Transcript of interview with Bruce Layne by Claytee D. White, June 18, 2004

CT U1 l Do 7 An Interview with Bruce Layne An Oral History Conducted by Claytee D. White The Boyer Early Las Vegas Oral History Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas 2007 ©The Boyer Early Las Vegas Oral History Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2007 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV - University Libraries Director and Editor: Claytee D. White Interviewers and Project Assistants: Suzanne Becker, Nancy Hardy, Joyce Moore, Andres Moses, Laura Plowman, Emily Powers, Dr. Dave Schwartz H Recorded interviews and transcripts composing the Boyer Early Las Vegas Oral History Project have been made possible through the generosity of Dr. Harold Boyer and the Libraries Advisory Board. Lied Library provided a wide variety of administrative services and the Special Collection Department, home of the Oral History Research Center, provided advice, archival expertise and interviewers. The Oral History Research Center enabled students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. Participants in this project thank the University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcripts received minimal editing. These measures include 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 following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Boyer Early Las Vegas Oral History Project. Additional transcripts may be found under that series title. Claytee D. White, Project Director Director, Oral History Research Center University of Nevada Las Vegas ORAL HISTORY RESEARCH CENTER OF UNLV The Boyer Early Las Vegas Oral History Project Use Agreement Name of Narrator: Name of interviewer: ??.(it~AiT££ ~d. <rttT£ We, the above named, give to the Oral History Research Center of UNLV unrestricted gift, to be used for such scholarly and educational uses as shall be determined, and transfer to the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, legal title and all literary property rights including copyright. This gift does not preclude the right of the interviewer, as a representative of UNLV, to use the recordings and related materials for scholarly uses. There will be no compensation for any interviews. the tape recorded interview(s) initiated on as an Lied Library Special Collections 4505 Maryland Parkway, Box 457010, Las Vegas, Nevada 89154-7010 (702) 895-2222 Illustrations Unless otherwise noted, all photographs are courtesy of Bruce Layne. Preface Bruce Layne came to Las Vegas in March of 1955 when he was 10 years of age. He attended High school at Bishop Gorman and college at the University of Nevada Las Vegas where he received a B.S. in Economics. In college, he played baseball for three years and was named All Conference Player in 1966. Growing up in Las Vegas, two of his closest long time friends are Governor Bob Miller and Tito Tiberti. Bruce later went on to become the President of Layne & Associates Insurance which was the largest Insurance Agency in Nevada. Bruce tells fabulous stories of his 40-year experience in the Las Vegas community. When he first arrived there were only about 25,000 people living here. Since then, Bruce has been witness to the enormous growth the city has undergone. Throughout the interview, he discusses his book, My Gift, which he wrote after he discovered he had Parkinson’s disease in 1999. The book contains valuable advice on life and it has touched the lives of many people who have read it. Today Bruce Layne is relentlessly fighting his battle with Parkinson’s disease both for himself and for thousands of others. He continues to have a positive attitude and is supported by his wife, Sherry Layne, and his two sons, Chad and Trevor. Good morning. This is Claytee White and I'm with Mr. Bruce Layne. It is June 18th, 2004. And we're in his office in Henderson. How are you this morning? Hi, Claytee. That's a mouthful, but it's a beautiful name, and it suits you perfectly. Thank you. I'm great this morning. It's June 18th, '04 [2004], That's right. Is it true that you've given me permission to do this recording, that you know it's for educational and research purposes? Absolutely. We're not going to start in the usual way, by talking about your life first. I just read your book, and I'm still very enthusiastic about it. And 1 love the concept of “paying it forward.” Now, how can we really get that off the ground in a big way? Let's talk about the movie for a second, Claytee. Kevin Spacey starred in the movie, and he was the sixth grade teacher. He was an interesting guy because he was sensitive, but he was kind of overbearing. So he had the sixth grade class. And what he told them is that the world is pretty brutal out there. It's a jungle out there. And his whole point, his whole theme was, if you treat human beings with kindness, it'll come back tenfold. So all the kids, as a project, were supposed to go out and find three people to help and be kind to them. And it would proliferate, and we'd have a kinder world. It's amazing how when you compound something like that, it has tremendous results. Have you thought about using this in any of your speeches, any of the presentations that you're doing now? Great idea. Let me go back to my book. There's so much goodwill and inspiration relative to that. And there's so much goodwill from it, as you can see by those letters that responded to my book, 2 that there is just something to be found. And I'm not sure what it is. I'm still exploring it philosophically. But there's some magic in the book to motivate people to be kinder, to be thought-provoking. I mean, it's thought-provoking about, Are you successful? Do you appreciate? Should I go into that a little bit? Yes. A couple of the points that I'm finding out in speaking that's having some impact is that we don't appreciate anything enough. We're always seeking "tens" in life. Hopefully, it's appropriate. I'm going to back up and go over the HELL on Earth. I'm friends with Dr. Jack Jeraski, a psychiatrist here in Las Vegas. And he had this program, and I'm just taking it and tweaked it a little bit. But his point was HELL is the acronym for happiness, enthusiasm, love, and laughter. And the point is we're all into survival. And we all aren't maximizing good events and satisfying events. We aren't looking for beauty and love. And there are ten experiences in those types of virtues. And anyway, we're into survival; food, shelter, clothing. And you have to get past survival to really enjoy life and to be satisfied, find fulfillment in life. So I think it kind of shows you what you choose. So happiness is just finding gratification, finding out what turns you on, what excites you, what gives you satisfaction. And E in HELL is enthusiasm, that you should have a curiosity about you. [Leonardo] Da Vinci talked about curiosity. And you should have a curiosity about you. You should make yourself be interested in things that you have to take the initiative to do it. And most people don't take the initiative. So love, love is kind of beauty. I talk about love. The epitome of love is when you die for it like the monk, the Zen monk. He was falling down that cliff. But all of a sudden, he saw the tulips, the magnificent blue-gold tulips. And he just saw beauty, and he didn't mind the plant pulling out and dying. That's taking it to the other — but it 3 makes the point. So love. And you talk about love, it's really beauty is love. Even you could see beauty in a kiwi. Isn't that kiwi beautiful? Yes. What else is beautiful for you? A rose. A rose. Okay. I think it should be a pure, pristine white rose. Maybe that's more beautiful. I like vanilla ice cream. Anyway, so that's just of a purist. And laughter. You have to look at humor. You have to look for humor. And I've given my close friend, Claytee, my book that's the best book I’ve ever read of keeping life in perspective. And it's "Ten Fun Things to Do Before You Die," written by a nun in Chicago, Sister Kowalski, who I was trying to track her down to talk to her, interview her. But it gives you a perspective going through this world. I'm sorry it gets to the F word, fun. So I recommend you read this book. So anyway, what we're looking at is to appreciate more. Appreciate meaning looking for tens, looking for tens in all the wrong places. And you also appreciate what you have. And people that are your parents, do you appreciate them deep enough? I had to find out things the hard way. Do you want to talk about your early life here in Las Vegas now? While we're on appreciation. I've always been a want-to-be philosopher king. So understand more in pursuit of the ideal world. Anyway, I've been successful in most everything that I've done. But I never really appreciated it that deeply. When you're going 122 miles an hour, you can't smell that white rose very well. You don't even see it. If s a blur. So I was probably a seven on a scale of one to ten on appreciating. I had to learn it the hard way. And actually my world changed on April 19th, 1999. I was working out and my personal 4 trainer said, Go see your doctor, I don't like the way you’re carrying your arm, and I don't like your gait. So I go see my doctor, Corey Brown, Fremont Medical Center. He looks at me, and he said, you’re going to the neurologist. And I said, well, what the hell's wrong? And he said, "You either have a brain tumor, or you've had a stroke, or you have Parkinson’s." And 1 said, "Oh great." Is there a D, none of the above? I've been sick, according to Monte, my aide of 28 years, three days, I've been sick in 35 years. Never been to the hospital. Not perfect health. Overweight, of course. Anyway, so I go and find out that I have Parkinson’s. And I went into a deep depression, deep depression for — I don't know — days, weeks, it felt like years because that's not my normal nature. So 1 said, Oh, my God. 1 was shocked. I was afraid. My arm was shaking, so I would go nowhere. You're face gets more zombie-like. You lose your animation in your face. And I had a little bit of that. So I was in a state of depression. In fact, I've seen people in wheelchairs all shriveled up and trembling and drooling. That's what 1 saw the first time he sent me to a support group. So anyway, I was depressed. And then all of a sudden, 1 said, "Wait a minute." Whatever I have to live, I'm going to live, and I'm going to do some good things. And I started to look on the bright side. And I said, you know, this Parkinson's, it's kind of the fashionable disease. It's the "in" disease. It's in vogue. I mean, Michael J. Fox has it, the Pope, and Muhammad Ali, all the movers and shakers. It is a gift. The Parkinson's is an absolute gift, and 1 can say that with all truthfulness. And I feel that way because that made me turn around and decide I'm going to appreciate life more and deeper, emerge myself in what's important. So that's what I’ve been doing. I want to do something more significant. It's fueled that fire. That's one of the reasons, the second reason, why I wrote the book. It was more my grandkids, the first reason. But anyway, I've come out of it. I lecture people. And I've had it for five years. And a lot 5 of people are in wheelchairs at three years or four years or five years, whatever. And I've played their game, kind of a turning point here. I played their game. They told me to quit playing tennis and that type of thing. So after three years of doing that type of nothing, I went back to playing tennis. I've been taking Pilates. And I'm a pretty good example right now. You know, it's a progressive disease. If s incurable. You progressively get worse. Everybody gets worse; it's just more how quick. But the other thing that I developed when I got out of my state of depression for a week or two was I came up with a triad of strength and hope. And it's a triangle. And the first top is positive thinking, a positive attitude. And the second leg is clarity of purpose. And the third leg is faith, faith in yourself. So this has really helped me. I’ve gone back to this several times. So this becomes a lot stronger than just having a positive attitude. And you could put it in writing, and it makes you more accountable. Like Claytee did, she did that letter of destiny in her portfolio [I wrote a letter regarding a future position that I wanted and it came to fruition.]. So she knew where she was going. But this gives you strength, and it gives you hope. And those are important items when it comes to Parkinson's. I went into a tangent, but... Do you talk to a lot of Parkinson's patients? Yes, I do. These Parkies, there's an estimate of 8,000 people with Parkinson's in Las Vegas. And there are two organizations that I'm involved with. And they have a mailing list of like 500 each. So it shows you that people don't even get involved in any of these programs. Also, funded six classes for a year, every Sunday, six classes, and it costs — well, it was $50,000, but it's been worth it, I think. I have some backup on that, if you want, some letters of what we're doing, Claytee. I've spoken to both groups. I talked to them, just get out, be active. Or I'll talk about perseverance and determination. And that's one of my idols that I find encouragement from is 6 someone like Superman, Christopher Reeves. I mean, everybody knows about him. Ten years ago he fell off a horse, broke his neck, and can’t move anything below his neck. You know, we whine about persevering and determination. This guy has worked out ten hours a day for ten years. And finally, six months ago he could move his little finger, and he's ecstatic. He's triumphant. He's blissful. It's unbelievable. Now, we've got to leam perseverance from someone like him. That's right. But I go and tell them to get active, get involved. Have you shared this triad of thought with them? Yeah, I have given it to those two people, yeah. 1 don't always talk about that. It's such a terrible disease. It's so debilitating. It affects your nerves. And you lose your dopamine. Everybody loses their dopamine. It's brain chemistry. So it's a movement disorder. And everybody loses their dopamine as they get older. And they estimate that if everybody were 110 years old, everybody would have Parkinson's. That ought to scare the hell out of you. Can we make a synthetic dopamine, and can we put it back? The pills are getting better. The medicine and drugs are getting better. They keep looking for the cure, and I'm not sure. You know, they talk about the cure. They think they're close to it. About every two weeks for the last five years, I've read. And you keep hope, but they just aren't moving that quickly. But they're devoting more money towards it. And then you get into the stem cells. The researchers think that these stem cells will really be the cure. But it's pretty controversial. Some people think it would violate the right to life. With something as controversial as stem cells, how do you look at that? I don't know what your views are on abortion. But how do you justify within yourself that kind of research? 7 Well, I don't see it as abortion. I mean, 1 think there are some people that take that view. If it was abortion, then maybe I'm not for it. But I don't think it is. When they just throw the embryos away --1 don't think it's abortion, but that battle will go on. You can go to London or in Sweden or a few places like that that are doing a lot of experimenting. And they're doing a lot of experimenting. Harvard just committed $300 million to set up a whole stem cell research center. I don't know if this is appropriate. And these stem cells could help Parkinson's, MS, and what's worse is Alzheimer's. And there are those three things they think they could cure out of stem cells. So you've got to try and get involved in that and research that. Just to put things in perspective nationally, there are a million and a half people that have Parkinson's. There is four and a half million that have Alzheimer's and about the same with multiple sclerosis. And strokes, that would be part of that help, too. They all come out of kind of the same approach. Its brain chemistry and nervous system. Since this is our first interview -- we're doing a series of interviews on early Las Vegas — what I'd like to do today is to talk about your family's move to Las Vegas. I want to talk about your memories of that first day, that first week, those first years here, what it looked like and all of that. Coming up from Los Angeles and being in a new world. Boy, I remember I said it best in that Johnny Hicks, the friend of mine who owned the hotel, his dad and all that. I went to these Strip shows — that's the wrong — the hotels had shows, and I don't mean strip shows, huh? But that's the best example. I remember how hot it was. I played baseball and met a lot of friends. And we grew up on Maryland Parkway and Charleston. And we used to play baseball and football and everything on that. This was like "Andy of Mayberry." This was Mayberry here. It was 25,000 people, I think, around then. 8 Now, which year was this? '55. So in 1955, what did the Maryland Parkway, Charleston area look like? It's kind of dilapidated now. The sprawl keeps going to the mountains, and now we're out of land. The BLM owns all the land around here. We've got some serious problems, water problems and land problems, affordable land. But the other side of the coin is this is like the gold — what word am I searching for, Claytee — gold strike, panning for gold. It’s like the Frontier or the Barbary Coast. It's the last frontier. The Gold Rush. Yeah, the Gold Rush. That's what is I was trying to say. Thank you. But there's a wonderful can-do attitude, and it's always been there. People are generous, and they can do, and they don't resent people coming in. You don't have to have six generations of blue bloods. Kind of like you being a blue blood, Claytee. I was just saying the other side of this getting busy, 1 bought a piece of land seven years ago — I closed escrow a month ago — but it increased in value 25 times. You can still make it here. A lot of people have done well and worked hard. There’s good work ethic here. Back to the future here. I remember the first time I drank beer and got a little tipsy, and the cop stopped us, and he brought me home. I was scared to death of my parents, what they were going to do. But now you couldn't do that. Johnny Hicks had a brand-new Corvette when he was 14 years old, and we'd cruise around in it. But people were nice. If you got lost, a little baby would get lost, the whole neighborhood would look for him, you know, that type of thing. It was a wonderful place. We all came in our covered wagons [he’s joking], I think there were two hotels. There was the Sahara [opened Oct. 7, 1952] and the Rancho Las Vegas [April 3, 1941] — it's 9 across from the T-Bird, the Thunderbird. There was like four. And the Flamingo [December 26, 1946], Frontier. [Last Frontier opened October 30, 1942] Frontier was just being built. Frontier and the Riviera and the Sahara were kind of — I don't know — in the late 50s, I think they were. But the Flamingo, with Bugsy Segal, the mobster. Fie built that, and everybody thought he was crazy. The Rancho Vegas. I can't think of — El Rancho. El Rancho. 1 remember Lili St. Cyr was a stripper. They had people like that that starred there. You know where Sahara and Maryland is? Sahara was one lane, one lane of paved and one lane of rocks. We'd get on our bicycles — and this was Tito Tiberti and Johnny Hicks and Bob Miller — and we'd ride our bikes to the artesian wells to go crawdad hunting. Now, where was that located? You know where Commercial Square is, right there. Commercial Square. Maryland and Sahara and go west, and that's where it was. Between the Sahara Hotel and the Commercial Square. I mean, the Las Vegas Country Club, that's probably a closer approximation. Tell me what school was like. You attended school at Gorman? Yes. What kind of reputation did it have at that time? It had a good reputation. We had 105 people in our graduating class of 1963. It was close. That's why I have such great relationships now; a lot of people stayed here or came back to their home to work. And doctors and lawyers. Why did your parents decide to send you to a private school rather than to the public school system? 10 I don't know. That's a good question. See, there were 400 kids at Gorman. So you knew everybody. My mom, she was very forceful. She thought it was important to do that. I think I did meet some of the people, the future leaders of today, their future looking 30 years back. I remember it was $250 in tuition, and now it's like $5,000. 1 don't know if that's progress or not. But they're moving Gorman, and they raised $36 million in about a year. They're moving it. Where are they going? Out to Summerlin. The area is pretty congested, and they don’t have any room to grow. And it's going downhill. The neighborhood is not as good as it once was. But I remember you could walk 15 minutes from one side of the town to the other. If you go out there by Cheyenne and 215, if you live out there and go to Green Valley or Anthem where I live, it's like 36 miles. It's like L.A. Yes. Because I live in the northwest, Durango and the 95. It's the worst. It is. From these dusty roads on Sahara Avenue to this loop that goes around 40 miles, it's definitely startling changes. Tell me about your friends: Bob Miller, Tito Tiberti, and Johnny Hicks. Tell me what they were like at that age. Johnny Hicks, he was kind of the class clown and always looking for the thrills. As we talked about in the book, he had a gangster complex. Maybe a lot of kids had that kind of a complex. But he came by it legitimately, didn't he? Yeah. His dad was kind of a front. His mother was the most lovely lady in the world. I'd always 11 mooch meals because my family life was so messed up. Everybody says theirs is dysfunctional. I'm thinking of a better word for dysfunctional. But everybody has their skeletons in the closet. So Johnny Hicks, he used to get $2,000 a month from the wedding chapel. Did he actually do any work at the wedding chapel? No. And his sister got the same thing, Mary Ann, who's a lovely lady, still here. So what did they do, teenagers, with $2,000 a month? Well, drugs weren't even around then. (End side 1, tape 1.) Some of the things that we did when we were kids is I'd go over to Bob Miller's house, and we'd go to the putting range and just putt for hours at a time. And to this day, we're both great putters. He's better than I am. But he had a basketball hoop. His mother was the sweetest lady in the world. She was my second son's - Trevor - she was the godmother. She was just a sweetheart. She would always cook food for us, take us to shows. You know, the old Mayberry type of approach. And Bob always had all these games, these beautiful - it reminds me of the Joker, Jack Nicholson, in Batman. Where did he get all those wonderful toys? Bob had this hockey game. He had different board games. And he was always very competitive. He was competitive in politics and competitive in basketball and tenacious and competitive in these games. He didn't like to lose. He'd get mad and throw a tantrum and turn the game over. Tito was always serious. If I had only two best buddies, it'd probably be Bob and Tito. And Tito was always older than all of us mentally. We all played sports all day. I can't stand to be ten minutes out in the heat now. But, you know, when you're little kids, you're out there playing baseball and football. Johnny Hicks always would take us to one of those hotels to eat. I had swimming pool 12 jobs. And Bob got me a job at the Riviera Hotel for several years. And Johnny Hicks got me a job at the Algiers as a pool boy. I think Mrs. Miller used to take you to shows sometimes. What kind of shows did she take you to see? You're really stretching my — I've got to look back 50 years, Claytee. I remember The Palace Theater. There were three theaters: The El Portal, The Palace, and The Fremont. And then the Huntridge. The Huntridge ended up becoming kind of a — they have rock groups, exhibitions. You ever been in there? The Rocky Horror Picture Show, they still do that. That's what I'm trying to turn my book into. I'm trying to figure out what makes a cult a cult? So I'm trying to make my book kind of a cult thing. It's offbeat, but fascinating. And I think that's the Rocky Horror Picture Show. And I'll call it the Parkie Picture Show, the Horror Picture Show. But anyway, the Huntridge, you know, I remember you make a loud noise with those DOT boxes. I don't know where I'm getting all this stuff. What's a DOT box? DOTs. You ever have DOTs, the little chewy candies? And that box, you used to be able to blow on it and make a loud kazoo noise. Or take the popcorn containers, and you would smash it down, and it would really cause fights. But I remember it was fun to go to the show. You'd see who was there by walking down the line. I remember the Palace [Theater], that's where I saw I Was a Teenage Werewolf with Michael Landon. That was his first movie he ever made. What did The Palace Theater look like? Oh, it was really kind of a rundown place. I probably shouldn't go there. But I remember there were a lot of black people there. It was no big thing, but I just remembered I'd never been to a theater — thinking about it now, people made a big thing about it, and I didn't think it was a big 13 thing. And it isn't and still isn't. But I remember it was different races went there, for some reason. Isn't that funny? Did everybody sit together? You know, I think they kind of evolved in their own groups, now that I'm thinking about that. Now, what is the one theater where the seating was outside? I don't remember that. No, I don't remember that. But you know the other thing I remember, though, back on the racial thing, I didn't understand why — I remember like Nat King Cole and Sammy Davis, instead of the hotel rooms, a couple of them were in trailers. And I never understood that until 1 grew up and then know how racial this thing is. I mean, maybe those are dumb remarks. I don't know. I think it's pretty good that kids don't understand what's going on. Did you have any African-American or Native American or any non-white friends growing up? Yes, definitely. Ray Jackson. He grew up here, and his kids went to Gorman. Ray Jackson was a heck of an athlete. And Glen Walker was a heck of a guy. He died of leukemia four years ago. I was good friends with them. We played sports together. But they were nice guys. They were not treated any different as anybody. I mean, it was Gorman. It was a small school. They were just friends. I remember my mom took home those two guys, and it was through the Westside. It was kind of a — not an epiphany, but 1 never really spent time over there. But a couple of times, my mom and I took them home after football practice, and we saw it was a little different. Yes. Because 1955 was when the first African-American dentist -- McMillan? -- uh-huh -- moved to the city. And a year before that, '54, was the first African-American medical doctor. So things were just beginning to change at the time that you moved here? 14 Yeah. I think I always had a sense of fairness. I'm not sure where that came from, sense of fairness. Maybe being sensitive to other people helps that. You moved here from California; is that correct? Los Angeles. So how old were you when you moved here? Oh, I think I was nine. Do you remember what race relations were like in Los Angeles? No. 1 mean, I never understood — except we had a maid named Ruby, and she was the sweetest thing in the world. I remember I liked her a lot, and she was very affectionate. You know, the second child is always affectionate. It's kind of like the number one son or kid has 4,383 pictures, and the second one has 3. 1 think you must have been the second child. I was. I still like hugs. Some people call me a serial hugger. Gorman went through the 12th grade. Where did you go to school after Gorman? And where did Bob and Tito go to school, as well? Well, Bob went to Santa Clara, and Tito went to USC. And I stayed home. I had no direction. 1 talk about this in my book. I had no direction and no motivation. So I flunked out the first semester. I went to work at the titanium plant. This was a big turning point in my life. Went to the titanium plant, and it was dirty, dusty, and dangerous. So I'm working there for about six months. And the baseball coach, "Chub" Drakulich, he was the first baseball coach, first athletic director, golf and baseball. He came out to the titanium office, and I didn't know who he was. He introduced himself. He said, Hi, I'm Chub Drakulich. And he said, "I want you to play baseball for me." He said, "You get back to school." 15 I was starting to get a little fear. I think fear is the biggest motivator for most people, and it was for me. The fear was that I was going to be a zero and a nothing. You know, a grease monkey, a mechanic — well, I shouldn't say that. A grease monkey or something. So it was the timing. But it was really Chub Drakulich who got me back to school. And I hit .395 for him that year. Now, before you finish that story, because I have some questions about it, how did you feel when Tito and Bob would come home for holidays? They talked about school seriously. It was a good environment for me to grow up and have aspirations. But, yeah, they knew when they were going. Bob knew he was going to be an attorney. Tito knew he was going to go in with the Tiberti Company because his dad had a formidable business that Tito even grew bigger. They had something to do with being around people. I always thought Gorman was the difference between — they ask, "What college are you going to?" And some of the other schools just say, "Are you going to college?" That's a much more positive environment to say, "Which one are you going to?" So I came back, and I probably had a B average after that. So we were talking about them, do they motivate me. Yeah, they definitely motivated me. But I didn't catch it being around them. I wasn't a very good student. I wasn't that motivated. I didn't care. So compare your home life with theirs. Well, Tito's half Italian, half Irish. His mother was feisty and a nurse here. And his dad was just starting to get big. I remember he had a wheelbarrow attached to a truck, and he started from nothing. He built up a $250 million company. But you could still make it here. The best story is just to tell them what my wife said when we got married at the Landmark, at the top of the Landmark. There were 250 people there. There was the wedding line. She'd already met about a 16 dozen ladies --1 exaggerate, a dozen -- but ten — eight or ten ladies said — because I was kind of a waif. I kind of had no really home life. I'd go by and mooch meals off of them. So when Sherry went through the line, the lady would go, "Oh, hi, I'm Mrs. Payne, I fed Bruce on Tuesday." So the Tiberti. Yeah, the Tibertis say, yeah, I'd mooch about every other day, different places. But they had I think, what, six or seven kids. They had no TV. J.A. Tiberti didn't believe in TV, didn't think it was good for the kids. Was he the forerunner of — it was crazy. Their house was bedlam with all the kids, seven kids. So they didn't even notice if you were there? No. 1 was just another one to throw on a meal. Bob Miller, he lived in the high-rent district on Desert Inn Road on the golf course there. His sweet mom, she was the Irish, Colletta Jane, the Irish songb