Transcript of interview with Oliver Crickman by William Hawley, March 3, 1979

UNLV University Libraries Oliver Crickman i An Interview with Oliver Crickman An Oral History Conducted by William Hawley 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 Oliver Crickman ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2017 UNLV University Libraries Oliver Crickman 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 Oliver Crickman iv Abstract On March 3, 1979, William Hawley interviewed Oliver Crickman (born 1933 in Apex, North Carolina) about his experiences from living in Nevada and working in restaurants. Crickman first describes his background and his first occupations prior to starting as a cook in Las Vegas restaurants. He then explains how he gradually moved from the position of cook’s helper to sous chef and his then-current position of executive chef at the Royal Inn. Crickman goes into detail about the operation of those restaurants and other Las Vegas Strip and Downtown Las Vegas properties, and he describes the demographics of cooks as well as how the hospitality industry has changed over time. The latter part of the interview involves a discussion of Crickman’s various residences in Las Vegas over time, the extent of crime, the first places to shop, and a brief discussion on mobile homes. UNLV University Libraries Oliver Crickman 1 Okay, this is the oral history project interview, and this is Mr. Oliver Crickman, and the date of the interview is March 3rd. And it is 4:30, and the place of the interview is 6335 West Twain, Las Vegas, Nevada. The name of the collector is William Hawley of 3321 East Tonopah, Las Vegas, Nevada. And this is the oral history project. Okay, when were you born? October 24th, 1933. And where? Apex, North Carolina. And did your family live there for a long time? History, back couple of centuries, yes. Okay, when did you first come to Southern Nevada? July, 1956. Did your family come or did you come by yourself? I came with a wife and kids. Oh, so you were married in North Carolina? Yes. And what was your occupation in North Carolina? Truck driver. Truck driver? Right. And when you first came to Nevada, was that your job? When I first came, I went to work for Union Pacific Railroad, August 7th, 1956. I worked as a carman helper and oiler for a two-year training period to become a carman. In the meantime, UNLV University Libraries Oliver Crickman 2 things got tough and I had to work two jobs. And not getting too much rest, I got suspended from the Railroad for thirty days for sleeping on the job, they call it—(Laughs)—and before my thirty-day suspension was up, I got into a good job working in the restaurant, which prior to that, I had worked for my uncle in North Carolina in a small bus stop restaurant-type operation. And I’ve been in the restaurant business since, here locally. So the time when you were working for the Railroad, was it a hard time financially, or? Not too hard for the times. I made good money, railroad made good money for the times that it was here in Las Vegas. It was considered a middle class job at the time. Were there a lot of railroad workers in the area, or? Fairly good. It was a regular repair track here and a roundhouse, and different scene—this was kind of a halfway point between L.A. and Salt Lake and Green River, Wyoming and Provo, Utah, you know, through in that area—Pocatello, Idaho. It wasn’t too bad; it kept plenty of us working this. That was about the main industry at the time outside of gambling. Was it a hard job, physically, to—? No, not too hard. It was, you know, just a mediocre job, it was not too bad. But then you got a better job in the restaurant? Right. What restaurant was that? The old Bonanza Club in North Las Vegas, which is now Jerry’s Nugget. And that was in 1959. We opened up Thanksgiving Day in 1959; it was formerly, then, Ambassador Embassy Club or something (unintelligible) and they had been shut down for a year or so. And Donna French come in from State Line, Idaho and opened it up, remodeled, and we opened up Thanksgiving Day, 1959. And I was making—time prior to that, I was working two jobs, and I was making, UNLV University Libraries Oliver Crickman 3 starting out in the restaurant business, about three-fourths of what I was making working two jobs. So, consequently, I quit the other two jobs and stayed in the restaurant. So, was that considered, at the time, a really good opportunity? Real opportunity. Were there a lotta openings in the cooking field? Right, you could work out the union hall, work one job six days a week and you could get part-time work out of the union hall, ‘cause there was a great demand for cooks—couldn’t get enough of ‘em at that time. So, what did you first do in the restaurant as? I started out as, what they call, classified now, is a cook’s helper. A cook’s helper? Right. And at that time, it was classified as, well, as they say in restaurant slang, a yardman. That was peeling potatoes, making French fries, breading chicken, breading fish, and making mashed potatoes and backing up the cook on the line, fry cook. And my particular position, I was working for a friend of mine, and he could trust me, and I trusted him, and I was kinda like in charge of the whole shift. I was making more money than the cooks, but so far as classification’s concerned, it wouldn’t be the same classification. It was kind of like a sous chef, but without the knowledge. So, was it a long stay at where you worked, or were you very transient from job to job? No, I stayed there till January, 1962. And I went out to the Mercury Test Site and worked for the Reynolds Electric as a second cook in one of the camps in the (unintelligible) areas for about four months. And it was, at the time, two kids, girls, was one in school and was kind of rough on the life because I was staying out over—stay out one night, come back next night, and go back, UNLV University Libraries Oliver Crickman 4 stay out the next night, and she couldn’t (unintelligible)—couldn’t have no kids, so I had to quit working out there and come back into town to where I could be more of a father and put a little pressure on the kids to keep ‘em in line. What kind of operation did they do up there? In Mercury? Yes. Well, there was building test tunnels and stuff—what they’re doing now (unintelligible), you know, like digging underground tunnels and burying the bombs and testing them and stuff as that. And you worked in a cafeteria, or? Cafeteria-style, second cook in the cafeteria. And how long did you have that job? I worked about four months before I had to quit and come back to town on account of, you know, family, kids. Where’d you start working when you came back from the Mercury Site? I went back to the Bonanza Club and I worked there, well I guess the balance of ’62 until January 1st, 1963 when Jackie Gaughan and Mel Exber bought the El Cortez and started the El Cortez out. And I started working for them at that time. And you were still a cook’s helper, or you were—? I was classified as boiler cook at that time. And I worked for them for approximately six months, and I got a better job at the Desert Inn as a sous chef on graveyard shift. That was when the late Wilbur Clark was still alive. And I worked that job for a little over a year, and I left there and went to the Hobnob Coffee Shop on, well it was 2800 Las Vegas Boulevard. It’s no longer in UNLV University Libraries Oliver Crickman 5 existence; the man lost his lease because the lease terminated and they wouldn’t re-lease it. Like, he wanted ten years at the time, they only released it one month at a time because they was gonna tear down the building, which they never have done yet. So it was just one of them things—I worked there and I (unintelligible) for that job because it was a chef’s job, and I worked there as a chef for eight-and-a-half years. And at the time I went there, Circus Circus, (unintelligible) bought the Circus Circus, and none of them places were there—that was all desert—and we had one terrific business going. And then along came Circus Circus and Denny’s and the other places were locally, I mean, more convenient for all the people—lower prices, this place didn’t have any alcohol or gambling. It was just a coffee shop-type restaurant; you couldn’t compete with them places, so business kinda dropped and the man didn’t want to stay in there for a month-to-month basis, so he cancelled his lease. So, when it closed down, I left there and went to work at the Plush Horse for Jack Rivetti for a year. And then I got another chef’s job—that was a swing broiler at Plush Horse, and then I got a chef’s job where I’m working now at the Royal Inn Casino, which I’ve been for the last five years, four months. That brings it current to date. So, in all this time, did you ever have trouble getting jobs, or was it fairly easy for a cook to get a job in the period that you lived here? Out of the twenty-three years that I’ve lived here, I’ve had trouble turning down jobs. (Laughs) I usually work ‘cause I work hard, and I have a reputation and people know me, know my work, and I’ve never had any trouble getting a job—never been out of work. I mean, I’ve changed jobs, but I’ve always had a job to go to whenever I changed. Then you’d say that this would be a good field for people that were to come into this town for that period and start working? UNLV University Libraries Oliver Crickman 6 During that period, yes, definitely. If you was dedicated and into the business of what you’re doing—at that time, it was small enough to where everybody knew everybody in the catering business in the restaurant institution, and you either had a good reputation or a bad. If you had a bad reputation, you might be out of work two or three months every year. But if you’ve got a good reputation as a good worker, conscientious, you was in demand, which is, you know, leads to now. So, it was a very good field then? Very good, yes. And were there a lot of other people that came in there now knowing a whole lot about the field and working with you that were just like, you came here not as a cook, started working? Yes, it’s been quite a few. I know a number of people that work with me that—see, I got a great (unintelligible) from a friend that put me on my way towards where I’m at now. So, ever since then, I’ve been in the position to give other people breaks, and I tried, like I promote dishwashers under me into cook (unintelligible) positions, and they went on to become cooks. And two of ‘em are former dishwashers that I have promoted in the past years that I’ve been a chef. One is an assistant chef at the Aladdin Hotel under Varnell at the present time, and another one was my assistant at the Royal Inn but has left since to work at the Barbary Coast. And the rest of ‘em are still working for me at the present time, which is three or four guys that I think I call number one fry cooks at the time. They’re not into the preparation and chef and such as that, but I would classify them as number one for this town in fry business. So I got a handle on the (unintelligible) and I do the same thing. Okay, you worked both on the Strip and the Downtown area, right? UNLV University Libraries Oliver Crickman 7 Right. And how would you compare the two working for the hotels? Are they pretty much the same, or are there some differences? Well, myself, I prefer working in a smaller-type place, like the chef jobs I had mentioned prior, you know, before in this (unintelligible) conversation, because I like to be known more as a person than a time clock number. You work in the large hotels, they’ve got so many employees that it’s impossible for any one person to know any other one person unless you’re into working ranks or, you know, you work side by side with the people. I’m not too much for getting pat on the backs and stuff like that and, “You’re doing a good job”—that’s not the reason for it. I like to feel satisfied that I am doing the man a good job when I go pick up my paycheck. And I don’t feel, like whenever you’re working for a hotel, you got four men on the line and one man can be goofing off and you doing all the work and he get the credit for anything that’s happening. I mean, you know, he’s been there longer, and it’s just a lotta difference where you work for a smaller outfit, such as I’ve worked in the past and such as where I’m working now, you know the owners personally, they know you, they know you work. And I feel that I have way better job security in a position like this, because you just don’t walk up to the time clock, punch out, and have you paid—you find a check ready. The man himself, personally, if you have done something wrong, he calls you into his office, he tells you about it, he tell you to straighten up your act or, you know, you’re out. But in the hotels, they don’t know you personally; you’re just a number on a piece of paper, and they just pull you a timecard, and that’s it. So I think in smaller operations—not knocking the Strip operations—but in the smaller, operation, you have much more security as far as the job is concerned if you do your work and do it conscientiously. There’s more of a tight feeling. UNLV University Libraries Oliver Crickman 8 It’s more of a tight feeling. You feel that you’re doing the man a good job, and he, in return, feels that you are. So, have many of the small places that you’ve worked at, you said have gone out of business then? Just the one, Hobnob; I worked there for eight-and-a-half years. It went out of business, but only because the man didn’t want to lease on a month-to-month basis. The owner that owned the shopping center where the Hobnob was located at died. And then it went into probate court, and his son and mother and sister inherited the business, and then they sold it out. And the man that bought it was a big change from back east someplace, and he was planning on tearing it down and moving it back into the property—it was real deep in the back but like on the street in the front of the Strip. And he wanted to tear down all the buildings and move it back about 500 feet and build a high rise hotel and such as that. But something happened along the lines, it’s never materialized, and the place where I worked still hasn’t been leased to this day. It still has been vacant ever since 1973. They never did find anybody that would lease because, in this town, you can’t build credit on a month-to-month lease, because no purveyors will allow you thirty-day credit. As you go for buying groceries, you know, a small operation like that, you have to pay cash for your groceries, specially unless you’ve got a long lease that you have to abide by. So, you know, a lot of them went out of business from time to time in this town, but not because, you know, they forced out business—because people don’t want to lease it by ten-year lease like he had originally. He had a ten-year lease, and when it ran out, the guy wanted to lease it by the month because he was planning on tearing down the building at any time. And the guy didn’t want it, so he sold out and moved back to San Diego, California. UNLV University Libraries Oliver Crickman 9 Well, as a cook, you can tell pretty much how when the busy seasons are and the slow seasons are—can you tell me how much they’ve changed over the years or if they have at all? Well, every season gets busier and busier, but as the hotels go up more and more, then you don’t really notice that it is getting busy. Every year, the gaming commission says that Nevada, Las Vegas casinos set a new record each year, is always higher and higher, but it’s more and more places going up. So, say, per se, where I work, business may be the same as it has been for the last four or five years customer count-wise, but yet there’s more and more tourists every year coming into town—you just can handle so many people, and that’s all you can take care of. So, you’d say the tourist business, as far as you can see from your position, is the busy seasons are getting longer? It’s getting to be near about reversed. Four or five years ago, summer months from the time school let out and vacation started to school went back in, maybe to the last of September, used to be our busiest season. Now, with conventions coming into town, they’ve got to where they book the conventions in the wintertime because they know they’re gonna be busy in the summer, and now it’s getting to be twelve months, may have (unintelligible) during the holiday seasons and Christmas, stuff such as that, but normally we stay, basically, the same all year long. But you’d say, because there’s so many hotels now, that it’s hard to tell if it’s getting busier all the time because they’re taking most of the customers? Yes, everybody’s getting their share. The increase in customers and increase in hotels kind of balance one another out. So, we get the same amount of customers now we did five years ago, but the town is just as busy. Yes. UNLV University Libraries Oliver Crickman 10 It just don’t seem like it’s as busy because it’s got more places to take care of people. When I first went to work here in 1956, you’d have a line—I’ve seen a line at the Bonanza Club, 1959, it would go two lines, half a block waiting to get in, which you don’t have that problem now because North Las Vegas expanded, Las Vegas expanded, and there’s enough restaurants where people won’t stand in line (unintelligible). They go where they, you know, can get in and get it over with. Back in the fifties and up till the (unintelligible), has there been a lotta transient, temporary people that would be hired just for a short while or just work for a short while and then leave after? It’s quite a few of ‘em—not as bad as it used to be. It used to be, it was too hot here for ‘em to leave, or either that or they come from back east on the way to L.A. and run out of money here—stop in to see the gambling, they maybe only have a hundred dollars to (unintelligible) through and they wind up blowing it and have to sell the car and hitch a hike to California or catch your trail ways or something to this nature. But more and more, it’s getting kinda stabilized; there’s not too much transient at the present time, per se, as it was in the fifties and sixties (unintelligible) most people who come in here has already got relatives living here, they’ve gotta start when they get here. So they may not stay on one job long to begin with and to learn because they don’t know what they’re doing. They just go to the union hall, they send ‘em out as a dishwasher or bus boy, such as this, and they’ll work two or three months and quit to go to something higher in pay or go back to school or whatever. We get a lotta turnover because we hire a lotta schoolkids that go to school. They can’t work dayshift ‘cause they go to school, or such as this, so most of that’s mostly in the summer months when school’s out. And then, UNLV University Libraries Oliver Crickman 11 basically it goes back to the older people during the wintertime and (unintelligible) in the wintertime. You’d say, were a lotta these people, like, in, say, the late fifties unexperienced that they have come there and you have to train them, or? Not as much as today in that most of the people that we got in the fifties was experienced people. I don’t know, it wasn’t so much as the younger teenagers working at that particular time—most of them was working as stock boys or bag boys or something in a grocery store or pumping gas at a gas station or working in a car wash or something during the summer. And it’s only been, since, really been heavy in the teenage school-type people in the last five to six years where they’ve got into the catering business as an alternative over washing the cars or (unintelligible) because of the pay rate, for one, is higher now than then. At that time, cooking, I mean, a regular fry cook himself—somebody pumping gas could make just as much money. Now, it’s reversed; now they’re paying minimum scale, the government minimum scale in these gas stations and car washes and grocery stores for that type of work—not for the checkers and stuff like that—but for that type of teenager going to school and stuff. Or they could go into the restaurant as a bus person or as a dishwasher and make $3.50, $4.33 an hour, which is a great improvement over washing cars or pumping gas or boxing groceries or whatever. So that’s the reason for the small places going up; more places got into hiring the younger people—I don’t know whether it’s on account of the last president’s pushing for hiring the younger people, or whether it’s just—at that time, most of your businesses was in the three months of summer, and rather than hire somebody working three months, say, person with a family, they know it’s only gonna be for three months ‘cause business is gonna drop off when school starts back. They just hire the teenagers and work UNLV University Libraries Oliver Crickman 12 them for three summer months. And that way, that gives the person with the family time to find them a better job or whatever, you know—seems to work out, average itself out pretty good. So, would you say that, in the, say, late fifties or early sixties, that the average cook was a much older person, or? Much older, right. Very seldom did you see a cook, say, under the ages of twenty-five—twenty-four or twenty-five years old—working in an establishment in Las Vegas at that particular time as a cook. We had them at that time as bus persons but not to the extent that it is now. Most of them had dropped out of school—they wasn’t going to school. Now, it’s reversed; kids are trying to work themselves through school and the college, such as this, so it actually has more meaning to hire a younger person now than it did in the days, ‘cause in them days, the kid has dropped out of school, he’s just looking for a buck, he didn’t care whether he got any further than that or not. Now there seems to be a trend towards education, helping their parents—of course inflation don’t help, so they near about have to help their parents get ‘em through school and through college, especially if they want an automobile to drive, they have to go out and go to work, ‘cause their parents just can’t afford it anymore. So, in them times, most of the police and key jobs like that hired married people with families so that they could support their families. And so, when you trained somebody, when you trained a younger person, it usually took, oh they probably only trained a year or two years, where now, if they really go in there and try to get into the program and learn, they can become cooks in six months—(unintelligible) that is, not preparation cooks but short order cooks. Is it back in, say, the fifties, or when you started cooking, how long did it take to move yourself from, say, a cook’s helper to an executive chef? UNLV University Libraries Oliver Crickman 13 Well, depending on your determination and what you wanted in life. I made it myself, personally, from, I started in 1959 for a time in the restaurant—I had worked in the restaurant off and on cooking and stuff for my uncle and all prior to ’59—but I went into it at full speed in 1959. March of 1964, I got my first executive chef’s job; that’s when I went to work at the Hobnob, a coffee shop in the Strip. That was my very first chef’s job. So, that took from ’59 to ’64, took my about five years. But I was willing to work; I worked a lot on my own time to learn. I pulled my—at that time, it was not a forty-hour work week, it was a forty-eight-hour work week with no overtime for the eight hours, and I’d work that plus put in extra time on my own working with the chef, helping him and learning what’s happening, and that’s how I advanced so far, because I was determined to do it. I don’t have that much of education—I don’t got a ninth grade education—so, for me to get anywhere, I can’t go in and show diplomas; I’ve gotta show work. And that’s how I’ve got to where I am. Was the average cook, say, back in the fifties and early sixties an educated person, or? Uneducated. Uneducated? Well, when I say uneducated, I mean there wasn’t high school graduates; they were people, unfortunate, I mean, they come up during the times that were, you didn’t really have that much—education was there for you, but the opportunity wasn’t. It was in bad times when I came through school, it was kinda bad times, and my father was a plumber, and during the seasons, I had to stay out mostly—I was lucky if I went to school every Monday to turn in the assignments that the teacher gave me over the weekend. Mostly, if I could go to school on Monday and get the week’s assignment, go back on Friday, turn them in, and then get a weekend assignment, go back on Monday, turn that in, I was lucky. And if it rained, I went to school; it the sun was shining, I UNLV University Libraries Oliver Crickman 14 stayed home, I had to work in the fields and stuff. So, I knew what I had to do to better myself in any community—not just this community but any community, and I had to do it, so I went out and done it. I done it and I accomplished it in five years. So, I’m self-educated; there’s not too much I don’t know about restaurant work. Now, I’m not a mathematician or anything like this, but anything pertaining to the food industry, food control, wage control, stuff to this nature, I know just as much as, you know, any educated person that’s went to college to learn the same. But it’s from actually on the job experience rather than in the classroom. Would you say that your rise in the cooking industry from just starting out to where you are today was unusually fast, or slow for that period, or? Well, again, I say it’s depending on what you want out of life and your determination. I knew I couldn’t make it as a teacher, I didn’t have an education. I knew I couldn’t make it as any kind of a job that had to have an education, and at the time, the opportunities was greater for an uneducated person in the restaurant industry because you didn’t have to have an education. At that particular time, all you had to know how to do was fry a hamburger and cook eggs, steak. And I seen that this was my chance to better myself because of not having an education. And let’s put it this way, education never hindered me from getting what I wanted. Work is mainly to get what I want, and I’ve made it myself, but education didn’t hinder me from getting where I’m at today. Determination and willpower and hard work is what got me here—not education. But education’s helped me ‘cause I educated myself as I went. Okay. [Recording cuts out] Okay, when you first came to Las Vegas, can you recall what street and area of Las Vegas you moved to? UNLV University Libraries Oliver Crickman 15 Well, when I first came to Las Vegas, I moved into a two-bedroom home on Lawrence Street in Vegas Heights, which now is part of Westside. At the time, it was a small community similar to what Paradise Valley was a couple, three or four years—had our own town board and such as this, and I’d go up there till 1959. Was this a tract house area, or were they all self-built houses? They was all self-built houses. It was, buy a piece of land, throw a house up on it—it’s out in the desert away from the city itself. Westside consisted of—to get to this housing tract, you had to go through down West Bonanza, which now is called the street—coming off of West Bonanza is Highland, it was Highland at that time also—you had to go through that area, but Westside consisted of a small community of maybe ten square blocks at the time, and Vegas Heights at the time, which is all (unintelligible) by Westside now, but at that time, was sitting off, say, like on a hill from the rest of the city. And it was pretty fair, pretty nice place to stay. For the times, it was as good as any other place in town except for, naturally, the better side. Was this all lower class or a lotta middle class neighborhood? Middle of the road, it was—well, if you would compare it to now, to, say, this house here, for the times it would compare to this house here. It (unintelligible) from here. You would say it’s basically a middle class area? Basically, at the time, ‘cause it was all custom homes, it wasn’t tract homes. You bought a piece of land to build a custom, your own home. Were there a lot of minorities, or was it basically an all-white neighborhood? It was a all-white neighborhood. Like I say, you had to go through the minority section of town to get to this place, to Vegas Heights, but it was, for the times, considered as a middle class place. UNLV University Libraries Oliver Crickman 16 So this peculiarity was basically on the outskirts of the town? It was the outskirts of the town, right. Okay, and then after you left that place, where did you move to next? I rented a apartment after leaving (unintelligible), I went to an apartment down on—I forget the name of the street, but it’s by the LDS Church in North Las Vegas; I moved closer to my work, where I was working, say kinda off from Bonanza Club, and Lake Mead, it was off of Lake Mead, which used to be College Street. I lived one block off of College Street in North Las Vegas, which was a rental neighborhood, which you couldn’t classify it as middle class or low class because if you had to (unintelligible) apartment, you got it. I rented a house, but it was apartments close by. Oh you rented a house, it was—? A home, yes, I rented. I sold my home in Vegas Heights and moved to this. So, did this area, was it vastly improved to the one you had moved from, or as far as—? About the same in age. At that time, any place with a blacktopped street was considered a middle class neighborhood—it had a blacktop street, it wasn’t a dirt street from your house. You know, it didn’t have sidewalks but it had a street and curb. So I mean, you know, for that time, it was considered a nice neighborhood. Was it a convenient drive from there to work, or? Well, I could walk through it, about a block-and-a-half from where I worked at. So, this is more into the town? Right, it was into North Las Vegas at the time; that was before they had a fire department and such, they was all volunteer at the time. That’s when North Las Vegas grew. I’ve seen the whole town of North Las Vegas come from nothing to a city. UNLV University Libraries Oliver Crickman 17 So, was it a very big police department or local government for North Las Vegas there, or? No, they had one squad car and three policemen—one for each shift. And I think they had a couple of volunteer reserves to cover days off and such or weekends, whenever—a lot of drinking going on in bars (unintelligible) and stuff such as that. You wouldn’t say, as a whole, that there a lotta crime in the area at that time then? If it did, I didn’t notice it. I mean, it wasn’t like it is now. If you pick up the paper or (unintelligible) TV or radio or something that somebody got hurt, it kinda is more or less a shock than anything else at that time. Nowadays you pick up the paper or listen to the radio, it’s every other day they find a body somewhere, or somebody got shot or had a shoot up in the bar or casino or something like this. Now, you don’t even pay that much attention to it because it’s an everyday occurrence, but in them days, you’d be concerned because you would want to find out if it’s somebody you knew because the town was small e