years. What addresses have you lived in Southern Nevada? The first address was 508 Concord Street, which was Vegas Heights, Las Vegas. That’s where your mother was when you were born? Right. In the time I was born until I was twenty years old. Then we moved to 5130 Swenson Street. UNLV University Libraries Elizabeth Garrison 2 Do you remember why you moved there, Elizabeth? Yes, we needed a new house. Why’d you need a new house? Well, let me explain that when my parents bought the house, it was a two-room house that they had bought from a man called Mr. Johns. And he told them that he was going to rent the house to them, and then later he said that when they had paid a certain amount that he would sell the property to my parents, and they just thought he was raising the rent and didn’t believe him. And he would walk from town all the way out to the property once a month to collect the money, and when the amount was paid up that he had said, he brought out the deed to the land, and it shocked my parents. When we first moved to this two-room house, I had two older brothers and then me and then pretty soon there came two more brothers and a sister, so we needed a new house. And during that time was the war and the Depression, and you couldn’t buy building materials, so the added room was a cement floor and crossties to hold the roof up. My father was not a carpenter, and he had to bring fish boxes home from where he worked at the different hotels as a cook to put a siding for the house, ‘cause we could not get any building materials at all. And we just outgrew the house. And the children in the neighborhood loved to come to our house because to get from the main living room, you had to go through a bedroom and then the dining room and then the kitchen and then the bathroom and then a garage which was later converted into a bedroom. And there were one, two, three, four, five outside doors, and it fascinated every kid in the neighborhood because there wasn’t a hallway. You could just go from room to room, get from one end to the other, and we just outgrew the house. And we were always going to build a new one—we had plans, but we never had any of them materialized. About how old was the original structure? UNLV University Libraries Elizabeth Garrison 3 I don’t know, I imagine it was seven years old. It had a silver roof with green siding on it, and then that was the main room, and then in the back, it was like a little slanted side room. And we had to change it from a wood floor to a cement floor, and it had black widows and scorpions galore underneath it. My sister did get bit by a scorpion when she was a baby in her crib, and that was when the floor was changed from wood to cement. Is it still standing now? We, we donated it to the fire department as a burning exercise because it wasn’t any good. Oh, that’s interesting. Well, were there any other changes in the environment that caused you to move? Yes, the neighborhood was changing drastically. The Westside, which is where the colored people live, was spreading out towards the Vegas Heights area, and the white people were running from the neighborhood, and it was almost like a panic condition. And we eventually moved—we were about one of the latest people to move. We were going to stay, but my father was working at the Strip, and he’d always have to go from end of town to the other to get there, and since we never did get around to building a new house—I had always wanted to live in Paradise Valley—it was a second dream—we couldn’t have our dream homes in Vegas Heights, so that was when we moved to Paradise Valley. And that would be about 1963, right? Right. I have a lot of memories about living in Vegas Heights. I remember once laying in bed and listening to the coyotes; they were within a half a mile of the house, and they would howl at night. And the boys—I had three brothers living at home—and they would always go out to where we called rifle range and take their BB guns and go out there and go shooting, and they used to— UNLV University Libraries Elizabeth Garrison 4 Where was this rifle range? That would be north of Consella Street out towards the north end of town. In fact, the city dump used to be out that way, and we always used to go out to the dump and play around. And there were (unintelligible) that used to live in the mesquite bushes out there. And I remember one time, we were out in the desert and we had got off on this sand dune that was covered with mesquite bushes, and this (unintelligible) couple lived there, and they were having a big old fight, and one was going to kick the other one out of their home, and it was a mesquite tree home. And the (unintelligible) also used to live at, oh, it’s near Owens and H Street, and there was an artesian well—my brothers and I used to go down there and catch the tadpoles and frogs that were in the water, and there was a big colony of (unintelligible) that lived there, too, but we were always getting scared of them. They were always getting drunk and fighting, chasing the kids away. And then across the street towards the east side of town was Maggie’s Pasture, and you didn’t dare go on her land, ‘cause she had dogs and everybody was afraid of her shotgun, ‘cause she’d get ya. And I remember during the Depression, we never had a television set, and so at night, my mother and father and all of us kids would walk down the hill on the old road, the road from North Las Vegas, which is through Miller Street and the Miller Street underpass would go right up to her house, and then Mrs. Knight, the kindergarten teacher and the principal for Vegas Heights School decided that Main Street was too close to the school and was a traffic hazard to the children, so she had to move the main street two blocks to the north, which made it Miller Street. So we used to walk down the old road and watch the trains go by and count the trains. And I remember, one time we were walking down there, and Daddy went back to the house and Mama told us that he’d be back soon. And he went and got the truck and went to the old dollar store, which is at Main Street and Bonanza, and got a watermelon; that was a real treat in those days. UNLV University Libraries Elizabeth Garrison 5 You mentioned that your father worked at some Strip hotels; can you tell us something about that? Yes, he worked at the Thunderbird hotel and he worked at the El Rancho hotel and he worked at the Flamingo hotel, and then for a while he worked Downtown at the Golden Nugget and the Horseshoe. And then he worked out at Nellis Air Force Base for several years, and he worked at the Sands hotel, and then he worked at the MGM hotel. What year did they come to Las Vegas, your father, and where did they come from? They came to Las Vegas in 1942, 1943 when I was born, and my mother was living in Ash Meadows, and my father was a cook at the Furnace Creek Inn. That’s in Death Valley? Yes. And then for a while, I think he cooked at the Death Valley Junction. And my mother was working in Ash Meadows with her father. They had moved there from Goldfield, where my grandfather and his sister and his brother owned the laundry. They were originally from France, and they had migrated from San Francisco. And when they moved from San Francisco to Goldfield and had the laundry there during the big boom time, and my mother was eight years old when Goldfield burnt, and that literally destroyed the town. Then after that is when my grandfather moved to Ash Meadows. Do you remember anything about them telling you about anything about Ash Meadows back then? Yes. Well, whenever we’d go to Grandpa’s place, we would always pass different houses, and they would say, like, that was the Bradford place—I think it was Kate Styles’ old house or her brother’s place that had the huge pond of water that was filled with goldfish and trees surrounding it, and it was really very pretty. And then somebody came along and filled it in with UNLV University Libraries Elizabeth Garrison 6 dirt. And I remember the old Devils Hole, which the government later destroyed, but I remember going there once when I was a child, and it was, like, on the side of a mountain, and it was like a cave and you walked down to it and there would be a pond of water and a place to stand, and that’s where the animals in the area would go to get water and be protected from the weather. It had a roof over it, but when the government got to experimenting, they blew it up and blew the roof off of it and had to surround it with fence. But I remember when my mother saying the people that lived in the area were trying to determine where the flow of the water came from. So the best swimmers in the area got together and tied rope around their waists and tried to say which direction the water was coming from, and it was such terrific pressure that they couldn’t get very far, and they had to pull them out. And then later on, after the government blew it up, several SCUBA divers drowned in the Devils Hole, ‘cause the pressure was just too fantastic. And then once they put dye in it to see where the water went, ‘cause it’s like, it’s an underground ocean out there at Ash Meadows, and the springs pop up everywhere. And then, it’s connected with what we call a deep spring, which is about a mile behind my grandfather’s house. Years ago, the water was so clear that you could see it bubbling up from the ground, and then after they had the bombs at the Test Site, then it was muddy water bubbling up from the ground. You mentioned the water turning colors from the atomic testing; do you remember anything about the aboveground testing or anything about it? Yes, when we were kids and we knew there was going to be a bomb exploded, we would all get up real early in the morning and get in the car and go up to the hill—I don’t remember what we used to call that hill—and watch the bomb and then see—we had to turn around for the big explosion. And then it was like the whole area just lit up, and then there would be a big mushroom—it was really very pretty. And we always watched them; it was very interesting. UNLV University Libraries Elizabeth Garrison 7 Do you remember old you were when this, about? I was about, well, just about thirteen I think. And you went out of Las Vegas to watch the test? Well, Vegas Heights is in the northwestern part of the town, and we’d just have to go about a mile from the house, ‘cause there was nothing out there but desert, and we’d just go to a high point and watch it. But we always went to watch it. Do you remember anything about prostitution being legal in Ash Meadows when you went to visit your grandfather when you were a young girl? I sure do. We had to pass the house every time we went to Grandpa’s. Do you remember the name of the house? Ash Meadows—and they would either, it’d depend on who was the head madam. It would either be Vicky’s or—gee, I can’t remember any of the other names. But my grandfather knew ‘em all; he used to sell eggs to ‘em. He was a typical Frenchman, and he’d take his eggs over there, and they all were very fond of him, and he’d get to pat their little butts, and he’d tease ‘em all. In fact, when my grandfather was ninety years old, the head madam who owned the Ash Meadows Lodge at the time threw a huge birthday party for him, and the girls were invited, and they came over to the party. Everybody from the area was invited; it was in the newspaper, everything, and it was quite a big affair for the area. But at one point, the house burned down several years ago—that wasn’t too long ago—and so they built a new one, and I got to go into before it was finished and before anybody had moved in, and that was interesting. I had never been in one of those places before. I thought it was interesting that they had everything done in red carpeting, they had a kitchen in the back, and they had small bedrooms and a little lounge area in the front. And in fact, my younger brother used to work there cleaning windows until they found out he was UNLV University Libraries Elizabeth Garrison 8 underage and it was against the law, and they wouldn’t let him do it anymore. But there was an airstrip there, and people used to fly in all the time. And then after they starting closing down the Test Site, then business sure dropped. And it was a dirt road; it was really a very terrible road to get there, and then people started going to lay their wells, ‘cause it was paved, especially after the Test Site started closing down. Another thing that I think is interesting is, years ago when my grandfather’s brother-in-law came to visit him from Los Banos, California, and he was out duck hunting, and he was crawling along the grass so he could hide from the ducks, and he got dirt in the barrel of his shotgun. So he stuck his finger in the shotgun and then promptly shot his finger off. So he made it back to Grandpa’s place and then got the wagon and buggy and went to the closest doctor, which was in Rhyolite, which is now a ghost town, and he had to take the wagon all the way straight up from Death Valley junction up to Rhyolite. Were you married in Las Vegas? Yes, I got married two-and-a-half years ago. I was the family old maid until my husband finally showed up and married me. Where were you married at? St. Joan of Arc’s Catholic Church Downtown. Is church an important part of your life? Oh, yes. We went to St. James Catholic Church when we were kids, which is over on H Street a couple blocks off of Bonanza. And we all were baptized there and were all confirmed there and had our First Communion. And I remember going there and having the bingo parties, and then there was Barney Burger, which help with the kids, and we’d have outside moves that everybody in the neighborhood would come, and we’d have street dances. And when the church was small, UNLV University Libraries Elizabeth Garrison 9 before they enlarged it, we’d sit outside in the back behind the church and have our lessons with Sister Claudia; that was great fun in those days. Do you remember any of the visits of any of the presidents or other important people to Las Vegas? I remember when President Kennedy came; I went to see him and I took a picture but it never turned out. He certainly was good looking, though; I was very impressed. I remember when Senator Bible was running for his first election. He came to Vegas Heights in a helicopter, and all the kids and people in the neighborhood were gathered around; that was really a big deal in those days. We were very impressed. He did win and he won several after that. Have you ever been a member of a social club or any other special interest group? Well, I belong to the Southern Nevada Historical Society for the last fifteen years. I remember Vail Pittman coming to the meetings all the time. He was a very stature-esque person, just a delightful person, and everybody was fond of him. He was a great political person in Nevada. Henderson, or Pittman was named after him; later it was named Henderson. Is or was gambling an important recreational activity for you or your family? Well, I was too young for it to be. My recreation—my father loved to play keno, and he’d sit up at night studying all the keno tickets, and all of us kids would sit around the bed with him and match up the keno tickets with the winning ticket. And that was about all, really. What other kind of recreational activities did you participate in when you were a young child? Well, okay, first off let me say that our house was on three lots, and it was in the center, and there were one, two, three different water hydrants surrounding the house. And to keep cool in the summertime, we’d have water fights; there would be hoses attached to all the hydrants, and UNLV University Libraries Elizabeth Garrison 10 all the little kids in the neighborhood would soak everyone down with the water hoses, and that was a lot of fun. We had yard that had three huge grape arbors and a huge garden and apricot trees, peach trees, apple trees, and all kinds of nectarine tree and a [jujube] tree, which his like a date that tastes like an apple, which is delicious. And so we had plenty of room to run in there, and then when we were smaller yet, we would play in the old metal washtubs, and that was a lot of fun. And then we used to go out to the desert a lot, and then we go out to that ranch that—I can’t remember the name of it that they’re restoring now— You mean the old Mormon Fort? No, the one that’s out there off of North of Miller. Okay, my brothers used to go over there and go swimming all the time in the tules, and I remember one time they took me and you had to be real quiet so that the people wouldn’t catch you. They had made like a brick wall in the ground for part of it and made a swimming pool, and then put up a wood fence, and then behind the fence was where the tules were, and that’s where we always went to go swimming. And I was in the middle of these tules one time and they caught us. And I thought I was going to die and drown before I ever got out of there. But they almost got to the point where they’d shoot a gun at you. But we’d buy our fruit from there—I remember going there and buying apricots and peaches before we had our own fruit trees. And that was a lot of fun, and then my brothers used to always go out to, like I said, that rifle range and go shooting. Then if you went out far enough, you’d get to Devils Gulch, and it was where the rain floodwaters had washed great, big gullies out in the desert. And they’d got out there and get in fights and shoot BB guns at one another. And out there, there was an old ranch that had watermelons, and they’d carry stolen watermelon for miles, bringing it home. And one time, my brother caught a fox and brought it home. And we had his picture taken; it was put in the paper. And then it got away. And then caddy corner from UNLV University Libraries Elizabeth Garrison 11 where we lived was the old chicken ranch, and we used to go over there and climb the (unintelligible) trees and watch ‘em stick the chickens in the contraptions that would cut their heads off, and that was a lot of fun. What kind of cooling system did you have at Vegas Heights, do you remember? We had a swamp cooler, but mostly we stayed outside in the backyard underneath the trees or under the grape arbors, and you didn’t do anything during the day ‘cause it was just too hot. And of course, in the wintertime, we froze, but in the summertime it was just—it was hot, not as hot as it is now, because we’re all used to this air conditioning—but it was hot in those days. What kind of heating did you have in the wintertime, do you remember? We had oil for a while, and then we got an old wood stove, and every morning Daddy would build it too hot, and several times a year we’d have to get the hose and put the fire out ‘cause the rope would catch on fire. But we had an old wood stove, and we had changed to electricity after we quit having the oil. And then, I remember one time we went up to Mt. Charleston and came home and the whole house was flooded, and we never recovered from that. Where was the flooding from? It had rained up by the Tonopah Highway and just washed straight down to Vegas Heights and just flooded the whole area. It was just the way the flash flood had hit. It had rained up at Mt. Charleston, but we didn’t think it rained in Ash Meadows, and some people came up and told us that Vegas Heights was flooded. We raced home, and our house was flooded—all except the one room that was originally there. Okay, do you remember anything about the Old Fort? Yes, I remember—well, the most things that I really remember was going up what used to be called Fifth Street, and it had an S curve in it, and it was really pretty. It had trees on both sides, UNLV University Libraries Elizabeth Garrison 12 and there was a Swiss type restaurant on the right, and on the left was where—well, years before that restaurant was built—was a place where they had cattle. And then I remember going swimming there in this old swimming pool, and it was surrounding by old trees and old houses. And then they tore that all down when they straightened out the road and tore out all the trees and ruined the area, in my opinion. And I remember when the Helldorado carnivals were held at the Elks stay in Cashman Field. We used to go watch that Indian that used to be buried there in the glass case, and there was always stories told about him. We were always kinda scared to go see him, but we did anyway. Do you remember the Indian’s name? No. What name do you remember the Old Ranch by, do you remember—by the Old Ranch or by another name? I went just by the Old Ranch. And do you remember anybody that worked there or any individual that you knew from the Old Ranch? No. And can you describe any of the buildings in the Old Ranch property? They were white; I remember they were white and old, real old. And there were a lot of trees and fences around, and of course I was the kid and wasn’t allowed to do this, that, or the other, so everything was just more or less forbidden type—that’s how I remember it as. I had to be careful where I went. We weren’t allowed to go everywhere. Elizabeth, could you tell us some of the changes you remember in Southern Nevada, economic changes, for instance? UNLV University Libraries Elizabeth Garrison 13 I remember when the Fremont hotel used to be a bank, and it had pillars, and we’d run around the pillars. I remember when the courthouse had black walnut trees, and momma would dump us kids there and go pay the bills, and we’d stay at the courthouse and play on the grass and collect all the black walnuts and go home and crack ‘em and eat ‘em. And we’d go where the people were in jail and listen to the men in the jail—and we were afraid to get too close to the window, though—and going up the steps to the old courthouse. And I remember the first library was a separate building from the courthouse, and it was on the north side about where the entrance to the courthouse is now on the north, next to the sidewalk, and it was just a real small building. And I remember when the El Rancho Vegas was still around, and I remember that the brightest light on the Strip was the El Rancho sign that had a circular arrow pointing to the El Rancho, and when we’d wait for Daddy to get off work, we’d sit there and try to count the lightbulbs in the sign. And I remember when Highland wasn’t a road, and for my father to get from Vegas Heights to the Strip, he’d have to go clear out to Rancho Road and circle around up to Charleston, and he’d always bring home the rabbits that were along the road for the dogs to eat. And there was a pig farm right there at Rancho and Charleston. I remember when, going down from our house down Concord towards south towards town was a, I think they had pigs there, too, and it was full of mesquite trees, and there was a little creek or a little stream of water that had wooden crossed-eye bridge over the road. And I remember it would get flooded every— [Audio cuts out, tape ends] Interview with Elizabeth Schneehagen Garrison at 5513 Flower Circle, 25 February, 1977. Collector is Walter John Ritzau, 5513 Flower Circle, Las Vegas, Nevada. This is the local history project for History 117. UNLV University Libraries Elizabeth Garrison 14 I remember when Daddy used to have to ride the bicycle to work, and I remember later on when we, every Sun—Daddy was off on Sunday. In those days, everybody worked six days, and his only day off was Sunday, and we’d always do something family together. We’d go either out to Valley of Fire or to Mt. Charleston, and a lot of times we went out Paradise Valley Road to the artesian pond out there where there were tules and shade trees and frogs and whatever, and we’d have our picnic lunch there. And we’d go out towards Moapa and we always went somewhere up towards Sunrise Mountain or out to the lake. You worked for fifteen years for the Central Telephone Company; can you tell us something about your experiences there and the changes you’ve seen? When I first started working for the phone company, it was when I got out of high school and I worked as an operator on the cord board, and you could certainly tell—when it was six o’clock at night, the whole board would light up. And on Christmas, the boards would stay lit up all day long. And then a year later, they started changing over into the direct distance dial equipment, and they had to add a new building and had the new cord boards. And I remember when we used prefixes on the numbers instead of seven-digit numbers, and every call had to go through the operator. Do you know what some of those prefixes were, do you remember those? Midway and Dudley, and I can’t remember the others. I still have my original training book, which had the old paper tickets, which were real thin paper about two inches by about five inches, and now they’re the heavy IBM cards or the automatic equipment. What were these tickets used for? Whenever anybody made a long distance telephone call, they would have to go through the operator so that she could place the call and we would record it on a ticket, on this piece of paper UNLV University Libraries Elizabeth Garrison 15 which we’d call a ticket, which we would time, and then it would eventually be sent to the billing office and billed to the customer’s bill. And these tickets were later changed to the, what we call a OMS, operator mark sense, cards for IBM equipment. This new equipment was the most advanced in the country when it was first put in, and it was from Germany, and they had to send the German people over to install the equipment and train the people here. And that was when it was the Southern Nevada Telephone Company and then later sold to Central Telephone Company. Do you remember some of the early Helldorado Days and rodeos and things like that? Yes, they were the very best. I remember when the rodeos were held at Bob Owens’s place, which is two blocks from our house. That was the house in Las Vegas Heights? In Vegas Heights, yes. And I remember when we were kids, we used to have bamboo grow in our yard, and my brothers would make bamboo pipes, and then we’d go to the rodeos—we’d sneak in ‘cause we never paid. Were these local rodeos, you mean, or were they big rodeos? It was local, but it was the big Helldorado rodeo. I mean, in this day and age, it would be called small, but in those days, it was the big thing. And we’d go underneath the bleachers and get the cigarettes and take ‘em home and smoke ‘em in our pipes and think we were really doing the big time—one time we had a pack that had three cigarettes in it, and that was the best. But we’d go watch all of the rodeos, and eventually my brother became interested in the rodeo, and he used to ride the rodeo and won several buckles for his high school rodeo days. Oh, and I remember when the parades had the big beautiful floats from all the hotels. And I remember the one float that had the big swimming pool and the one float where everyone was painted goal. And I remember UNLV University Libraries Elizabeth Garrison 16 when, at the end of each parade, they would have the 20 Mule Team Borax team from Death Valley come over, and then my mother would always tell us that she used to play on the wagons when she was a child, and grandpa worked on the wagons when they lived at the junction or Death Valley. And then they would have all the carnivals and everything over to the Elks Stadium, and when the carnivals were—I think it was all surrounded by those wooden post fence[s], which they don’t have anymore, but it was great fun in those days. You mentioned your grandfather quite a few times; can you tell us something about his life in Southern Nevada? Yes, his name is Bernard Isaac, and he came from France when he was seventeen, and I think it took him most of the part of a year to come over on the boat. And he landed in San Francisco, and originally one of his brothers or sisters came over first, and then they would send money home for the next one to come over, and eventually there was three of them that made it to the United States. About what year was that, Elizabeth? Well, he was born in 1881— So that would be about 1898. Yes, when he came over. And he craved bananas, and the first thing when he got off the boat was eat bananas, and he got so sick on ‘em that he has never been able to eat ‘em since. And him and his brothers and sister lived in San Francisco for a while, then they moved to Goldfield where they had the laundry, and right across the street from the laundry was where the girls lived, the prostitutes. And my mother used to sit out on the porch, on the steps of one of the girls, and listen to her old Edison phonograph. Did they do the girls’ dirty linen at the laundry? UNLV University Libraries Elizabeth Garrison 17 No, they did the men that went to the girls’ place. Do you remember when your grandfather came to Southern Nevada? Well, after the town burned. But before it burned, my mother used to sit on the porch steps of this one girl and listen to her Edison, and when the girl died, in her will, she left the phonograph to my mother. And it was a very deluxe model with a case, and it had