Transcript of interview with Laura Gunning by Mike Martinez, March 5, 1981

UNLV University Libraries Laura Gunning i An Interview with Laura Gunning An Oral History Conducted by Mike Martinez 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 Laura Gunning ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2018 UNLV University Libraries Laura Gunning 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 Laura Gunning iv Abstract On March 5, 1981, Mike Martinez interviewed Laura Gunning (born 1923 in Los Angeles, California) about her life in Las Vegas, Nevada. Gunning first talks about her family background, her church membership, education, and the minimum wage. She also talks about the Las Vegas Strip, the first businesses and markets in Las Vegas, change in climate, and family trips. UNLV University Libraries Laura Gunning 1 Okay, informant is Laura Gunning. The date: March 5th, 1981. Time is seven o’clock. The place is 3751 South Nellis. The collector is Mike Martinez, 510 Falcon Lane. The project is the Local History Project: Oral Interview. Okay, first we’ll start off with your family background. When did you come to Las Vegas? In 1953. Actually, I came to Las Vegs to get a divorce. Oh, really? I came on my birthday, June 8th, and Peter brought me up, and I worked on the White Cross Drug across from the Nugget and on First Street. In those days they had two, right on Fremont. Mr. Bruno was the man I worked for. And then I stayed in that divorcees’ hotel right behind, on the next street over, on Third Street. Did you have any kids when you—? Yes, I had my two oldest children by my first marriage. Oh, really? Oh yeah. How old were they? At that time, young Gene was five years old, and young Ricky was three. And I had left them back with my mother in California when I came to get my divorce. Roger Foley was the one that got my divorce; he’s a judge now. And it was uncontested since I had been separated for three years before. So, that’s how I came to Nevada in the first place. What is your religion? I’m Protestant-Baptist. Did they have—well, I’m sure they had churches when you came here, how many? In those days, they had about twelve of all denominations. UNLV University Libraries Laura Gunning 2 Oh, really? Yes. This was 1953, you know. What was the one that you went, I mean, where was it located? The church we went to? Yes. Mostly 5693—St. Francis de Sales, over on St. Michael Way. Oh yeah. That’s still there. Yes. Father LaVoy was the priest there. In fact, he’s still—he’s not a priest anymore, he’s a monsignor now. So, he’s graduated in the time he’s been there. So, which one was that, came on a covered wagon, your grandmother or your mother? My great, great, great, great, great-grandmother. And like I told you, in the picture up there, my mother is in the middle, and her mother is up in the corner, and her mother is the other woman. Her father—and that was his mother, the one that came over with the Mormon wagon train, and the whole wagon train was wiped out except for her. And she hid in some bushes—she was three years old—and she hid in some bushes. Then, they didn’t have the borderlines, you know, like they have now. Oh, yes. Of course, definitely. So it was someplace out in the desert after the Indian massacre. And the family that raised her was the Scott family, and consequently she became Grandma Scott. Do you remember her name? Just Grandma Scott, that was it. That’s all we ever heard was Grandma Scott. And actually, I never got to meet her. Well, I’m sure great, great, great—that’s funny. UNLV University Libraries Laura Gunning 3 Even though that’s five generations, my mother, of course, she knew her, but she died before my mother was even grown. And then my grandmother, the lady up in the corner, we didn’t find out until she had passed away that she was also, had become in the Mormon Church, because her papers and things were found after she had passed on. But my father, well, he used to ride the range up here—I mean, my father. He rode the range of Montana with Black Bart, and I always ask him, I says, “Pop, how come Black Bart became a bandit?” and he says, “’Cause he was broke.” (Laughs) I expected him to tell me something, you know, real fabulous. And he was on the railroad down in Mexico when Pancho Villa took over there. And he said that Pancho Villa came and he said to the people that was working—they had wagons, then, you know, where they hauled all the things in—and I asked him, I says, “What did you do when Pancho Villa came?” And he says, “Pancho Villa said, ‘seniors, I’m taking over Mexico. Get out.’” And the supervisor said, no one’s gonna tell him to get out, and he said, “Si, si,” (unintelligible) shot him just like that. [Background phone call from narrator’s daughter] Is she the one, when you came to Las Vegas, was she young? Oh, no, she wasn’t born until 1961. We moved in the house on Vegas Valley Drive. She was ten days old when we moved in Vegas Valley Drive, and we were the first people on that street, you know, where the Valley High School is? Yes. We moved into that house, and there was no postboxes, no streets, no nothing—just watchmen looking around, you know, to keep things good. And there was no one on that street. What was the school system like then? UNLV University Libraries Laura Gunning 4 Well, they were having kind of racial problems, especially at Valley, because my oldest boy went there, and for the first year, it was kind of bad. Some of the kids were, you know, kind of wearing razor blades in their hair and getting kind of nasty, but the girls were kind of worse than the boys inasmuch as they carried switchblades and things like this. Jeez. And every time we’d see the police car go down, you know, sirens and everything by our house, we’d see them coming back with the back filled up with ladies—I don’t know if they were ladies, but anyway, it would be the women rather than the boys. But my son was the first one to graduate out of Valley High School, first year. Oh, really? Graduating class. I don’t have his yearbook, ‘cause he took it with him, but he and Donna were king and queen of the sweetheart ball in February, that year they graduated, too. When you came to Las Vegas, what’d you do, I mean, what was your job? I was a fry cook, same as—well, not same as I am now, ‘cause I’m a cook now, but I cooked out in front of the folks, you know, whatever they wanted, and the Nugget—the Golden Nugget is over on the other corner—and then Rex Bell had his saddle shop and everything like that up on Fremont. And we served them. And Grace Hayes—she hadn’t built her place on the Strip yet, when we first met them—you know, Peter Lynn Hayes’s mother? Yes. Gee, we’re going back a long time, Mike. It doesn’t matter. UNLV University Libraries Laura Gunning 5 But I knew all those folks because they came into the drugstore where I was at. And like my husband, he used to service Elvis Presley’s car, you know, when they go over to the dog park over in your area of town. But what else do you want to know? What was the minimum wage back then? Oh, golly, $1.85 an hour. Of course, you made your tokes, and I used to make real good ones because the dealers, then, got ten minutes every hour for a break. And they’d tell me to take them—they would be in the next hour for supper, and I’d have it all ready for them on the counter and everything, so they could just come in and eat and then run. Well, that’s putting in real good tokes. But the waitress were (unintelligible) anything. I remember, I paid $225 for my divorce, though. Really? It was a lot, too. What was Fremont—? Oh, paid ten dollars a week for my room, and that was reasonable. In Fremont, when I went there, the California Club had an explosion, and it closed. I mean, that’s where the people came blowing out the windows and everything. Now, the California Club—how far up was the California Club from where I worked on the corner, honey? About a block? Just a block away, that’s where they had the explosion—it was a gas explosion. How many people were killed, do you remember? Oh, about thirty-four, I believe. When did this happen? This is 1954. And there was the Boulder Club—that’s when you could shoot craps for ten cents. They had a ten-cent craps. And the Horseshoe has always been there, but Fremont is nothing like UNLV University Libraries Laura Gunning 6 it was before—nothing. It’s all completely different. They had the Sal Sagev Hotel on the California up where the Holiday International is. Mm-hmm. The bus depot was there, the train depot was there, and they had a passenger train that come up from California up—now, the people come over the weekend and then go back the next Sunday night. How about the Strip? Well, I was going to get those pictures out to show you. But the Strip, where the sign was, you were entering the city limits—all that was desert. Nothing was out there. When we came here, honey, what was the last hotel? Flamingo, that was the last hotel on the Strip. Can you imagine? Nothing else was out there. And then we were here when the El Rancho burned down; they never did rebuild it. That was next to the Silver Slipper. [Inaudible background conversation] See, I’ve told you I’ve kinda forgotten some of the things. But they had other—you know, when they said the MGM was the biggest fire? The El Rancho was the biggest fire that they’ve ever had in Vegas. And it burnt completely down, and they never rebuilt it. What date was that, do you remember? Puck, when did the El Rancho burn down? We were here, but I don’t know the exact date. Probably ’56, I’m not sure. ’56. Is there any other major incidents that happen, I mean, back then? Oh, McCarran Airfield has been changed. It used to be on the L.A. Highway, you know, going towards L.A., that highway? UNLV University Libraries Laura Gunning 7 Oh, I-15? Yes, it used to be out there instead of on Paradise. When did they change it? They changed it in 1963. No? When? [Inaudible] Well, it wasn’t changed in ’68, honey. McCarran Airfield. It changed when you went off of Paradise Road; you used to go in off the Strip, and then they changed to where you went in on Paradise Road. Oh. So they would increase (unintelligible). Yeah, they increased it a lot, ‘cause it was nothing like it is now. It was just little houses and the airport, but nothing like it is now, an ultra airstrip, ‘cause they get more traffic in and out of the airport than they do anyplace. Oh yeah, of course. Where did you—okay, when you came here, you were divorced and you remarried, right? I came here to get a divorce. Get a divorce. Mm-hmm. And you married when? I married in 195—well, I got my divorce, and then two days later, I got married, ‘cause I had already met Peter, but I couldn’t go with him, ‘cause I was married. So, after I got my divorce, Peter came up, he was with me for (unintelligible) in California, and has (unintelligible). And we got married. Then he brought the kids up, and when the kids saw the lights in Vegas, you know, UNLV University Libraries Laura Gunning 8 from where you could see the lights, then their eyes got big as silver dollars, because they’d never seen any lights like that. That was the big attraction. When you come over the hill from California, and you see all this around and all those beautiful lights, that’s what always fascinates a lot of people, ‘cause it looks like nothing for miles and miles. Then all of a sudden you come into this, like a jewel box. Where did you, as a housewife, shop? In those days, when we lived in North Vegas, we shopped at Vegas Village, the first Vegas Village. They had a Vegas Village back then? Oh, sure. Really? No, we didn’t, Yes, we did. We shopped at Loveland Market there was no Vegas Village. Oh. When we first came in, that’s right. Loveland. And then then when they built Vegas Village, then we shopped there. (Unintelligible) Safeway downtown. Loveland and Safeway was the two markets. And then, when we moved over to Vegas Valley in ’61, we shopped at El Bayal, but now it’s Smith Food King, and it’s on the corner of Maryland Parkway and Sahara, and they changed all that. You can’t believe, everything’s changed. How about hospitals? Hospitals—we went to—Doc Hardy, you know, the brother of, you’ve heard of Stan (unintelligible) Hardy? UNLV University Libraries Laura Gunning 9 Yes. Well, his brother (unintelligible) the Las Vegas Hospital, and we only went there. Las Vegas Hospital? Yes. Where was that located? On Eighth and Ogden. Now, it’s a drug rehabilitation and alcoholic hospital. Is that the first hospital here in Las Vegas? Was it the first, honey? I think it was. I don’t know which (unintelligible) there was two hospitals. Well, Southern Nevada— Southern Nevada, and— Las Vegas Hospital. Las Vegas Hospital. But Doc Hardy, he was chubby like his brother, and he was a real good doc. He delivered Elva, except I told her, I says, “When I get you back home, I’m going to take you up and introduce you to Doc Hardy.” And would you believe, he died a month before we got back? So, I never did get to take care. But he owned the hospital—well, it was, like, a corporation, you know, Dr. Nelson, Dr. Hardy, the child’s doctor—I can’t remember his name. (Unintelligible) Oh, Dr. (Unintelligible) that’s right. Goes back a lot of years—can’t remember a lot of details. I worked for Valley High School in the cafeteria when they first opened up. Valley, that was the first high school, wasn’t it? Las Vegas High. UNLV University Libraries Laura Gunning 10 Las Vegas High School, that’s what I mean. Yes, and then Rancho, and then, of course, Western. Did you say—they didn’t have a Safeway or nothing like that? Yes, they did have a Safeway down there on Fremont. Did they have a thrifty mart? (Unintelligible) ‘Cause my husband worked on Fourteenth and Fremont. They had (unintelligible) stations up there, and across the street from the market were (unintelligible). But there wasn’t too many. I remember, at one time, we had moved to Pittman, which is out this way towards the dam. And I was carrying young Peter, and during the time you’re carrying a child, you get hungry for all sorts of things, and I was hungry for steak. So, my husband had got off work at twelve, and he came all the way back into Fremont all the way from out here, you know, near Henderson, back into the town to the market, and got me some steak. It was on Fremont, Safeway? Yes. He went to the Fifth Street Market. What was Sam’s store called? Do you remember Bonanza and Main come in? We had a friend, Sam Clark, he owned that. Now, Sam Clark is a Mormon, and he’s a deacon in his church. He’s a real good person, but we don’t see him that often. (Unintelligible) Well, he had the grocery store on the corner of Bonanza; that’s history. What was the climate, you know, in the summer? Oh, then you could stand the humidity. See, there wasn’t so many people. And the humidity only comes up when you have lawns and you gotta keep water—you get more moisture in the air. Well, then, the humidity was low. Now, there’s so many houses and everything, that humidity is UNLV University Libraries Laura Gunning 11 getting so high in the summertime that a lot of people can’t stand it. And the more people that come in, the more that you’re going to have the high humidity, with the swimming pools and all that goes with it. So, the climate is gradually turning, as far as the heat, for the worst, because the humidity is getting too high. Then, it was beautiful. Do you know—you pick up a paper and you’d never read of a murder, you know, never. Really? That must be nice. It was. I can’t believe—you can’t pick up a paper now that you don’t see a murder every single day, practically, or a robbery, or something. In those days, they didn’t have those things. I don’t know if they were maybe hushed up or what. But it didn’t seem like it. I mean, it was different, it really was. It was a good town. And people go Downtown, and there was not the stereotype, like—we went away, and then we came back, and we went to a motel, you know, to get a room for overnight. Do you know, the doors were locked? I mean, the managers have to lock the doors now to be safe. And then, they didn’t; they could leave their doors unlocked. Really? Mm-hmm. That’s the big difference I see is, everything’s locked up now, and nobody locked their doors in the old days. We lived at (unintelligible) in North Vegas. And the most excitement you had was, man got mad at his wife and sticks of dynamite he was going to blow her up with. Of course, the police came and they took him, disarmed him. But, I mean, that was the most violence you ever heard of, was a man that got mad at his wife. They had (unintelligible) Bar over in North Vegas, and that’s where I had a can of beer and I got so sick, I never drank after that—never had another beer, ‘cause I got so sick on that kind of beer. Were you ever involved in any state activities? UNLV University Libraries Laura Gunning 12 The only thing I ever did was write letters to the editor, and anything that I didn’t feel was quite right, I would write to the editor. And he’d print it if he thought it made sense, and if it didn’t, they wouldn’t print it. But in my box in there, I’ve got more letters that I wrote to the editor. Sometimes I’d start fights, like, I (unintelligible) he joined the union in 1932. Then they were working for $17 a week, ten hours a day, six days a week. They needed a union; but now, the union is too powerful, and they can ruin this country just by calling a strike. And some things are good and some things are not. And I’d start fights like that in the paper. One fight I started was with a Mr. (unintelligible). I never signed my name because I didn’t want to embarrass my husband. But he always thought it was awful because I never signed my name, and he thought I was a man. (Laughs) I can show you these clippings. You told me before that, you went up and something about your son or something like that, that you brought up a case that, back then, they didn’t have enough— Oh, yes. Senator Brewster. In those days, of course, with young Ricky, he had muscular dystrophy. And had I known that Ricky would have had to sit all his life in a wheelchair and never be a normal, healthy child, I would have never, never had him, and then I would have gone, had an abortion. But I didn’t know, so therefore, I had him. But I don’t think that, if a person has a sick child, that they should ever be allowed to go through all the punishment that they have to go through for being sick. And so I wrote that letter to the senator, Brewster, and he invited me to come speak at the Senate in Carson City on that subject, but I never did get to go ‘cause I was working at that time, and I couldn’t leave young Rick, you know, because in those days, people were afraid of children with muscular dystrophy. And you couldn’t find hardly anyone that would be able to care for them. Did they have any activities for them back then like they do now? UNLV University Libraries Laura Gunning 13 Oh, yes. The one good thing they had was variety school, and Mr. Marr was the principal there. And in that school, the children who are handicapped and mentally retarded and, you know, children in accidents and things—they’re given a chance to be normal, as normal as they’re capable of being. And so that was the good thing there, which a lot of states don’t have. That variety school is about the best thing any handicapped child can have. And they give them physical therapy, and they do all the things that would be necessary to help a person grow. Ricky loved it. They ran it, you know, like they have the school fairs, you know, the science fairs? Yes. They built a moat out of papier-mâché, and would you believe those little people won it? Oh? Yes. I was so pleased, because they built this moat and this castle, and it was beautiful—I still got the picture in my album. What would most people do, I mean, like on the weekends back in around 1955? Where would they go? Even in those days, we would just take off through the—we’d get the kids in the car, and we’d take off—sometimes they’d take off on no roads. And one time we took off and headed towards, oh gosh—I knew where we ended up, but I don’t know the streets now. But we ended up in a ghost town in Arizona, and the curves in the mountain were terrible, and on the sides of the roads, we’d see stones with the cross where someone had been buried there. And we ended up in, was it Flagstaff, Arizona? Kingman. Kingman, Arizona. And that’s where the road took us, but we took off on the unpaved road, and to boot, we didn’t have no water. See, whenever you go on the desert, you should carry water. UNLV University Libraries Laura Gunning 14 But we didn’t take any water with us. And we were out there, and we don’t know where we’re going—we’re just on the road. And that’s what a lot of people did. We’d go on picnics up to Mt. Charleston, and we’d take food in the picnic baskets and we’d plant the seeds in the ground—we never did find out if any of the trees, grew, but we still planted the seeds. Then, they didn’t charge you to go up there—you know how they charge you now. Then, you could go up there and have your picnics and clean up your area and, I mean, no charge, no nothing. But it’s all changed. That’s why it was better then, because you could do a lot more. And the people on weekends, well, they’d go visit you—have barbecues at the house. Was there any theaters, or? Was Huntridge there? Huntridge was, and then one on Fremont. That’s the only two we went to was Huntridge or the one on Fremont. What was the price back then to see a movie? You always paid the tickets—what did you pay? (Unintelligible) Fifty to sixty-five cents. Now, this is 1950. 1950? 1950 and ’60. Las time we went to the movie here was Red Rock, and we saw Star Wars—cost us five bucks apiece. Could you imagine? I can remember when I was a little kid going to school, East L.A., we paid twelve cents just to get in the movie, and you got a (unintelligible), you got a free dish, and you got the comics, and you got a movie, and you got a flash (unintelligible), all for twelve cents. What about the average meal, like, in a restaurant or something, back in about 1955? Oh, golly. Bread was thirty cents a loaf, and the average meal was about— UNLV University Libraries Laura Gunning 15 [Audio cuts out] They had, after eleven o’clock at night, they had what you call chuck wagon, for a dollar each person, you could go in and they’d have all the best foods you can think of, shrimp salads and these big legs of beef, and chicken—all these beautiful foods, and all you paid was a dollar per person. But you had to go in after eleven o’clock around three or four in the morning. And so, if you went out in the evening to one of the Strip shows—like, we usually went down (unintelligible), we liked him, and Dennis Day, Danny Thomas, and southern shows, and then, gosh, those are about most of the shows that we did see. Now, Stan Irwin, he used to be in the Sahara Hotel. He used to hypnotize some of the entertainers, because they’d get nervous before they went on. And I found this out one time, and I (unintelligible) and asked him if he could help a boy with muscular dystrophy. And he was real great; he came over and he hypnotized Ricky. And do you know, no matter how much strength the little boy didn’t have, Ricky didn’t have, he would still raise his hand and shake hands with Stan. He was fantastic. I don’t know what it was where his mind controlled that handshake, but under hypnosis, he could shake hands with him even though he had no strength left. And Stan Irwin—I forget exactly, what was he, exactly, Pete, in the Sahara before he sold out? (Unintelligible) He hired all the stars for the stage shows at the Sahara. He’s now Pearl Bailey’s business agent. His son went to Valley High School, too. After we had—well, he had gone over to Rome to see the Pope, and then after he came back from there, it was about 1969, he and his wife got a divorce, and we felt real bad for him because he was such—I never met his wife, but he was a fine person. And I felt real bad for them. Other than that, what else do you need to know? Well, that’s about it, Laura, unless you got questions. UNLV University Libraries Laura Gunning 16 Do you think you’ll get an A or a B? Hopefully. (Laughs) Thanks a lot, Laura. I’m sorry I couldn’t remember some—I mean—I should go back over and you could—now, the minute you leave, I could think of a whole bunch of things that I should have told you. But I’ll get those papers out, and then you could see something in them. Sure. And I’ll bring them to work. Okay.