Transcript of interview with Rowena Gonzalez by Michael Boyd, March 1, 1977

UNLV University Libraries Rowena Gonzalez i An Interview with Rowena Gonzalez An Oral History Conducted by Michael Boyd 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 Rowena Gonzalez ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2018 UNLV University Libraries Rowena Gonzalez 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 Rowena Gonzalez iv Abstract On March 1, 1977, Michael Boyd interviewed Rowena Gonzalez (born 1946 in Wichita Falls, Texas) about her life in Nevada. Gonzalez first talks about her family background and residential history before discussing the way of life in Texas and eventually in Las Vegas. Several topics covered in the interview include Gonzalez’s recollections of the atomic testing, the building of the Hoover Dam, and Howard Hughes. The two also discuss tourism, the properties on the Strip and in Downtown Las Vegas, and early means of transportation. UNLV University Libraries Rowena Gonzalez 1 Good evening. Tonight, Rowena Gonzalez is with us. She’s going to tell us a little bit about herself and everything that went on back in the mid-fifties up to the present. Rowena, tell us your full name and present address. Okay. Full name is Rowena Marie Gonzalez. The address is 1109 North Twenty-Second Street, and that’s in Las Vegas. Right now, I’m just working at the university, taking classes also in German and will probably go after a master’s eventually. Very good. And how long have you been here? Since 1959, August 29th. Oh, good, you remember. Fantastic. Okay. Since you arrived in Las Vegas—pardon? We rode the Union Pacific train, and I think we wound up in Southern Pacific—anyways, we came in from Salt Lake City. You lived in Salt Lake City, came in from Salt Lake City? No, came in via Salt Lake City. Mm-hmm. Where was the train station then? You mentioned trains. Basically, it was sitting right where the Union Plaza is today, only a little bit back, because there was a big circular park. And in those days, I suppose all through the night, you’d see people lying out there in the summer. What brought you to Las Vegas? My father was a policeman, forty years in Texas. He retired, my mother got a teaching offer out here, we came out. Very good. And you went to Henderson—she taught in Henderson? She taught at Henderson Junior High School. We lived in Pittman at 417 Merlin Drive, my first address here in Nevada. UNLV University Libraries Rowena Gonzalez 2 Anything interesting about that? Well, mostly the, it was all desert then. It’s not built up much now. In those days, it was even less, and the best part was running around in the desert on the summer nights, watching the dump burn, because in those days, they’d have the dump up on Sunrise Mountain, they’d just set fire to it every Tuesday night—I think it was Tuesday night, I could be wrong. Mm-hmm. It’s fascinating. Yes. They don’t it anymore. What were you doing when you lived on Merlin Drive, you personally? I was a student. In college? Oh, no, in junior high. I junior high? Yes. Where were you going to junior high? Henderson. In Henderson. And from Merlin Drive, you moved to? The Ace Motel, which my parents bought. We lived in a trailer there, operated the thing for a year or two, I suppose. It was not profitable, very small place. It does not exist any longer. And where was it? It was at the deepest part of the valley: on Boulder Highway right next to what now exists as the Desert Sands, which is crumbling. The Ace Motel has been transformed into a flagstone— UNLV University Libraries Rowena Gonzalez 3 Memorial? Memorial. Okay. And how long were you all in that business in that time? Oh, well, let me see—two years. I’m just guessing. Two years? You left approximately early 1960s? Yes, early ’63. From there, where did you all go to? To 328 North Sixteenth Street. I should say, as I understand, it wasn’t uncommon for people who moved here without a great deal of money to move out and have several addresses until they either settled down or left. We lived there for four years, I think. Then we moved to 312 South Sixth; we only stayed there for three months—one of the hottest summers I remember. And then we moved to 618 South Third Street; it was a strange place—actually, it was set on two lots and had a swimming pool, brick fence. Brick was in the front, and then around the rest of it there was a board fence—I can’t think of the name for it. The board’s kinda interlaced, and so I used to white wash. We left there in ’67—no, we got there around ’67. We left there in 1971, moved to 2406 South 15th Street, which is really the last home I can say my family was in. You had mentioned earlier something about a famous realtor who had built one of your houses that you had lived in? I don’t know how famous he was, but he was certainly successful, and his name was Ted McHouston. And by the time we met him, he was a very old man—very kind gentleman as I recall. He used to drive by on Sunday and check his property. I think he was mostly glad that we stayed there—it was an interesting place. It hadn’t been built as a single house. It has since become a parking lot. UNLV University Libraries Rowena Gonzalez 4 The house is not there anymore? No. Isn’t it strange to go back and say where you lived one time, your house was no longer there, and you used to play or whatever out there? No. It doesn’t faze you? No. Oh, okay. My houses in Texas are either parking lots or gardens. Okay. When you first got here, what was the geographical siting like? How big was the city and what was where and what was hot that is now? Well, let’s see. Maryland Parkway was just two ribbons of black road in the desert. Francisco Park had not been built. Eastern was just a road—nothing build between them that I remember. It was all desert. There was nothing between, oh, the Skyway Drive-In, which was here, and East Las Vegas—Whitney, it was called then. Desert Hills did not exist. It was all desert, much, much more desert than it is now. I don’t know much about what the western half of the city was like, but what we call North Vegas is grown up like mushrooms. It existed, but that’s about it. How about out in this part of town? Well— What about, you told me your rode horses out here somewhere, didn’t you? Well, that was a little bit later. Oh, okay. Just a little bit. UNLV University Libraries Rowena Gonzalez 5 Okay. The university was here, but Maryland Parkway was a rolling road. They’ve leveled it all out now. Was it paved? Oh, yes. There were two buildings in ’59, I think. At the university here. Was it known as the University of Nevada then? It was called Nevada Southern University, and there was some squawk when they finally turned it into the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and put it under Reno, because at that time, it was fairly independent. What was the squawk all about? Well, I suppose some people would have preferred to remain independent. I see. Two buildings, huh? Mm-hmm. What was their primary degree here? Was it a fairly liberal arts college? I’m not sure that they—I don’t know what degree they gave. Was it known as a teachers college back then? No. It was building—I think business was there, and I know English was. That’s about it. I really don’t know much about that. Mm-hmm, before your time. Before we go any further, let’s go back into your family’s history—where your mother was from, where your dad was from. Well, they’re essentially from Texas. My father was born in the territory of New Mexico. I say he was a policeman for forty years and ultimately an identification expert—kept an autographed UNLV University Libraries Rowena Gonzalez 6 picture of J. Edgar Hoover on the wall until the latest flap. My mother got her degree from Midwestern University in Wichita Falls. Was she born in Texas? She was born in Odessa, Oklahoma. Okay. Since you arrived here, what type of jobs have you held? Well, I was a student, seventeen, eighteen, and I sold cosmetics door-to-door—I guess everybody tried that. What kind of cosmetics did you sell? Studio Girl. Studio Girl Cosmetics. I was allergic to them. (Laughs) That went over big, trying to tell that here. Well, something allergic to, yeah. I suffered. And then I was a manicurist for a couple years. Where were you a manicurist at? It was a place called a Hare-Pen-a-Go-Go, that’s hare, as in rabbit, and pen as in writing, you know, a hare-pen—it was a go-go and a win-win all the time. Did you meet some interesting people? Yes. For example? I really shouldn’t go in— The Las Vegas (unintelligible)? Well, I don’t want to call them that. Okay. UNLV University Libraries Rowena Gonzalez 7 There were a lot of interesting people around. Mm-hmm. And in Vegas, when I first came here, you see, you didn’t ask any questions. This is interesting because nobody asked questions. Most people did not offer or volunteer information. That’s even more true now, isn’t it? No. No? No. Well, business has come in, but that’s something to mention later. But business brings out a different kind of thing—things were much more homey. This was a very little, very small big city. Mm-hmm. That was the kind of air it took on. It was much more comfortable, much more informal in those days. Very good. When you first arrived here, say something about the industry. Oh, the big interesting was mainly the chemical plants in Henderson, who had sprung up during the war. Victory Village, which was torn down just a few years ago, was a thriving government community in Henderson. The plants belched thick smoke or whatever it was all the time. They cut that down now; you don’t see any smoke coming out of the chimneys. Not in the daytime anyway. Not in the daytime. Drive by at 7:30 at night and you may see something else. Were people as ecologically minded back then at all or to any degree? No, not in general. The first ecological warnings I heard came from my first chemistry teacher here. UNLV University Libraries Rowena Gonzalez 8 Really? Mm-hmm. What year was that, approximately? It was spring ’71. 1971. Yes. A lot passed since then. Yes. Do you remember any of the aboveground testing that took place back then? I remember some of it, but by that time they were testing very small things, I think. So the only thing I can give you, really, about that is hearsay, except a couple of things I do remember. One was that there’s always a flap about the famous atomic club in Beatty, Nevada. It’s supposed to fall down every time they set off something, but it hasn’t yet. But the early bombs, of course, were just set off aboveground. They were put up in big towers, detonated electrically. I think they set off a hydrogen bomb, and this hydrogen bomb is said to have turned the sky red when it went off. Really? When did this go on? I would have to say—well, you could look it up. It would be the first hydrogen bomb that they set off, because I think they did detonate a hydrogen bomb. And at that time, as I’ve been told by many people and one lady in particular, they took some dummies—now, this has been represented in movies, and they used to give this as scare shows—they took these dummies, they put ‘em in houses that were typical of American housing, put them up in dinner tables and in bed and wherever they’ll sleep, people would be. Then they set off a bomb, and they brought those UNLV University Libraries Rowena Gonzalez 9 dummies back. And they laid them all out, you know, various degrees of roasting. On what used to be a park and what now stands the city hall, which is contemptuously known as the city silo by some—and one lady in particular told me that she walks through there one night after work. And it was like walking through a field of corpses, and you could look at them, and it was just like the stories of Hiroshima—the bodies would be burnt on one half, the half that had been exposed to the blast would be charred black, destroyed, the other half untouched. Oh, good grief. Just complete, you know, very sharp lines of demarcation. The people went and looked at them and oohed and awed and waited for the next bomb to go off. How often did they go off? I don’t really know, you’d have to look them up. Just whenever they decided to set one off? They were fairly frequent tests, I think. That was the height of the Cold War; we were doing a lot of testing. Is that basically it? Well, it’s all I can really think of. I know that a truck driver was once caught in the cloud. I think it rained or something, he drove through a cloud. He had a shower for three hours and used up a couple bars of soap before they let him go. They would come with the Geiger-Muller counters—Geiger counters—and check, you know, anything that they thought had got radiation on it. And in those days, it was quite serious. Were there a lot of accidents, or was it pretty safe out there? There were not accidents that were reported. See, it’s something like the building of Hoover Dam, or Boulder Dam, whichever you want to call it. There were accidents there, but— UNLV University Libraries Rowena Gonzalez 10 You mentioned that, let’s go into that, talk about Hoover Dam for a while. What have you heard about that? I’m sure, some interesting stories. Well, I took an engineering club tour through the place, and as a guest of the club, I was able to see just about every place that isn’t classified—I assume there are classified places there. But we went through, we took a whole day and we walked through that whole thing. I don’t remember how many miles we were supposed to walk, I think something like—said when we walked back we would have walked between ten and fifteen miles. Good grief. I think. Now, I could be wrong. But it was an enormous distance. And the finishing in there, the machinery—something you don’t see on your average thirty-minute tour that they take the tourists on. It’s beautifully done; you could never get work like that again. The only thing I can compare it to is, you know, the ordinary machining just on your most ordinary things—elevator gates and that sort of thing—the stuff was done with stainless steel. And the only thing I’ve seen to compared it with is the machining on rifle bolts. Really? I’m quite serious. It’s that kind of solid, well-done work. Of course, they had no problems with labor in those days because, you know, if one guy fell over from the heat because it was 130 degrees there and they carried their tools around in buckets of water. If one guy quit or died on the job, there was a whole line of guys waiting to take his place. There was never a problem with unemployment. How many people were working on the project at the time? I have no idea. Now, those are details that you can get, you know from the BLM, Bureau of Land Management. UNLV University Libraries Rowena Gonzalez 11 That’s on the border of Arizona and Nevada, right? Yes. Who does it belong to? That’s a good question. It is administered or overseen or whatever by the Bureau of Land Management, I believe. Those generators that are down there, is that powering any city in Nevada, are we getting any of it here? Not that—I understand that it’s all going to California, because it’ll go through a switching station—I can’t think of the name of it, it’s a Scottish name, something like that—it’s a switching station out towards Searchlight. That’s an impressive thing to see, too. That’s where the lines go, and I think this power runs to L.A., because we’ve got our Nevada power set up here. Well, I had heard that it goes to L.A., but I thought that was kind of unusual. Well, how is Las Vegas getting their power? We get it from steam generators. Steam? Yes, burn oil. They’re all fuel out here in Nevada? As far as I know, yes. That’s awfully expensive. The one we’ve got. I’m surprised they’re not using coal. Didn’t used to be. UNLV University Libraries Rowena Gonzalez 12 But it is now. But the switchover is pretty difficult. Because I know we’re using coal and have been for some time in Texas. In San Antonio now, we had to use fuel oil on an emergency basis, and our bill shoots sky high. Nevada has some of the lowest power rates in the United States, Las Vegas anyway. Interesting. I just wondered how they did it, where they did. I don’t know, but I know one of the tanks caught fire one time. Really? Yeah, guy was in there welding. Oh yeah? That’s a good reason for it to catch on fire. This was not too long ago, and I guess the thing arced, and the fumes exploded—killed him and I think it severely burned or killed another man. And this tank burned for days—there was nothing you could do about it, no way to put it out, you know. When was this? This was not long ago, this was maybe five years ago. This wasn’t too long ago. Did you ever hear anything about accidents? You spoke of the accidents that happened by Hoover Dam or something. The only accidents that’s really of note that I know about that I got from someone who was there who swears that there are people put away in the dam. He does say there is? Yes, now, a lot of people say there are, and other say no. You can almost bet there is. UNLV University Libraries Rowena Gonzalez 13 There may be parts of people, because what happened was, they were pouring a form—they were pouring concrete, they poured it in these huge forms. One of the forms gave way, and it dumped all this hot concrete down on a crew that was working below—it just went all the way down and took some forms with it, so I understand—and dumped it on these people. Well, concrete sets up, and it’s hot, and they chipped out the bodies and recovered all they could. They get to a certain point where it’s hard to chip anymore. Once you start pouring that concrete, it’s difficult to stop. That is true. You’ve got to plug on no matter what. But I’m sure that they did all they could to recover any bodies. Of course, other people were killed in falls of the hills. Sure. I suspect the mortality rate is pretty high. There used to be a big sign when, as you approached the dam, said, “Safety pays.” But it’s gone. The thing’s torn down now. It was a big hangar-like building. You see some of the parts—one great valve was cast at a foundry in the east, shipped out here in halves, and each half took up a flatbed railroad car. And they used that huge hangar to put it together, I think lifted it down by cranes, and put it in place. It’s an incredible thing to see. I think it’s a needle valve and it is unbelievably huge. You figure something that took up a flatbed— I wonder how they opened and closed it. It must be mechanical of some sort. Oh, yes. Is that the main gate valve? UNLV University Libraries Rowena Gonzalez 14 Let’s see, now that’s been a long time since I’ve been through there. I think it’s the biggest valve, so I guess it is. But it can be shut down very fast. It can be shut down fast. What would happen if they closed that off, would that lake drain immediately, irrigation on the other side of the dam? Close it off? Yes, close off the valve. We got the lake on the back side then, right—well, okay, they close it off, back up, where’s the water coming from? Perhaps— It’s coming from California, isn’t it? No, the water’s coming—figure the Colorado runs southwest, so that water would back up. Okay, I’ve got it backwards. If they close it off and prohibited the water from flowing on the other side of the dam, where does the lower back side of the dam or the front side of the dam going into? Is that going into California? The front side, the curved side you mean? I can’t picture the dam—I’m talking about the other side of the dam, not the lake itself. Okay, well that stream would run on to Arizona. It goes back into Arizona, not down in the Pacific? No, it goes on—I just can’t— I never looked at a map, and I was just wondering how it’s set up, if it runs through Nevada or Nevada, California, or I guess— No, it runs down, I think it’s kind of the border of California and Arizona. I think it runs along there and then it runs on into Mexico, I think. Oh, okay. UNLV University Libraries Rowena Gonzalez 15 But you can find it on a map. [Audio cuts out] Okay, and then there was an old man named Howard Hughes. What do you know about that old boy? Well, I don’t know very much, because I only know what the general stories were around town. I can say this, I can say that Howard Hughes was either a blessing or a curse depending on how you looked at him, how you viewed what his presence brought and what his influence did to Southern Nevada, because we were on an upswing. Things were booming, things were growing before he came. But when I came here, the population was, I think, around 100,000; and that included Nellis Air Base. And Nellis was a bigger, I think more important base, or so we thought, than it is now, because I’m not positive about. Now, Howard Hughes came in, as I see, on an upswing. He was able, through his money and through his prestige, to apply a tremendous impetus to the growth of Las Vegas. He bought, I think it was the Dunes is the first hotel he bought—I’m not sure—the Sands. And the local people, all we know was that Howard Hughes was fabulously rich, was said to walk around the streets dressed like a bum or rewarding those who gave him charity, and currently see this coming back in that will now, you know. But it’s just exactly the stories that we heard, and so everyone was very kind to any old bum, for a while anyhow, the chance that it might be Howard Hughes. No one ever saw him. He became very irritated when the newspapers, and I think it was the Las Vegas Sun in particular, invaded his privacy and demanded court appearances. What was that all about? UNLV University Libraries Rowena Gonzalez 16 I’ll tell you, I really don’t know. I’m not sure, because I didn’t follow it that closely, but it had something to do with a lawsuit. They wanted to verify his signature on certain things—Robert Mayhew was Hughes’ right hand man, and then he fell into disrepute. Really? Hughes got (unintelligible) by the lawsuits and so forth. And the Sun really went to town on him. Hughes did not appreciate this, but I think that’s about when he moved. That’s when Hughes moved? Yes. But meanwhile, the good, or the damage, depending again on how you look at it, already been done, because the Strip used to be just about, there were certain hotels. Well, Hughes bought some hotels, he built some hotels. Some people think he overbuilt the Strip, and some people even suppose or said that they were afraid he was going to monopolize the place, buy up everything, and then shut it down for moral reasons. This may sound absurd, but this is— That doesn’t sound too absurd. This is the sort of thing that wound up in the letter to the editor. Let’s see, his major competitor was Del Webb. It seems to me Del Webb is dead, but again, this is something I’m not sure of. However, Del Webb’s International Hotel is now the Hilton. That’s Harrah. Del Webb’s corporation? Yes. Del Webb has the International Hilton here? No, not anymore. Oh. I thought he built it, and Howard Hughes built the Landmark, or it may have been vice versa. Well, did Hughes anything—build Downtown or did he steer clear? UNLV University Libraries Rowena Gonzalez 17 Let’s see. Del Webb got The Mint. I don’t think Hughes built around Downtown. He didn’t have to, you know. A gold mine (unintelligible). Buy a (unintelligible), ‘cause, you know, hotels on the Strip aren’t going to worry about Downtown. That’s when Downtown began to go (unintelligible). Well, did Hughes base his whole organization and different organizations out of Las Vegas or Nevada? As far as I know, he was said to have. This would have had, I think, certain tax benefits. Okay, he had Summa Corporation. What else did he have? Oh, there was Hughes Tool Company, which I think is the original, then there’s Hughes—well, there was Air West, but he bought an airline that was all but defunct, I think—rescued it, you know, turned it into a viable— Wasn’t that part of TWA Shareholdings or something like that? It might have been, I don’t know. I wouldn’t know that much detail about it. But, you see, his efforts were his money that he was able to put into this town. Well, fortunate result, if you’re thinking in terms of employment, in terms of growth of the city, bringing in a lot of people, the city certainly did grow, apartments were built—everything just buying up, like mushrooms everywhere. This was all very well; on the other hand, if you think of it in another light, he brought so many people in that it just blew up the population of a valley with limited space. As I said, before Hughes, before all these people, there was no smog, except for Henderson, and they finally got rid of that. There was, oh, you can see where I am now, you can see that twice as clearly. Really? UNLV University Libraries Rowena Gonzalez 18 Of course. I’m serious. There was a lot more desert, and a lot more friendliness. And now, industry, you see, we have EG&G moving in. It has moved in; it was not there before. EG&G? EG&G is over here, lots of things are over here, and those things came about, well, I can’t see it wasn’t here before, I shouldn’t say that. But so many big businesses did move in with some kind of headquarters here. And much of this came in, so to speak, on Hughes’ coattails. Some people think he’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to the valley, but you can’t take back what’s happened. You’ve got Dun & Bradstreet, you’ve got stock exchange things down here. That’s Dun & Bradstreet—that’s not a stock exchange though? No, it’s a— Big corporation. Big corporation, and there are several other, you see, came up about this time. Well, do people still hold a grudge against Hughes? Some do. And don’t feel that he was a betterment for the city? Well, some do. You see, Las Vegas could have remained, and of course this is a reactionary view that I’m giving you, although there are people who really believe this, that Las Vegas could have remained a much friendlier place, a much less sophisticated city. I called it a very small big city; well, it’s getting to be a pretty tolerably big, big city. It really is. What is the population now compared to, say, mid-fifties? What is the population now? Yes, what was it like then? Then, oh, I don’t know, maybe 50-, 60,000 people. UNLV University Libraries Rowena Gonzalez 19 Oh. And then, you see, if you include Nellis, Nellis holds a lot of people. I’d say it came up around, it was around 100,000 back then. I believe—now, this can be checked. I know it’s right around 400,000. (Unintelligible) people. Big boom. Sure. Well, it’s obviously a tourist city now. Has it always been a tourist city, tourist-oriented? No. This is what I was talking about with the locals versus tourists. It used to be—well, there weren’t that many tourists. There weren’t that many locals either. The locals may a good living off the few tourists that came, because there were not too many locals to visit. Now, you can’t do it anymore. And as I said, the locals have suffered. As far as being a tourist city, I think less and less it is so, because more and more you’ve got big business or moderately big business springing up here. And when that happens, you get something established. You just can’t—it depends on tourism, but it’s no longer absolutely oriented that way. Now, it’s big business in the hotels. Yes. Well, you mentioned earlier (unintelligible) about casinos being locally-oriented. It’s not that way anymore, obviously. No. Downtown, I think, there’s some casinos—and I don’t want to recapitulate something I said on the other side. It went on the other side. Oh was it? Mm-hmm. UNLV University Libraries Rowena Gonzalez 20 Oh. It’s (unintelligible). Some of the places Downtown have become much newer. And these are the old casinos—I’m thinking of the Las Vegas Club. Lady Luck’s too new. The El Cortez, maybe. Now, these are going to give you—they’re said to give you a better break, they’re more liberal slots and so forth, but you know, there was no longer the mystique of gambling that there was; now, that I will tell you—probably because everybody loses money now. But some people don’t ever seem to learn. Well, it’s not that. You see, you could take your bucket full of quarters and you could play a slot machine for hours and hours and hours and hours. Mm-hmm. And you might hit a jackpot. But nowadays, you can’t do that. That’s true. ‘Cause you’ll find that you start feeding slot machines that are very greedy. But let’s see, did I tell you about the Orbit Inn on this side? No, you didn’t tell me about the Orbit Inn. I didn’t? No. Is it on the other side? No. It’s not? Mm-mm. UNLV University Libraries Rowena Gonzalez 21 Well, then, the Orbit Inn is Downtown on Fremont Street, and a man, for some reason, whatever reason people do these things, got a box of dynamite, and I believe he sat down on it and fired a gun into the box, or else, maybe he didn’t even sit down, maybe he just shot it. Anyways, he blew himself and a couple up and killed a few people. And the gambling—I’ll tell you, we heard the explosion because we lived not too far away from it, we went Downtown—the people came out, looked, you know, and went right back in to gamble. Now, we were impressed, obviously, by something that’s going on, and not everybody went back in, but a good many simply went back in to gamble. They stayed on the tables or they stayed at the lots. And this is fairly recently. Years ago, there was a joke—there was a fire in the casino and nobody moved off the tables. And there was a mystique about casinos which does not exist now. The Golden Nugget, if you go in there—have you been in there? Yes. Take a real good look around there—well, it used to be a whole lot better than it is now. Well, how is it any better? Let’s see, I have to be careful, but they used to have a lot more heavy wood in it than they do now. Well, they would throw that stuff out. For what reason? Remodel it. But then, you see, it lost a certain charm. I mean, this thing had tons and tons of dark wood finishings everywhere. Well, I think that was all pulled out in the remodeling because they remodeled it and extended it. One guy died on the table. This happened in one of the casinos—I’m not going to mention where—but he died. Heart attack? UNLV University Libraries Rowena Gonzalez 22 Probably. Or he may have taken an overdose of pills or something and it just took that long to hit him. But this guy, he had to come in, and he didn’t look too good, and the dealer didn’t want to—I don’t want to get off the subject too much, you know calling back—but to give you an idea, dealer didn’t want to put up with him. He let him sit there on the blackjack table, and he played for a while, and after a while, he just tilted backwards, kind of relaxed, and collapsed, and those high stools, you know, it just tilted backwards, he crashed back and landed up against a bank of slot machines, and people just ignored it. Went on. And they thought he was drunk or passed out or something, and this isn’t all that unusual to see, you know. And it was twenty minutes before anyone discovered that he was dead. The dealer didn’t catch it? No. No, the gambling goes on. The cards just go on, the cards turn over, the people— That is wil