Transcript of interview with Jack Cornell by Richard Fesler, February 18, 1979

UNLV University Libraries Jack Cornell i An Interview with Jack W. Cornell An Oral History Conducted by Richard Fesler 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 Jack Cornell ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2017 UNLV University Libraries Jack Cornell 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 Jack Cornell iv Abstract On February 18, 1979, Richard Fesler interviewed Jack W. Cornell (born 1918 in Manhattan, Nevada) about his experiences living in Nevada. The two first discuss historical buildings, including the Nye County Courthouse, and Cornell describes his family background and the different locations at which his ancestors lived. Cornell then talks about his experiences as an airplane mechanic for the Army Air Corps during World War II and the different countries he would visit during that time. The two also discuss the effects of the Depression, Cornell’s work in automotive body repair, and his recreational activities. Cornell also describes an experience in which he assisted an air escort for President Roosevelt, and he also describes when he witnessed one of the atomic tests. The interview concludes with Cornell’s thoughts on how the rural area in Manhattan has changed over time. UNLV University Libraries Jack Cornell 1 This is a oral history interview for Dr. Roske’s office, History 117. The informant is Jack Cornell. Today’s date is February 18th, 1979. The time will be eight o’clock, 2000 hours. The address is 801 Adams, Boulder City, Nevada. My name is Richard Fesler, 801 Adams, Boulder City, Nevada, and the interview will be taking place at one of my cohort’s working. Were you born in Southern Nevada? Well, I was born in Manhattan, Nevada, which is considered to be Southern Nevada. I think it’s more central, but they do call Tonopah as in Southern Nevada, and that’s forty-five miles north of Tonopah. Okay. Do you remember any places or buildings of that area that would be of historical reference or interest to us? Well, the only really significant building that I know of would be the old courthouse in Belmont. It’s the original Nye County Courthouse, and it’s still standing, and it’s being considered, now, I guess it has already been considered for a state park; they’re going to make a state park out of it. Is it going to be listed, possibly, as one of the historical sites of this area? I’m sure it will be. When you were born, was your family situated in the rural section of Manhattan, or was it within the city limits? Well, Manhattan was a very small little town, it’s just a little mining town. And, oh, when I was born, there probably weren’t over 500 people in the town. We lived in town. Okay, and is there any parts of the city that are still standing that is still usable, or is it a ghost town, or what? Well, they went through a deteriorating stage right after World War II, it—oh, the population dropped off probably to thirty-five, forty people, but in the recent years, people have been buying UNLV University Libraries Jack Cornell 2 property there and moving back in, in the summertime. They like the elevation and the community for a getaway place. And you can’t buy property there now, in town. What’s the terrain, the geological—is it mountains, hills, trees, desert, what? Well, it’s mountainous; it’s up in the Toiyabe Range. The elevation in Manhattan is 7,500 feet above sea level. It’s right in a little old canyon going up from Smokey Valley. It has pinyon trees, pinyon and cedar trees, and quite heavily wooded in that area. Okay, now where did your father and mother come from, and state the city and what you know about their ancestral movements? My father was a descendant of Ezra Cornell, who was the founder of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He and his father and mother were pioneer people who moved from the New York area into Minnesota where my father was born, and after he was born, his two sisters and dad and mother moved to Deadwood City, North Dakota, and they lived there. And I don’t know what they were doing, but my dad’s mother died there and is buried in Deadwood. And the reason I know this, I was just a little tiny boy, I remember the sheriff of Deadwood came through to a little ranch we were living on, and he told my dad that he had been the pallbearer for this mother’s funeral in Deadwood, but he was only eight years old when she died. And then they migrated down into Utah where they, I don’t know exactly how they came about it, but they raised a bunch of horses, or acquired a bunch of horses—I believed they raised them. And they finally, when they got enough horses, they drove them to Three Kids and my grandfather into Los Angeles where they sold them. And at that time, my dad was getting up to be a young man, and he got bit by the gold bug, and he moved into Nevada where all the gold booms were coming on. He moved into Bullfrog and Rawhide and Candelaria and Goldfield and all these—he made every (unintelligible) so he was in Manhattan shortly after it was discovered, and that’s where he UNLV University Libraries Jack Cornell 3 met my mother. And they were married in Manhattan. He was older than my mother by several years, and my mother was born on a ranch right out of Belmont in Nye County when Belmont was a county seat in Nevada of Nye County. She was one of four kids, and they were all born right out on the ranch in regular pioneer style. My grandmother (unintelligible) crossed the Atlantic on a sailing vessel, and she, had her tell me about being on deck in a terrific storm, and she got down inside of a coil of rope on the deck to keep from being washed overboard. She wasn’t supposed to be up there, but she was a very arrogant, self-centered little old girl, I guess—she wanted to see what the storm was like, and she said she got up there, was darn near scared to death. She survived that, and she had lost her arm when she was a little girl, nine years old, in England, and she didn’t have any parents. I don’t really know what had happened to them; I imagined they died, but her aunt got her a passage over into the east coast, and when she arrived there, then someway she came into Nevada and moved up to Belmont where she went to work for a well-to-do family known as the Ernsts, E-R-N-S-T, family. She took care of their kids and got a housekeeper for them where she met my grandfather and they were married. He was quite a bit older than she was. He had come across from Germany as a sailor on a sailing vessel and had gone around (unintelligible), South America, and while they were in San Francisco, he jumped ship, which I guess was an accepted practice in those days. That was a way a lot of the people got in this country. But he then took off from there and went into Virginia City, which was a booming town in Nevada, then, at that time. And he worked as a woodworker; he was a cabinetmaker, and I don’t think he went underground very much, but he did work with the (unintelligible) mines and he helped perfect the square set stope method of mining up there by his knowledge in woodworking and design. He worked with the fella that actually invented the square set stope method of mining, and evidently he made a few bucks out of that, and he moved UNLV University Libraries Jack Cornell 4 up, then, to Belmont where he met my grandmother, and they were married, and they moved onto this little ranch, or two little ranches, pretty good ranch. And shortly after they had four kids, my mother, her sister, and two brothers. And my grandfather died; he had cancer and died, leaving my grandmother with the four little kids. And she was a pretty good pioneer-type persona, and she stayed right on the ranch and raised them. My mother’s sister is still living in Tonopah. She’s Rose Walter, and she’s been interviewed many, many times by Nevada Magazine and everybody; she’s quite a prominent senior citizen up there. She’s, back last (unintelligible) days in Tonopah, she was queen of the days up there. She’s quite an old lady. She lived in Belmont up to about two years ago when she finally moved out. She’s way up in her eighties. She lived all alone up then after her family moved away and her husband died. But that brings us about up to what, then I was born in Manhattan. Is your parents still living? No, they’re both dead. Okay. And you were born in Manhattan, Nevada here. November 25th, 1918. Okay. Shortly after World War I and a few days. And you were educated here in Nevada? Yes, I went to a high school in Manhattan, graduated. Okay. High school—is that twelfth grade or eighth grade? Twelfth grade. Okay, my dad only had to go through eighth grade. Oh yeah? UNLV University Libraries Jack Cornell 5 When he went through school. He graduated in ’27 or ’28, and all he had to do was go through eighth grade. And (unintelligible) graduation, he got a high school graduation. Was yours a segregated school, or was it one-classroom type? It was a three-room classroom; we had four grades in each room. Okay. What was your graduating class? How many was in it? Seven. Seven? Seven kids. Was the school there in Manhattan? Manhattan, yes. And all the kids from Manhattan in the rural area? Well, pretty much from Manhattan. They didn’t travel around much. Every little town had their own school in those days. Okay. Do you remember anything historical that happened in your community while you were growing up? Well, not much except the Depression came along when I was just came in to high school, and that’s about the only thing. We did have, coming out of the Depression, we had all the reconstruction times, the CCC camps moved in, such as that. Okay, we’ll get to the Depression here in a couple minutes. Now, about your education, are there any of your old schools or any of your educational facilities still standing, or at least have you gone back for graduation or do you know anything about your Manhattan area as far as schooling is right now? UNLV University Libraries Jack Cornell 6 The school building is still there, but they don’t have a school there anymore. They bus whatever kids need to go to school that live there to Tonopah. To Tonopah? But the building is still standing; it’s empty, but it’s standing. They had a school reunion last Memorial Day, I guess it was, up there. Unfortunately, I had to work and couldn’t get up. School reunion—are you talking about all the kids in the school or just the graduating class? That was everybody that ever attended school that could come. It was quite a deal; they had about 350 people, I guess, at the reunion. Do you know when the school was finally closed down and they started busing to Tonopah? It was after I left there; let’s see, I think it was probably, well, it was during the war, I think, during World War II. Okay, now why don’t you give us a brief idea of your military training and your background and some of the places you were posted? I enlisted in the Army Air Corps—that’s what it was at the time, now it’s the Air Force—but I enlisted, I think it was February 7th, 1941, just before World War II started, and we—do you want me to tell you about my basic training and where I was? Yes, explain where you went to be inducted into the service, where you signed the papers, how did you get to wherever you were once your basic training, took the oath, and your schooling from then through as much as you want to say about your military career? Well, I enlisted in Reno at the post office building, is where the recruiter was. He put me on a train, and I went down to San Francisco, and I was sworn in in San Francisco. And then I went to Hamilton Field, which was an Army air base on the Bay there in San Francisco. I took my Basic UNLV University Libraries Jack Cornell 7 Training there, boot camp there, and right out of boot camp, I went to airplane mechanic school, which was at Glendale, California, was the Curtiss-Wright School of Aeronautics there. I graduated from that, and when I was in school, my outfit that I had been assigned to at Hamilton Field has been shipped to a brand new air base up in Paine Field in Washington, up at Edward, Washington, was the brand new air base. So, when I got out of school, I travelled up there, and I had only been back up there about, oh, a little over a month when Pearl Harbor came along, and we were in the war. So, from there, my outfit travelled, went down to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where we trained pilots. We had P-39 airplanes and we trained pilots for quite a while. Did you train as a pilot, or did you train pilots to do a particular act for you? I was just a mechanic; all I did was maintain the airplanes that the mechanic (unintelligible) any pilots were training in. They were training to be combat pilots. Okay. And part of the outfit—we split up then. I stayed at Baton Rouge, and part of the outfit went up to the Aleutian Islands that, at that time, was the old 57th Fighter Squadron, 54th Fighter Group that went up the Aleutians. And then, part of the bunch that were left went to England, and they formed the 350th Fighter Group on England. And so one day they just loaded us all on trains and we went up to Fort Dix, New Jersey, the ones that were left on Baton Rouge, and we got our troopships from there, New York, and went over to Casablanca. And we went in on the invasion of North Africa at Casablanca. We were—oh, they’d already secured the land when we went in, ‘cause we weren’t combat troops; we were just mechanics. Maintenance. Maintenance mechanics, but we hung around Casablanca for, oh, several months, just mostly stockpiling gasoline, they’d bring gasoline in, and we’d bring that in in five-gallon cans and UNLV University Libraries Jack Cornell 8 fifty-five-gallon drums, and we were just making big, huge stockpiles of gasoline, and finally our airplanes arrive from England. They flew down, and the rest of the mechanics that had gone up there joined us there, and we went into combat in, oh, about the time that General Romo of the German Army gave General Patton his first whooping up there on the Kasserine Pass. We were at a little airfield up there, and the Germans overran us and we had to evacuate and we left airplanes—we had to burn them, just (unintelligible) on the ground, just had nothing wrong with them than flat tires on them. But they were shelling the airfield when we left, but then we went ahead on up to Algiers, and I was just outside of Tunis when the African campaign ended. In fact, I went into Tunis about the second day after it fell, and there was thousands and thousands and thousands of Italian prisoners of war just marching four abreast down the roads and men giving themselves up. And after that, we flew coastal patrol along the Mediterranean with our airplanes, and we flew air cover for convoys out over the Mediterranean. And we flew cover for the invasion of Sicily, and when that was over, they had secured the island of Corsica. We went over there, my outfit, and took Corsica, and we flew fighter bombing missions in Italy from Corsica. We were quite a ways behind the German lines, and that way we were close, had close access, and consequently, we were bombed quite a bit, because they didn’t like us bring there. But we stuck it out, and finally, we went into—a detachment of our outfit—went down to Naples, and we flew cover, then, for the invasion of Anzio, when they invaded Anzio in Italy. And some of our planes were shot down over Anzio, and we—I didn’t get in on the deal, but several of our mechanics went in one time and made a landing change right under the nose of the Germans there in the airplane, and they flew it out, but crash-landed up there on Anzio. It was quite a hairy experience. And then we just finally came over into the mainland of Italy and followed the troops right on up the mainland, and we were at Pisa, Italy when the war ended. UNLV University Libraries Jack Cornell 9 Okay, now how did you get home from the war from Pisa, Italy? How did you get back to Nevada? Well, I came on (unintelligible), just on a troopship, ‘cause it wasn’t like when we went over. It was kind of a luxury-type (unintelligible)—we came home on a Liberty ship, right up on the deck of a Liberty ship, but it was pretty fantastic. And we landed at Camp Patrick Henry there in West Virginia—well, that’s where we went, got off the ship, we went up to there. And then they shipped me to Salt Lake City, and I was discharged at Salt Lake. And while I was at Baton Rouge, I was married to a gal from Baton Rouge while we were stationed at Baton Rouge, so then she came out to Nevada and met me in Reno. And we visited with my family, they had a little ranch up at old Belmont. And we visited there for a couple of months and got to know each other again, and then I went to school, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Okay, then what was the community of Belmont or Manhattan? What was the community view on the war and you being in the war and the young people being in the war? Well, they were a lot different than the people nowadays, you know, there was an awful lot more patriotism, it seems like, in those days than there is now. And everybody was pretty well behind the war effort. There was no disgruntled (unintelligible) about business at all. Glad to have you home and all the other— Oh yes, tickled to death and, you know, glad and—even though I wasn’t a hero, I was the hero that everybody else (unintelligible). Yes. Okay, now we’ve got the rest of your residential life and occupation there on the fact sheet, and now what we need to know is we know what your occupations are. Now, you were talking about the Depression—what was the community view on the Depression, and how did the community handle the Depression when you were still in school in your UNLV University Libraries Jack Cornell 10 community? And we’ll speak on this for a couple minutes, and we’ll move on to some other areas. The Depression didn’t hit our little town very hard at all. In fact, we did real well. We weren’t very affluent people at any time, you know, we were pretty much (unintelligible) all the time (unintelligible), which we were satisfied with because we didn’t know any better. Now, you were saying that your family was a mining family, or? Yes, my dad was a miner. And the mines did well. They never shut down during the Depression. In fact, we lived better, really, during the Depression than we did before that; in fact, my dad had a lease on a gold property, and he made quite a little bit of money. In fact, it was darn nice living during the Depression. Well, that’s good. So your community really didn’t even feel the Depression? No, we knew it was going on, you know, if you left that area and went anywhere, you could see, you know, people that were really suffering from it. And we knew what was going on, but as far as the little community there, it wasn’t that bad. Did you feel any effects of the presidential workforce in different labor camps and the conservation camps? Yes, they had a CCC camp move right into Manhattan. In fact, I have quite a few friends that came in there, and they stayed after, you know, they— They came in from different areas, such as San Francisco and the bigger populated areas? Yes, mostly from the east coast. East coast? Yes, that’s where the people, the kids came from—they were just young kids, and if I remember right, they made five dollars a month, is what they were paid, and I think they sent their families UNLV University Libraries Jack Cornell 11 twenty dollars a month or something. But anyway, the kids had five dollars a month, which would buy them (unintelligible) and that’s about it. They didn’t have a whole lot of money to spend, but the community accepted them real well. In fact, we really enjoyed them. Do you remember where they were located from in your community? Were they located in the community, outside the community, on a ranch, or were they shipped in each day, or how were they taken care of? No, they were right in town. They had just a bunch of tents pitched up a canyon right on the edge of town, believe what it was, but they had the area there, and then they had it fixed up. They had a ball field, and we played ball with them, and that was about it. We were glad to have ‘em, because they did an awful lotta good work in the community. They built a lotta roads and maintained a lotta things that, you know, there was no tax money for. They really kept us, really upgraded the community. Some of the structures that were made by them, such as your hitching posts and curbings, double curbings that they made, bridges and some of the extra roadways—are those still standing or still usable there in your area? Oh yeah. They built a new road all the way from the old town of Manhattan up to Belmont, and most of that road is still in use, and it’s a good road. It’s a dirt road, but it’s still passable, unusual. Okay, were you married in Nevada, or when you and your wife came from back east, did you stay in Nevada after your schooling in Tulsa, Oklahoma? Well, no. When I finished my schooling in Tulsa, we moved down to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, back, but to be near my wife’s folks, and I apprenticed myself into a body and fender shop where I learned the body and fender trade and automobile painting. UNLV University Libraries Jack Cornell 12 What year would this be approximately? About 1947 when we moved down there. Okay. And then about, oh, a little over a year after that, we moved back to Tonopah, and I went to work for the Ford garage there in Tonopah. [Audio cuts out] Okay, we’ve changed tapes. We’re now on side two, and the last question that we were talking about before I was interrupted about taking a shower was, we were just finished talking about his working in Tonopah at the Ford garage. Anyway, I worked at the Ford garage about—and my main reason for it, coming back to Tonopah was that my brothers and I had gone in partners with my folks on a ranch that we had bought out in Smokey Valley. And I would work at my job and provide money to help with the ranch, and my younger brother stayed on the ranch with my parents, and they worked the ranch and we worked together that way for several years. Was this a cattle ranch, a horse ranch, or what? It was cattle. How successful was it during that time? Oh, pretty tough go. The (unintelligible) price was very low, and the ranch wasn’t that great a piece of property. But we did manage to pay it off and got a clear title to it, and we worked until my parents died, and then we finally just sold the place to settle up the inheritance and so on. Okay, now where would you be taking this cattle, for slaughter, or would you sell it for meat, for beef, or where was the actual marketplace for this farming? Well, buyers would come through and buy them, and— UNLV University Libraries Jack Cornell 13 Were they back east buyers? No, they were, oh, from Fallon and places in the area, and Yerington has always had a slaughterhouse there, and some of our cattle would go there and down to Los Angeles, and at the end of the feedlots. And of course, they were just range cattle; you didn’t have regular cattle that would go right to slaughter, so they would be bought by people who had feed lots, and they would buy them and fatten them and then— What was the going price for, let’s say, a calf that was going to go to the feedlot? I can remember many times getting no more than six cents a pound for them. Okay. Were you ever active in any type of politics, or however were you involved in politics while you were growing up or since you’ve moved here to Southern Nevada? Oh, no more than just I’ve always voted, and I’d get into arguments, is all. But (unintelligible) politics. Okay, have you ever been involved in any historical happenings here within Nevada? Earlier your mentioned something about you flew escort for Roosevelt from Casablanca, and also you mentioned your graduating class came to Hoover Dam for the topping-off ceremonies. Well, that was before the topping—while they were topping the dam off, it was, I think they were making their final core when we came down in 1936, and we spent two days down here in Las Vegas, little old town, wasn’t very big then compared to what it is now. On these topping off, is the dam as it was then, or was it the full stage, or did they add on some later? Is the dam as it was when you’d first seen it in graduating class? No, they weren’t quite up the roadway yet. They were almost up to what the top is now—I think they had one more layer to go across the whole thing, way. UNLV University Libraries Jack Cornell 14 Okay. Do you remember anything significant about Las Vegas when you first visited the southern part of Nevada? No, it was a big city to me, though, you know, came out of little old Manhattan, and that was quite a time. They had several theaters, and we really enjoyed it. How did you travel on that field trip? Did you come down on a bus or a truck or what? Just private cars, just several carloads got together and came down. Well, that’d be close to about a four-hour, six-hour drive, wouldn’t it? Oh yes, about six hours. Coming through Tonopah? Yes, it was right in the dead of winter, too, and there was snow on the ground in Tonopah. So, when we got down here, we enjoyed the good weather, too. It was nice down here. I can imagine. Now, could you elaborate on your flying escort for Roosevelt in Casablanca? Well, all I know is that he was on his way to a meeting with Churchill at Casablanca, and we were, at that time, were flying up north near Algiers. As he went over our territory, then our fighter pilots just all went around his airplane and flew escort to him (unintelligible) relieved him, and he went on in. That’s all I know about it. In fact, we didn’t know. We just knew that it was somebody important; we didn’t even know it was Roosevelt until it was over. What type of plane were you escorting? Was it a C-140 or C-131 or what? I don’t really know. Of course, I was on the ground—don’t remember what kind of airplane it was. The main old airplane back in those days was a C-47, so that was probably something along like that. All right. Now, you mentioned you were a member of a social club, the Elks. Could you elaborate when you joined and where and how you’ve been associated with them? UNLV University Libraries Jack Cornell 15 Well, I’m kind of an inactive member. I’ve belonged about three years now. I joined her and Boulder City, and mostly had joined because I didn’t know any local people—in the confinement of our jobs, we don’t get to meet so many of the townspeople, so that gave us a chance to meet somebody and talk to somebody and talk to somebody besides kids a long time. So we, being employed at the children’s home, and now on a twenty-four hour basis, it doesn’t give us much time for socializing, so that’s the main reason that I joined. I also belong to the Eagles, the Lodge in Henderson. I transferred my memberships from Yerington down here on that. I’m a past president of the Eagles Lodge, and so we actually are more active than the Eagles Lodge because the people in the Henderson Lodge I’ve known for many years and through our association through the state. Also, was your dad ever a member of any type of organization, such as in this community, while you were growing up? No, not that I know of. He was always interested in organized labor. He was quite a fan of organized labor, and he was active wherever there was a union activity while he was active in that. Okay. Is gambling an important recreational activity for you and your family, and do you remember if there gambling in your community at home, and (unintelligible)? Well, no, I don’t pay much attention to the gambling. I enjoy gambling, but I realize the futility of it, so I don’t really do very much gambling. And as far as being any gambling in Manhattan, outside of a few slot machines, I don’t think there was any. There might have been a poker game or two in local saloons, but I don’t remember of any gambling. If anybody wanted to gamble, they had to go to Tonopah, to the Tonopah Club. Okay, the Tonopah Club, was that just the regular casino or dinner club or what? UNLV University Libraries Jack Cornell 16 Just a (unintelligible) casino kind of a deal. Okay. Now, what type of recreation do you go for? If I remember right, you mentioned something that you’re a golfer as well as a fisher? I used to do a lot of fishing, but since I started playing golf, I’ve lost a lot of my interest in fishing. I like to stream fish, mountain stream, and mainly down in this country, don’t have much access to mountain stream, so I haven’t done much fishing—oh, occasionally when we’d take our kids up in the mountains on camping trips, I fish. I always have a license just in the hopes that I might get to fish someday. Okay, when you were growing up, where was a good fishing hole that you and your dad or yourself would go fish at? All the streams around Monitor Valley and Smokey Valley are great mountain streams for fishing, and Pine Creek and Bonnie Creek—Bonnie Creek was the ranch that my mother was born on. It used to be fantastic fishing before they had fishing limits or paid much attention to fishing limits. You could go out and get fifty or sixty fish without any trouble, and had plenty of time to cook ‘em. You arrived in Southern Nevada in 1971? Yes, moved down here from Carson City. All right. Do you remember anything about the early aboveground atomic testing other than what you see in the papers? Do you remember any community feelings or anything like this? I witnessed one. I saw one go off and saw the mushroom cloud and the whole bit. I was on the highway between Bishop, California and Tonopah and the cloud drifted right up past us, and it UNLV University Libraries Jack Cornell 17 was probably a good many miles from us, but it was a humungous cloud, you know, mushroom cloud. Approximately, do you remember the date, the time, the day, the year? I don’t remember the year; of course, it was right in when they were doing it, but it was about ten o’clock in the morning, and, you know, there were several hundred miles up from the blast, and right at ten o’clock in the bright sunlight, the flash was evident, plain—it was just like a flashing of lightning (unintelligible). So, nobody thought much about the things, you know. They were led to believe that they were safe, so nobody paid much attention. We used to fuel ‘em, you know, you could fuel ‘em every time they sent one off no matter—even at night, they’d wake you up, you know, you could run the flash and be brilliant (unintelligible), I’ve sat up at night while I was in Bishop, and this would be around, oh, in the ’55, along in there. We got a phone call, we’ll be right with ya. Okay, here we’re back, and he’s just finishing up on the talking about the testing of the atomic bombs. I don’t know much more to say about it, that we, as I said, they were very interesting, and I know a lot of people, even over there in Bishop, would find out when they were gonna happen, and they’d rent an airplane and get up over the White Mountains and really get up high where they could really watch it ‘em, you know, and it was quite a brilliant sight. Also during that time, wasn’t there a big controversy about the atomic testing killing sheep and livestock in the area and stuff like that? Well, we would hear about that, but then,