Transcript of interview with Joseph Gemma by Dan Murphy, March 1, 1979

UNLV University Libraries Joseph Gemma 1 An Interview with Joseph Gemma An Oral History Conducted by Dan Murphy 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 Joseph Gemma 2 © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2018 UNLV University Libraries Joseph Gemma 3 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 Joseph Gemma 4 Abstract On March 1st, 1979, collector Dan Murphy interviewed Anderson Dairy production manager, Joseph Gemma (born on October 25th, 1934 in Norwalk, Connecticut) in his home in Las Vegas, Nevada. This interview covers the history of Las Vegas, including employment opportunities, construction work, housing developments, and the hotels on the Strip. Joseph also recalls social and environmental changes and local recreation, including sports and the importance of gaming in Nevada. UNLV University Libraries Joseph Gemma 5 The informant is Joseph Gemma. The date is March 1st, 1979 at 7:30. The place is 1717 Bonita Lane, Las Vegas, Nevada. The collector is Dan Murphy, 760 Naples, Las Vegas. The project is Local History, Project Two, Oral Interview, Life of a Las Vegas Old-Timer. Now Mr. Gemma, what is your occupation here in Nevada? I’m production manager at Anderson Dairy. And how many years have you lived here? Twenty-five years. When did you first come out here? In 1953. And where is that from? Norwalk, Connecticut. Oh, what was your basic reasons for coming out to Nevada? Better opportunity for a better living out here. The wages were much higher. Back on the East Coast your wages ran anywhere from seventy-five cents to a dollar. At the same time, out here, the wages were running from a dollar sixty-five to three dollars an hour. And are there any of your relatives living out here? I have quite a few relatives here. My grandmother and grandfather started pioneering from Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1948, and from then it started a chain reaction of my mother’s sister, my mother’s brother, my mother’s other sister, and then, my mother’s brother-in-law and her other sister. We come out here right after I got out of high school in July of 1953, and it just started a chain reaction from 1948. Did the weather have anything to do with you coming out here? UNLV University Libraries Joseph Gemma 6 The weather was right for my grandmother and grandfather, who suffered from arthritis very badly, and they came out to California for a trip and they stopped off here. And the weather agreed with ‘em very good. They felt real good out here, from the dry climate. The humidity at that time wouldn’t get any higher than two percent and in the hot summer it would be very, very dry. They liked it. It helped there health and this is why they moved out here. And do you think—when you first came out here, when the population was relatively low, do you think it’s increased rapidly since you came out here? Very much. Nevada used to be the forty-eighth state. At that time we only had forty-eight states. Was the forty-eighth state in growth, and now I believe it is about thirty-eight in the nation. The population in 1953 is approximately twenty-three thousand people. I remember driving to work from where I live to Anderson Dairy, on dirt roads. It went up as far as Maryland Parkway, up here and there was nothing but desert as far as the eye can see. Now it’s built up tremendously. The population here now I believe is around a hundred and seventy-five thousand. So it’s been quite a jump in twenty-three years—from twenty-four thousand to about a hundred and seventy-five thousand. My hometown of Norwalk, Connecticut, when I left in ’53, had a population of sixty thousand people. As of last year, I read in the newspaper, my hometown has a population right now of seventy-five thousand people. So you can see the difference. And do you think there’s any problem like in traffic, since there’s more people out here? It takes you a lot longer to get to work, right? Right. Much more traffic. When we—I first came out here. There was no—hardly any traffic signs, or stop signs, traffic signals, rather. Only four-way stop signs, very, very few traffic signals. Not you’ve got ‘em every block now, just like you have in the big city, much more congested. UNLV University Libraries Joseph Gemma 7 And do you notice any—the buildings you notice any, yes, do you know of any of the structure differences in newer buildings out here? (Laughs) Well, when I first come out here, everything was on the first floor. Everything was spread out. You never saw anything that you had to go upstairs. Hotels were spread out. The Sahara, for instance, which was built in 1954, was a tremendous building that they put up a hotel, and it was spread out for I don’t know how many blocks, going up Sahara and down Paradise. Never went up two stories, all the homes were on one floor. Everything was made with flat roofs. Now they’re getting away from that, and you can see high rises all over Las Vegas. The homes are going two stories. The banks, fifteen and twenty stories, the hotels, twenty-five and thirty stories. So it’s been quite a difference in all the years of building here now they’re not figuring on spreading out but now they want to go up. And do you think it rains any more now than it did when you first came out here? Rains much more now I feel than it did when I first came out here. Whenever it rained, when I first came here, very, very small amounts. Five minutes, ten minutes, that was it. Now it seems like we have a rainy season, which starts in mid-December and it doesn’t quit until April. And has the snowfall been pretty much different? Did you have any like snowfalls like—we had a big one, and I thought this winter, do you think that there was any big snowfall like that before? The only other snowfall that I saw as big as that was in 1974 when it snowed for eighteen hours, and we had a little over eight inches. This past year we had thirty-six hours of snowfall. The difference was on this last snowfall that it just seems to be bigger, bigger flakes. I think that is the third of fourth time in twenty-four years that I’ve seen it snow here, and stick to the ground I might add. UNLV University Libraries Joseph Gemma 8 Yes. Is the wind a major factor out here? I know that it’s a lot more windier here than it is in Connecticut, probably. I believe so. You’re wide open. I’ve seen winds come up as high as sixty, seventy miles an hour. One instance I can give you, and the wind comes out of nowhere. I mean, everything can be calm. One fine summer evening was back in 1957, I had a—two giant Elm Trees I had planted in the back. It had been a nice calm day. I had ‘em braced with ropes for about six months. I went out in the backyard and I took the braces out and in a matter of five minutes we had a Gail pass through about sixty-miles an hour and just uprooted both trees. It’ll come out of nowhere and you’ll never know when it’s coming. And when it does come it does create a lot of havoc here with the dust it blows around. I’ve seen it pick up orange crates, flying around. In fact, I’ve seen ‘em land on cars and dent ‘em and everything else. Planes have a hard time coming in and going out. It would be just as bad as the smog in Chicago or in LA. But the wind is very, very bad thing out here. I think that is about the only thing I do not like about it here. But if it wasn’t for that wind, on the bright side, you’d have a lot of smog here. That wind really blows it out of the valley when it whips up. Can you relate to the mudslide that you had here I guess in the ‘50s? Well, what had happened was they had a lot of rain and snow on the mountains and then when the spring came the thaw was real fast and at that time it was not built up on the west end of town, and it started to flood. And when the flood came it picked up mud and caliche and it put in there covered this whole neighborhood with mud. All the houses from Spencer down to Burnham or down to Eastern had about two or three feet of mud in the front yards and backyards. It kind of ruined everybody’s lawn in this area and that was about a week before I got UNLV University Libraries Joseph Gemma 9 here and I saw the results of that mud and it was bad, very, very bad. Took a lot of people, a lot of time to clean up their places. And do you think or know if the family life is different here than it is out in Connecticut? Very much so. Out here, everybody seems to want to be fenced in, have their own privacy, cook in their backyard. In Connecticut, everything is wide open in the backyards. You can stand in your backyard and look down the block and nobody has a fence or wall or anything. And you can yell to your neighbor, five or six house up and talk to ‘em and chat to your neighbors in back a yah to each side of you. But here, it’s all closed. People want to be alone. I feel that they’re more friendly in the east, living next to each other. In the West overall, I think people are friendlier—meeting them on the street and talking to ‘em. But as far as living. It’s a lot more private. Everybody wants their own privacy. I’ve been living in the same house for—since I moved here and I’m very friendly with one neighbor. And that was about all. The ones behind me, to the right of me, across the street from me, they all mind their own business and I mind mine. Yes, and before they had the air-conditioners out here, I don’t know what year, if you ever had lived without air-conditioning out here—how bad was it, you know like? Well, we used to have swamp coolers they were called. And what they were was a motor and a pulley and a fan, had three sides on your swamp cooler that had straw on it. A little pump, pumped water through the straw, soaked the straws. Straw pads are what they were called and then the air would blow through the ductwork. Now it kept it cool at night. But it was very, very clammy. Just like being on the East Coast in damp weather. When it got with a little humidity during the summer, they didn’t work very well. Now of course you got your air-conditioning just about everything. Swamp coolers now I think are about one-tenth or one percent of the whole UNLV University Libraries Joseph Gemma 10 valley. Whereas, when I first came here, there were ninety-nine and nine-tenths of the whole valley. Do you think when you first came out here that there was a lot of job openings to be had? When I came out here I didn’t know what I was going to do. All I know—all I knew at that time was job opportunities, our pay rates were higher. But when I got out here the job opportunities consisted of either construction, gambling, in the hotels that is, if you wanted to work as a dealer, you had to go to dealer school. Most of it was a lot of people worked in construction, but in construction you made good money but you only worked about three or four months out of the year and that was during the summer months. The bad part of working, about construction, even though the pay was great, was working in the heat. And at that time your heat, like I say would be up between a hundred and two and a hundred and eighteen degrees during the day. And a lot of construction workers out here who were not used to it from the east or from the Midwest would come over here and a lot of them would just get too sick to work in the sun. Now, my uncle was one of ‘em, who come out here on job construction. But he only wind up working three or four months out of the year. I myself happen to just trip unto a pretty fair job at one of the local dairies, at that time there were three of ‘em here, and I’ve been there ever since. And do you think gambling is an important part in your life or do you just, do you gamble once in a while, or? Once in a while for recreation, my wife and I, we’ll go out and she likes to play nickel slot machines and I’ll go play some keno. But most of the time when we go I’m not a great big gambler ‘cause if I was I wouldn’t have lasted here this long. A lot of people believe when you work out here you gamble and lose it all. Well, lot of people do that. Their paycheck is spent before they get home. If a person can’t stay away from gambling then they shouldn’t be out here. UNLV University Libraries Joseph Gemma 11 But I myself watch this, this is the biggest thing out here. This keeps Nevada going. Without the gambling I think Nevada would just be one little horse town like you’d find in the Midwest or in the deep south. Gambling is very important. The people who come here, the big gamblers from California and all around the country support this town and it’s a very, very vital cog in our community. Now, what kind of recreation are you involved with in like, in the Nevada area? Myself, personally? Yes. Well, the only recreation I got into really was a lot of coaching. When my oldest boy was about seven years old I started coaching in peewee league with him. My second son I took in peewee, and I coached baseball for about ten, twelve years, and basketball, also. And I more or less kept the boys involved in sports kept them out of trouble. I had a good time doing it. I more or less retired from it. Last year was my last year in coaching and I took the boys all the way from peewee league right up into American Legion. And as you know, my oldest boy plays with you on the Rebels, and my youngest boy doesn’t play anything more now. And baseball and basketball was about the biggest things here, in recreation for little kids. Course they’ve got swimming and they had horseback riding, tennis, soccer’s growing in leaps and bounds. Do you think that the little leagues and everything has really gotten bigger since, you know, since you first came out here? Oh much bigger. The—at the time I started coaching was just a Clark County League that they had. Now you’ve got Paradise Valley, you’ve got Central Little League, you’ve got ‘em up at four corners of town. I forget how many teams were involved in here. You’ve got the Babe Ruth UNLV University Libraries Joseph Gemma 12 League, Colt Leagues has just grown in leaps and bounds. I think it’s grown about three hundred percent since I started. And you think—what single person would you say did change the town more than anybody else out here? I would say, when Howard Hughes came out here, he got so much publicity buying up these hotels, buying here and buying there and just at the drop of a hat, tried to buy the airport out here but the commissioners wouldn’t go for that. He wanted to build another airport out towards Boulder City and sell it to the city. It cost, I mean this man was just something else with his money. He’d buy anything he had a whim to buy. And the publicity just grew and grew with him. And the people, I think, many people came out here just to see they could get a good, could get a glimpse of Howard Hughes. And he was quite a man because I never met him personally. Course a lot of people never did but in my line of work at the dairy, for instance he used to order milk had to be in glass pints and they would take twenty-four of them a day at the Desert Inn. Now Howard Hughes from the stories I got would drink maybe three or four of them and the rest of them were returned because he had to have his milk fresh daily, ‘cause he was a nut for everything to be fresh. And those bottles cost the company quite a bit of money because at that time, glass business was on its way out. But he insisted on glass and he owned the Desert Inn so we just went ahead and did what he wanted. The day he died it was a sad thing, I think. But a man of his stature, he would not be around anymore. I don’t think there’ll ever be another man like him. But I think he helped this town quite a bit. And in the dairy business have you known any significant changes in the dairy business? Well, the biggest I see could see was milking of our cows. We have our own herd out in Moapa Valley and at that time they were milked by hand. This is about twenty-four, twenty-five years UNLV University Libraries Joseph Gemma 13 ago. And they used to bring in about six hundred gallons of milk a day into the plant. Now it’s all done by milking machines. We got an ultra-modern dairy barn that was built out there. And then they can milk twenty-four hundred a head every twelve hours. And now it’s to the point now where they bring in over twelve thousand gallons of milk a day. Everything is done the—by machinery now of course. The washing up process, the milking process, it all has changed quite a bit. And do you think there’s any difference like from say the cows in Moapa Valley and the cows in like Wisconsin? Well, the cows in Wisconsin, I would say are about the same. A cow is a cow is a cow. But in Wisconsin you’ve got the cold, cold weather where a cow will not give as much milk when it’s that cold. Where here your weather does not get that cold all year round and your volume of milk that you can get from a single cow is much more greater than it would be in Wisconsin. And that is just by the weather, the cold weather. And do you know of any complications in like the really hot weather in the summertime out here and the delivering of the milk and pasteurizing and all that? Not really because all cows that are milked, all your milk comes out of a cow at ninety degrees and it’s cooled right away by refrigeration. It’s run through a press with cold chilled water and your milk is down to forty degrees in a matter of hours. Your milk is delivered to the dairy, forty degrees or below. And then, it’s pasteurized and then it’s homogenized and cooled down and bottled that way. Many people think that milk is bottled at warm temperature. The only time milk is warm is when it leaves a cow. And from that time on its cooled down right after that. It is never warmed up again, unless its warmed up by the customer who buys the milk. UNLV University Libraries Joseph Gemma 14 Do you know any difference between the men you work with out here and like, say, the men back in Connecticut? I think the men out here, they’re very, very few who are native Nevadans that work out here. I think of all the people I’ve worked with over the years, I think maybe there’s about four or five that were native Nevadans, the rest were from all over the country. So it’s hard really to compare the people that I work with here and the people I work with back in the east. Because ninety-nine percent of them were natives of my hometown and you knew ‘em, you grew up with ‘em. And like I say out here they’re from all walks of life. As far as Europe, I’ve seen them come here and work at the—where I do. And it’s kind of hard to compare that. And do you think that like, you started at the bottom, didn’t you? Do you think there’s any complication, do you think had the same thing in Connecticut as you had out here in Nevada, about working at the same position you hold now? Well, where I worked back there, I was a shipping clerk and there wasn’t much opportunity for advancement there, I worked, I had about thirty-four women who were saw machine operators and I was a shipping clerk and a cutter. And actually there was no place to go, no advancement. We used to call ‘em sweatshops in the East Coast and a lot of them were there making men’s jackets and boys jackets, robes, so on and so forth. And out here I happen to come into a company where I started at the bottom as a dock worker. And as the years went by I saw opportunities to advance and I worked my tail off in plain English. And got advanced, little by little. And then, I was offered the production managers job about eight years ago and I accept it. It made a better life for me and a better life for my family, in my earnings and my style of living. And I have nothing to be sorry for, for accepting it. Course there’s a lot of headaches that can go UNLV University Libraries Joseph Gemma 15 with it. When you work there with twenty or thirty people and then wind up being in charge of forty, I’d say that’s quite a jump. But I’m not sorry. And how old was Anderson Dairy when you first started working there? Anderson Dairy had been in existence since 1941, and I went to work for ‘em in 1953, and that was at their old plant on Main Street. And then, in 1956, they built their new modern plant down on Las Vegas Boulevard North, where they now operate from. They’re situated on nine and a half acres. They’re the largest independent dairy in the country and I say independent because many of the dairies now around the country are chains. And we are the last of the few independents. Have you seen any new competitors try to come in the field in the last, say since you first came out here? In the dairy business? Yes. Well, there’s a lot of them in California that are not bottling here locally. They bottle in California and ship it up here to different supermarkets. We’re the only dairy bottling locally here other than Ardent. Ardent is a small dairy here right now. But all the money that’s spent by employees of Anderson Dairy stays in Nevada or in Las Vegas and that’s the good part of it. That money helps Las Vegas grow. I see, have you had any trouble with any strikes or anything since you’ve been here? We’ve never had a strike at the dairy itself. We came close one time and they had to leave their jobs to go vote on it and luckily enough they passed it. But on other strikes, I’ve seen a lot of strikes that have hurt the economy here. Especially the one on the culinary union a few years back when the Strip was closed down for about four days. And the—it was a frightening thing to UNLV University Libraries Joseph Gemma 16 see, to go up the Las Vegas Strip at night and it was all dark. I mean it just gave you an idea of what the gambling industry is for this town. The darkness just scared the daylights out of everybody that was concerned with it. It affected the dairies, it affected clothing businesses, groceries stores. It’s just a chain right down the line. All your—the people who work here and all your business will suffer on strikes, especially one on the Strip. And I just thought I’d never, I hope I never have to see anything like that again. Yes. Mr. Gemma, have you noticed any advancement in the air transportation since you first came out here? Well, 1953, when I was here we had two major airlines that came in, one was Trans World and one was United. And the local airlines, was, at that time, called Bonanza. And of course, we were in the props. No jets were out at that time. Compared to now we have better than fourteen or fifteen major airlines that come into this city. And we’ve advanced to the eighteenth largest airport, or the eighteenth largest airport to bring in the tourists. It’s in, I can’t give you the exact figure. It’s in the millions on the tourists. But like I say, we’ve advanced to the eighteenth largest in the nation. And we have of course the, Bonanza has changed the airwaves since then. And having that many major airlines shows the great growth. The old McCarran Airport was just a little small airport, course now we have the large one, where it sits now. It’s an international airport. And they say, they are expanding more and more out there now, and I hope to someday see the concord come in here all the time. Do you think Howard Hughes had anything to do with the air travel or about the airports or anything out here? Not really. I think if they would have built that airport and—by Boulder City, I think it would have been a detriment to the town. Because of the larger, or the longer travel time, from the UNLV University Libraries Joseph Gemma 17 airport to here. Whereas now when you come into this airport, you’re right in the middle of everything. It’s five minutes here, five minutes there, whereas from Boulder City, you would’ve been thirty, thirty-five, forty minutes away. And I don’t think Howard Hughes had nothing to do with it. Have you noticed any—was there any big plane crashes out here since you first got out here? Well, there was one back in the early sixties, where a Bonanza Airline crashed on Arden Mountain. And the oddity of it was, the plane had broke in half. And it was a big fireball in the sky. Because that happened to be one of the times it was snowing here. And I was out in the front yard in the evening and I saw this fireball in the sky. But yet when they got to the plane, everybody had perished and the plane was in two pieces, and there never was a fire, and they never could figure that out. Other than that, I’m trying—I do not think we had another air crash here, a major one. And, has the railroad transportation been a big thing out here? At one time it was. I think it’s diminished. At one time you had the—I forget what they call it but it was—the hotels had a special on that. You came in from L.A. But I couldn’t think of the name of it. But as far as train, I don’t think anybody—It’s diminishing all over the United States, as you can see in the papers. Railroads are going out of business. Back east we had the Fairfield County Railroad, which was one of the largest ones around, and that is out of business now. They used to take all your commuters from the small towns of Connecticut into New York City, and that’s just about wiped out. So I don’t think there has been an advancement in train travel. I think it’s diminished more than anything. Do you think this town could use like a public bus system? UNLV University Libraries Joseph Gemma 18 Yes. We do have a public bus system. But not too many people are taking the bus except the elderly. Mm. I think there’s less busses now than there was when I first came here. It just runs on the Strip doesn’t it? No. They have them going Downtown, Fremont Street and up around North Las Vegas. But they’re getting smaller and smaller, the busses. Have you seen a rise in the police force in the general Las Vegas area? Years ago they were—the sheriff’s department was by itself and the Metropolitan Police Department was by itself, and I think they had about twelve hundred members. Since it’s combined over the years, they have their new offices on Las Vegas Boulevard. They are better than three thousand strong right now. Have a lot of special squads they have there. They have Vice squads and SWAT teams, K-9 cores, helicopter units, and it’s advanced quite a bit, and they need that for this type of town, where your crime rate is always going to be high because of the people that come into this town. And did you see the rise in the high schools since you first came out here to the present? There was one high school in 1953 and that was Las Vegas High School. Mm-hmm. And since then now we have better than thirteen high schools. And for a town with a population that we have, of about a hundred and seventy-thousand people, thirteen high schools is really astronomical. In my hometown we had one and right now, in my hometown I think there’s only two. And it’s just amazing how the school district has grown in leaps and bounds. UNLV University Libraries Joseph Gemma 19 And when you first came out here was it, the cost of living different you know like in buying land and you know that’s—the price of land has raised considerably—but you know of any big differences? Very much so. The price of land, when I come out here, my father could have bought an acre of land up on West Sahara or West Decatur rather for three hundred and fifty dollars an acre at that time. Course when you’re out here and the populations only twenty-four thousand and you could see nothing but desert, as far as the eye can see, your kind of skeptical about buying it. Today that same piece of land is probably worth ten to fifteen thousand dollars an acre. If people at that time, which a lot probably did, bought that land, their sitting pretty now. And did the energy crisis play a big part in like you out here? The people in Nevada? Definitely will, if we have—we had a slight energy crisis there a few years back and we could see the difference in the amount of people that came into this town. Hotels were not filled up, conventions were not filled up, business was not that good on weekends because of the rationing of gas. Well, they got the price up and now they’re starting again on it. If it came to pass where they would close gas stations on weekends, you’re talking about a lot of tourists that would not come into this town. Because of the gas stations not being open and you can’t fill your tank up on Friday, and drive from California, let’s say to Las Vegas and back without hitting a gas station. And if that comes to be, then we’re gonna have a, some tight times. Think that had to do anything with all the lights on the Strip and all that? I don’t know. They tried that one time years back and shutting all the lights off on the Strip and that went on for about six months but it’s not the same because many people will come here and they want to see the lights ‘cause that’s part of the beauty of the Strip and Downtown. The lights were turned off tryna save energy and I don’t know if it did or it didn’t but it didn’t last that long. UNLV University Libraries Joseph Gemma 20 Have you noticed a big difference in like the entertainment prices? In the shows and everything out here? Yes. I—I’ve gone to shows on the Strip back in 1953 and I could see any major star in the United States or in the world—perform at any hotel, in the dining rooms, and it cost you the price of a glass of punch, which was a dollar. If ten people went in to see a show, such as a Frank Sinatra or Harry Como or Jackie Gleason, it cost them ten dollars for ten people if they all bought punch. Today, you go into the hotel now, you got a twenty-five dollar minimum coverage and they bring you all your drinks, whether you can drink ‘em or not and it’s quite a difference now between then and now and the price. Yes. Having the mountain so close, do you ever go up in the mountains (Laughs) and—with your family for recreation or anything? We did at first when we come out here. We go up to the mountains, we’d have picnics. My uncle had a cabin out there—up there rather and we used to go up on weekends. The only bad part of it is, is that we start coming down with allergies from the pine and mountain air was nice but it seems like it’s getting worse and worse as far as allergies go out here. A lot of people allergic to the sand. Now you’ve got so much more homes and trees and bushes and flowers and the air is getting humid more and more each summer. Your allergies are more pronounced every year. You get ‘em in the spring, you get ‘em in the fall, you got the Bermuda grass, the roses. My family and my children when they grew up they were pretty much—had a lot of allergies. One boy was allergic to sand, I’ve got another boy who’s allergic to Christmas trees. We couldn’t have a Christmas tree in the house. I got allergic to Bermuda grass after living out here for ten years it never bothered me and then finally it started bothering me. If I go out and cut grass and the Bermudas out and its seeding I come into the house and I’m wheezing and I can’t even UNLV University Libraries Joseph Gemma 21 breathe. The—but as far as getting back to the mountains there we don’t go up there too often anymore. Because of the allergies we found out we got from the pine up there. My wife is allergic to it. And like I say, my boy is. I think my daughter’s the only one that’s escaped allergies. So, I don’t know if she’s gonna get ‘em or not. Did you have all these allergies back in C