Transcript of interview with Theresa Jones Denning by Lynn Kelstron Ballard, February 26, 1977

UNLV University Libraries Teresa Denning i An Interview with Teresa Jones Denning An Oral History Conducted by Lynn Kelstrom Ballard Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas Special Collections and Archives Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada, Las Vegas UNLV University Libraries Teresa Denning ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2018 UNLV University Libraries Teresa Denning iii The Oral History Research Center (OHRC) was formally established by the Board of Regents of the University of Nevada System in September 2003 as an entity of the UNLV University Libraries’ Special Collections Division. The OHRC conducts oral interviews with individuals who are selected for their ability to provide first-hand observations on a variety of historical topics in Las Vegas and Southern Nevada. The OHRC is also home to legacy oral history interviews conducted prior to its establishment including many conducted by UNLV History Professor Ralph Roske and his students. This legacy interview transcript received minimal editing, such as the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader's understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. The interviewee/narrator was not involved in the editing process. UNLV University Libraries Teresa Denning iv Abstract On February 26, 1977, Lynn Kelstrom Ballard interviewed Teresa Jones Denning (born in Overton, Nevada in 1912) about her life in Southern Nevada. Denning first talks about her family background and her upbringing in Overton, including her life on a farm and her education in that small town. Denning also talks about her recreational pastimes before talking about the building of Boulder Dam and her life in Boulder City. Towards the end of the interview, she talks about her work as a driver for Las Vegas High School, her husband’s work on the Boulder Dam, and the changes in living conditions that she has noticed in Boulder City over time. UNLV University Libraries Teresa Denning 1 This is Lynn Ballard interviewing Teresa Jones Denning at 1321 Denver Street in Boulder City, Nevada. Her age is sixty-four, (unintelligible) February 26th, 1977 at eight p.m. Mrs. Denning, I understand you are a native Southern Nevadan. Would you like to (unintelligible)? Oh, I certainly would. I’ve had a wonderful life. Some people get lucky; I was born lucky. I was born Teresa Jones, March the 29th, 1912 at Overton, Nevada, the second child and the first daughter of Albert Bell and (Unintelligible) Jones. My father was one of the younger sons of Thomas Jefferson Jones and Hannah Christina Larson. Grandfather was prominent in business and county government and church activities in Southern Utah and in Panaca and Overton. Panaca and Overton are towns in Nevada. He was manager of the co-op mercantile in Panaca. He was sent there because the co-op was in danger of going under, it had lost so much money. When he moved back to St. George, he managed the Rio Virgin Cotton and Wooling Mills in 1875. Cotton was grown in St. George for quite a while. I don’t think they’re growing much of it there now, but they had to have the company to organize and process the cotton into cloth. He held very important positions in the church; he was bishop, he was state president twice, and a state patriarch. His wife, Hannah, came from Sweden with her parents after she joined the Mormon religion. They had a baby brother who was kidnapped in Missouri. Her parents were driven out with Mormon exodus. The baby was left behind because the mob threatened them, and they had the baby hid and wouldn’t let them take it, so they never saw their child again. My father was a farmer and also a mail carrier in Overton. He carried mail between Las Vegas and Moapa, sometimes on horseback and at other times, he drove a team, pulling a light rig. My mother was Ira Levi Conger. She was born in Clay County, Alabama, October 17, 1889. Her parents were Ruvin Jonas Conger and Hixie Ann Clementine Mitchell. Her father, who was UNLV University Libraries Teresa Denning 2 a farmer, spent three-and-a-half years in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. Her family joined the Mormon Church and moved to Utah, and then they moved on down to the Moapa Valley in 1905. Folks claimed it was inevitable that my father should marry my mother. It was said that he was the most handsome man in the valley and had the best horses, and my mother was the jolliest girly and the best dancer in the area. They had four children: Glen C., who was sheriff of Clark County for sixteen years and lives in Las Vegas, myself, Nisa, who is now Mrs. Taft Watts—she retired from Clark County Schools June 1976—and William Albert, who died in 1973. We lived in Overton on a farm until my father developed tuberculosis in a knee bone; this necessitated having the leg amputated. He was in an accident on the Fourth of July; he was riding one of his fancy horses when the horse bucked him off and he landed on his knees on the hard ground, and his leg developed the tuberculosis from that injury. Where did he go to have it amputated? He went to San Diego, California. And it’s funny—in San Diego, we were in an apartment, and my brother had never seen a streetcar, so when a streetcar came by, he ran out and hooked onto the back of it, and we had a hard time catching up with him to get him off. (Laughs) Soon after the leg amputation, we moved into town. My mother kept roomers and boarders. Dad had to lie in bed for about eight years with a plaster cast on his remaining leg. This immobility was to overcome the TB germs in the body. After eight years, he did overcome them, and from then on, he was able to work. He owned a grocery store and did other jobs. The older people in the valley will remember Mother for her good cooking, because she always put out good meals and her cheery personality. UNLV University Libraries Teresa Denning 3 During these years when we raised our own food in a garden, and we had one cow to milk. It’s surprising how well a family can live if they have a cow. But we didn’t enjoy the luxuries that other children had. We weren’t allowed to make candy. We couldn’t afford the necessary two cups of sugar to make a batch of fudge. Nevertheless, we didn’t realize that we were that destitute, and each week, we would ask if we could make candy. So with the first money that my father earned, he went and bought a sack of sugar, and he instructed my mother to let us children make all the candy we wanted to. So it became a tradition that when it rained, we would have a taffy (unintelligible). Now, everyone knows that it doesn’t rain very much in Southern Nevada, so there was a bit of control on how often we had a taffy (unintelligible). And then, you know that taffy just doesn’t harden well in moist weather, so it never was really the best thing to do. When I was only two months old, I had the whooping cough, and from the stories people told, I was very sick, and many nights was not expected to live until morning. But I’m glad they didn’t give up. Later, during the 1919 flu epidemic, I was about six years old then, no one left their homes without a mask. Now, a mask is several thickness of gauze, bandage, and it’s put over the mouth and nose and held in place by a tape or string that we hooked over the ears. The masks were moistened with some kind of a disinfectant, and if I recall right, it smelled something like eucalyptus oils. Then the wearer of the mask breathed through this, and it was supposed to catch the contagious germs, so we didn’t get the flu. And none of our family actually did have the flu. During this time and later years, in Moapa Valley, they produced as their main crop cantaloupes. There was a great sale for cantaloupes on the east coast, and we could get them there before other parts of the country. My father usually had about ten acres planted in melons. UNLV University Libraries Teresa Denning 4 It was hot work because they ripened right around the Fourth of July and on into August. The vine was picked up with a wooden hook when they started harvesting. Now, this wooden hook was sort of like a slat, and on the end was a sharpened slat so that when they picked up the vine, they could pick the melon without stooping over all the time. So one day, they had picked and they crated all the melons, and they hauled them to the railroad siding, and they transferred them to an icebox. They kept ice reefers, the whole top of the boxcar was full of ice. They didn’t have refrigeration units like they do now. And I had gone to sleep in the seat of the buggy, and the horse was tied to the station hitching post. Something startled the horse, and he reared, breaking the ropes, and then he dashed away with me in the seat. I woke immediately, and I started yelling, “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” and about a half a mile down the road, the horse stopped. And about that time, all the men from the station ran out then. There was few anxious moments that were over for all of us. I started elementary school in Overton at age six. We didn’t have a kindergarten there, but there were two grades held in each room. And we met in an adobe-constructed building—I think it was built mainly for our church. When I was in the first or the second grade, one of my teachers was the late Losee Roe of Las Vegas, and my fourth grade teacher was the now-Mrs. Marion B. Earl of Las Vegas, but at that time, her name was Lucille Pike. That was the year that the first airplane I ever saw flew into the Valley and landed in the (unintelligible). Nevertheless, the whole school ran two miles to see this wonderful machine. We were really tired when we got back to school, too. I started taking piano lessons when I was fairly young. To pay for my laundry, I did the teachers’ laundry each week, and my sister Nisa did her ironing to play for her lessons. But it paid off because at age twelve, I began to be the organist for the Church Primary Organization, UNLV University Libraries Teresa Denning 5 and since then, except for maybe about seven years, I filled an organist job in the church. At present, I’m organist for the Boulder City First Ward Choir. I don’t remember too much of what happened up through grade school and into sophomore, high school. I remember when I was a sophomore, we had silent movies every Saturday night, and I had the job of playing the piano for the silent movies so there’d be some movies there—we thought we would go modern. The projector that we had was a single unit, and at the end of the reel, the house lights were turned on while the reel was rewound, and then a new reel put into the machine. The projector had to be turned by very steady hands because if it was turned too fast, the picture went too fast, and if it went too slow, sometimes you would catch a fellow kissing his girl too long. So they really had to have boys who could keep it steady. During my junior and senior years in high school, I was secretary to the principal, and I earned a fabulous salary of ten dollars a month. And I squeezed that ten dollars, I just didn’t dare spend for fear I wouldn’t get another one. And I was the junior prom queen, the queen of the Golden Green Ball and president of the junior class that year. That was also the year that the school painted the big M on the side of the mesa to give the Moapa Valley High School its earned attention. The following year, I was elected president of the Moapa Valley High School Student Body, and I always wondered if the voters really thought I could do a better job than my opponent, or if my victory came from the fact that I had more relatives in the school than he did. All the years that I spent at Moapa Valley High School were busy and happy ones. I wrote the school will for the departing senior class, and I played Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata as a piano solo at the graduation exercise. My sister Nisa won a trip to the National 4-H Club Jamboree; it was held on the White House lawn in Washington, D.C., and this was in about October of 1929. And she was selected UNLV University Libraries Teresa Denning 6 while she was there to place a wreath on the Grave of the Unknown Soldier, and that was quite an honor, we considered, for a country girl. When school was out in June, I remember writing a Goddess of Liberty speech for the next Fourth of July program, but I never gave it. An opportunity for employment in Las Vegas came the latter part of June, and a job was a necessity in those days if you wanted to go to college. And my job was waiting on tables, and I worked in a supper club that year, and I earned enough money working that year to go to BYU for a year. There, I studied accounting and shorthand. When I returned to Las Vegas next spring, I went to work for Gene Wars as the bookkeeper. He owned the Mesquite Grocery store that stood, then, on the corner of First and Fremont Street in Las Vegas, and across the street was DeWitt Tracks cash-and-carry store. When we met in Boulder City, DeWitt and I had some old time things to talk about. I was there in Las Vegas in 1931 when the President of the United States signed into law the appropriation to build the Boulder Dam. One seldom sees the celebration like we had. As soon as we heard— Was that President Roosevelt or Hoover? I can’t remember. It was in 1931, and I can’t remember which president it was. It must’ve been Roosevelt, wasn’t it? Who knows? (Laughs) (Laughs) But we all left our jobs; nobody stayed and worked. Everybody went out in the street. Everybody threw their hats in the air and yelled—you seldom see anything like what went on at that time, because the building of the dam would benefit everybody. It would provide jobs for the area, money for the area, electric power and irrigation water—it was just something that we needed for a long time, and it was coming true. We also were finishing a post office, the United States was building a post office, and it was three stories high. Las Vegas didn’t have any UNLV University Libraries Teresa Denning 7 buildings three stories high until the post office came, and that was built at Third and Stewart Street. The next year, the construction workers started flocking into Las Vegas, some of them bringing their family, some of them coming singly, to get jobs at the dam. They set up a security gate to control the traffic going into Boulder City. When you came to the gate, you had to stop and tell the officer what you were going into town for, how long you were going to be there, when you were coming back—he seemed to want to know everything that was going on. Then there was also an employment office which was arranged in Las Vegas to process the workers that were going to be employed on the dam. From the Mesquite Grocery, I applied for a bookkeeping job at the Clark County Wholesale Mercantile Company. Joe Ronell was the manager then, and I was accepted. Accounting is one of the things that I really enjoy, and I enjoy it to the extent that, when I’m working on a set of books, I’m just oblivious to my surroundings. I don’t hear the children cry, and I don’t smell the dinner burning, so it’s just too bad for— For the family. Right, too bad for the family. I met my husband Robert at an MIA dance in the new Mormon Church at Ninth and Clark in Las Vegas, and this was in 1934. He was a pest; wherever I went, he just happened to be there. One day, we were walking past the Davis Jewelry store on Fremont Street, and he opened the door and invited me in and bought me a diamond ring. He claims that he married me because I refused to take it off after I tried it on. Years later, the diamond well out of the setting and went down the drain with the dishwater, and I regretted my lack of care for the ring. I should have done better than that. Anyway, he’s still staying around. He doesn’t take me out as often as he used to. When were you married? UNLV University Libraries Teresa Denning 8 We were married April the 27th, 1935. I about forgot, didn’t I? We moved to Boulder City, which became a well-organized construction camp, or you might say city, that grew up rapidly. And the temporary tents that were here were changed for houses that were built by Six Companies. We lived at 635 Avenue F in a one-bedroom house, and it looked like all the others up and down the street. And I’ll never forget the first night we moved out there. There was no grass in Boulder City at that time; it was just sand piles. The first night, it blew so hard, when we got up in the morning, we took a shovel and actually shoveled the dirt out that had come in on the floor—pushed it out with a flat-bottom shovel. During the peak of construction, many people thought the drive from Boulder City to Las Vegas was a twenty-minute drive, but the death toll on the Boulder Highway’s very high. Some claim it averaged one fatality a month for a thirty-six month period. But we had a lot of fun in Boulder City. Dancing was the social recreation of most of the people. Every Saturday night, we had a dance at the Old American Legion Hall, and Jimmy Manix played, he and his orchestra, and they had girl singers. We remember Norma Smiley, who is now Mrs. Claude Moore, as one of the singers, and Mary Jane Carter as one of the singers. The group was as exciting and outstanding to me then as Lawrence Welk is today. And there was always a lot of mixers, like grand marches and circle dances and Virginia reels—everybody knew their neighbors, and everybody knew everyone at the dance, and you just did not dance with one partner all evening. Then, Ed Nielsen from the Bureau of Reclamation was the author of the Circle Eight Square Dance group. Mr. and Mrs. Tom Mead and Bob and I were the first two couples, and we attended the first meeting. We talked mostly, but Ed put us through a few square dance drills, and he instructed us how to maneuver to his calls, and the steps he wanted us to use. In a very, very short time, there was a very well-organized square dance group. The dances were exciting UNLV University Libraries Teresa Denning 9 and full of fun. Mrs. Laverne Walker was very active then, and to us, she was a bright star in the organization. There were new callers developed, and we remember Frank Long, who was the Department of Water and Power supervisor. He had a way of calling that added zest and spirit to the dancers. I left the wholesale work to have a baby, and then after a few years, I wanted to go back to work. So, they took me back, and I was driving from Boulder City to Las Vegas. Shortly after that, I started driving, transporting students from Boulder City to the Las Vegas High School because we didn’t have a high school in Boulder City at that time. And my car, which was a little ’35 Ford, it would only hold five aside myself, and shortly after then, the school officials called and said, could I arrange to take ten—well, I couldn’t in that car. And there wasn’t much time to have a family counsel about doing anything else, so I realized that if I was going to do it, I had to sign the contract that day, so I signed the contract for the ten, and I just went out and bought an International Station Wagon and drove it home. That was quite an experience driving that car home. It had a four-speed transmission, and I had never even driven a three-speed truck. And those high school boys that were riding with me could have done a better job of driving that day. I couldn’t get the car out of second gear; every time I would try to shift it from second to third, it would growl, and I couldn’t get it out. I’d stop and start over again. But it had to be double-clutched, and I had no experience about double-clutching, so I drove from Las Vegas to Boulder City in second gear. And there was silence in truck—they knew better than to snicker at me. (Laughs) But I was a little embarrassed, too. When I walked in, I presented my purchase to my husband; he was silent also. He just didn’t know what attitude he should take when he came out of his state of shock, but he did let me keep UNLV University Libraries Teresa Denning 10 the station wagon, and that night, I had some lessons in truck driving, so I could drive back to work the next day. And from then on, everything went smooth. I understand you took the kids on field trips, too? Yes, those were mostly church kids that went out on field trips, and different organizations. The truck did go to Elko once, I think, taking a load of band students up there. Oh, we had a lot of fun with it. It was always kids ready to go, and we were ready to go. I was here when President Roosevelt came to dedicate the Boulder Dam and the Hoover Power Plant, to pull the switch that started the turbines. In fact, Robert had worked on the conduits that were required, and the circuits, for this event. And for many years after, our family enjoyed, on Sunday morning, hearing the chimes that came from one of the churches, and I believe it was the community church. And they sounded so pretty on Sunday morning—we missed them very much when, for some reason, they were silenced. Another Sunday morning activity was the annual Easter Sunday morning; that was a very special event. I never remembered exactly who came up with the idea of holding a sunrise service on what we call as Cross Hill, but about a hundred people or more gathered—oh, I guess there was 200, maybe 500 gathered—up on the top of the hill for this sunrise service, and just as the first peak of sun came over the mountain, we began the service. A little portable organ that belonged, I’m sure, to the community church, was carried to the site, and it was my honor and pleasure to play it several times. It had to be graced against rocks or held by somebody because it was so light that when you pumped the bellows, it seemed sort of to walk away from you, and you would find yourself sitting back with no organ to play—not very many people knew about that, but it was a problem. We used it to accompany the hymns and the groups while they were singing. Then, always at the beginning and at the end of the service, Otto Littler or Tommy Nelson would give the trumpet solo usually over the top of the UNLV University Libraries Teresa Denning 11 hill, and quite often, it was taps, probably at the end of the service, they played taps. So, Easter was a very special event for us. Were those two boys, were they Boulderites, or? Boulder City boys—they were grown men. Otto Littler worked for the government, and Tommy Nelson, too, he was electrician for the government. And Otto worked over in the administration building. Otto is dead now, but Tommy is still living here in Boulder City. When the first atomic bomb was exploded, we drove out beyond the Railroad Pass to a high place and parked along the side of the road. And it was to go off at the crack of dawn, so we had to be out there when it was dark. And we waited and waited in the chilly dawn, dark—it was cold. We didn’t dare take our eyes off of the north, and finally we did see the first bright light, and it was so bright—it was brighter than day—and then a red, and then we felt the explosion, and then we could see the familiar cloud that rises after atomic bomb. How long did you watch it? We watched until it disintegrated and blew away. How long did it take? Oh, half hour, I don’t know, maybe more than a half hour. Well, I became an agent for State Farm Insurance Company, and I’m still selling today. It’s been very interesting and educational as well; it kept a little money in my pocket for lunch. Our five children grew up here and attended grade school and high school in Boulder City. And our family tree has a lot of branches on it now—sixteen grandchildren, five great-grandchildren, and the indications are that the tree is still budding. Although we’ve travelled through most of the states and parts of Canada, it’s a real pleasure and it’s a thrill to return to our home area after these trips. Robert found me in Las Vegas in 1934, and he claims he stayed here because I had a piano when we married, and he had UNLV University Libraries Teresa Denning 12 no desire to haul it around. And I am certain, though, that he loved Nevada because he worked here several times before he met me. He paid his first Nevada poll tax in 1928, and he still has a 1934 Nevada poll tax receipt. He says that the Overton Graveyard is his choice of a place to camp while waiting for the resurrection day, and I think I’ll camp beside him. [Recording ends, begins midsentence on other side] We were already used to the heat because I grew up in the heat, but then again had to work at night and sleep during the day, we would take a big towel and wet it and put it over the foot of the bed and then put a little fan behind it and let the fan blow through the towel. That kept them cool while they slept, and then the wife always had to go in and rewet the towel every so often to keep the cool air going while her husband slept. After a while, we did fix up a box and put a fan in it and put packing on the outside we could get an evaporative cooler going, and the water that was used on the cooler then ran into the ground and watered whatever plants we had. In our first house on Avenue F, we didn’t plant any lawn because we were only going to be there just a few months—there was no need in planting a lawn and then leaving it, but after forty years, here we are still. When we did move over to California Street, we did plant a lawn. We planted palm trees and (unintelligible), and an apricot tree and peach trees and almond trees, and then we also have a little garden out in the back where we had tomatoes and we had some strawberries. We always that when we raised radishes, they cost three dollars apiece because it took so much water to keep them alive and grow them. And then the birds always ate what Swiss chard we could grow, so it was hard to raise a garden. What other places did you live in Boulder City? UNLV University Libraries Teresa Denning 13 The F Street house and at 663 California Street. We moved there in about the latter part of 1936, I guess it was, and we stayed there until we moved to Denver Street. We moved here on October the 22nd, 1952. Well, all these houses were government-owned, right, for the workers that were at the dam? No, the house on (Unintelligible) Street was government-owned, and the government owned it then when we moved into it. The rent was very low, but the government wanted to get out of the housing business, so they sold the houses and then when they sold the city, they sold the houses, and we bought our house here (unintelligible) land. You must have seen a lot of changes in the valley in the year you drove back and forth to work? Oh, it certainly has grown up, especially along the highway. When I first started driving back and forth, there was no Henderson out there at all, and when you got from the top of the hill at Railroad Pass, you could see clear to Las Vegas and practically no slowdown at all for traffic. Changes in Las Vegas—the homes there used to be all small homes. A few of the wealthier people had large homes, but all of the small homes had small square feet, oh, maybe a twenty-by-thirty foot house, and always built up the wood with wood siding and sometimes just rolled grouping on the top. They usually didn’t have any heat except maybe a coal and wood stove. I know that we used to buy coal to keep warm during the winter, wood wherever you could find it—not too many fireplaces, and the cooling was with evaporative coolers whenever you could find one. When I was working, I remember the only cooling we had was about a ten-inch fan, and we could have that running as much as we wanted. We put it down on our feet, and that kept your feet cool, and if you’re cool on your feet, you’re cool all over. But up near the ceiling, it UNLV University Libraries Teresa Denning 14 was 110 degrees, so it was warm part way, and cool the other part, and just the fan doesn’t keep you too cool either in the way we judge coolness today. One thing we used to do on Saturday night besides dancing out at Lorenzi’s Park—they had a real nice dance hall out there. Other nights, we would drive uptown and sit to the side of the sidewalk on Fremont Street and watch the drunks go by. And of course, that was not a very good thing to do, but it was fun, and there was not much other activity to do. Well, sounds fun. When you were living in Boulder City, what other entertainment was there besides the square dancing? Well, during the summer for the kids—well, for the grownups, too, I took it one year—the Red Cross always had swim programs. Anybody who wanted to could get into a swim program, and it seemed to me that they went longer than two weeks—at least we had an awful lot of fun—classes for all ages, and all of my kids took all of the classes as far as they could go, even to the lifesaving classes. I just took the one—I wasn’t a very good swimmer, a lot to learn. Were these classes all at the lake? All of them were at the lake at that time. Yes, we didn’t have a pool uptown till much later than that. There’s trailer parks and camping areas at the lake now—do you know how long they’ve been there? There was one parking area, not the big one that’s privately owned, but the National Park Service did have a campground down there, and it’s been down there for as long as I can remember. You just drive into a space, and that’s it. Well, Boulder City was government-owned up until, oh, around 1958, and I understand you were on the charter committee? UNLV University Libraries Teresa Denning 15 Oh, yes, yes. I was elected to the unofficial charter committee, and this was at the time when the government was going to turn over the city to the citizens so that we would have our own private government. The unofficial charter committee worked on a charter for Boulder City, and then when it was time to present it to the people, then we were reelected and were called then the official charter committee, and then they were the ones who presented the charter to the city, and it was voted upon to use that as the charter. So then the town became self-supporting? Yes. It became owned by the city, and it was called Boulder City, and it is a town that has its own government—it’s a city manager-type town, a city council. We have a mayor who is one of the city’s councilmen, and the city council hires a city manager who actually knows that work. The mayor is just the figurehead who meets the dignitaries and that type of thing. He has his own occupation otherwise. Well, what changes have you noticed in Boulder City? Do you have any idea when they got their first high school? You used to take the kids back and forth to Las Vegas to school—do you know the Boulder City High School was built? Before the new high school was built, they were going to school up in the old building, and gradually, they added mobile homes and used those for classrooms and then when the building started to be used down there, they would add just the freshman class one year. Then the next year they added sophomore and then junior and senior each year till they finally got a whole high school here, but it wasn’t all of sudden; it was year by year. The date, I can’t remember. I bought that old truck in 1938, so it was after ’38 when it was built. I guess I should say around 1940, about the time we started the high school here. But they always has an elementary school? UNLV University Libraries Teresa Denning 16 Always had, yes. At first, they didn’t have the building; that had to be built by the government, and it was built right after the government came into town, but the first classes, I’m sure, were held in just homes and so forth till we had a place. Your husband worked on the dam, am I right? Yes. When he first started, he went up as a—goodness, I think it was a carpenter, ‘cause he wanted a job, and that was the only job that was open, so he went out as a carpenter. And then he soon got a job in his trade, which was an electrician. And yes, he worked on the dam for twenty years. He retired in about the end of 1965. He was an electrician for quite a long while, and he was a general foreman, and he was general foreman for twenty years. And that job, they worked ten days on the shift and had four days off, and then they rotated the shift around the clock, so you never could depend on doing anything at a certain time because your husband was alway