Transcript of interview with Dorothy Ross Fletcher by Sharon Hildebrandt, June 26, 1975

UNLV University Libraries Dorothy Fletcher i An Interview with Dorothy Ross Fletcher An Oral History Conducted by Sharon Hildebrandt 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 Dorothy Fletcher ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2018 UNLV University Libraries Dorothy Fletcher 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 Dorothy Fletcher iv Abstract On June 26, 1975, Sharon Hildebrandt interviewed Dorothy Ross Fletcher (born 1936 in Las Vegas, Nevada) about growing up in and living in Southern Nevada. Fletcher first talks about that various towns in which she lived while growing up before discussing the schools she attended. She also discusses the changes in schools, her involvement in politics, church activity, gambling as a recreational activity, and prominent visitors who came to Las Vegas. Fletcher also talks about living in Nevada during World War II, the atomic testing, environmental changes and extreme weather, and the social changes in Las Vegas. The latter part of the interview involves discussion of real estate, the introduction of air conditioning for cooling, changes on the Las Vegas Strip, recreational activities available to youth in Las Vegas and the increase in the nonnative population. UNLV University Libraries Dorothy Fletcher 1 Informant is Dorothy Ross Fletcher. The date is June 26th, 1975 at four p.m. The place, 1400 Ingraham, Las Vegas, Nevada. The collector is Sharon Hildebrandt, 2920 East Jansen Avenue. The project is Nevada History, Oral Interview: Life of a Native Las Vegan. Were you born in Southern Nevada? Yes, I was. I was born in the old Las Vegas Hospital up on, oh, I think it’s Ogden and Ninth or Tenth or something like that—Eighth maybe. They closed the doors for the first time last year simply because it wasn’t paying. It was a private hospital, and I was born there. Why did you or your family come here originally? My mother and father came to Southern Nevada in 1928. They came to Goodsprings. My father had to come to a dry climate because of his health. He had been injured in the First World War and had very poor health the rest of his life because of his injuries, and it was recommended that he go to a dry climate. So, he found a job with, I think it was the Yellow Jacket Mine in Goodsprings—Pop Simons from Jean owned that mine, and he put him to work there as a machinist in the mine, keeping the machines running in the mill part of the mine. And so, they arrived in Goodsprings in 1928, and then a year later, they moved into Las Vegas, into town. How many times have you moved in Southern Nevada? I’ve actually only lived in two different locations in Southern—well, no, that’s not true either because we lived in Goodsprings. After Mother and Daddy moved into town, they bought a lot in North Las Vegas, and then they built a little house and then work was so unsteady in those days that they moved back and forth. They moved back to Goodsprings for one year—I know the year that I was, oh, I guess about three—I was three, ‘cause I had my tonsils out while we were out at Goodsprings. And so, we moved out there for a little while, and then we moved back into town. And then, when I was five, in 1941, we moved out to Nelson, Nevada, which is also a little UNLV University Libraries Dorothy Fletcher 2 mining town down in the, well, below Searchlight. And my dad also worked for Pop Simon. He owned that mine, too, and he worked down there. And we all moved out and we had a house out there and we lived there. And then when we moved back, we stayed in our house in North Las Vegas until I got married. So, I’ve lived in Goodsprings, Nelson, the North Las Vegas, and then the house we’re living in now—that’s four different places. What schools did you attend? Well, I started kindergarten over at the Washington Street School in North Las Vegas, which is now boarded up. I think they use it for storage or something. I started kindergarten there and then we moved to Nelson, and I didn’t get to finish until maybe March, April, and May in that school. And then the next year, the new school was ready, which is now the Jefferson Street School, and it, too, is obsolete. They used it for Title I programs, the school district does, and for storage and for different things that they need rooms for. So, I went to that school first through fourth grade, and that was as high as the school went. And when you got out of the fourth grade, you had to go uptown to the old Fifth Street Grammar School, which is now—well, part of it’s the federal building on Las Vegas Boulevard South, formerly known as Fifth Street, and the other part, I think, is part of the county annex or something like that. It’s owned by the county. And I went to school fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth up there—those were the years before junior high—and then ninth through twelfth over at Las Vegas High School. Did you ever have any jobs before you were a teacher, like before you got married or anything? Well, I got married right out of high school, as soon as, like a week after I graduated. And then I had my family and helped my husband get through college and this sort of thing. And then probably my first job other than dime store and ushering and theater and stuff like that that I did UNLV University Libraries Dorothy Fletcher 3 in high school—my first job was one summer, it was the only summer job, I came back and we were living in Georgia, and I came back for the summer to show my family my new little baby, and I went to work at the city hall in North Las Vegas. It was a brand new city hall, and they were very proud of it, and I was the switchboard operator, even though I knew nothing about a switchboard, but I learned real quick. And I worked there for about two months, and then another job that I had a few years later was with the Motor Vehicle Division, selling license plates one summer. And I did that also because we needed to have some extra money, any my husband was finishing up, he was getting his credits in education over and above his bachelors, and so while he was going to school, I was helping to put bread on the table that summer. And those are the only jobs that I’ve had other than, you know, as a teacher. Have you noticed any growth or changes in the teaching field? You mean since I started? Well, see, I’ve only been teaching five years. How about since your children went to school in there, too, or even since you did up to now? Oh, heavens yes, I hope so. I really think it was kinda substandard when I was going to school, when I stop and think about it. The buildings alone are so much nicer now and so much more suited for education for the learning process than they used to be. I know up in the Fifth Street Grammar School, there was no air conditioning at all—not even swamp coolers, which is the water evaporating-type cooler. There was nothing. Fortunately, they had, in almost all the rooms, big windows, and we opened our windows up, but we also didn’t go to school past about the 25th of May every year; that was the end of school because it was just simply too hot. And of course, the new schools, like the one that I’m teaching in now, is a beautiful school. It’s all, of course, air conditioned, and it’s carpeted, and it’s very colorful, and it’s a place I like to go to, and I think UNLV University Libraries Dorothy Fletcher 4 the children do, too. It’s an attractive school, and I think the quality of teaching is better, naturally, because we have better teaching training institutions that teachers come out of now, and I don’t know—yes, certainly. I’m really proud to be part of the teaching profession now. And like I say, my elementary—I had never gone into a library until I was in the eighth grade. There was a library at Fifth Street Grammar School, but it was only for the eighth grade students, and I didn’t even know what a library was. We had a little old dinky library down where the courthouse is now, city library, but my mother didn’t allow me to chase around Downtown, so I never went down to it, and we lived in North Las Vegas. And that was a long way away from it. So, I think the fact that first graders—even kindergarten children—are exposed to libraries and all the facilities that they offer. And the exposure is so much greater now than it used to be. So, surely, it’s a lot better now than it used to be, thank goodness. You and Monty were married in Las Vegas, weren’t you? Right. Where were you married out here? Well, we were married at the First Baptist Church Downtown, Ninth and Bridger Street—still down there, believe it or not. Is that the church you still go to now? Yes. In fact, our daughter and her husband were married in that church last summer—last spring, I guess it was, a year ago. So, church activity is an important part of your life? Yes, probably the most important part outside of our home and the activities that take place in our home. Both my husband and I are church workers. In fact, this week, I’m involved in teaching bible school, which I wonder every year how I get myself into—(Laughs)—it’s fun. UNLV University Libraries Dorothy Fletcher 5 Were you active in politics ever, or are you now? No, I’m not active in politics, but I’m certainly interested in it, and I am a voted, have been a registered voter since I was twenty-one. We both, when we registered for the very first time, registered nonpartisan because we didn’t know anything about either one of the parties enough about it to know which one we wanted to belong to. And we got a little bit weary during the primaries of voting for dog catcher and unimportant offices—not the major offices. You know, if you’re nonpartisan, you can’t vote on the Democratic ticket on the primary or the Republican—you just vote for the issues that are involved and this sort of thing. So, I got tired of that. I wanted to have a say on who was going to be eliminated and who go to stay on. So, about our third time around at the voting poll, we decided that it was time to make a decision, and we both registered as Democrats. And are you still registered Democrats? You bet, but we both for the man and the issue, not the party, and that’s why we haven’t gotten involved in all these political functions and whatnot. Okay. Were or are you a member of a social club or other special interest group, anything you can think of? You know, it sounds really dull and boring, but no, we’re not. I’m not a joiner; I don’t like to join things just for the sake of joining. It doesn’t turn me on—I like to be home when I get through work. I like to come home, and that’s where I like to stay. And when we go out to activities, it’s church activities. Really, if you get involved in church activities, you don’t have time to belong to a lot of social clubs. I don’t think I’ve ever belonged to anything except the PTA, of course, when my kids were little. Is or was gambling and important recreational activity for your or your family? UNLV University Libraries Dorothy Fletcher 6 Oh, no. The only time we ever got involved in anything like that was when company came from out of town. My mother and dad would spend about fifty cents in nickels in a slot machine when they would take company up to go through the clubs. And once in a while, when Monty and I, like if we go bowling or go to a movie or something, we’ll stop by and get something to eat, and we like to go to the Showboat and get something to eat, and then maybe put a dollar or so worth in the slot machine. I have had one jackpot on a nickel machine, and I was sillier than any tourist ever was because I got so excited over getting the jackpot that I just kind of embarrassed everybody around me. But it was the very first time, and that just happened last year. But then I don’t put a whole lotta money in. If I get my dollars’ worth in, that’s it. And I took it off pay and took it home. Do you remember the visits of any prominent people to the Las Vegas area since you’ve been here? You know, really, since I’ve been here, oh, well, lately you know, we’ve had presidents come. I think Kennedy came—I didn’t go out to see him, ‘cause I had seen him in Georgia. When my husband was going to the University of George in Athens, he came for a graduation speech as the keynote speaker for a graduation ceremony, and we went, and I took my binoculars, because right then, he was a very, very hot candidate for president. This was, like, 1957, and his name was mentioned as a possible future president and all that, and I had never seen a president before, so I thought I’d go see this guy in case he ever became a president. But I can remember people like, well, Ford and all that stuff, but I had never gone to see them. And that’s only been I the last few years. I don’t really recall anybody. I can remember Roy Rogers and Dale Evans coming to a Helldorado Parade, and I thought that was quite exciting. Probably I got more thrill out of seeing entertainers. UNLV University Libraries Dorothy Fletcher 7 And did a lot of them come when you were growing up? Yes, well of course, they came to the Strip, and that was just then becoming—I know when I was in high school, we had a teenage center, it was really a neat place, and it’s a s shame they tore it down, but it was called the Wildcat Lair, and it was down on the corner of Stewart on Fourth or Third, I think—it was right next to the post office, the old Main Street post office. And we had dances every Saturday night, and they had what they called the Lair Board, which was a group of kids: two sophomores, two freshmen, two juniors, two seniors, and then the director. It was part of the recreation, I think, for the city—in fact, I’m sure it was. And we would go out, like, on a Thursday or Wednesday afternoon after school to a hotel to invite—and this had already been prearranged—to invite an entertainer to come in between the dinner show and the late show, over to the Lair to entertain for us. And of course, we always took a photographer from the Review Journal, and he took a picture of all of us kids standing around Kay Starr or Tony Martin or—I don’t know if Frank Sinatra ever came or no—but I know a lotta groups came, the Weavers came—nobody ever knows about the Weavers, but they were very big in the early fifties. Was that a family of actors? No, it was a singing group, and they were kinda like folk singers. And I think there was one woman and about four men, and they really were neat singers; we liked them. And they loved to come. And really, I don’t remember—of course, as I say, this was all prearranged with, the director had already done this with his stars’ public relations person, and it was all—I don’t know, maybe there were some people that turned us down, but most of the people—and they had to hustle in between shows to get from the Strip all the way Downtown and put on a twenty or thirty-minute thing for us, and then hustle back. And this was on a Saturday night, a busy night. So, those are the kind of people, the entertainers, that really impressed me more than political UNLV University Libraries Dorothy Fletcher 8 people, or—‘cause I don’t really ever remember any political people. Maybe I just wasn’t that politically involved or in tune. Do you remember the 1942 crash of Carole Lombard’s plane? Yes, I do. I sure do, because it happened so close to a little town where I used to live. It happened right out in the hills fairly close to Goodsprings. And I don’t remember Carole Lombard. I’ve seen her movies lately, and I know they’re gonna plan movie of her and Clark Gable and this sort of thing, but we didn’t even go to movies in those days—well, rarely, if at all. I don’t remember movies. But I do remember that crash, and I remember the rescue town going out and how awful it was. And I wasn’t sure who she was other than the fact that she was a big movie star. Of course, I wasn’t but maybe, what, five or six years old at the time. Did you live in Southern Nevada during World War II? I sure did. Do you remember any changes in activities due to the war? Well, yes. In fact, probably my first and most vivid memories of my childhood were connected to the war. Like, we were living Nelson, I told you before, that little town down on the Colorado River—well, it’s Lake Mojave now—in 1941. And my oldest brother was in the Navy then, and he was over stationed in Pearl Harbor. And as far as we knew, he was stationed on The Pennsylvania, the battleship, and as far as we knew, that was where he was when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. And of course, The Pennsylvania was one of the ships that was so badly damaged. So, when that attack came, we didn’t have television; all we had was radio, and isolated in Nelson, of all places. I remember my mother and father were nearly frantic wondering if Albert had been killed or if he was alive or what had happened to him or what was going to happen to him, and I can remember that very vividly. I remember that the cook over in the UNLV University Libraries Dorothy Fletcher 9 cookhouse—see, there were a lotta men that worked out there in that mine and mill that were not married, or if they were, they didn’t have their families with them. And so they kinda had bunkhouse and a cookhouse. And the cook was a Chinese man, and he wouldn’t fire up the stove because every time he did, all the radios had static on them—that’s not the best place in the world to get radio reception, down in the middle of that canyon. So, they didn’t have any hot food for several days until finally, mother found out that Albert had been switched over a week before to an office over on the island, and he was all right. But I can remember my mother getting involved in Red Cross lessons; she’d go off and she’d have her little hat on and learned how to bandage things in case somebody around—well, the worry was, in case that we get attacked, because had blackout curtains—and we had those in school, too. I can remember blackout curtains in school, but you could pull and have all the lights in the place on at night, and nobody could see from the outside whether there were any lights or not. My mother joined the Navy Mothers Club in those years because she wanted to do her part, and I remember the ration books. We had to have stamps for sugar and meat and things like that, and that kinda altered our life, and then also gas rationing. I remember after the war, the first thing my dad did was get down and buy four new tires for the car, ‘cause he was just patching those tires for four or fires and never had enough—well, it just wasn’t available. All that kind of stuff was going into the— Do you remember how much gas they rationed you? No. See, I wasn’t driving in those days. Do you remember anything about the early aboveground atomic tests? Oh, you bet. I was in high school when they were doing that, 1952 and ’53. In fact, I think it was 193, the yearbook of Las Vegas High School, the Wildcat Echo, has a picture of the atomic bomb on the front of it in living color. And it was because it was a very vivid thing—it was the UNLV University Libraries Dorothy Fletcher 10 thing. Kids would take off at two in the morning to get out to Indian Springs so they could sit around the road there, and they could see the mushroom cloud from the bomb; from Indian Springs, you could see it there. Of course, they had to miss half a day of school, and they were always in trouble, and for that reason, I never went out there. I was such a good little kid in those days, I wouldn’t dream of ditching school even to see an atomic bomb. I also remember the model city that they set up because the kids in the driver’s ed class got to drive all the new cars out to Mercury. You know, they set up like they had dummies, people—mannequins like a model city. They build houses and they built stores and they had people in it, and they had cars in the street. And of course, there was nothing living going on when they dropped the bomb, but they wanted to see what would happen. And I knew a couple of the kids that were in the driver’s ed class that got to drive the cars out there, and then they got to hang around and watching, but I didn’t get to. I wasn’t involved in that. Have you noticed any economic changes in Southern Nevada since you first, well, since you were growing up? Well, yes, the railroad used to be a great thing. That’s why Las Vegas, really, was started as a depot, and I knew a lotta kids in elementary and high school whose parents worked for the railroad, and that was their source of income. And of course, it’s not that way now. I probably know more people who are supported by entertainment and the tourism industry now than I did when I was a girl. My friend’s parents owned garages or worked in pennies or things like this, and of course, most of the people I know probably—well, most of the people I know now are involved in the school district. Most of our friends revolve around the school district, people that I’ve known and worked with. How about any environmental changes? UNLV University Libraries Dorothy Fletcher 11 You mean, like, is it hotter now than it used to be? Right. Well, my mother says that, since they put the dam in, it’s a lot more humid now than it used to be. And that’s probably true, and I think it is true because there are so many more people living here now, and there are so many more lawns, and they’re all being water, and swimming pools in the backyard and all that. And all that does, create more moisture in the air, believe or not, more than it used to be. I can remember real, real bad electrical storms as a little girl, that scared me to death, and I don’t know, maybe I just grew up and the storms don’t bother me now, but I don’t think we have them quite as much, if at all, than we used to. I mean, just really frightening lightning, thunder, and rains that just wouldn’t stop, like summer electrical storms. Of course, the smog in this valley is enough to turn you off. This never used to be, and it is now. And all of these are things that happened when a place get a lot of people in it. Do you ever remember any natural events occurring here, like floods or fires or snowstorms? Not anything that’s probably been written about or put down as very important, but I can remember flash floods—of course, we still have flash floods in Las Vegas. But I can remember it going through this one lady’s house over on the other side of the highway, which would be the old part of North Las Vegas and the other side of the Salt Lake Highway—it went right through her house—took the furniture, smashed it up, ruined everything, and I can remember that very vividly. I can remember a forest fire when I was a Girl Scout We went up to Lee Canyon; we didn’t have a Girl Scout camp, and we had to use the county camp, what’s called the county camp now—I don’t know what it was called then. It was just called Lee’s Canyon, and we were up there when they had a forest fire—not near there, but they had to get us out of there so they UNLV University Libraries Dorothy Fletcher 12 could put the firefighters in the camps. When they came back to camp to rest, there would be a place up there that they could go to and rest and sleep and eat and all that. I don’t think we’ve ever had any earthquakes; if we have, I haven’t known anything about it. I know they have them in Boulder City, but that’s kind of, I think, because the pressure of the lake and all that—I’ve had it explained to me, but I don’t remember any. Of course, the dust storm—everybody knows about a dust storm. If you’ve lived through one, you know all about it. [Recording ends] Have you noticed any social changes in Las Vegas, such as people of different kinds and their sort of positions, maybe their occupations and such, in the community? Yes, probably. Well, I don’t remember—I remember very, very few Oriental people in Las Vegas when I was growing up. The Fong family—Wing Fong and his uncle, they own—well, I don’t know, Wing owns, but the uncles own the Silver Café down on Second Street, and now they own Fong’s Garden.” And they were very unusual people because they were Orientals, and there were very few Orientals here. And of course, now there are a lot of Asian people in Las Vegas, and they have all kinds of jobs there, and teachers and salespeople—I mean, they have just about the same kind of job as anybody else has. But probably the biggest change, social change, in Las Vegas has been with Black people. Ad thank God this has happened, and it’s not only happened in Las Vegas but everywhere else in the country—when I was in high school, we really, I never thought we had prejudice because it just didn’t occur that we were prejudiced or that we had any policy of segregation. But we surely did, because in the theaters—I know when I worked at the El Portal Theatre as an usherette, there were only seven rows, and that was in the back on one side, seven rows of seats that Black people could sit in. And there weren’t that many Black people, number one, ‘cause I don’t remember ever, even in a big, practically standing UNLV University Libraries Dorothy Fletcher 13 room only house, I don’t remember having more Black people than I had seat to put them in, ‘cause we were never, ever to put them anywhere except right there in the back in the corner. There were schools—there was an elementary school over on the Westside. A lot of people that lived on the Westside were not Black people. In fact, my parents lived over there in the early years before they built their house in North Las Vegas. They lived over on the Westside, and that was not a bad place to live; in fact, it was kinda nice, a little bit cooler over there than it was down on this side of the tracks. But there were some all-Black schools, and of course, they were like—the old Jefferson School, they only went to the fourth grade, so when the kids over there got into the fifth grade, they had to come over to the Fifth Grade Grammar School. I only remember two grammar schools in town when I was in grammar school that went as far as the eighth grade, and that was John S. Park and Fifth Street Grammar School. And John S. Park is an old school that’s in the Huntridge area. And as far as I was concerned, the richest kids went to that school, because, far from ritzy now, but I mean, that was the area that the people that had money lived in, and I think maybe the kids that had money in high school had all gone to school at John S. Park. But of course, the changes that have come in the areas with the Negro people was really good. They can live anywhere they want and where they can afford to live, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s fine. We have a little gal across from the street from Thailand, and years ago, if anybody different moved in your neighborhood, you all of a sudden got panicky. And I don’t know that anybody in this neighborhood objected to her—we also have, down the street, a colored family. I don’t know them, but I’ve seen the kids out on their bicycles, and they are seeming to get along as well as getting into the neighborhood. Have you noticed any changes in family structure and family lifestyle? Well, you mean like a mother and a father? UNLV University Libraries Dorothy Fletcher 14 Right. Well, probably I can see more of it as a teacher than I can as just a regular member of the community, ‘cause everybody around here in my neighborhood, practically everybody, there are two parents in the family. The original? Oh, I don’t know about the original parents; there’s a lot of, I’m sure, ‘your kids, my kids, and our kids.’ We never heard too much about that when I was a girl; that was something that was really weird, you know, and I can see it more in the children that I teach in school, that there are far too many children that don’t have but one parent that they’re involved with, and of course, I think everybody’s living a little fast, and I think the world is living fast, and I think this has a lot to do with it. So, just all over, not so much just Las Vegas? Probably. As far as families come, I think there’s probably more single people here that come to get divorced and this sort of thing. I remember when I was in the eighth grade, my math teacher was a fine man, a real nice man, and I was just simply horrified when I found out in the middle of the year that he had come out here for a divorce and had liked it and had stayed and was teaching, because that was, oh, that was the first time I’d ever known anybody, you know, especially a teacher that—and I had some strange and interesting teachers, too. But I didn’t know it, you know, it wasn’t that much as common knowledge. Okay, what differences have occurred in the value of real estate in the area? For example, do you recall what the land was going for when you were settled as compared to now? No, but I wish I had enough sense to save my pennies and buy some land. You know, children don’t pay much attention to how much land costs, but I do know that when my mother and UNLV University Libraries Dorothy Fletcher 15 father, in 1929, bought a lot of land in North Las Vegas, and the land was 50 feet by 136 feet, and they bought it from Tom Williams, and he was kind of an early day realtor. He had a development in North Las Vegas, and he sold lots, or tried to, and hoped he got paid for it. I think the land was about $150 to $200, that piece of property right there, and I think they paid $50 down, $10 a month, or $10 whenever they had it—remember, that was Depression—and my father was a skilled laborer. He was not—of course, it didn’t matter whether you were or not—you were just simply out of work. So, he did whatever he could do, and when the money came in, they paid on the land. But—oh, I remember people saying that when they came here in 1940, they could’ve gotten land on the Strip for a dollar an acre and stuff like that. Well now, whether they could have or not, I know it was dirt-cheap. But I really don’t know. I know that it really inflated now to the point where it’s a little bit ridiculous. But, well, that’s progress I guess. I was going to ask you here about air conditioning, but you still have an evaporative cooler, right? Yes, and I don’t know if I should really tell this or not, ‘cause people are horrified when they find out about it. You know, the swamp cooler was invented in Boulder City, did you know that? No. Well, not too many people know that, but when they put the dam in, they were working through the summer, and it was just, like, 120 degrees in that Black Canyon. And those men down there were just simply exhausted, and they’d go back to whatever they lived in—tents or cabins or whatnot—at night, and it was just too hot to even sleep. And so, some genius devised this water cooler thing where the, you know, the water goes through the straw and all that stuff. And that was all we ever had on our house in North Las Vegas. And my dad was change the thing every summer, and he took care of it. He was a machinist, and he knew how the thing worked inside UNLV University Libraries Dorothy Fletcher 16 and out. So, we had one big one on our house, and that was it. We never knew anything differently. Now, when we moved over here in this house—and of course when we lived in George, we didn’t even have that—and I wish oftentimes we had had a swamp cooler down there, that was— What was used for cooling there? Well, open the windows. (Laughs) Oh. As we were leaving, when we left in 1958, the peo