Transcript of interview with Dayvid Figler by Barbara Tabach, June 22, 2016

AN INTERVIEW WITH DAYVID FIGLER 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 Dayvid Figler (1967 - ) is the quiet boy who became an insightful and creative contributor to the local culture of Las Vegas. The oldest of Barbara and Meyer Figler?s three children, he was four years old when the family station wagon reached Las Vegas in 1971. They moved in with Uncle Izzy (aka Big Irish) Figler for a few months. Having the ?juice,? Dayvid?s father soon became a Pan dealer on the Strip. As the family grew, Barbara eventually immersed her energies in her children?s activities, Hadassah and Temple Beth Sholom. In this oral history, Dayvid also recalls his awkward, but incredibly interesting youth, his bar mitzvah at Temple Beth Sholom, and path to a successful career as a criminal defense attorney. He also talks about embracing Las Vegas as his home, owning a home in John S. Park neighborhood and mentions a number of literary depictions of Las Vegas that he admires. Dayvid describes growing up a ?casino kid? who lived in an apartment near the Riviera Hotel. This, in addition to his slight stature and academic brilliance, may have set him apart from many of his childhood peers. He graduated from Valley High School at the age of 16 and by the age of 23 he was a rising star in the legal world. He looks back with appreciation to his list of mentors who encouraged him along the way. Dayvid is also a local favorite as an essayist and poet. For a number of years he could be heard on KNPR/NPR. He has been a performer in hundreds of productions that featured his comic wit and writings, from Lollapalooza to Tom and Jerry?s on Maryland Parkway. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Dayvid Figler June 22, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Barbara Tabach Preface??????????????????????????????????..iv Tells the story behind his uniquely spelled.first name; traces his family ancestry to Chicago where both his parents, Barbara and Meyer were born. Meyer Figler?s family owned Figler Bakery, which sold to Manischewitz kosher products company; family friendship with Bob Dylan; long line of rabbis and ultra-orthodoxy. Story of how his family came to settle in Las Vegas; uncle was Isadore Figler (speaking role in movie Rain Man); mother?s side of family of Russian background; Morris and Grace Goodman, maternal grandparents lived in Las Vegas; mentions other relatives?..1 ? 6 More about Meyer Figler (aka Little Irish) and Isadore Figler (aka Izzy and Big Irish); family moved to Las Vegas in 1971 when Dayvid was 4 years old; how his parents met, married and decision to leave Chicago in a station wagon headed for Las Vegas, living with Uncle Izzy for six months until father got a job dealing Pan at the Sahara.......................................................... 6 ? 10 Meyer Figler?s Pan customers included Barbara Greenspun; visits to Los Angeles to see family; enrolling in Temple Beth Sholom preschool. Talks about living in apartment complex near Riviera Hotel. Recalls a job gathering tennis balls at Riviera, paid by the bucket. How his father became a dealer with Chicago connections; Meyer was also a gambler, impact on family?s economic status and importance of ?comp culture.??????????????????????...10 ? 12 Barbara Figler?s involvement with PTA, Hadassah, his child activities; mother became very involved in Temple Beth Sholom, her friendship with Mary Jane Schaffer, mentions other families that lived near temple; story of Mary Jane and Barbara selling raffle tickets on Fremont Street. Talks about BBYO, Temple Beth Sholom day camp, Charles Bock (author of Beautiful Children), Starr Pawn Shop family, Carol and Howard Bock. Talks about youth trip to Israel for five weeks in 1979????????????????????????????????..13 ? 18 Talks about meeting Mike Cherry when he was a criminal defender and active with BBYO mentoring; David Cherry; AZA fraternal organization; Eisen brothers ? Andy, Steve and Bob; his bar mitzvah at Las Vegas Country Club, Rabbi Joe Kohn, Simon Bergman, Rabbi Appel, Leo Wilner. Mentions Jacky Rosen???????????????..????????18 ? 21 Memories of attending school here when population was around 250,000; Fremont Junior High; friend Steve Hoffen; family going to Stardust for entertainment; describes being a ?casino kid?. Talks about his sisters; starting college at age 16 at University of Arizona after graduating early from Valley High School; attended McGeorge School of Law and passed bar at age 23?...22 -25 Shares about his decision to become a lawyer; getting into criminal defense; mentors include Mark Bailus, Mike Cherry, Oscar Goodman, Mort Kirsch; B?nai B?rith (BBYO); going up before Judge Cherry as an attorney; overcoming nervousness?????????????????..26 -31 vi Talks about moving into the John S. Park neighborhood as an adult; Joshua Abbey; last service at the Temple Beth Sholom before it moved from Oakey location to Summerlin; Fanny Licker story. Describes how he sees Las Vegas and its booms in population growth; how non-residents think they know Las Vegas. Being a regular contributor to KNPR/NPR (1990s) and a local storyteller; college roommate was Alex Baze (comic sketch writer for SNL, Seth Meyers, etc.). Mentions Steakout, Caf? Roma, Benway Music Store??????????????????..32 ? 36 Started a band, was house band for Tom and Jerry?s in 1996, comedy poetry, arts fellowship from Nevada Arts Council in 1997; show that Josh Abbey directed at Charles Knight?s Art Center; KNPR essays; Ginger Brunner; performances at El Cortez ballroom; Mob Museum. How he sees humor as his crutch. Ruby Kolod Center of his youth at Temple Beth Sholom; thoughts about being Jewish today????????????????????????????.37 ? 40 Reflects on JCC event for Jewish University at Mob Museum when he interviewed Oscar Goodman; performance poetry and Lollapalooza event, readings at Caf? Roma, opening for Beastie Boys and other performances he participated in from 1995 to 2010. Shares his thoughts on a variety of books about Las Vegas and by: Charles Bock, Claire Vaye Watkins, Joan Didion, John Updike, Mike Ventura, Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson, John D?Agata, Kirk Robertson, and others????????????????????????????????..?41 ? 49 vii 1 This is June 22nd, 2016. This is Barbara Tabach and I'm sitting with Dayvid Figler. Dayvid, if you'd spell your name for us first. Sure. First name is unique spelling of Dayvid. It's D-A-Y-V-I-D. The last name is Figler, F like in Frank, I-G-L-E-R. Do you know why your first name is spelled uniquely? I do and I'll tell you. Other than the fact that my father [Meyer Figler] was remarkably nervous with the birth of his firstborn son and filling out the birth certificate quickly. Apparently under a lot of pressure and nerves, he wrote my?so, okay. It's a quick story. I'm going to try and make it quick. I was supposed to be a girl; that didn't work out. Then he was shocked to find out I was a boy. They were a hundred percent sure I was a girl for whatever voodoo reasons in 1967 people were sure of things. So my mother [Barbara Figler] made him promise that if by the off chance I turned out to be a boy that my middle name would be Ann, A-N-N, because that was her beloved grandmother's name and her grandmother had just passed away recently. So my dad agreed and he filled it out. I've seen my long form birth certificate, so everything's been verified. So it originally read Dayvid, traditional spelling, Ann Figler. So he wrote down Dayvid Ann Figler and he looked at it and he said, "That can't be right and I don't want my son to be beat up. So I am going to just"?and it was already written in ink, so he put a "J" in front of the Ann. So on my birth certificate it says Dayvid Jann, capital J, capital A-N-N, Figler. So my middle name is Jann. Then apparently, and according to him, he was looking at Dayvid next to Jann, and it just didn't look like it was spelled right. And so he phonetically sounded it out and he inserted (a y.) And you could tell he squeezed between the normal spaced "A" and the "V" is like a little "Y" and we're done. 2 Then he later came up with the story that his name had a "Y" in it and he has a daughter whose nickname had a "Y" in it [Pearl/Penny] and my younger sister [Rayann] has a "Y" in her name. So he just made it a family tradition. So that was it. Bless his heart. There you go. So it was just basically a combination of bad grammar, probably nerves and maybe a touch of liquor. He wasn't much of a drinker, so it would probably only take him one shot. People remember my name. Yes. So what do you know about your family ancestry? Since this is the Jewish Heritage project, we like to know where it all began. I know that both my parents were born in the United States and both my grandparents on my mother's side were born in the United States. My mother was born in Chicago in 1935. My grandparents were both born in Chicago in 1906 and 1908 respectively. My father was born in Chicago in 1919. His family emigrated from a small village in Poland, which name I have somewhere. I should've brought that. But they came through Ellis Island in the early nineteen teens. My dad was the youngest of six siblings. He and his brother and then his sister were all born in the United States; the other three siblings were born in Poland. They were an Ultra-Orthodox family. Where were they settled, your father's family? Everyone settled in Chicago. That's where they all landed. They opened a kosher bakery that was the largest kosher bakery apparently in the South Side of Chicago. It was on Roosevelt Road, which is apparently an important road in the development of Chicago in that time. They ran that kosher bakery for about fifty years. So it was a staple and they had different locations. 3 Ultimately they also had a noodle factory that was part of it and they made kosher noodles and they made products for Passover. We found some old advertisements for the Figler Bakery from old newspapers and we have a couple of those around. I have one with me. They eventually sold the noodle factory and then the bakeries. And the noodle factory was apparently a very large industrial concern at some point. They sold that to Manischewitz, a leading kosher products company. So Manischewitz purchased that small, for them probably, noodle factory and put it into their network. I don't know much about my mother's family except that they emigrated from Russia at the very beginning of the twentieth century and that they also landed in Chicago. In fact, my mom and my dad, though many years apart?they were sixteen, seventeen years apart in age?essentially grew up about four blocks away from each other, just different generation. So that was kind of interesting. They knew a lot of the same people when they ultimately hooked up, people from the old neighborhoods. Of course, by the time they met, which was about 1965, '66, everything had changed. The bakery was gone. My father was sort of living off of the proceeds that went to all six siblings. The siblings were distributed throughout the United States. He had a sister up in Duluth whose husband was in fishing and had a very profitable fishing concern. They are a new sort of Chabad folk. Her son, who is my first cousin, invented imitation crab meat. Oh, really? Yes. So he made a lot of fun doing that. He was childhood friends with Bob Dylan. So Bob Dylan would often come to our family things. There's lots of pictures of Bob and my dad at family gatherings. That's kind of a fun little thing. So that was the Duluth contingency. Then there was another daughter who was married off into a very Ultra-Orthodox family 4 and those Hasidim are through all of the United States, Europe and Israel. So that's all my cousins and relatives come from that part of my dad's family. Katzes, all rabbis everywhere. They're in Texas. They're in Pennsylvania. They were in Tennessee. They were just all over. They multiplied as Hasidim do. The rest of my dad's brothers and sisters went to Los Angeles with the exception of my uncle Isadore who landed in Las Vegas two years before we did. And my dad followed his next-in-age brother to Las Vegas when we came out here in '71. So that's my dad's sort of family. Only my dad's two sisters have any tie to Orthodoxy, though my dad was raised in it very strictly and his father was considered to be a very holy man. There is a Chabad center in Pacific Palisades that's named after my grandfather [Moshe Dovid Figler]. My grandfather is buried in Israel. We'll probably get to that story about my trip to Israel when I was twelve; out of Las Vegas. My mother's family, on the other hand, is a little bit more of a mystery. They came from Russia, landed in Chicago. My maternal grandfather had a couple of brothers and sisters. They just went throughout the United States. However, there's still a contingency of that family in Chicago. Then my maternal grandmother, she also had a couple of sisters and the same situation throughout the country and then also still a Chicago contingency. So I still have kinfolk in Chicago from that, but I don't really know their history or what they were involved in or any of that stuff. I just know my grandparents. My grandparents followed us out here in 1975, my maternal grandparents. My paternal grandparents were already deceased. They (my maternal grandparents) lived in Las Vegas until they died and they were very active in Temple Beth Sholom and Temple Beth Sholom Seniors 5 until the end. What are their names? Morris Goodman and Grace Gussey Goodman. They came out in 1975. Then little by little, more of the family started coming out to Las Vegas in their retirement age. So my grandfather's brother, which I knew him as Uncle Red, so Red Goodman?they were all Goodmans?so Red Goodman and his wife, Dorothy, my aunt Dorothy, they moved out to Las Vegas. He was in the newspaper publication business. They died tragically on a drive from Lake Tahoe back down to Vegas. It seems like Uncle Red fell asleep at the wheel. There was another couple in the car, too, and they were all in their seventies and just careened off the road in between on that stretch, probably I-15, I'm guessing it was on 15. That was some time ago; that was my grandfather's brother. Then my grandmother's sister, my Aunt Sally and her husband, Uncle Ben, they were Gilfonz and they came out to Las Vegas as well. So I think between Uncle Red and Aunt Sally, they were probably only in Las Vegas for about five, six years before they passed. Just kind of the end of life stuff. Maybe almost ten years. I'm trying to think. That would have been late seventies into the... Well, that's too bad. Yes. So we'd always be the hub of visitors for everyone that would come, but those are the only people who have actually lived in Las Vegas as far as extended family. Then, of course, my dad and his brother. And his brother lived here until he passed away and his brother was a very, very, very, very colorful character in Las Vegas. It's hard to find anyone who has been in Las Vegas for more than forty years in the gaming industry who doesn't know or know of my Uncle Isadore. His biggest claim to fame, although not in his mind, but objectively, he has a speaking 6 role in the movie Rain Man. Oh, really? Yes. He was working and a casting director saw him and asked him to be an extra. Then the extra guy said, "You should be an extra prominent." Then the casting director in charge of the speaking parts said, "Would you mind saying a couple of lines because you're perfect for this?" And he is. He looks the part of a pit boss. He has a couple of lines in the famous scene when Dustin Hoffman is counting cards at the Caesars Palace and then when they call security to come down; that's my uncle making the phone call with the lines. And he still gets checks for that twenty years after his death. They still get residuals. He'll get a check for forty-seven dollars or thirty-three dollars or something. Isn't that amazing? Yes. Well, he found that to be one of his least fulfilling endeavors in his lifetime. And certainly by his standards of adventure and charisma and just generally being a character, it probably does rank very low in the things that he did. But, yes, he was definitely a character and very close with my father. They were both born in the same calendar year, and so they got the nicknames?and all my dad's friends had nicknames. That was that era. They all came out to Vegas or lived in Vegas. My dad had a large set of his friends from the old Jewish neighborhood in Las Vegas were all in gaming or who were gamblers or who were retired here in gambling, they all had nicknames. But my dad was known as Little Irish and my uncle was known as Big Irish for two reasons. One, they were both blond-haired, blue-eyed kids. My dad had the most incredible crystal blue eyes ever. But also apparently was a bit of a dig in that they would call them Irish twins because they were born within the same calendar year. But they embraced it and it was 7 Big Irish or Irish until the day he died and my dad was Little Irish forever. Also Big Irish was big. We're a small people, the Figlers. None of us are particularly hefty. But Uncle Izzy was a bull, just a bull of a man. Whenever you would see him, he would always say, "Squeeze my arm." And you could not get both hands around his muscles. He was just a big barrel guy. But that was his nickname was Big Irish. So it's kind of funny for a Jewish kid from the streets of Vegas. That's great, yes. That's really all I have as far as history and heritage goes. I know people have been sniffing around trying to figure it out because of the extended family and because there are parts of our family that are so engrained in Orthodoxy that I guess that's a little bit more important to them. So there's probably some pathways that are out there that I can, if need be, tap into it. Well, people are so interested in ancestry roots anymore. They are, yes. It's the thing. But I'm happy just to go back to 1971 [year he arrived in Las Vegas at age four.]. Before that it doesn't really matter to me. But the family landed here, which got you here. Because I'm always curious about where we came from and how we got here. So you were a toddler at that time it sounds like. Sure. So you probably have no memories of arriving in Las Vegas. Actually, I do. It's funny. It's my first memory. It's a story I tell, so I'll tell the story. My mom and dad met out in Las Vegas after an unsuccessful date in Chicago. So my mom was temping at a friend of hers office as a secretary; he was hiring a new secretary and she was just coming in to lend a hand. My father had some business dealing with that gentleman and came in one day, saw my mom, who was very attractive, and said, "Hey, should we go on a 8 date?" She said, "Sure." They went on a date. It was not successful and they didn't talk to each other again. My mom was in the process of going through a very lengthy divorce at the time and my father was divorced twice from the same woman and about to get remarried to her a third time when a business opportunity of some sort availed itself in Las Vegas. My uncle was already out here and working in gaming. So my dad was on his way to Vegas unbeknownst to my mom. My mom, who had just gotten her divorce, was with one of her girlfriends and her girlfriend's friend and he footed the bill for kind of a getaway for them for the weekend; go celebrate the fact that you're divorced and we'll go see shows and have great food and everything. So they independently went out to Chicago. Mom flew out; dad was in a rented Cadillac convertible. So they randomly ran into each other and this would have been anywhere between?they don't know the exact date?but anywhere between six months and a year and a half after that first date. Dad saw Mom at the Stardust waiting in line to go see the Lido de Paris. He obviously recognized her from their prior encounter. Dad being somewhat of a gambler had juice or connections within the hotel. He said, "Hey, you don't need to wait in line. I'm going to go talk to somebody." He went over, got a line pass and a comp for them, got the best seat in the house. They all saw the show. Then the next thing you know, they're on the pathway to marriage with a baby. So that's how that all worked out. Back in Chicago, Dad was essentially between jobs and got an offer from a friend of a friend who was an illegal bookmaker, somebody who ran basically a betting operation underground. This particular group of bookmakers had the idea that they would use families as the front. So instead of being in the back of a dry cleaner's shop or being in the back of a bakery or something like that, they were actually in residences. My mom and dad and baby me were set 9 up in the living room of a one-bedroom apartment and the bookmaking operation was in the bedroom. There were three families in our North Side Chicago apartment that had nothing to do with the bookmaking, we were just the kept family, which were the front for the activity that was happening in the back with all the phones and all that stuff. Apparently, one May day in 1971, there was a raid on the building and the family on the first floor was essentially taken into custody and the kids were put in protective services and the whole thing. So my dad talked to the benefactor bookmaker and said, "What's the game plan? Are you going to lay it low? Are you going to move? Are we moving? What's going on?" And the bookmaker said, "No, no, it's business as usual. We're just going to split up that operation into up here. So we're going to have to use part of the living room, too." My dad said, "Well, I don't think that's a really good idea given that the heat is on and they know what you're doing now and they might find other families in here." And then the bookmaker told him in no uncertain terms that that wasn't his call to make. My dad's last job before not having a job was working as a used car lot as a salesman. He called up his friend Sammy Schwartz and said, "I need a car that will get me to Las Vegas to meet with Big Irish." We packed up in the middle of the night into a station wagon and we loaded up the station wagon with all our worldly possessions and headed west to Las Vegas so that we wouldn't have to deal with that situation, apparently. I recall my first memory is that station wagon breaking down somewhere in Arizona and an African American family stopping by the road and asking us if we needed any help. And we did because that was kind of a situation; we're in the middle of a desert and parents were freaking out. This family, gloriously, gracious family came up. I remember playing with the kids and that they were headed the same way we were. Whatever they did they helped us get to the next 10 stop. I remember arriving through the desert in a very tenuous situation. I just remember it was very stressful that is this car going to continue to go or not? Then we made it to Uncle Izzy's house?what we call Big Irish was Uncle Izzy?and the car died there. I remember walking into his?he lived over off of Sandhill. I just remember walking into what at the time?I have not been back there in forty years?but at the time it was probably a very modest house. But for a little, wee three-year-old, I remember just everything was sparkly and big like what I imagine a mansion would be, just some very huge space. Uncle Izzy and his wife, Lynn, embraced the aesthetic of the time. I know all the furniture because when he passed I had the world's coolest yard sale with like lacquer jaguars holding up glass panes for a coffee table and like bird cages with Grecian goddesses in the middle leaking oil with colored lights and stuff. I remember all that vividly. So I was between three and four years old and that was my entree to Las Vegas. We stayed with Uncle Izzy for probably about six months while my dad got a job. My dad got a job dealing cards over at the Sahara Hotel in a game that was almost exclusively frequented by older Jewish women, a game which is no longer offered in Las Vegas, but it's a game called Pan, P-A-N. One of my dad's regulars there was Barbara Greenspun. She was in there almost every day playing Pan. She would always greet us at High Holiday services and give Little Irish a big hug and a kiss. It's so funny because his customers and his coworkers?they keep reemerging in my life. Some years later my best friend in high school turned out to be one of his?they moved down here from Minnesota; but before they moved out here, when they visited?one of his customers. Just a small little universe of his Pan people. He played Pan as well off duty and he played Pan with his family when we'd go on family?it was a family thing. They played a lot of Pan. He 11 and his sister Esther played a lot of Pan when we would go on family holidays. Most our family holidays were to Los Angeles because by that point most of the family lived in Los Angeles. So my Aunt Esther, my Uncle Jack. For all Passover, for all nights we'd be there and we'd stay with them or we'd go there for our High Holidays or every bat mitzvah and bar mitzvah or wedding or funeral. There was a lot of traveling to Los Angeles for that part of the family. So, yes, those were my first distinct memories. I remember the desert. I remember being scared. I remember it being very nerve-racking. Then I remember the ridiculous seventies gilded palace that was my Uncle Izzy's house. I think my uncle at that time was working at Caesars Palace as well. So he used to get ready for work every morning with the big medallion. Oh, yes. So that was my entree. Then I that fall was enrolled in Temple Beth Sholom Preschool. So that's where I started going. I guess Melissa Rivers was in my class, according to my mom, Joan Rivers' daughter. Oh, really? Yes. I guess Joan had a residency out here at that time and she was performing at the Riviera or something. So her daughter was in the same preschool class, by my mom's account. I don't remember her. Then we eventually moved into an apartment complex close to my dad's work so he could walk to work because he liked walking to work and we only had the one car. It was a one-bedroom apartment over on Kishner Drive. Irwin Kishner owned that. So we lived at 3040 Kishner Drive and that was in the Somerset Plaza over right by the Las Vegas Convention Center and where the Landmark used to be. Our apartment was the closest to the wall that was shared with the Riviera Hotel. 12 When I was a little bit older, one of my first sort of odd jobs was I would go pick up all the?because we used to have a topnotch tennis facility in the back of the Riviera and they actually hosted international tennis events there. It was the Riviera and the Caesars Palace had the different tournaments. But there was always people playing. They had a pro and there was all these people playing tennis. So tennis balls would always come careening over and stuff like that. I would gather up all the tennis and I would get I think it was five dollars a bucket for tennis balls or two dollars a bucket, whatever it was. So that was my first job, really, I guess technically. I would probably be seven of eight years old and I would just collect tennis balls for the Riviera tennis courts. That was kind of fun. So that's where I grew up and that's where I lived from late '71 to 1980 or '81; for almost ten years there in that apartment. Your dad: did he have any stories about the challenges of becoming a dealer? No. He got juiced in. He knew everybody. There was a lot of Chicago people that were out here. So it was definitely a Chicago connection. We were never at a want for running into people that my dad knew from Chicago, or my mom for that matter, but mostly my dad, or people who knew my uncle. And my dad was a gambler, too, so he was known on that level, and he'd been coming out to Las Vegas since the fifties. So when you're in a lower economic strata and you're a gambler and you have a family, you have a lot of intriguing support systems in place. Some which are counterintuitive, but one of which is sort of the comp culture or whatever or the reliance on your sort of community connections. My dad was very good at keeping all those things balanced. We never wanted for anything. But certainly by any objective standards we lived in pretty solid poverty, but we didn't know that because we were eating shrimp cocktail for 13 a tip. So it was kind of an interesting dichotomy. Mom right away?she didn't have any real skill set or any kind of training, never really had any long-term jobs. She just sort of threw herself into the dual-headed monster of PTA and Hadassah and Sisterhood and ORT and all that stuff. She really, really immersed herself in the temple culture over at TBS [Temple Beth Sholom] and the PTA culture at wherever I was going to school at any given time. So that's where she occupied all her time. Then later Boy Scouts or Cub Scouts and all that stuff she did that as well. Whatever activities I was involved in, she was involved in very heavily. One might say too heavily that said. That was kind of her life. Dad worked day shift. Dad worked noon till eight every day. So mornings had to be quiet and dinners came late at night, when he'd decide to come home after a long shift; when he wasn't gambling that would be. So we were probably not heavily into Beth Sholom until I was probably eight or nine and I think that's when Mom really, really kicked in. That's when she started rising up the level. She found her best friend, this woman named Mary Jane Schaffer who was married to a gentleman in town named Gerald Schaffer. They had a daughter who was my age and they lived right behind the temple. They lived off 15th. So that became kind of our extended family and it kind of revolved around Beth Sholom. When we would go to Sunday school, afterwards I would just walk over to the Schaffer house. The Schaffers lived next to Bucky Buchanan on one side and the Fields on the other side. I'm trying to remember: Marjorie Fields. I can't remember what her husband did. But they were all involved in Vegas growth in the seventies. So that was kind of my after-temple experience. Then we would do a lot of Friday nights. Of course, when bar mitzvah time came up, I started 14 doing all that a little bit more. But Mom was a life member of all the organizations and she was an officer of all of them and sold raffle tickets. One of my favorite raffle tickets [story] is her and her best friend Mary Jane Schaffer?the ladies sold raffle tickets; that was a big thing. They sold raffle tickets right in the casinos is what I've heard. Right. But what Mom and Mary Jane used to do, there were a bunch of...So Fremont Street was going through one of its many transitions. So there were a lot of Jewish-owned businesses up and down Fremont Street, some more legitimate than others, some that showed off-color movies then our later to become Senator Chic Hecht had a men's clothing store down there on Fremo