Transcript of interview with Myra Berkovits by Barbara Tabach, August 21, 2014

AN INTERVIEW An Oral History The Southern Nevada Jewish Community Digital Heritage Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries i ?Southern Nevada Jewish Community Digital Heritage Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2014 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV - University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Project Manager: Barbara Tabach Transcriber: Kristin Hicks Interviewers: Barbara Tabach, Claytee D. White Editors and Project Assistants: Maggie Lopes, Stefani Evans ii The recorded Interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) Grant. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader's understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews with permission of the narrator. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Southern Nevada Jewish Community Digital Heritage Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas iii PREFACE Myra Berkovits was born Myra Mosse in 1944 in Chicago, Illinois. Her father emigrated from Romania to Canada, later moving to Chicago, where he met Myra's mother, a daughter of Russian immigrants. After graduating from Loyola University, Myra married and started her career as an educator teaching at an elementary school in inner city Chicago. She taught there for twelve years before moving with her husband, son and daughter to Las Vegas. Since arriving Las Vegas in 1980, Myra has made contributions to the city, both in the public and private sectors. In 1982, Myra purchased Las Vegas Menu Review, a restaurant promotion-concierge company, from neighbor and friend Mike Katz. During this time, she also interviewed restaurateurs and wrote articles for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Myra sold Las Vegas Menu Review, and after going through a divorce some years later, started a competitor business called Las Vegas Dine Direct. Unsatisfied by her new endeavor, she returned to teaching, heading to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) to renew her teaching license and later her master's degree. After a year of teaching in multicultural education, Myra was then in charge of the school district's homeless program, seeing its growth from serving 1,200 to 6,000 students. Myra's other passion was for Holocaust education. Driven by this interest, Myra contacted Edythe Katz, well known and respected for her work with Holocaust education as the founder of what is now the Sperling Kronberg Mack Holocaust Resource Center. Myra became one of six interviewers in the city for the Shoah Foundation, documenting survivors' stories. One interviewee, David Berkovits, would later become her husband of fifteen years. Myra's own Holocaust education was aided by powerful trips to Israel and Poland. She used these experiences to develop and lead student-teacher conferences and classroom curriculum for the whole state. Myra still serves at the Education Specialist at the Holocaust Resource Center. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Myra Berkovits on August 21, 2014 by Barbara Tabach in Las Vegas, Nevada Preface iv Describes her father's family emigrating from Romania to Canada; father moving to Detroit, then to Chicago. Explains how parents met and married, joining children from pervious marriages together in one family; her birth. Talks about father's Santa Claus photography business; helping with photo development. Describes mother's family history; mother's first marriage. Lists where she attended school, from elementary to college 1-5 Talks about first job, teaching English in inner city Chicago; so challenging that quit and went to work for non-profit assisting homebound people. Returns to teaching, for twelve years; describes school's neighborhood. Discusses changes in school after Civil Rights Act passed; having her own children. Talks about moving to Las Vegas; her ex-husband's work that brought them; settling into neighborhood; son attending six grade center, getting into acting 6-10 Discusses role of Temple Beth Sholom in integrating into community; changes in rabbinical leadership at temple over years. Talks about ex-husband working at Sliver Slipper; where children attended school. Purchases food-concierge-like business from previous neighbor Mike Katz; describes business model, incident with gangster wanting space in her booth. Lists good restaurants at the time. Recounts attempt to interview Lou Ruvo for Review-Journal 11-17 Continues talking about restaurateurs interviewed for Review-Journal, including those of Golden Steer, Piero's. Tells amusing story refusing to pay booth fees for convention. Discusses becoming active in city's Holocaust education initiatives; meeting Edythe Katz; student-teacher conferences. Recalls selling business; divorcing; starting another similar business promoting local restaurants, before returning to teaching 18-22 Mentions working for Manpower, setting-up business centers at conventions. Returns to talking about interest in Holocaust education, sparked by trip to Amsterdam where she met Anne Frank's good friend. Describes start of Holocaust Resource Center in late 1970s; connecting with Resource Center; being sent to Yad Vashem summer institute. Becomes very involved in K-12 Holocaust education. Shares story of Edythe Katz's friend getting Shindler's List written....23-27 Discusses start of Shoah Foundation; being selected as volunteer to interview survivors; identifying survivors through community networks, Jewish Federation, Jewish Community Center. Details about interviewing survivors, one of which becomes her second husband, David Berkovits. Talks about difficult second trip to Israel, with some days in Poland 28-31 Talks about career as educator in Las Vegas; at length about managing school district's homeless program, growing the program from serving 1,200 to 6,000 students. Talks about personal v coping strategies for her work with Shoah Foundation, homeless program. Discusses affection for Las Vegas; raising children there; son and daughter's careers 32-37 Index 38-39 vi vil This is Barbara Tabach. Today is August 21, 2014. We are sitting in the Holocaust Resource Center on Eastern and Tropicana. I'm sitting with Myra Berkovits. Myra, I'm going to ask you to state your name and spell it for the transcriber. My name is Myra Berkovits; M-Y-R-A, B-E-R-K-O-V-I-T-S. We're going to start with your family heritage. If you can take me back into your family history as far as you want to go and give me a little background. My father came here from Romania in 1909. He and my grandparents came together, which was sort of unusual. Usually the husband came first. They went to Canada and they came in on?they said they were hidden in a hay wagon. They went to Canada because my grandmother's brother had a farm in Saskatchewan, which he was able to get because the Rothschild family?because there were so many pogroms in Eastern Europe, the Rothschilds bought farmland in western Canada and in Israel so that Jews could immigrate to those countries and be safe from the pogroms. My father's uncle, which was my grandmother's brother, had a farm, and so that's where they went. My grandfather, my father's father, came from a very wealthy family in Romania. They were furriers and he married my grandmother. But the really interesting thing, which I found out not too long ago, was neither my grandfather nor my grandmother could read or write. They could read Hebrew because they were orthodox Jews, of course, and were very religious. But they couldn't read or write Romanian, which I didn't understand, and they couldn't read or write English. So they only knew Hebrew and they couldn't really speak Hebrew conversationally. They spoke Yiddish, but they couldn't read Yiddish. I thought that was really interesting. My father was a very industrious guy, and at sixteen, he left Canada. I don't think he came 1 to America legally. I think he jumped the border. Oh, really? That's what I understand. He went to Detroit and applied for a job as a photographer on the Detroit Free Press. He had no experience. He was a young guy, and he lied and he started to work for them. He worked for them for many years before he came to Chicago. He then brought his family over. So then everybody came from Canada?his mother, his father. He had a sister and a brother?two sisters and a brother and he brought them all over and they lived in Detroit. They lived on a street called Gratiot Avenue, which was a very Jewish neighborhood. Then he met a woman?he was young?he also played the saxophone. He met a woman who was a singer. Her name was Estelle something; I forgot. She had a heart problem. He married her and they had my brother Sandy, and then she died. My brother Sandy then lived with his grandparents, and my father went to Chicago to work on the Chicago Sun Times as a photographer. That's where he met my mother. He and my mother were married and they brought my brother Sandy from Detroit to Chicago. My mother was married before. She was divorced. She had a son, my brother Mark. Then they were married for about five years and then they had me. I'm not going into the dynamics of all that. But anyway, that's the history. My father worked on the newspaper. I was born in 1944. In 1949, he and a man who also worked on the newspaper started this incredible business called Santa-Graf Corporation. How do you spell that? S-A-N-T-A, dash, G-R-A-F. It actually was a business where he would go to different department stores around Thanksgiving, and he'd have a contract so that he would be able to take pictures of children on Santa Claus' lap. So that's what he did. He was all over the country. He was in 2 Cleveland. He was at Higbee's, Halle Brothers; those were the two main stores. Was it May Company there, too? DOUG UNGER: I have my picture. Are you serious? It's sitting, my picture, in my garage. I look at it all the time, sitting on Santa's lap. Of course, I do. And he may have taken that photo. Oh, he did. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely he did. Every child in Cleveland. Every child went to this... I need to insert here that Doug Unger is joining us. He may make occasional comments and have his own interview later. My father and mother worked in the wintertime, and they had an office on Wilson Avenue and Broadway in Chicago. They enlisted everybody they knew to work for them. It was black and white pictures. Yours is black and white, right, Dougie? Yes, and it had a number at the bottom. So my job?I worked for my dad?was to take a stick and push the pictures into the solution so that they became pictures, the developer. He did that for many years. We would have Hanukkah on Christmas Day because he would be traveling around the country, making sure the operation worked correctly. There were many times where he and my mother were Santa Claus because Santa Claus didn't show up. He was in St. Louis, Cleveland, Chicago, and all over the Midwest, in Detroit. He didn't go west of the Mississippi. He had that for many years. I think in the early 3 sixties, the company that bought his company was National Photographers. They used to do school pictures and they started?his was just regular old developer, but the new company used Polaroid. Polaroid came in. The guy who was the president of that company was Bobby Riggs, the tennis player. Oh, really? Yes. My father worked for that company for a few years, and then he retired and he actually passed away in 1978. Do you remember what year he was born or what year he came to the U.S.? My dad was born in 1905. He came to Canada in 1909. He only had an eighth grade education and he was an incredible reader. He was a very, very, very smart man and really, really clever. He made a lot of money. He was a self-made man, basically. That's fascinating. My mother came from a huge family. She was born in Waukegan. My grandfather came to America from Russia. Then he saved up money, which is usually what happened. They saved up enough money to bring the family over. So my grandmother traveled from Russia to England with five little children. She spoke Russian and Yiddish. I think she spoke mostly Yiddish, not so much Russian. She traveled across all of Eastern Europe, got to England with these five kids, traveled in steerage, landed in Canada, came to America and ended up in Waukegan where she met my grandfather. It's just incredible to think that that's how they did it. They lived in Waukegan and my grandmother was really the brains of the outfit. My grandfather was this really cute guy, but he didn't have much business sense. They used to go to the fruit and vegetable market. They had a farm in Wisconsin, and they used to load up every day and go to the fruit market or the vegetable market in Chicago and sell their products?potatoes, onions; those kinds of things. They had an 4 apartment in Chicago and they had a house in Waukegan. There were a lot of brothers and sisters, sort of a crazy family. My mother said they lived next to Jack Benny. Who knows? Jack Benny lived in Waukegan and they said they lived next to him. I don't know so much about my mother. She didn't tell me too much. But she got married. She was gorgeous. She was a hand model; I know that for sure. She went to Schurz High School where she told me she graduated, but she really didn't because I found her records. She was a beautiful, beautiful woman. She married a man named Sam Essex and they had a son, my brother Mark. She was married to him on and off; I think she was married and divorced and married again to him. I guess he was a gambler and a chaser. Then she divorced him a second time and was single and lived with all the aunts and uncles and the whole mishmash. Then she married my father in, I think, 1939. She didn't have a formal education. She was pretty much a homemaker, but she was also a fantastic cook and entertainer. She helped my father in the winter with the Santa Claus. Sometimes she was Santa. Did she take photographs or she was just helping? No. She was just Santa sometimes. Where do you call home? I was born in Chicago in 1944. I grew up there. I went to elementary school, Eugene Field Elementary. I went to Sullivan High School and then I went to Sun High School; I graduated from there. Then I went to Wright Junior College. I was a horrible student. I went to Wright Junior College for my first half of year, and then I went away to Miami of Ohio for the second half, and then graduated from Loyola University in education. I taught school. I was married. I graduated one week and got married the next, and taught school in inner city Chicago. I taught there for about twelve years. 5 What did you teach? Elementary school, third through eighth grade, in the ghetto basically. What was that like? It was during?my first job?the guy?I forgot his name?had a rent strike. He was a leader of the black community and he had a rent strike. Of course, the rent strike was across from the school where I was teaching. I came the first day to school and I had a class. It was called PZ; it was between first and second grade. Instead of holding back everybody, they put them in a classroom and, of course, that's the class I had. I was so ill-prepared to be a teacher it was unbelievable. I had two kids in my class who were twins and they were both named Jose. I'd come to school and they're licking the floor. It was horrible. I remember I went next door to the teacher who had been at that school a long time and I said, "Gee, can you come in and help me? I'm going crazy." She came in and she started hitting. She had a paddle and was beating the kids. I said, okay, that's enough of that; I would never touch a child. I had to find a way to curb their behavior. I stayed there for a few years. Then I said I can't stand to teach anymore; I have to stop. My second major was social work. So I worked for a nonprofit group for a year. It was called Homebound Project. It was an organization that took homebound people to different activities. My job was to develop the programs and take people out. People were on some ventilators. They were in wheelchairs. They were on stretchers. It was amazing. They had muscular dystrophy. They had multiple sclerosis. They had all kinds of horrible physical disabilities. I did that for a year and I said that's it. So I went back to teaching. Teaching in the ghetto was easier than that career? Yes, it sure was. I taught for twelve years, and I left when I was teaching third grade at Byrd School. That was wild because those kids lived in the projects. When you came back after the 6 second semester started, you had to update CUM cards. There was no computers, so you wrote on CUM cards. There was one little boy that was really not a good little boy. He sat next to me and he said?I was just going over everybody's card and I said to him, so I understand you have this and this and this brother. He said, no, you can cross so-and-so off; he got killed over Christmas break. How did that happen? He was in his bedroom, in our bedroom, and there were people shooting and through the wall they shot him. That was what I was with for about twelve years. I loved it because anything you did for those kids they appreciated. In those days that was the time?that was before or just after the Civil Rights Act had been passed. It was passed in 1965. It seems like a tremendously long time ago. That meant that kids came to school...there was no free lunch. There was nothing. After the Civil Rights Act was passed, and children had Head Start and they had free breakfast and lunch. They had some things at school, so they would come to school. Many times kids had to pay protection to get to school because it was a horrible and dangerous neighborhood, a gang-filled neighborhood. If they had gloves and boots on, they had to pay protection; otherwise, kids would take away their gloves and their boots. It was horrible. Explain paying for protection. In other words, a kid may have had a quarter in his pocket or a dollar or whatever. He had to give that to somebody who was bullying him in order to allow him to go to school with his boots and his gloves. I would take a collection from my friends and we always had things in the room for the kids. I found out from being a teacher, especially in that neighborhood, these kids came to school so ill-prepared in every way. They didn't have prior knowledge about anything. They didn't have their basic needs. How do we expect them to learn? I mean it was not possible. We had food. We had a lot of things, a lot of the teachers did, so we would help the kids. And I loved it. It was a challenge. The kids had a really hard way to go, as I say, because they were not prepared. Only 7 then, just at that time did Head Start begin, so kids were in preschool. Before that, they didn't go to preschool; it didn't exist in that neighborhood. Could you have asked to transfer out of this teaching situation at any time? I could have I suppose. I was in that school and some other schools. But, no, I didn't really want to. It was tough because that particular school was in such a terrible, scary neighborhood. We had a fire station in front of the school. It was downtown Chicago. It was Wells, near Chicago Avenue. The police station was in front, then there was the teacher's parking lot, and then there was the school. The firemen would come out in the morning, watch the teachers get out of their cars and walk into the school, and then the school would be locked down all day because it was so dangerous. We were with the kids for the entire school day. They got out at two thirty at that time because we were with them for the whole day. It was tough. It was a really, really tough school. The principal was really, really, really awful. But the teachers were great. So I stayed. I stayed there until we moved to Las Vegas, which was in 1980. So I started teaching in '66. When did you start having your own children? My son, Joey, was born in 1968 in Chicago. We lived in Evanston, Illinois, and we moved to Wilmette. He went to elementary school in Wilmette. When we moved here, he was eleven, just before he went to junior high school. When my daughter, Annie, was born in Chicago, but we lived in Wilmette at that time, and she was born in Evanston Hospital. We lived in Wilmette for about six months. She was born in June and we came to Las Vegas?in '79?and then we permanently came to Las Vegas in January 1980. She lived there barely six months. So it seems like a natural place to ask, what brought you to Las Vegas? You said 1980. Yes. My husband at the time, his father owned a junk shop, a junk business, and his father had 8 passed away. My ex-husband, I should say, was a talented, talented guy. He's a photographer and he worked for my father. Then his father passed away, and so his mother asked him to come into his father's business. Well, his brother was also in the business. It was a bad, bad deal. So Terry developed a new part of the business where he'd go to Indiana every morning, early in the morning, and they'd pick up scrap metal from this one company. Then he'd drive it back to Chicago and so forth and so on. They did that for a while and then it just was a terrible relationship and Terry was very upset. So he said, "We have to do something." My father-in-law had died and my father had died and our mothers were difficult. So we left town. We tried to go to California, but we couldn't because it was too expensive. So that's how he came to Las Vegas. We had a friend who lived here and we stayed with her when Annie was just a little baby. Then we went back home. I went to teach. I taught for another six months or something. Terry owned a plant store. That's right. And then he sold his store and then I stopped teaching and we came here. Okay. So 1980 Vegas, what was it like? It was fantastic. Had you visited here before you moved? Just once in the summer before. It was teeny, teeny tiny. It was four hundred thousand people. People knew each other. Especially the Jewish community was so tiny. It was so little. We rented a house and the house next-door was owned by a man named Mike Katz. Mike Katz owned Manpower, which was a temporary employment agency. He and his wife and their son Andy lived in the house next door. They had four children, but three of them were out of the house; Andy was the only one that was there. They came to our door. Mike was very tall; he was over six feet. Bea, his wife, was about five one. They came to our house and they had a big bottle of wine and 9 they welcomed us to the neighborhood. We were renting that house because we were going to buy something. He said, "Before you do anything..! know everybody in town. So if you're going to look for a job or whatever, let me know first so I can tell you if it's bad or good." Because the city had a really bad reputation. It was sort of fly-by-night people. They'd come here, gambling; all kinds of things. So he was sort of our mentor. When my husband at the time would go and talk to people about jobs and so forth, he'd call Mike and Mike would say, "No, don't go back there," or, "Yeah, that's a good place," or whatever. Anyway, he lived next door and he became a very good friend, and he actually really became an inspiration for me. He helped me quite a bit. We only lived there for six months and then we looked for a house in an area with a good school. Joey went to?it was called a sixth grade center. In those days, they didn't have real integration here. The children from North Las Vegas?at that time it was really only a black community; we had a very little Hispanic community?the black children from North Las Vegas used to come to the schools in Las Vegas. But for sixth grade, white children went to what they called sixth grade centers in North Las Vegas. That was weird. It was not good. Well, especially if you're coming from an education background in inner city Chicago. Right. I can't imagine your reaction to that. I thought it's only one year, so it's not the end of the world. My kid was smart, anyway. Joey hated it; I mean hated it here. He hated the school. He didn't make friends. But he liked to act. I mean he was?not that he ever had any formal training, but he always marched to a different drum. So he went to that sixth grade center. He was there; he was very unhappy. I saw this ad for Rainbow Company. It was repertoire acting company for kids. So I said, "Do you want to do that? Do you want to try out? Do you want to be in a play?" He said okay, and he tried out for a 10 play. His first play was To Kill a Mockingbird and he was Dill, who was the friend of Scout and the boy; I forgot the boy's name. But Dill in real life was actually Truman Capote. Right. He did that and then he tried out for Rainbow Company; then he got into the group and he was happy. He loved it. We had moved by then to a little, small street called Casa Colorado, which was just a little bit west of Boulder Highway and a little bit north of Flamingo, maybe it was two blocks long. There were a lot of really interesting people on that street. My friend Iris lived on that street. There was a man next door who was married to a much younger woman; it was like a drug house. People would come by; they'd get drugs. The police would come. It was a whole mishmash. It was a great neighborhood, beside that. Then another person moved in. It was very nice. Then Joey went to Woodbury Junior High School, and Annie went to Temple Beth Sholom Preschool and then to George E. Harris Elementary School. It was great. Their growing up was very normal. They were good students. We had nice friends. We joined Temple Beth Sholom because we were strangers, and so that's where you met everybody. I still have those same friends, thirty-five years later. It was a really wonderful community at the time. At that time, in 1980, there was no Ner Tamid. So every denomination of Judaism came to Temple Beth Sholom. It was the orthodox, conservative and reform. And then there was a man Mr. Super. Remember Super? No. Super was a real estate guy. He didn't think that Temple Beth Sholom was orthodox enough, so he opened up Shaarei Tefilla. Then who opened up Ner Tamid? 11 Mike Cherry, David Wasserman, and a grant from Moe Dalitz was actually how the building got built. It was a matching gift, a million-dollar matching gift. Wow. So when did that start? Well, you got me. Early eighties. The early eighties, yes. From what I understand, it was the early eighties. The rabbis at Temple Beth Sholom were sort of interesting because when I came there was Rabbi Caliman Alpert, I think. He didn't like to go to the hospitals. He didn't like to make calls to hospital or he didn't like to do funerals. He didn't like to do any of that. He owned a T-shirt store?his wife owned a T-shirt store. I don't know how long he lasted. After that was Rabbi Lederman. He was a rabbi for a long time, and then he had some issues and was forced to resign. There was a lot of turnover from what I have seen. A lot of turnover because things were not aboveboard. Let me just say that. But the man who stayed the whole time was Cantor Bergman. His wife was the nursery schoolteacher and he was the cantor through every single rabbi until the new Temple Beth Sholom was built, and then he left and started?and then he became a rabbi. He bar and bat mitzvahed both of my children. Then I sort of was a stay-at-home lady. But then in 1982 or 1983, I bought a business from Mike Katz. So you never went back to teaching in the classroom here? I did, eventually. You did, but that's down the pipeline, all right. A little later. When I came here instead of getting licensed?I didn't. I don't know why; I just didn't. I was raising Annie and Joey. My husband at the time?this is sort of interesting. My 12 mother knew somebody in Canada who knew a guy who owned the Silver Slipper. I don't know how this all worked. But she gave Terry the name of the guy who owned the Silver Slipper, and he got a job there. He never finished college. So actually, for him, the only thing he could do was gaming. He started to work in the coin room at the Silver Slipper and he'd work graveyard. The guy who owned the Silver Slipper?I don't remember his name?but he used to teach at UNLV. He was like an innovator. Do you remember his name? He was an innovator as far as gaming went. He wrote a book and that was like the bible for gaming. So Terry started there. After a few years, he went to work for Steve Wynn at the Golden Nugget where he was a slot shift supervisor. His last name was Slotnick. People would say to him, "Did you change your name to be a slot shift supervisor?" He worked there for nineteen years. My kids went to school here and then Joey got into acting. He went to Chaparral High School and won all these awards for the state and so forth, in acting. He went on to be...that's his career. Annie graduated from high school and UNR. Let me back up. When we first came here, the first day we went to Temple Beth Sholom? the first service you stood up and you said where you were from and that you were new to the community. I remember to my dying day. Janice Riceberg afterwards, after the Kiddush?or at the Kiddush came up to us and said, "My name is Janice Riceberg and I live here and this is my husband, Harvey." She was the first person I ever met here. You have to be sure to interview her because she knows a lot of stuff. A lot of friends that I met were from the temple. There was a very nice group of people. We'd sit in the back; we didn't sit in the front. We'd sit in the back for all the holidays. My kids were in Sunday school there. A lot of what we did, our activities were through the synagogue. There was no JCC that I remember. There was a Jewish Federation and there was Jewish Family Service. 13 They did some programming, but that's about all. Yes. But that's about all. They had a space in the federation office. In the federation office, yes. But I met a lot of people being here that long. When I decided to go back to work or wanted to work, maybe two years after, maybe 1982, Mike Katz said he had a business, because I was friends with him. It was called at that time Las Vegas Menu Review. And this was in addition to his Manpower business? Yes. He had a business with the man who was the head of the health department?his name was Gil something?his wife, and another fellow. They owned this business. They came up with this idea because we had a huge convention town at that time and the conventions were at the Las Vegas Convention Center. They came up with this idea, but then they didn't really know how to run it. They couldn't spend enough time doing it. Mike came to me and he said, "Do you want to buy the business?" I said, "Well, what do you want for the business?" He said, "Well, we want fifteen thousand dollars." I said, "I don't have fifteen thousand dollars to buy the business." He said, "Okay," because this is the way the town was, "Okay," he said, "Every time you get a convention you give me ten percent of your profits, your gross, and that's how you'll pay it off." And we had no written contract, nothing. Nothing? It was a handshake. And that was it? That was it. It was a handshake. I paid him off in a year. So the business was a very interesting. I had a booth at the convention center. The booth was so heavy. It was like panels and it had shelves and everything; you had to put the booth together and then you took the booth down. We 14 had a sneaky, like a little place in the storehouse next to the convention center that nobody knew about. So we never pai