William McCullough interview, February 26, 1979: transcript

UNLV University Libraries William McCullough 1 An Interview with William McCullough An Oral History Conducted by Pete Wahlquist 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 William McCullough 2 © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2020 UNLV University Libraries William McCullough 3 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 William McCullough 4 Abstract On February 26, 1979, collector Pete Wahlquist interviewed William McCullough (born May 9th, 1905 in Kansas City, Missouri) at his home in Boulder City, Nevada. In this interview, Mr. McCullough discusses moving to Nevada and working on the building of Hoover Dam (Boulder Dam). He also speaks about Boulder City during the time of building the dam, as well as the growth he has seen happen in Las Vegas, Nevada. UNLV University Libraries William McCullough 5 Testing one, two, three, four. How do you pronounce your name? Is it McCullough or McCullough? O-u-g-h. And it's Bill, right? Yes. Okay. Mr. McCullough, or Bill, if we can start again. You know, the reason you came down and about your car and your labor, things like that? Well, I come down here from Wyoming and it was just run out of work up there. I was working in the oil field in Casper. Figured I’d come down here and come to Las Vegas out to the dam or out to where the city was supposed to have been. They just started building it. And—. I was told that Boulder City was built mainly for the dam right? That's right. It was built down. It was a government town. They had to bring power in here and trains and all that? Yes. They brought power in from California and the Cal Electric built their power line in here and that power line is still in. It takes power out. It’s the smallest, smallest power line. Don’t happen to know if you notice you go along out to Boulder City, it has—it doesn't have no wire on the top of it for communications back years ago. Now they don’t use it at all. It’s a small, small line, electric line. Very small. Was Boulder City just, just starting when you got here? There was nothing here when I got here, at all. Nothing at all? Just a few tents and oh, there was fuel trucks, everything was down to the river. There was a lot of people lived down in the river, you know. They called it Ragtown. People lived over at UNLV University Libraries William McCullough 6 McKeeversville, was living at McKeeversville over cost. A shanty town that knows. And when I first went to work, they was hiring people from Las Vegas employment agency. They were supposed to be hiring ‘em, see, but I went right—I went to work for a guy and I worked for him down in the carpenter shop and building—helped building the dormitories and the mess hall and—. For the workers for the dam, right? Yes. For the workers. The dormitories was two story. And each had big showers in their room for fifteen, twenty people at a time. I think the dormitories must have had about 250 capacity, about 250 people. Each man had his own room. Very nice bed, Simmons bed, single bed with mattress, very good. And they changed linen there whenever you wanted. If you got your bed dirty you’d get new linen, and—. Was this free, do you know? What? Was this free to the workers or did they have to pay for this? No. We paid for, we paid for all of us. We paid for our—our meals at the mess hall and the transportation, and our room was a dollar sixty-five a day. And the mess hall was—it had two wings to the mess hall. And oh, would it would take care of all the people who stayed in the dormitories. It was enormous place for me. And they had the best food probably that was ever served in the mess hall. They had—for breakfast they'd have any kind of eggs you wanted was on the table in plates. They had bacon and oatmeal, cornflakes, dry cereals, and everything. They did hotcakes, biscuits, they had all that stuff. Anything a person would eat. Same with the noon meals. And then they—when the people that worked down on the dam went to work down there, why they had these lunches that you’d pack, you know. The person could pack his own lunch. UNLV University Libraries William McCullough 7 Putting (unintelligible), whole pie, you could take a whole pie or whole sandwiches and everything was terrific. It was very good. And a lot of guys would take food down and give it to guys that wasn't staying in the dormitory. Were there other places to stay besides the dormitories? Ah, not very many. No. Mainly all the people were living in—well, they started building the houses for the workers here, and they built about, well from Avenue B clear over to Avenue I, they had houses. All—some of ‘em was three rooms, some two rooms, and then they had lower down on Eighth Street, they had a bunch of dingbats, they called ‘em. That was one—one room. Just—they built them, the dingbats, they built it in a day. That fast? They’d put ‘em up, yes. They had a crew of about five or six men working on it (unintelligible). And at this time, when they was building all these here, they had a—New Mexico Construction was building the streets in Boulder City. Any idea why the people from New Mexico, all the way? You know that company? Well, they just come in, a lot of ‘em did, but they had horses and mules pulling a lot of the equipment for digging the ditches and everything (unintelligible) Were trucks and automobiles that much back then? Oh they was, yes. Trucks and automobiles, too. But they—at that time, you know, it wasn’t too good, you know. They was getting better all the time, but then nearly all the work was on the road (unintelligible) well, they did have one conveyor that they dug ditch with, ditch digger, but it was broke down on you all the time. It was kind of slow. And at that time, why, now this is—where we live is on M Street. At that time, they kept their horses and mules about where this place is. About right here. UNLV University Libraries William McCullough 8 Mm-hmm. And they—the sheep was just a little, the wild sheep was just a little ways from over where towards the dump used to be. East you could see right over there, and these sheep weren’t afraid at all. You could see twenty, twenty-five head of bighorn sheep, you know. They just turn their heads and look at you and just maybe walk away. And then some of these younger ones would come back. And— You said you were hired from the Las Vegas Hiring Hall down there? No. No. They was supposed to be hiring down there, but we come up here and I just stopped over to a guy, and I seen the guy was smoking a pipe and wore glasses, a big guy, and I walked over and asked him for a job, and he said these other fella’s that try to get a job, they come over to the car, I had a ’29 Chevrolet. And I’d haul ‘em up down from Ragtown. We got up there, well, I had to park my car because I didn’t want to get stuck in the sand. So I drove a little ways and I’d come back, these guys said “No, we went over there to see about a job.” So I thought, well, I’m going over and ask that guy, see if I could find out something about it. And I talked to this guy and I said “Are you hiring people?” And he said “What can you do, lad?” I said I’d do anything. How old were you at the time? Oh, I guess I was about twenty-five. And he said, this is kind of funny, he said “You see that guy over there with a hole in, in his teeth and his mouth?” And this guy was toothy like this. I’ll never forget that. And the first guy I talked to had sent me over to this fellow, and the fellow by the name of Charlie Williamson. He was in charge of all the, all the building of the dormitories and everything in Boulder City except the government buildings. Then later on, he was in charge of a lot of the stuff down in the dam, the building on the dam. But, this old man Kissle and I UNLV University Libraries William McCullough 9 went over and got the job. Why, I told him, I, they told me to come over and see him. He said “Well, just go ahead and go work.” And that’s all. And I worked for him. I never changed. I worked for him all the time when I was working for Six Companies. (Unintelligible) and from the different, other job I had was down building the, helping building it, the machine shop. Now it’s the Park Service. This big steel building is the Park Service. Mm-hmm. And (unintelligible) and then I helped put up the—there was a big government warehouse I helped put up. That’s all steel and corrugated iron, see. And then I went down and helped on the buildings of BMW. Now that building has been tore down, which is a national disgrace. The federal government sold it, but it shouldn’t have as far as I’m concerned. It should’ve been a landmark for—of course, it is a Babcock and Wilcox Manufacturing. They’d come out here and put this building up down there and roll the iron and the steel that went in the pin stocks. All that was fabricated, then they’d ship the flat iron out here and after they get it down here, they’d bend it and welded it together and drilled the holes and—but the government sold it I suppose, just (unintelligible) Everything that—the whole dam, all that stuff had to be brought in, right? Oh yes. Everything brought in. Yes. Was it brought in by truck or by rail or? All trains. Trains. Yes. Did they have a track all the way to the dam? They had it. Yes. And they also had—I worked down on the bridge across the river. They had to go down and get gravel. And the gravel pits was on the Arizona side of the river. Now that’s about eight or nine miles. But the way we had to go, we had to go way around the mountain UNLV University Libraries William McCullough 10 where the water supply is, and we had to go up around that and cross over Vegas Wash and go to the next canyon down to the river. And this bridge was a—they was gonna build a—first they was gonna build a conveyor across there. And back in them days, conveyors wasn’t too practical. I don’t think they had them very long. And this was, this bridge was a tiled bridge, and they thought they could build seven or eight bridges, you know. If they wash out, they was afraid to wash out. But, and yes, this bridge never did wash out. It lasted the whole time of things. See, and that’s, it was a piled bridge, but I worked till the completion of that. You said they were worried about the bridge being washed out. Was it a large river? Oh, it’s the Colorado River. Yes, I know. But I mean, back then, it was still a really big river? Ooh, it was big. Yes. And the flood would come, you know, and God, it shoved some of the trees up above where we was building the bridge there, up on the bank of the river where there was a collection of rubbish. And I remember there was an old cream can set way up in the tree, where high floods before that had come along, you know, and these would wash down from God only knows where, back up in Colorado or Wyoming. And this cream can still had the lid on it. And it was way up in this tree, within all this brush, you know. And we stayed—when we was building the bridge, we went down there and I think we finished it in about sixty days. That was in ’31. And we went down there and we lived, there was three or four of us lived in the Gillette Ranch. This Gillette razor outfit had a house up there, and barn, and they had farmed some land. I really don’t know who did the farming or what they did, but that was called the Gillette Ranch. And it had a very nice house. And they also had all the old deals they had there for, shaking, they call ‘em shakers I think for mining the gold, you know? Yes. UNLV University Libraries William McCullough 11 And they had a water pump there that would pump water out of the river and up to irrigate. And that was around, that was a gasoline motor that ran that. And that’s where we stayed when we built the bridge. And it might be interesting, while we was building the bridge, I was working on the graveyard shift. In the morning, I’d cross the river. Before we got over to that, we started on this side, and it was, I remember now, I think there was sixty-one vents. That was twenty-one foot vents I want to say. That’s between two rows of piles where (unintelligible) is set on. And this pile drive, you could probably hear it for forty miles in the morning, you know, when it’s hitting, you know? And sheep and the burros used to go down, come down to the river and it was pretty scary for quite a while, but they got so used to it that they used to come down and go over and drink. And there was an old burro there, he was a pinto (unintelligible) whatever you want to call him. He was. And he was so old that he was walking on his (unintelligible), you know. His—most horses when they run out in the range, they wear their hoofs off, you know. But his—it seemed like his (unintelligible) gave away and it looked like his, he had ski’s on his feet. It was—the poor devil could hardly get along. (Unintelligible) He’d come down there every morning, and he’d set across there and he would just bray and bray when that pile driver was running. We used to shut it off. We’d seen he’d have his head up in there, you know. We knew his brand, but couldn’t hear him on account of the pile driver. And we’d shut the pile driver off. And he’d just stand there and just bray, and it was pretty funny. Were there a lot of burros (unintelligible) Oh yes. Oh yes. There was probably a herd of probably, oh, I’d say forty, fifty sheep. Sheep used to come down all times of the day. They’d come down maybe ten, fifteen in a bunch, and maybe eight or ten big ones and little ones. Big bighorns. There was a lot of them. And we used to go UNLV University Libraries William McCullough 12 over on the other side of the river afterward. We got cable across, and find arrowheads. It seemed we have a lot of rabbits over there, and also was badgers and we used to find—go around these bushes where the rabbits were, and we’d find them in this sand that sifted, you know. The wind is blowing and the arrowheads would be part of them, would be sticking out of the sand. Found some beautiful arrowheads. And they always was a blight. And that’s right below Fortification Mountain, right kind of on the north end to where it comes down from the bridge. Were there any Indians still around this area at that time? What? Were there any Indians at this time around? You hear the talking about Indians. They had a—they had an old Indian that died down here and somebody shot him. They was chasing him. He was—he killed a lot of people. I can’t think what of his name, what his name was. But they had then, later on they got his body, and put it in glass and had it in shown off in Las Vegas. I think the Elks showed him off one time. Yes. They had him, they found his, you know they looked for him and then they’d shot him and looked for him. And finally somebody was down there, going around in the cave right up from the river, the Colorado River, and they found his body and they brought it up, and it was all mummified see. And they used to exhibit his body in Las Vegas. And somebody probably got his body now, or else they buried him. I don’t know. The Indians raised the devil about him. You know, using the body, see. But then, he was exhibited for a long while at different things that’s going on down here. Was Las Vegas a big town back then? Oh no. Las Vegas when I’d come here was probably, oh, probably four thousand. That’s all? UNLV University Libraries William McCullough 13 But then there was a lot of people that come in here, you know. Between here and Las Vegas. They just coming in all the time, looking for work, down, I don’t know how many hundreds of people had camped down at Williamsville, the Ragtown down here. And we camped down there and the water was so full of sand, that you’d take it out, we used to do that up where we’d built the bridge too, but we let it settle. But you used to haul water from Boulder City at that time, used to bring it down. The Six Companies, they brought us water down. But when we first come here, why, we went into town and I say we, I went into town and got a vinegar barrel from a store. Jean Ward. He was, later on, he was a (unintelligible), and I got a vinegar barrel and brought it back, and drilled some holes in it on the bottom and then we dug it down in the water so, or down in the sand so the water would seep in, see, and we’d get clear water. And I put a top on it with hinges to get in it. But later I had to put a lock it because the kids were always, and the people were coming over and getting water out, and they would just fill them with silt and dirt, you know, and they had to—we had people take the water out of it (unintelligible) take care of us, you know. When you were working on the bridges down there on the river, did you ever get the floods down there when you were working on it? Never did get a flood, but we had it later on. The bridge would just sway. You’d see the bridge just swaying from one thing. They had big—the gravel trains, you know, was hauled by big, great big steam engines. Locomotive. All that—some of the biggest there was, you know. They had to haul that gravel all the way up hill, see. Clear up here, and then they hauled it clear to—and they (unintelligible) the gravel plant. And then when they got it, when they got it clean, they cleaned and sorted it down at the gravel plant. That was down oh, off of that (unintelligible). You can look out and see the old water tank they used to supply the water for that gravel plant. And UNLV University Libraries William McCullough 14 they sorted this gravel out, and the sand, and then they had loaded back in the railroad cars, and the trains went clear down into the canyon to the river, where the lower mixing plant was, see. And then they had a Himixing plant up above, when you—by the road that you go down to the, at the top of the dam. They had a mixing plant there. They called it the Himix. But, it didn’t mix as much concrete as the lower one then. I think the lower one was much bigger, see. But they had all these mixing plants. They had these cars that hauled the concrete. I think they held like, the buckets I think held about, I don’t—maybe six yards. Maybe more than that. I just don’t remember that well. But they had electric trains for hauling processed concrete, see. Mixed concrete? Mm-hmm. And they would haul these things down here, park under the cable way from (unintelligible) then let ‘em down. As I remember now, they had nine cableways, maybe, maybe ten. I don’t know, nine or ten cableways. And I think it was—I’m not too sure which one it was. It was a (unintelligible) cableway anyway. When I say (unintelligible), it was built here. The other ones was all manufactured and sent in here, see. But this cableway was letting down a load of concrete on it. And I think the fella’s name was, a single guy, I think his name was Williams. I’m not sure. But anyway, he was single, and he was on that, you know, and he was coming down, and the cables broke on the damn thing. He hit down right in front of the, on the Nevada side, in the construction tunnel right there. Was hit and, of course, killed him. But then they had, was talking about BMW now, went rolling this pipe, getting it ready, pin stocks. Some of them pipes was thirty foot in diameter. Thirty foot? Yes. Thirty foot. Then they had the thirteen foot tunnels took off of them. UNLV University Libraries William McCullough 15 (Unintelligible) And they run through the turbans. Now, they used to bring that pipe down on a trailer they called it. I don’t know how many meals the trailer was. It was built just for that. And they used to bring it down and hook it on the cableway. The pipe on the cableway and let it down. Then they’d roll it back in the tunnels and install. This guy Williams, at that time, were there a lot of people that got killed in the construction of this? I think there was about eighty or ninety. Yes. That’s not a lot. There was—they talk about a lot of people being buried in the concrete and as I remember there’s only one man that was buried in the concrete that died. And they say, well they just buried him there. And you know, these stories grow (unintelligible) Yes. The superintendent of the job was down there when this guy was, the forms gave away, and he was down at the bottom. And he supervised the job of taking that guy out. And when they got down to his body, they was digging down in there, the concrete had set, you know. And they had pavement busters and jackhammers, picks. When they got down to where they seen one of his hands, or one of his legs, or his body, why, Mr. Crow was the superintendent, and he made him take and use small picks to get that body out. You know, (unintelligible) sort of deal. But that’s the only person I remember was killed in the concrete. And there was a lot of fella’s, some of the fella’s high scalers, fell on the scales, and oh, I don’t know anything else that’s very important to know. When you worked, did they work on the dam twenty-four hours a day? UNLV University Libraries William McCullough 16 Oh yes. So you worked in shifts then? Yes. Three eight hour shifts. Oh yes. Then they had the—they hauled ‘em down there to work in big trucks. They had two deck trunks. They called one, the biggest one, they called—it hauled 150 men, I believe. That’s been so long, but they called it Big Bertha. It was a monstrous truck. Went down way out. Yes. They had pretty good transportation. You know, for them days, it was very good. How much did they get paid for a day’s work? Well, most of them paid four dollars. And then you said it cost you a buck sixty-five for the meals and the food? Yes. Was that taken out of the four dollars? Yes. And that was—that was pretty good wages, you know. There was no work, and people had to work. And there’s a lot of people worked here that I know in Boulder City and Las Vegas that raised a big family, and educated them on four dollars a day. Right here, because the rent wasn’t too high, you know, for the Six Companies houses. And their houses was good houses, you know. Their houses was much better. The old houses, Six Companies houses in Boulder City that we have on Avenue B clear over beyond California and them houses been remodeled. They’re better than the new houses they’re building in Boulder City. The houses they built and stuff, was that mostly for single men or did they bring their families too? Oh that’s, all the houses was for married people. People living together. They never did too much of that back then. UNLV University Libraries William McCullough 17 Did they build schools here too for the children? Yes. Yes. They built, they used some of the old dormitories for that. Eight men dormitories. Some of them there was brought over on New Mexico Street. I think it’s New Mexico, as I remember, and remodeled it for a school building. That was the small one. But to start with, they went to Las Vegas to school. And let’s see, (unintelligible) During the Depression, which I guess came about that time. Yes. Did that hit this area bad? Oh God, yes. There was so many people come here and so many people and they couldn’t get work, you know. Yes. That was terrible. It was terrible here. Did it—was it bad here and then the Depression made it worse? Or did it just sort of, you know, stay the same? Well, no. I think things got a little bit better here all the time. You know, finally people who couldn’t get work, they left. But then they, they actually in Las Vegas, they had the WPA and the PWA and they was building things in Vegas. The government helped. And they built the memorial building in Las Vegas, and that was later was tore down to make, I think make room for the city hall. I’m not sure just exactly what. But—. Was Henderson here at the time? No, no. Henderson didn’t come till after the war. When the war started, you know. Then that—they brought in that process from England for making let’s see, I want—Basic, I think it was Magnesium, I’m not sure. For airplanes? Mm-hmm. This process of these metals. UNLV University Libraries William McCullough 18 Yes. I think it was magnesium. Yes. That’s what it was. And that started then. See, that was during war. And then when it was there, and I didn’t—I was working down in the job and I, and then I went in the service. You know, me and (unintelligible) in the service about three and a half years, I guess. But then when I finished the government, I finished Six Companies, I went to work for the government, installing the units in the dam power plant. And I worked on installing nearly all of them, but N8 was installed, N7 I guess was installed, and during the war, that’s when I was gone. But outside of that, I worked in (unintelligible) installing that. What is N7 and N8? Well, that’s the name of the—in Arizona they’re A. A1, 2, to 9. Oh is this the turbans? Yes. Yes. The turbans, yes. See there’s nine, nine turbans on the Arizona side and there’s eight on the Nevada side. And on the Nevada side they’re supposed to be all the same size, maybe very little bit. But on the Arizona side, eight was built for the purpose of the (unintelligible) to Cal Electric for them bringing the power up here, see, from down this side of the dam. And later on, it was Southern California Edison operated. And the eight, A8 was really the first turban that was completed. And there was a couple of ‘em over in, I don’t know what it was, N1 or N2 that was started first. The big ones were started. But A8 was the— (Tape one ends) You mean it just, it was idle for a long time before they (unintelligible)? Well, they couldn’t—they didn’t have no way of getting the power out, see. The lines weren’t built, see. And they used to test them there. They had the electrician, he grounded in the tail bay and run down in three phases, was running right down in the water. You could see the electricity UNLV University Libraries William McCullough 19 hitting and just blowing it up, see. That’s where they tested ‘em, down there. But they didn’t have the power line hooked. A lot of this power, you know, couldn’t be used because they didn’t have no use for it. They were getting ready for it in California, when they first put it in. Outside of, I think, maybe one or two generators running for just a long time furnishing power down in California. Do you remember how long it took to finish the dam? Well now, the Six Companies, they finished and let’s see now, I went to work in 1935 for the government, so they must have finished about 1935. Six Companies. And then the government, the first power—Roosevelt was president when the first power—he came out here, I forget what year that was. He came out and—? Dedicated. Yes. Dedicated the dam, yes. Was that really a big event? Oh quite big, yes. Yes. Did you go down and see him? What? Did you see him? Oh, I was working down there. Yes. I was working when he was there. Yes. Oh, everybody seen him. Mrs. Roosevelt (unintelligible) their train come out here and backed into Boulder City and their car that they was on was right up by the water plant up there, the railroad used to run right and back into there. She’d come there, see, what I remember about her is I thought she was just a terrific old lady. But she had on these moccasins—not moccasin shoes, something with straps on, I don’t know what the hell they call ‘em. My wife knows better than I do (laughs). But you UNLV University Libraries William McCullough 20 know, she was comfortable, you know. And that was something that I’d never seen before, when (unintelligible) seen people wearing them things before. But I, oh, I thought—I thought Roosevelt was a great man. How long did he stay? Just for that one day? I think a couple of days. Maybe stayed in Vegas for one day after. We had Hoover visit it down in the mess hall (unintelligible). I didn’t like—I didn’t care for him at all. I (unintelligible) This was when he was still president? What? This was when he was still president? Yes. When he was president, you know. And back then, we was all eating in the mess hall, and that’s on the wing on the right side towards the laundry. We had a big laundry here (unintelligible) you know. It done all the laundry for the guys lived in the dormitories. And was in there, you know, and we knew he was coming in, and you know, whether I liked or disliked him, I thought that we should show him the courtesy of standing up. And some of the people even booed him. And I thought, I thought that was bad. Yes. They wouldn’t stand up. They kept right on eating. Of course, you know what I mean, people were pretty bitter about even having him come here, you know. This—he was terrible. Jesus, it was awful. I was gonna ask you about that. Was he—I heard a lot about the heat being really bad during the construction. Was it really that bad? UNLV University Libraries William McCullough 21 God yes. And not so, it was bad enough up here, but think of the guys that went down to the dam, you know, working down at the dam, down where the water was coming through, you know. Did they do anything special to cool those areas or? Well they, now like on the dam, they run pipe through the dam when they put in the concrete, and put pipe through there, and they pumped water or ammonia, whatever was in it, to cool it. They had to do that so they could pour it fast, see. It wouldn’t have to take so long. They, now they built all the form for building the dam and building the power house. They built, I’d say, nearly all of ‘em. A lot of ‘em had to be built down there. But the forms on the dam, they had one form that they hauled down there. I think it was, if I’m right, I think a sixty-eight feet long. And the pours were five foot high. And the lumber they hauled in down here, they bought down here in the carpenter shop way (unintelligible). They then load that lumber out of the boxcars and we had an old man that worked there, he wasn’t too old then. Mr. Stice. He’s dead now, very fine man. But he used to unload it. He was one of the guys that unloaded it. And they’d unload a cartload of lumber without getting a knot out of it. This lumber was oh God, it was B and B. That’s the best rate of lumber there was, you know. But at that time, it was cheap. They got it almost for nothing, you know, and during the Depression. How did you—like when you lived up here before they had air conditioning, how’d you keep cool? Well they had a swamp cooler, you know. Now the first swamp cooler I ever, I helped build in Boulder City was down at the construction outfit that was building the railroad and the road down to the dam. I just don’t remember who the construction outfit was. But we went down there, this fellow, Harold Anderson, Harold and Bill Anderson run the mess hall, they served all UNLV University Libraries William McCullough 22 the meals and took care of all the dormitories and everything. And so they wanted to go down and they had a bunch of burlap, and we fixed a frame for it, and hung it up and then they put a big fan back of it, then we—the pipes and water piped some water up and cut some holes in the pipes, so the water run down on this burlap. And they blow the fan against it. But that wasn’t good enough. They had to cut the burlap in strips and leave a little opening for the air, otherwise the air wouldn’t go through to it. And that was—they use that down in the kitchen for the mess hall. That’s the first one I’d seen here. A lot of peopl