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Transcript of interview with Jacque Dvorak by Barbara Tabach, March 09, 2017

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2017-03-09

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Jacque Dvorak was born in London, England, in 1944. Two years later, her family immigrated to Canada and then in 1953 they fulfilled their dreams to reside in the United States. The Dvorak family settled in Long Beach, California where Jacque?s brother was born. In 1957, the Dvorak family relocated to Las Vegas when Jacque?s father, Sam, opened a 24-hour barbeque restaurant in Market Town with his brother Harry. While growing up in California, Jacque enjoyed dancing and being on stage. She found herself drawn to performance much like her mother, Irene, who was an entertainer in Great Britain. This enthusiasm served her well in her future retail career which included the opening of the MGM. Jacque attended Las Vegas High School and graduated in 1962. Taking full advantage of being a teenager in Las Vegas, Jacque remembers the days when the need to lock your doors didn't? exist. Though, Jacque describes being keenly aware of being Jewish and forming strong bonds within the Jewish community through BBYO and other Jewish organizations. She also recalls protesting during school prayer recitations in the 1960s. In this interview Jacque gives an insider?s perspective of growing up in Las Vegas and Jewish life in the city. Her stories range from tales of teenage fun to dealing with modern anti-Semitism in Las Vegas to the joy she has found in friendships in the community. Jacque has two children, Harry Fagel and Lisa Sokoloski.

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OH_03151_book
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Jacque Dvorak oral history interview, 2017 March 09. OH-03151. [Transcript]. Oral History Research Center, Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Las Vegas, Nevada. http://n2t.net/ark:/62930/d1w37px5d

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AN INTERVIEW WITH JACQUE DVORAK An Oral History Conducted by Barbara Tabach Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ?Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2014 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV ? University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Project Manager: Barbara Tabach Transcriber: Kristin Hicks Interviewers: Barbara Tabach, Claytee D. White Editors and Project Assistants: Maggie Lopes, Amanda Hammar iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) Grant. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes 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. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews with permission of the narrator. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas iv PREFACE Jacque Dvorak was born in London, England, in 1944. Two years later, her family immigrated to Canada and then in 1953 they fulfilled their dreams to reside in the United States. The Dvorak family settled in Long Beach, California where Jacque?s brother was born. In 1957, the Dvorak family relocated to Las Vegas when Jacque?s father, Sam, opened a 24-hour barbeque restaurant in Market Town with his brother Harry. While growing up in California, Jacque enjoyed dancing and being on stage. She found herself drawn to performance much like her mother, Irene, who was an entertainer in Great Britain. This enthusiasm served her well in her future retail career which included the opening of the MGM. Jacque attended Las Vegas High School and graduated in 1962. Taking full advantage of being a teenager in Las Vegas, Jacque remembers the days when the need to lock your doors didn?t exist. Though, Jacque describes being keenly aware of being Jewish and forming strong bonds within the Jewish community through BBYO and other Jewish organizations. She also recalls protesting during school prayer recitations in the 1960s. In this interview Jacque gives an insider?s perspective of growing up in Las Vegas and Jewish life in the city. Her stories range from tales of teenage fun to dealing with modern anti-Semitism in Las Vegas to the joy she has found in friendships in the community. Jacque has two children, Harry Fagel and Lisa Sokoloski. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Jacque Dvorak March 9, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Barbara Tabach Preface????????????????????????????????????..iv Jacque begins with sharing a bit of her family ancestry; her father coming from Russia and fighting in the Second World War; Her birth in England; coming to Las Vegas in 1957 to open a barbeque; shares stories of her mother as an entertainer; having multiple citizenships; her parents pride in becoming citizens of America; growing up in a ranch style house in Las Vegas; belonging to B?nai B?rith. Talks about her love of riding in cars and teenage shenanigans; reminisces on stories about schooling over the years; shares the feeling of segregation from other communities in Las Vegas being a Jewish young person?????????????????????????...1-5 Talks about her Jewish upbringing in Las Vegas; Her mother getting involved with Temple Beth Sholom; her not being able to have a bat mitzvah; Shares stories of anti-Semitism in Las Vegas; talks about the rotation of rabbis in the beginning of Temple Beth Sholom; starting Ner Tamid; speaks of her son Harry?s bar mitzvah; bar mitzvah after-parties; being married in 1966.........5-11 What it is like to watch the city grow so rapidly; shares stories of the police boundaries in Las Vegas at the time; buying a car in the eighth grade with her friends; spending time at Circle park; going to UNLV for a year; her uncle owning a coffee shop across from UNLV and having dances on Friday and Saturday nights; going to England; and opening Freddie?s Sandwich Shop; her son being born in Canada; returning to Las Vegas; Temple Beth Sholom being the Hub of everything; raising money for Israeli bonds; shares stories about Sara Saltzman; shares stories of teenager territory for cruising Fremont; reminisces about her friend being a Rhythmette; shares how she would get up and leave in protest during prayer time in Las Vegas schools; being raised in a very open environment; conducting and participating in protests in the 1960?s???????????..11-18 Ditching school to see Elizabeth Taylor get married; gender roles in the temple in the 1960?s; shares stories of her father never being angry at her, even though she frequently was getting into situations when she was young; shares stories about Freddie; talks about parties she attended at Piero?s; shares stories of her mother; Jacque working in a souvenir shop and working with Tony Alamo; opening the MGM; meeting celebrities; working with Freed?s Bakery????.?18-28 vi Jacque talks about being culturally Jewish and attending services now; lighting the Shabbat candles growing up; giving her children a foundation in faith; working with her father business when she was twelve; shares her thought on how Jewish people have influenced the creation and shape of Las Vegas; being a single mother; reading The Green Felt Jungle; being at the filming of Ocean?s Eleven; seeing shows on the Strip; working at the Sahara and seeing Elvis???????.28-35 Anti-Semitism in modern day Las Vegas; integrating the Las Vegas schools; her daughter being a teacher; her son being a poet and a police officer; talks about the sixth grade centers her son went to; shares stories of the Moulin Rouge; her families relationship with the Molaskys???...35-44 vii 1 Today is March ninth, 2017. This is Barbara Tabach, working on the Southern Nevada Jewish Community Heritage project. I'm sitting with Jacque Dvorak. I'm going to ask Jacque to spell her name for us. I thank you very much for coming today. You're very welcome. It's J-A-C-Q-U-E; D, as in David, V, as in Victor, O-R-A-K. Did I pronounce that correctly? You did. I'm proud of you. Nobody does. I've been called a lot of different things. Wasn't there a famous composer? Dvo??k. I wished. My girlfriend was in Czech and she saw a hotel that said Dvorak and she e-mailed it to me. I was close. Close, not quite. So speaking of names, tell me a little bit about your family ancestry. What do you know? I know a little. Our real name is Dvorchick. And how would that be spelled, do you know? C-H-I-C-K. D-V-O-R-C-H-I-C-K. They spell it a hundred different ways, but that's how my father spelled it. His father came over from Russia and they came to the United States through Ellis Island. At that time Canada was offering land and he and his brother?him first, he went to Canada and he was up in Vagina, way up in the coal country. I think my father was born in Edmonton and then went into an orphanage because his mother wasn't able to take care of him and his brother. They were then in Winnipeg in a Jewish orphanage. Then they both went in the war, Second World War. My father always wanted to come to America. My uncle came first. He crossed first illegally and then they knocked on his door and sent him back. Then the third 2 brother lived in Connecticut. My uncle lived in Connecticut and he sponsored my uncle. I was born in England and then we went to Canada and then to Vancouver. My father had a business there, but he still wanted to come to America. We needed ten thousand dollars and he accumulated that money over the summer in his ice cream business. He didn't pay any bills. That's how we came to America. We had sponsors and it couldn't be family in those days. We had friends that sponsored first me and then my grandmother and my aunt. Then we all wound up here. My brother was born in Long Beach in 1955. My father was working several jobs at that time. An opening came here at Market Town to put in a barbeque and he had been learning how to cook chickens and ribs and all that. His cousin said, "Come on up, we could use another person here." That's when we came, 1957, I think. So what were the names of the relatives that lived here at that time? I don't know. But they had the barbeque? My father had the barbeque at Market Town, and my uncle. They were open twenty-four hours a day and they worked twelve-hour shifts. What was your uncle's name? Harry. He's still living. He's turning ninety-five on the twelfth. He's living in Florida. So it was Harry and Sam. So Sam was your dad. Yes, and Harry is my uncle. And your mom's name? Irene. Her given name was Hettie. My mother was an entertainer. So she changed it to Irene. She 3 thought that was better than Hettie. What kind of entertainer was she? Singer/comedian. During the war she entertained the troops in England. She actually saw more action than my father did. My father was over for seven years, never saw home. Can you imagine? No. Went there and that was it. They met and he fell in love with her literally and they were married the first month. So did you say that she was British? Oh, yes. I'm British, too. My father is Canadian. That's how we came to America. So do you have multiple citizenships? Probably. If I wanted to go back, I probably could, but I'm not going anywhere although I don't know right now what I'm going to do. I'm going to Vancouver in April for a cousin's birthday and I'm hoping I can get back in the country because I'm born in England. But I'm a naturalized citizen. I've been a citizen since, I think, I was fourteen. Do you remember what you had to go through at that time to get that? My parents at that time had to go through a lot. They had to read and write in English, obviously. They had to know "The Star-Spangled Banner." They had to know who the presidents were. A little American history. Then I just went down and stood with them. My parents got all dressed up. They were so proud to become Americans. So that's been instilled in my kids and me from my father. When he was in the orphanage, he tried to run away to America. It was something that was always in his mind. That's how we came here. We had the barbeque probably until nineteen...I'm trying to remember. We were in front 4 of Market Town. In those days Ron Lurie was the manager and Nate Adelson owned the market. We had never owned a home. Nate and Merv were building houses. Merv Adelson, my father managed to buy his house because they were building on the Sahara Golf Course and that was our first home and it was on Bracken and Houssels. We were there for a long time. That's kind of where I grew up. What was that house like? It was one of those ranch style, like an L-shape, very open. Everybody came to the house. My father would go to the market and get chickens and ribs and feed everybody in those days. I belonged to B'nai B'rith, BBYO. So everything happened at our house. We had lots of meetings and fun. They were great, my parents. Who were some of the people you were hanging out with as a young person in BBYO? Charlene for one. Doreen. Give me their last names if you would. Charlene Herst. In those days it was Friedkin. Doreen Herst, her sister-in-law. Probably Ronna G, Ronna Goodman. Cheryl Freedman. I'm really pushing my brain. Gail Gayle, who is Gail David, and she has since passed away. I ran around with the older girls because they had cars. And why did you want to be in a car at that age? Well, it was great in this town. You didn't have to lock your doors. It was fun. Mount Charleston in the summer and in the winter we went to the lake because we were always kind of ditching. It was an interesting time. Who else did I know? So you were attending what high school? Las Vegas High. I graduated in '62. An interesting story on my part, when we moved from Long Beach here, I had already started middle school?in those days it was called junior high?5 seventh grade, and when I came here I had to go back to elementary school. Ruby Thomas was our principal and she wiped my lipstick off my face. I went there seventh and eighth grade and then went on in ninth to Las Vegas High. That's right. So you went from Canada to California. To California, to Long Beach. So growing up in California was different than growing up in Las Vegas at that time? Yes, because I was really young. I was pretty much homebound or dancing. I was a dancer. Then when we came here I didn't pick it up. I dropped the dancing. Because my mother was on the stage and she thought that she would give me every opportunity to also be on the stage and it really wasn't my bag. So when we came here I was able to say, "Oh, they don't have any schools here, so I'm good." But they did. They had one downtown, but I didn't want to go. I was done. I was also eleven, eleven and a half or twelve, and I had my thirteenth birthday here. We lived on Rexford when we first moved here. I was starting to notice boys. I was getting a little bit older. So I started to have a little bit more freedom here than I had in California because I was young. I had a great time. Growing up here was a lot of fun, really. Why was it fun, do you think? We were segregated, the Jewish community. We pretty much were hovered together because in those days if you weren't Mormon or of some other faith, you weren't included in their activities. So we kind of all hung together, the ninth graders through the twelfth graders, through BBYO, through AZA and BBG, and we formed our own little units. So we did a lot together because we were not included in those days. Charlene probably...By the time she got here, we had made the way. So what was the Jewish upbringing like for you at that time? 6 In the beginning my father was orthodox. We didn't belong in California. I don't remember them being that religious. My mother was not. My mother was raised in England where you were either orthodox or not. So they were struggling in those days. There was no way for them to be members. Then when we came here Bernice Schiffman got a hold of my mother and they had a diaper service across the street from Market Town and she got my mother active at Beth Sholom. In those days when we first came here it was a little, tiny synagogue downtown. I don't remember what street it was on, but it was in one of those little houses down there. In that first year we were here Jan Peerce sang Kol Nidre. I don't know if you know who Jan Peerce is. I do know that name, yes. We weren't allowed in. We stood outside and listened. It was amazing. So my education was pretty much at Temple Beth Sholom. In those days they didn't bat mitzvah the girls. I was going to ask about that. No, I was not bat mitzvah. Charlene later went, I think, but I chose not to. I was conservative although I've become reform because my kids are. But we were pretty conservative, pretty open. We used to walk to temple on the High Holidays, which was a long walk, from Oakey and Bracken, Oakey and Houssels, all the way down to 16th Street and back because my father in those days didn't drive on Shabbat, but that started to stop too and eventually we drove. He said, "It's too far. We're going to drive." So we became more conservative in our thinking. Beth Sholom kind of took everybody under; all kinds of Jewish people were there. The first week right before High Holidays when we opened the synagogue on 16th, somebody burned swastikas in our lawn. These were really difficult times in this community. At that time Hank Greenspun was very active and he would not allow the press to take any pictures 7 because he was afraid it would start copycats. But I remember camping out there all night to protect the synagogue right before High Holidays. It was a very close-knit community in those days because when we first came here, Rancho Circle...We weren't allowed to live there. We weren't allowed to belong to any of the golf courses. So the guys got together and built their own golf course, the Las Vegas Country Club. Then things started to open up because we started protesting and things got better in the sixties, towards the mid-sixties, for me personally. For Harry, they had to go to sixth grade centers. And Harry you're talking about? My son. In the back of the synagogue, I think when I was a junior, they opened up the Kolod Center. So then we had a place to hang out. But prior to that we traveled to different communities for BBYO. I held a lot of offices in the organization. It was fun. Where would you travel? We traveled to Arizona, several places in Los Angeles, two places in Arizona, Tucson and Phoenix, wherever the conventions happened to be. Then district controlled us from California, and so I was able to go to district. Then we still had a train here. So one year we took the train to...I think it was Ojai, California, somewhere up there. Yes, it was kind of cool. We met with all the girls from the Los Angeles Basin area. We had to make our own fun. Who would be the people that would do adult supervision of taking kids? Oh, Elsie Goldring. She was our founder, I think. Let me think. I'm not really good with names. But Elsie was our sponsor. So you would have been doing this in the fifties? Late fifties, early sixties, because I graduated in '62. 8 Those are great memories. Oh, God, yes. Who was the rabbi that you remember most? We had many. There was quite a turnaround. When we first got here, they fired one rabbi because he was mowing his lawn on Saturday in his shorts. I remember that. Then there was Rabbi Gold. Rabbi Gold actually married me. Then there was Rabbi...Appel is from Israel. Then there were three others after that. Then they divided and part of the congregation became Ner Tamid and they were really a split-off. You probably know better than I do. They took themselves away and they started Ner Tamid. Then from that I think there's twelve now. Synagogues? There's twenty-something. Twenty-something. I don't count them. The number keeps going up. But those are like little storefronts. They are and some just meet once a month or twice a month. Right. Rabbi Bergman, Cantor Bergman, he only meets twice a month. I don't know what his is called. He just did a funeral that I saw him at and he's still wearing the same piece. (Indiscernible). He was tough on my son. By the way, my son brought the house down when he was bar mitzvahed. How's that? Let's talk about Harry's bar mitzvah. Harry's bar mitzvah. He had the most magnificent voice you've ever heard. Singing voice? 9 Singing. He took the service from the very beginning at nine o'clock in the morning all the way to eleven thirty. I was floored. I didn't know he knew that much, but the cantor did. The cantor was hard on him. I don't think there's been a voice like that since. Isn't that wonderful? Yes. They wouldn't let me record it. No, no. It's against the rules, isn't it? Two weeks later Herb Kaufman got to record his son's. That was the very first reason that I got mad. I think they did my daughter's on a Friday. They did the girls in those days on Fridays. I have heard that. But Harry was amazing. So when you had bar and bat mitzvahs in that era that would have been what year? My brother is eleven years younger than me. So he was bar mitzvahed at Beth Sholom. What kind of ceremony did they have at that time? They did a full Saturday morning from beginning to end and they davened. It leaned a little bit toward the orthodox side in those days. Were there parties afterwards? Oh, yes, big parties. Are you kidding? Sure. Where were the parties at? Well, my brother's party was at the synagogue. The night before was at our house. Same with my wedding. The night before was at the house and my reception was at the synagogue. Pretty much everything was at the synagogue in those days. I grew up there. I was always there. It was somewhere to go. So it was kind of like my second home. In fact, the group before us...The synagogue decided BBYO is not a temple group. So they took our room away from us and they 10 wouldn't let them meet there. This is right before I came in. They went downtown to Father Crawley on Charleston. He had a little church down there. He gave the kids the basement. Then the temple, they realized that they better bring the kids back. Because they were meeting in a Catholic church. Absolutely. Father Crawley, he was amazing. Anyway, he gave them the basement. The boys would play cards down there and we had our meetings. But then the synagogue said, "Okay, B'nai B'rith can come back." Of course, by then I was in and we had all our meetings there. We were kind of crazy in those days. It was a very free, no pressure kind of time. So if we can go back and forth between you being a kid and then raising your children here, so then with the bar and bat mitzvah for your son and daughter, how did it change in a generation? A lot more money. I had caterers for Harry and even had an ice carving of his name. I went all out, with the help of my parents because by then I was remarried?probably shouldn't have been remarried, but anyway, I was remarried. My parents paid for that. Then my daughter decided she wanted hers at Jubilation, which was the disco place that was open for lunch. So we did a big luncheon for her. That was also big money, more than...I think I was still married, yes. Then things just got out of hand. It became hotels and clubs. They were like weddings. When I got married in 1966, December, my reception was at the temple and my father catered it. He was a little drunk from the night before and some of the food didn't get out there, him and my uncle. I don't remember a thing about it. I had a band because in those days you didn't spin records; you had a band. I remember some of it, but not much, not much. But everybody had a good time. They did. It was an afternoon wedding and everybody was invited. Yes, you invited the whole 11 town because there wasn't that many of us. So it was a fun time. It's amazing to watch a city grow as rapidly as you have seen. There were 57,000 people here when we moved and I don't know, what are we, close to two million now? Two million roughly, yes. I've seen a lot of changes. The area that I live in now, the boys used to go quail hunting. It was the back country. What area do you live in now? I live up in Anthem. Tropicana was called Bond Road and there was really nothing south of Bond Road. There were railroad tracks and we used to go park out there. There was just nothing. In those days you had the police department and the sheriff's department. The police department, Sahara was their border; they couldn't come over in those days. So if you were in any kind of trouble, you just jumped over Sahara. When I was in eighth grade we bought a car, five of us. I don't remember the kids' names, but they were all in school with me. But it had no top on it. It just had the wheels and the place that you sit in and the engine. We used to ride around Maryland Parkway. We only paid twenty-five dollars for it or whatever and we scrounged the money together. All the police knew us. I mean everybody knew everybody. Were you all underage? Oh, God, yes, all underage. But we weren't going anywhere. It was just around Maryland Parkway. We played a lot of football at Maryland Parkway. That was kind of the Sunday meeting place. Are you familiar with the park? So Maryland Parkway and what? 12 There's Circle Park. Okay, the Circle Park, yes. And that was really the only park that was close. The other park was out at Twin Lakes and we didn't go over there because we had no way to get there. So we would all meet at Circle Park and play football or whatever all Sunday. That's kind of where I met some of the guys. That's how I got involved. I think I got involved when I was like twelve. You're supposed to be thirteen, but they snuck me in. So you grow up here and you graduate from Las Vegas High School in 1962. Then I went to UNLV for a year. Talk about UNLV. That was fun. It was Grant and...There were two buildings on that side. I think there was still the engineering shacks out here. The student union was this big, tiny, tiny, tiny. The library opened that year or close to it and it was one floor. Not like today where we're sitting. No. The gym was a little gym; it was where they played basketball. It was a lot of fun, not that I learned that much, I don't think. But we used to have University Days here and we'd end it with a big bonfire and you'd stay up all night to protect this bonfire. They'd throw flour at you and whatever else. It was all desert. The road was a hilly road; Maryland Parkway was hilly. My uncle had a little coffee shop across the street because there really wasn't anything here on campus. It was like cafeteria style where you'd order your hamburger or whatever. He used to let us have dances in there. So Friday or Saturday night we'd have a dance. Would that be with live music or records? Oh, always with live music, oh, yes. All the most recent bands that were coming up during that 13 time. Yes, it was fun. Then I dropped out because I went to England. I was working during this time and I decided that I wanted to take a trip and go home, see what it looked like. I was gone for four months. Then when I came back, I think that's when we opened up Freddie's Sandwich Shop downtown, somewhere in that area, and I went to work for my father down there. So your dad had Freddie's? Yes. By then the barbeque had closed and my father really had no work. Freddie Glusman? My cousin got him into the Sahara hotel with Alex Shoofey, and they had him put a day-time deli in the lounge, and he did that for a while. Then Freddie opened up a sandwich shop for my dad. So the Freddie is named after Freddie Glusman? Yes. Oh. I don't think he mentioned his sandwich shop. He probably didn't. Then from there I think I met my husband. I was there probably about a year and I met my husband and got married December 1966, right at the end, and I didn't work. He didn't like me to, one of those old-fashion kind of guys. He didn't have anything and I didn't have anything and it was a struggle. Then we had Harry in 1968, May of '68. He was born in Canada. My father by then was up in Canada doing work and said, "Come on up, there's room for you guys." So we went up and Harry was born there. Then, of course, that work dissipated and we came back. He was six weeks old when I came back. And I've been here pretty much ever since. Jimmy and I left when he was five and his sister was four and we lived in Vancouver for six months and then we went to Minnesota and then I came home and I've been here ever since, just short trips. So what made it feel like home? You used that to describe. 14 Because it was a close-knit community, I think. I think that's the main reason. I unfortunately do not have a good memory for names. But in those days we had one synagogue, so that was our hub, and everything revolved around Beth Sholom. The Men's Club was very active. They used to have auctions with cars and furs to raise money for, in those days, Israeli bonds. I don't remember what year it was, but the third or fourth year we were open; instead of taking Yom Kippur money, they bought bonds, and then they would go to Israel and spend their bonds. But they did; they were big supporters of Israel in those days. Prior to that my family was not until the Six-Day War and then they became active. It's hard to explain. It was just an amazing community in those days. I mean, everybody was new. Everybody was starting from ground zero, and so everybody was kind of in the same situation, on equal footing other than the mob guys that were here. They were a little bit above us. I don't know. If you wanted a job, you went and talked to somebody. My kid needs a summer job or whatever. Art Lurie was really good about that; he hired all the boys. They were all box boys at one time or another in those days. They were very community minded people and they were building a city. I don't know if you talked to Todd Marshall, but his grandmother had a little dress shop on? And his grandmother's name was? Was that Sara? Sara. Yes. So we're talking about Saltzman, right? Yes, Sara Saltzman. She had a little dress shop on Las Vegas Boulevard and everybody shopped there because there wasn't anywhere else. Then downtown there was Penney's, Sears, Ronzone's; it became Dillard's. First it became Diamonds and then it became Dillard's. And then there was a 15 lot of little shops along the way and that was our place. Of course, when I was growing up we cruised Fremont Street. I don't know if anybody's told you that. But we would go up from the Blue Onion, which was down at the five corners, Sahara and all that. We'd go from there. That was our base. Rancho's base was up at the top. Never the twain should meet. We'd cruise up, go around the railroad station, because there was a railroad station where the Plaza hotel is, and we'd zip down, find out what's going on and then go to parties. So what would happen if you would cross paths with people from Rancho? Ooh, I dated guys from Rancho. We used to burn each other's floats because they were really the only two high schools in the city when I was growing up. Gorman opened and there was always basic. But the two rivalries were Rancho and Vegas. We had these Sir Herkimer...They were kind of bones or something. Whoever won the football game got them, back and forth. Today we'd probably go to jail for the stuff we did. I remember I went back for my second or third year out of school and we're waiting for the floats to come in and you look and they're all burning down the street because they were napkins. We stuffed them with napkins. So they weren't real flowers. They were paper flowers. Yes. But the hotels would send us the bases, the float beds. They got into it a little bit. In those days we had the Rhythmettes. Were you a Rhythmette? No, Charlene was. Token because she was Jewish? She was good. I met Charlene; she was about eleven, and we were still living on Rexford because there was nowhere to live in this town, anywhere, especially with kids. She was 16 marching up and down in front of the house with her baton. She was practicing. Practicing, yes. She was really good. She was very active. I was not active in high school. I was more active in the Jewish community. High school...They were still having prayers in school. They were still giving credits for attending ward when I first started there. We were the kids that fought it. We would leave assemblies. When the prayer time would come, we'd get up and leave. So how many of you would actually get up? Maybe about fifty, forty-five, fifty kids, yes, because other kids would join in with us. We'd leave or we'd sit down or we'd be very disrespectful because we felt that our education was separate from church. We could never get the number of credits that the kids could get because they got a credit for ward. They would go to church in the morning and they would get a high school credit for attending religious school. Oh, so this is part of the Mormon influence of what was going on. They're on every corner by every school. I don't have a problem with that. The problem was that they had these clubs. So that's why we became so entrenched in our own clubs because we couldn't get into those clubs. They had DeMolay and Rainbow and all that and it was pretty much controlled during the time that I went to school. I have friends today from high school that never realized it. They weren't Jewish. They were all my friends. They're still my friends. I go out every Saturday night with them. They just were oblivious to what we were going through. But we were part of that beginning of opposing that kind of treatment. Not only of that, but in our Market Town, in our barbeque my father hired a couple of boys from Rancho High School who are now lawyers, and