Transcript of interview with Betty Ham Dokter by Roger Jablonski, February 27, 1977

UNLV University Libraries Betty Dokter i An Interview with Betty Dokter An Oral History Conducted by Roger Jablonski 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 Betty Dokter ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2018 UNLV University Libraries Betty Dokter 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 Betty Dokter iv Abstract On February 27, 1977, Roger Jablonski interviewed Betty Ham Dokter (born 1922 in Las Vegas, Nevada) about her life in Southern Nevada. Dokter first talks about her upbringing and education in Las Vegas before describing church activity and the first casino properties that were built. She later talks about presidential visits, economic changes in Nevada, the construction of Hoover Dam, and some of the social changes in Las Vegas. The latter part of the interview covers the topics of racial minorities, environmental changes, early grocery stores and movie theaters, and social clubs. The interview concludes with a brief discussion on Mt. Charleston. UNLV University Libraries Betty Dokter 1 Jablonksi—I am a student at UNLV, and I’m going to do an interview with Mrs. Betty Ham Dokter of 553 Ellen Way. First of all, when were you born in Southern Nevada? May 20th, 1922. And when did your grandparents first come to Nevada? My grandparents never lived in Nevada. My grandfather used to come to Las Vegas from Los Angeles as a conductor on the Union Pacific, when the Union Pacific went from Los Angeles to Salt Lake; this was the changeover spot. Could you tell me a little about your youth in Southern Nevada, like prior to 1930? Well, my mother and father came here in 1916, residents, and first being born in 1922—as a child, we had a very happy everyday wonderful life. I had two brothers, one two years older, and one five years younger. Entertainment was self-made entertainment. That what you want to know? Mm-hmm. For instance, we’d walk to Twin Lakes, swimming, and walk to the Old Ranch, swimming, and to (unintelligible) swimming, or else we’d take every day on weekends, pack up a lunch and trek out to Sunrise Mountain, Dashukai is the Indian name, and visit the Frenchman’s Mine. And other than that, our entertainment consisted of church entertainment. All the churches, went very definitely and for children’s entertainment courses. Could you tell me some of the names of the schools you went to, I mean, like, your high school name? There was only one grammar school and one high school in Las Vegas. My alma mater was Las Vegas High School, the Wildcats, and students from all over Clark County bussed into Las Vegas and thought nothing of it, to Las Vegas High—started kindergarten where, right now at UNLV University Libraries Betty Dokter 2 the federal building. And eighth grade is where the city hall is now on Fifth Street, and I think—is it the city hall or Clark County—nevertheless, when I was in the eighth grade, our school burned down, a two-story school. And my part of eighth grade was spent in the tents in second and third grade school seats out in the nice, hot Nevada sunshine. And this was during 1930? No, I went in—let’s see, it was 1935, from the eighth grade, and into 1939-40 in high school, Las Vegas High School. Where were some of the things you were taught? Was it—like in today’s school, they have very broad education. Was it much different, or? We had a very broad education. See, in grammar school, our principal was K.O. Knudson, and we had the good ole reading, writing, and arithmetic. And we had art classes, we had music classes, we had geography, and boys had manual training, the girls had cooking classes and sewing classes in the eighth grade. And in high school, we had a variety of subjects that we could take. There were some that were mandatory: three years of English, three years of math, history that was mandatory, civics was mandatory, you had to have two years of language—you had a choice of either Latin or Spanish in those days. I chose Spanish because we were around Spanish-speaking people, and those that went on into law or doctoring took the Latin. I’d like to go in a little bit about, is or was church activity an important part of your life? Oh, very definitely. Church was one of the main activities for everybody in school, and in fact I think I went to every church in town during the summertime, and it was just a thing everybody did. It was where everybody gathered was at the church. There was no line of which church you could belong to or which church you couldn’t belong to. If you belonged to one church, you UNLV University Libraries Betty Dokter 3 were always welcome in another church with open arms—just to visit, to go every week, to play, to pray, to do what you wanted to. About how many churches were there in Las Vegas at that time? Oh, golly, there was a Baptist Church, the Methodist Church, the Mormon Church, Catholic Church, Episcopal Church—I don’t recall a synagogue—and I believe that’s all I can re—oh, there was the Christian Science Church, and that’s all I can really recall. I’d like to go into gambling a little. Was gambling an important recreational activity for your family? Not in the very early days; no, not at all. My father was an attorney, and gambling was not even, as far as I was concerned being a child, not even thought of in the ways of gambling. I do believe there might have been—I won’t say believe—there might have been a few gambling places in the twenties illegally because I don’t believe gambling was legalized in Nevada until the thirties. And then gambling started off in a small way. But we had places prior to Prohibition; we didn’t have even liquor places to go into, but when Prohibition was passed, there were bars and there was very definitely a no-no unless you were twenty-one, and everybody knew everybody in town, and if you weren’t twenty-one, they wouldn’t allow you in, not even to look over the front door, or the swinging door, so to speak. But gambling didn’t really take a big effect in Las Vegas until the dam started, and I remember there was the Boulder Club between Second and Third on Fremont, and a couple others. So, I was too young to be able to go into ‘em, so I don’t know too much about ‘em. Then from there, there was the Meadows Club way out of town on Charleston. And the Red Rooster, which is now the Castaways—Grace Hayes owned that. And then the 91 Club, which went on to the Last Frontier, then the New Frontier, and now it is the Frontier Hotel. But the 91 Club was there, and then the El Rancho was built, then the Thunderbird was built, and UNLV University Libraries Betty Dokter 4 I believe from that was when Kefauver started the investigation of gambling in the east, and when he closed down that, then came the influx of gambling in the west. That’s my interpretation of it, and (unintelligible) swear to it, but I just had that feeling. And I can remember when the Flamingo was built, and everybody has always said, it’s a standard saying, “Nobody will go there; it’s too far out of town.” And it wasn’t a Western-type casino. It was very beautiful and very elaborate and very Eastern. But as we see today, it is practically Downtown. And all the hotels and casinos now have taken more or less that trend: they’ve gone from the Western to the Eastern motif. Once the El Rancho burned down and the Last Frontier changed hands and went into the Frontier Hotel, that also went from Western to the Eastern style. Do you remember any visits from presidents or important people to Las Vegas, such as President Roosevelt, or Hoover? Yes. In, I believe it was 1933, ’34, President Roosevelt came to Las Vegas to dedicate the dam. Let’s see—later than that, the date is of no importance—but when he came to dedicate the dam, my older brother and my father’s partner, Mr. Taylor, happened to know someone in the entourage and was able to get my older brother and his son in the second car that went with President Roosevelt up to Charleston to check the CCC camp. And then they went down to Boulder Dam for the dedication where they had the twelve water outlets go for the second time; they had gone previous to that when the dam was completed. And other than that, there were no other presidents in the earlier days that had come to Las Vegas. My father was a delegate in the Republican Party and met Dewey in Reno and met, in Kansas—and he met Mr. Taft, who was running against Dewey for the nomination that year. I believe those are the only ones I can remember, and I know since then, Johnson’s been here, I never knew him personally, never saw UNLV University Libraries Betty Dokter 5 him, and I don’t believe I have seen any of the others here. My father was a delegate for about three or four terms in the state of Nevada. Do you remember any important persons’ divorces or marriages? Oh, golly yes, my father divorced one of the Rockefellers—I believe it was the one that passed away from Arkansas, I’m not positive—and he also divorced Oliver Hardy, and then the same afternoon, he was married in our home on Sixth and Charleston. He divorced one of the Whitneys back east, and, oh, many of the movie colony. But unfortunately, I didn’t get to meet too many of them because they just appeared in court when the divorce decree would be filed. Oliver Hardy’s one of the few that I did meet, but my father was not what you’d call a divorce lawyer. In the days when I was young, a divorce lawyer could just go in and make a divorce if you’ve lived here six weeks, but my father only handled cases that had big property settlement, or there’d be something like that would take up a lot of his time because his time was more important than just—in those days, a divorce was $150—and his time was more important than a $150 divorce, just to go in and say, “This woman wants a divorce,” or “this man wants a divorce,” and then it’s a divorce. When did your father first come to Nevada? He came here in 1916 as clerk for Judge Thomas and his partner, and when Judge Thomas’s partner passed away, my father became his partner, and when Judge Thomas passed away, my father took over the business, and he had Mr. Ryland Taylor as his partner. And he was his partner until the Second World War, and he bought our Mr. Taylor and kept the practice going until my brother came out of law school and became his partner, and then it was Ham & Ham, and Mr. Taylor became Judge Taylor, and his son went into partnership with him. UNLV University Libraries Betty Dokter 6 Could you describe the changes taking place in Nevada, in Las Vegas, economically from 1930 on? Well, it’s kinda of hard for me from 1930 on; 1930 to 1940, the economic situation was mainly the Union Pacific and the Boulder Dam. Boulder Dam was very definitely the economic thing for Las Vegas because it gave jobs to people to work in the dam, and that was when we built our new home on the corner of Sixth and Charleston. And we had some of the most marvelous people work for us because, at that time, people from the east were out of work and came west to find work, and the people that couldn’t find work on the dam, we had some of the best carpenters, cabinetmakers and what have you for building out home. And that created a great economy in the thirties. And also, the start of the Stauffer Chemical in Henderson, and you mustn’t forget the Air Force that came to Las Vegas in 1940. And when it went on it on a skeleton crew, Senator McCarran was the one that saw to it that we had a permanent Nellis Air Force Base by moving the civilian airport from Nellis to McCarran Airport, which is now Hughes Airport, and McCarran moved on over to the new airport on the other side of the field. So, it’s just been a gradual move, move, move, and Las Vegas has kept expanding. And right now, I’d guess you’d say the main economy is gambling, the atomic energy, if it continues—and what people don’t know from out of town is we have so many small businesses in town that keep the people that work in the gambling establishments going. Do you remember the construction of Hoover Dam? Oh, very definitely, because I was one of the few young people, girl—I was very elated because Mr. Crowe, who was in charge of the Big Six Corporation at that time, had two daughters approximately my age. And we were the only girls to ever ride the lift that the men used to go from the bottom of the dam to the top to do the blastings on the side and pour the cement—was UNLV University Libraries Betty Dokter 7 even in and out of the diversion tunnels were the men could work on twenty minutes at a time, it was so hot and humid—and in and out of the spillways. So, the dam, to me, I lived and breathed the building of the dam before it was completed, and once it was completed, it was just the dam. I had the excitement of seeing it built, and that was much more excitement than going to the dam right now and just going down and seeing the turbines going around. You mentioned the Big Six Corporation; what was that? I don’t remember all of the names of the corporations that were in the building of the dam, but Mr. Frank Crowe was the head of the men that were doing the building. They were major corporations from back east that, I guess, they’re all on the plaques out there at the dam, and I don’t recall ‘em. All I knew was Mr. Crowe, his wife, and his two daughters. And I know we used to eat at the big mess hall, and they used to bring in the big pieces of metal that they had to put together out at the company out there, the metal company, that, when you do drive out there, sometimes you can see the tracks, and you wonder what the tracks are. And those tracks were the railroad tracks that went out to take out the big round cylinders that built the spillways and the diversion tunnels. Do you also remember the building of McCarran Airport? Now, the McCarran Airport original was where Nellis is now, is that the one you mean? Mm-hmm. Actually, no, I don’t remember them building it because I was too young to really take much interest in it. I didn’t really become interested in it until my husband was out there when it was a military establishment. Are you acquainted with St. Thomas, I mean—? UNLV University Libraries Betty Dokter 8 Oh, yes, I remember St. Thomas. We used to always take Sunday trips when I was a child. My mother and father would pack us up on Sunday, and away we would take off on a Sunday trip to St. Thomas, and there was the Indian village, the Pueblo Indians, and then later on when it was covered with water, we used to dive down and get gypsum off the gypsum mountain before it got too deep. Right now, you can’t dive down that far; it’s completely covered. All those people used to come to school here in Las Vegas, and it was quite a heartbreaking experience when they had to give up their homes all through that valley. We were lucky to have what we had there, but at that time, it was the only place we got green vegetables was from the valley, because out here in the middle of the desert, when I was a child, I can remember at the Vegas Creek that went from Twin Lakes down to the Old Ranch, I’d sit over there on North Fifth Street—North Main Street, I think—and dangle my feet in the creek. And I’d happen to see watercress down there, so I’d go down and get it and take it home, and we’d make salad out of it. Now, we liked the greens, and how seldom we’d get greens in the grocery store. So there were actually people living in the valley there, and they just chased them out so they could flood it, or? Oh, yes. The people had to move out of the valley—all their possessions and everything. They were paid by the government for their property, and they had to move out because the backup of the water covered all that. It’s now down underwater, 105, 109 miles of lake water—used to be just a tiny stream with a lot of quicksand, you’d have to go across it on a raft and a pole. Can you describe some of the roads that were in Las Vegas at that time, or were the roads—? [Audio cuts out, tape ends] UNLV University Libraries Betty Dokter 9 Well, the main roads in and out of town, when I was young, were all dirt in every direction—all four directions were dirt. Now, that was prior to the dam. I believe we finally got a paved road to Los Angeles, and it took about two days to get to Los Angeles. Then, they built the paved road to Boulder City and to the dam, which was a two-lane highway. Other than that, when I was young, this would be prior to ’33, going to Mt. Charleston was all on dirt roads—very hazardous driving—you’d go to Red Rock, dirt roads, go to Death Valley, dirt roads, going over to Moapa Valley, dirt roads, going down to the Colorado River, it was dirt roads. In fact, the dirt roads all the way around. I can’t really recall in the city—well, we weren’t called a city. It was a little pinpoint in the map, and when you would say Las Vegas, people would first think about Las Vegas, New Mexico; they didn’t think of Las Vegas, Nevada when I was a small child. In fact, even when I went to college, Las Vegas, Nevada wasn’t as well known on the map as Las Vegas, New Mexico. It just all of a sudden made a big burst, and Las Vegas, Nevada just took over because of the entertainment capital. But in the early days, it was just a small, happy, contented little community here. Could you describe the social changes that took place in Nevada, in Las Vegas? Yes, in what I can see in the social changes from the time I was small until now, and in between, so to speak, the Western charm has gone out of Las Vegas. People are not as gracious, they are not as polite. The influx that has come in to Las Vegas, I don’t know whether had come in because of the money-grabbing idea of, “I’ve gotta have this, I’ve gotta have that,”—they don’t seem to be content with what they have. When I was a child, everybody seemed to be happy, and they always met people when they came to town with wide-open arms, and when we left town, we never locked a door. There was never, ever fear of anything going wrong; in fact, I think we had a police force of maybe three or four. And nowadays, Las Vegas people proffer, don’t go UNLV University Libraries Betty Dokter 10 through the establishments anymore unless they have outside visitors come in to town and want to see something. They have their own entertainment in their homes or in private clubs, because the feeling when you go into the clubs is, to me, I don’t know whether it’s just my own feeling or now, but I just feel like they look at you and say, “Well, okay sucker, come on in, we’re waiting for you. What have you got to offer?” And they don’t have that friendly feeling, they don’t have the Western spirit of, “Hi, neighbor,” or “howdy, partner,” like we used to say. That’s the main change and the main thing that I find that I don’t like. Las Vegas has gotten way too large. If I would’ve had my way as far as progress was concerned, I would have liked to have stopped the growth of Las Vegas in 1950, but I know many other people would be against that because progress has to continue on. I just wish that the people that do come to town would come to town with a more friendly atmosphere about themselves and learn to like people. How was the early community of Las Vegas spirit-wise? Oh, it was marvelous. When I went to school—let’s see, nowadays, they call ‘em Chicanos, colored people, Asiatic, things like that—we didn’t do that. We had one high school, we all went to the same high school. People got bussed in not because they had to be bussed in—because they wanted an education and were bussed. It wasn’t bussed because you were either white, dark, brown, yellow—you were bussed in for an education. When we went to school, it didn’t make any difference what your color, your race, your creed—they were your friends. We knew nothing about this so-called, word they use today, bigot; that just never, ever entered out minds. I mean, it was the person that counted, not what you were. It just seems so surprising—I had as many colored friends as I had White friends and Japanese, Chinese, and Mexican. I don’t know, we were just a small-town community that everybody got along with everybody else. The one thing I think they remember is that money didn’t make the big difference. It was who the person was, UNLV University Libraries Betty Dokter 11 whether you were a good guy or whether you weren’t a good guy. I mean, you could be a good guy and have nothing, everybody liked you. You could be a good guy and have money and people liked you. Or you could be a bad guy and have nothing, and nobody liked you. Or you could be a bad buy with all the money in the world, and nobody liked you. It was just the idea of you, yourself, what type of person you were—that’s how you were judged, not by what you had. And also, not by the color of your skin or religion. Do you recall outstanding environmental changes since then? Oh, very definitely. As I can remember, as a child, on Carson Street, we had our rains, like our thunderstorms in the summertime that still come up, and everybody is so amazed when they have these floods, and I don’t know why because they’ve been having floods ever since I was a little girl. And the floods have been coming down the same way from the mountains for the many years that I’ve been on this earth and before that. Why they haven’t—these people that are taking care of the floods should know about it as much as I do, but we had fun in them because we used to sit in the gutters and play with little boats and sail our boats down the gutters. But nowadays it seems to have gotten worse for the simple reason that people, certain people I should say, take advantage of building, and they start their bulldozers, and just bulldoze down our good old tumbleweeds, our greasewood, and the trees that were planted in the desert by mother nature, is the only way I could put it, but they bulldozed all that down. And once you get rid of that from the desert, there is nothing for the water to be retained by; so the water has to go someplace, and it so it goes right through the city. And that is where our flood control has come in and been so bad. And that is one thing on the floods, and the other thing, on our water, we are fortunate where we now have water coming in from the dam, because I can remember in the thirties, when we were given tickets if our water would run into the street—we were only allowed to water UNLV University Libraries Betty Dokter 12 every other day, and we didn’t have swimming pools at all like we have here now. We had, like I had said, the Twin Lakes, the Old Ranch, (unintelligible), and then finally in the center of the city, we got the Mermaid Swimming Pool, and it wasn’t until the late forties, the city built a city swimming pool over on Bonanza Road. But as people moved into town, it seemed like when they bought a home, they insisted they have a swimming pool. And everybody now practically has a swimming pool. When I was a child, we had no humidity in the air—maybe one, two percent would be tops. Now it gets very high; in fact, in my own yard, I’m raising a Magnolia tree, which in my childhood days would have been the biggest farce of anything in the world to raise a Magnolia tree in the middle of the desert. You were lucky if you could get a blade of grass to grow. But it has been done through our water system coming from Boulder Dam, which is a magnificent thing that we are able to get our water from the dam and furnish all these hundreds and thousands of people that are now coming into the valley that, as a child, I never thought I’d see. But I just wished they’d take care of it, because that water won’t last forever. It is beautiful to see, and people take care of their yards magnificently, but they just don’t realize that this old desert can be very treacherous. So they were more conservative with their water? Very definitely they should be more conservative with their water. Do you remember the Transpacific Railroad? Oh, the Union Pacific? Union— That was our town; that built the town. And I remember we used to go down to the depot; they had one of the best beaneries at the depot when I was a little girl, and then of course they did a away with that when the second depot was built. And after the second depot, well, came the UNLV University Libraries Betty Dokter 13 Union Plaza. But as a child, I used to have fun walking the railroad tracks, as all children do, and going to the roundhouse and the ice house, which is still over by the railroad tracks if anybody would be interested enough to go over and look for it. It’s a real nice old rickety wooden building, but the ice house is still there. And the Indians still live down by the old railroad tracks on the north side of town—the Paiute Indians. Do you remember anything about where the Indians, or what position they had back then, or were they congested in a small area? As long as I can remember, they have always lived in that one little area over in North Main Street by the railroad tracks. The women, mainly, did little chores of housework. The men, I can’t remember doing anything but squatting on the street by Fremont Street. They were lazy. And I remember going in through the Indian village when I was a child with people who would work for us, we would go over and visit with them. And they kept to themselves. They were happy—of course, these were the days when you didn’t service Indians liquor, and as long as they didn’t have their liquor, they were fine. But if they got their liquor, they weren’t very fine. But those that could get away went on over to Pahrump and raised cotton and did a very fine job. There was a law concerning liquor to Indians? Oh, yes, very definitely there was a law concerning liquor with the Indians. I don’t know when it was repealed, but it seems to me it was repealed, and Indians can now have liquor. But when I was young, up until, I know, fourteen, fifteen years of age, liquor could not be served to Indians. They managed to get a hold of it, like, oh, you can get a hold of anything that you’re not supposed to, but it was unlawful. Where did you buy most of your foodstuffs? UNLV University Libraries Betty Dokter 14 Well, let’s see, at first, in my recollection, it was from Mort’s grocery store on the corner of First and Fremont, then later on, we moved and bought from Sewell’s grocery store, which was just around the corner from us on Carson, on Fremont Street. And oh, by the way, whenever I’d go over there shopping for my mother, they’d always give me a free hot dog, and if you needed soup bones, they gave you soup bones free with meat on ‘em. That was when the days when things were cheap. But we had about three fairly big grocery stores in town, but it was mainly canned goods and things like that. I can recall mainly, when my parents would come back from California, instead of bringing the children candy, they would bring us great, big sacks of spinach, avocados, oranges, and apples—anything green or (unintelligible) fruit. People used to wonder why she wouldn’t bring candy, and she used to always say, “Well, candy is easiest to get, but out in the desert, you can’t get fruits and vegetables and greens.” And spinach or greens and the fruits and vegetables or avocados were, oh, that was better than any piece of candy. Those were the days when you’d go over Cajon Pass, and the minute you’d get over the top of Cajon Pass, you had nothing but orange trees. We had theaters in town, the old Majestic Theatre first, it was on the corner of—the post office was on the corner of Second and Fremont, and next to it was the Majestic Theatre. That was the first one, and then there was the outdoor theater on the corner of Third and Fremont, and Mr. Cragin was building the El Portal Theatre at the time, but in the summertime, it would be too hot for an inside theater, because nobody had air conditioning. In fact, even when we moved to Sixth and Charleston when I was twelve, we didn’t have air conditioning until the late forties, not even the swamp coolers. It was cool enough just by opening the windows. We had cool enough air, and if it got extra hot in the summertime, we’d go down in the basement and turn on a fan. But nobody had air conditioning in town, and we didn’t seem to suffer. We had no such thing as air conditioning in schools. That’s why we put UNLV University Libraries Betty Dokter 15 in our 190 days of school with as few vacations as possible—no two weeks over Easter, no two weeks over Christmas—it would be cut as short as possible so we wouldn’t have to stay in school in the summertime. Were you married in Las Vegas? Yes, I was very fortunate. I happened to meet my husband when he—the day after he arrived in town, he was one of the first enlisted men in Las Vegas stationed at the old post office on Stewart Street—five enlisted men and I believe three officers. And I happened to meet him at the drive-in and the following year, we were married. Of course, the war had come on by that time, and we had a very private wedding in my mother’s—father’s home. And from then on, I joined him and travelled with him in the Air Force, coming back home at least once or twice a year. And, oh, I forgot to mention the one thing I did do. I went to school at Holmby, which is a girls school connected with Westlake School for Girls in Holmby Hills, and I had UCLA teachers, which were marvelous, ‘cause I was a little too young for coed school yet. And from there, I went to USC; at USC, I went into the Women’s Ambulance and Defense Corps to help out in the supposed war that we might get into at that time. And I rose up in the ranks to captain and came to Las Vegas and opened a chapter in Las Vegas as a captain, and the officers out at Nellis at that time helped me train the girls over at Las Vegas High School in the football field in the way of training, I mean to teach them the right hand from the left hand. (Laughs) And it was a nonprofit organization, and we went so far as to even get enough money to buy an ambulance and take care of things we could, but when I got married, of course that was turned over to someone else, and my life then was the wife of a military man. Do you remember anything about the adult early entertainment in the small community of Las Vegas? UNLV University Libraries Betty Dokter 16 Yes, let’s see, they had the Elks Club, the Shriners, the Masons, Knights of Columbus, Footprinters—those were a few of the fraternal organizations. Women, I know, had the Mesquite Club, and they had various women’s—things that they entered into. Most of the entertainment was done at Mr. Park’s home, John S. Park, but I can’t remember it was Craig Ranch or (Unintelligible) Ranch, but all the big parties were held there because it was the biggest home for people to entertain in. But people always entertained in their own homes; when entertainment was to be done, it was done there until the big buildings got going, and they finally filled a larger Elks Club, and the one that’s in town now is the third one that I can remember. The first one was on the second floor between First and Second Street, second one was on the corner of Third and Carson, and now the third one is out on North Fifth Street. The Masonic Lodge is still in the place it always was, next to the First Methodist Church and the bank. But the Las Vegas people have always more or less, I think, entertained privately in their own homes. Do you remember any changes in Mt. Charles