Madeline Taylor Knighten interview, November 6, 1974: transcript

UNLV University Libraries Madeline Taylor Knighten i An Interview with Madeline Taylor Knighten An Oral History Conducted by Jay Brewer 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 Madeline Taylor Knighten ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2019 UNLV University Libraries Madeline Taylor Knighten 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 Madeline Taylor Knighten iv Abstract On November 6, 1974, collector Jay Brewer interviewed Madeline Taylor Knighten (born July 7th, 1907 in Chanute, Kansas) at her home in Boulder City, Nevada. In the interview, Madeline Taylor Knighten discusses her life in the early days of Boulder City, Nevada. She also speaks about her husband’s work in the Green Hut Café, as well as in diamond drilling. UNLV University Libraries Madeline Taylor Knighten 5 My informant is Mrs. Knighten. The date is November 6th, 1974. The place is 615 California Street, Boulder City, Nevada. The collector’s name is Jay Brewer. My address is 5213 Holmby. The project is Local History, Project 306. And now I would like to begin with our interview. Basically, where did you live before you came here, and what were your reasons for coming to Boulder City? Well, immediately before coming to Boulder City, we lived in Los Angeles, California. My husband was a diamond driller, and worked for the (unintelligible) drilling company in Los Angeles, California. And we had been called there from Wickenburg, Arizona in 1931—in the summer of 1931. We were drilling at the old (unintelligible) mine in Wickenburg. And we were called into Los Angeles because the Metropolitan Water Company wanted drilling done on the dam site up San Diego Canyon. And, between the time we left Wickenburg and arriving in Los Angeles, they had had to cancel their contract with their company, because they were not able to sell their bonds at that time—the water bonds. The Metropolitan Water Company, Los Angeles, in connection with Boulder Dam, of course. And we stayed in Los Angeles and worked at various small projects our company had there until a friend of my husbands, a lifelong friend of his, Clarence Newlin, who had lived in my husband’s hometown, known him all his life, and he was a good café man, a really good restaurant man, telegraphed him, found out where we were of course through our mutual connections in my husband’s hometown, and telegraphed him to come to Boulder City to help him open up the Green Hut Café here. He had the government concession and Boulder City was a complete reservation at that time. Nothing was started here without a government concession to come in and put in the business. And my husband had gone to SMU in Dallas, Texas and lived UNLV University Libraries Madeline Taylor Knighten 6 with Clarence and his wife there, and worked for him. He had four Green Hut Café’s in Dallas, Texas before we were married. And of course, they’d been lifelong friends. He came up here by himself because he had no idea what he’d be getting into. Approximately when was this? This was the first of April of 1932. He came up to Boulder City, and they kept (unintelligible) night that I remember right, the 9th of April, it hoped to open on the first, but weren’t quite ready. And it was a very nice café. Mr. Newman, Clarence Newman, was an excellent restaurant manager, and he insisted on having only the best food served in his restaurant. And— What type of food was it? Just all sorts of good restaurant food. From the fanciest sort of restaurant meals to any kind of sandwich, honestly— (Laughs) I think any kind of sandwich that had ever been heard of could be put together there. And of course short order, fry cook type short order meals. It was very good. They had two rows of booths on one side of the dining room with a partition in between, and then a long counter. I don’t remember how many seats, but there must have been probably twenty seats to the counter in the café. And it was very well run, the very best ingredients used in all the cooking, and the cooks were all old down south type cooks. There was one Negro, who at that time, I think, was the first Negro in Boulder City. And for some reason, they called him Red. (Laughs) He was an excellent cook. Do you remember his name other than Red? No. I’m sorry. UNLV University Libraries Madeline Taylor Knighten 7 That’s alright. I don’t remember. He was a very pleasant man and an excellent cook for his type of cooking. Of course, they had several cooks. My husband’s specialty—he could cook too, that’s why Clarence Newlin called him to come here, because my husband, when he was just a kid, hardly grown, had learned to cook with the Newlin brothers—there were four of them—in one of their cafes. He had learned to cook there, and he used a Calumet Baker’s Manual for his cakes. And he could bake nine kinds of angel food cakes before we ever heard of the chiffon cakes that evolved, I think from angel foods. It had so many flavors. He could make all sorts of angel food cakes. He used a huge, big KitchenAid heavy aluminum mixer to mix his doughs. Mm-hmm. He could make all sorts of rich pastries, all sorts of good things like that, using the Calumet Baker’s Manual. And that’s what he did for Clarence here until Clarence sold the café, then he went back to his real love, diamond drilling. For all this time, you were elsewhere? We were here in Boulder City. I was in Los Angeles. I forgot to tell you that. I had to stay there because there was nowhere to sleep here. Clarence Newlin and his wife had taken up a duplex apartment on Utah Street. The builder of those was called—they’re called the Henderson Houses. The builder was a man named Henderson and he had quite a number of those duplex apartments up and down L and M, and a few running out. You know how our streets run in together like the spokes on a wheel. Few running out onto Utah Street, where it came out that street, I guess it would’ve been. And, there’s a screened in front porch, a screened in back porch, and Mr. Newlin and his wife had the one room. There was a little kitchenette and a little, tiny bathroom. The screened in front porch had two cots in it, and the fellows who were going to UNLV University Libraries Madeline Taylor Knighten 8 work for Clarence Newman slept turning out, according to what their shifts might be, on those Army cots. The little teeny screened in back porch had one more cot on it, and so more of them slept back there, turning out. And that’s where they slept in those early days when it was so hot here. We never heard of air conditioning. If you had an electric fan, you were lucky. And that’s the way they did to get the businesses started here in Boulder City. And I didn’t come up—my husband came down to Los Angeles once in the early fall of ’32 and stayed about a week, just to relax and visit a little bit. Then, around Thanksgiving Day, I came up here. And I came up on a Greyhound Bus from Los Angeles. The bus station was in the basement of the Roslin Hotel, if you ever heard anything about, the Roslin was quite a good hotel. It had a huge, big basement and the buses could go down from two streets—go down the ramp and into the huge, big basement of the Roslin Hotel, and you could get on the elevator and go right up to the lobby, or to your room. But, I took the bus there and came up to Boulder City, up to Las Vegas, and to the—over to the, was it the Overton Hotel? Oh, that’s terrible, I’ve forgotten. It was on the corner, across the street from the Sal Sagev, right behind the Union Pacific Depot and the park. This is the Main Street of Las Vegas. The Sal Sagev is still there. The Overland Hotel! That’s what it was, the Overland Hotel. And Overland buses came in there. But this bus stopped there, and I took a little shuttle bus out to Boulder City. And it was the funniest little bus, it was a pinwheel trolley type thing that had doors all the way down both sides. And the seats went all the way across, no aisle. The bus driver sat up in his little (unintelligible) cart, and the seats went all the way across from these doors. And, well at least four people can sit in them, and I think probably five or six can sit across in those seats. And when we got to the gate—and the reservation did have a gate—it was out east of Railroad Pass and I don’t know just how far, but not too far. East of Railroad UNLV University Libraries Madeline Taylor Knighten 9 Pass was the gate of the big fence. And the rangers. We hadn’t any police service here then, they were US Rangers, and our police station over on Arizona, called the Senior Citizens Center now, that was our US Ranger Station. And they had a little house, sort of thing, cute little—cute little small house. Sort of big there at the gate, and everyone got out. You stated your business, you gave your name, you stated your reason for coming to Boulder City, and of course, no liquor was allowed into Boulder City. You couldn’t bring it in. Although, you could buy it then, even though it wasn’t (Laughs) —I guess prohibition wasn’t quite over. You could buy liquor around the county, but you couldn’t bring it in to Boulder City. That’s part of what this query was all about. Did they check your luggage or anything if you were bringing any luggage? No, they really didn’t. I guess they—to that extent—they just trusted us. But if they didn’t accept your reasons for coming in, and after you were in here, you were in. You didn’t get out until you checked out again, you know. There was nowhere else to go. You just were in here until you went back out. But, I told them, of course, I was coming to visit my husband who worked at the Green Hut Café and gave them my name. And at some time, I guess perhaps it didn’t start until later than I had come up till in early ’33, they had a book you had to sign. And the person declared a visitor your reason for being in here, but I didn’t have to sign that. They weren’t doing that at that time. But, we came on in, and ‘course, there wasn’t a great deal to Boulder City in late ’32. There was this area I live in now, the Six Companies houses, which at that time, each of its type, they were all alike. This one was called a three room house. It was a straw boss house. Over on the other side of the next street were smaller ones called two room houses. Then on farther out, there were what they called the one room houses. And below New Mexico Street, there was a great area of the one room houses, a few two room houses. UNLV University Libraries Madeline Taylor Knighten 10 When did you expect this to be built? These houses here? They were built in ’31. They told us that they built one an hour, that they could finish one an hour because they had such a huge crew in and they, I think they built seven hundred and something if I remember right, of these Six Companies houses. You know, the Six Companies were six huge construction companies from all parts of the country. They banded together because Boulder Dam, Hoover Dam, was the most advanced construction project that had been until that time. They didn’t know just what they were doing. It was also the first of the big dams. They didn’t know for sure just what they were doing, and they sort of felt their way along. But they learned fast. These Six Companies, they had wizards, and really, really marvelous construction people, great crew, and a great engineer. And they were supposed to finish the big project in under eight years. And they finished and turned over their little tag ends to the government in six years or a little less. Phew. President Franklin Roosevelt came out and dedicated the dam in September of 1935 and that was only four years after. It wasn’t all finished, Six Companies weren’t quite through with their work. But he did come, and you could get to part of the top of the dam, there where the winged figures are down there—do you remember those? Yes. Over at the edge of the canyon, they’d built a large wooden platform, and the president stood there in his braces of course. He had to latch his braces, in order to stand for, well, at all, really. He stood there and made his dedication speech, and we were there, of course. We were up in Government Park up here, up in the Ad Building Park as we called it, the Administration Building Park, just down below the administration building. When his car came around and UNLV University Libraries Madeline Taylor Knighten 11 stopped there, and they (unintelligible), and the people could see him. They were not allowed to get near him, we were in one of the front rows, just off the curb, just on the grass off the curb. And a little frail old lady that you could see just worshipped the president. She went out to him, her hands up, you could see that she was just a Roosevelt worshipper. (Laughs) And the big Secret Service men swarmed down. They had (unintelligible) in those days, and there’s one in the front, one at the back in the running boards. And the president and Mrs. Roosevelt, they really were sitting in two different seats, sort of, inside, where he could be seen more easily, I guess. And Harold Ickes I believe was with them. Not one of my favorite people. And, the Secret Service men just swarmed down and smothered this little old lady, and picked her up, and set her back over on the grass. They didn’t let her go up to the car and take his hand at all. I thought that was a shame. That would’ve just made the rest of her life if she could’ve done that. But, the road to the dam was just a two lane highway in those days, and it was full. Bumper to bumper, both lanes going down, going down there that day to the dam. And all this was (unintelligible) was really an immense. But I’d gotten away from the early days in Boulder, haven’t I? The early from the town itself. One question I wanted to ask before we go too much farther, so what year were you married? Oh, we were married in 1925 in Twin Falls, Idaho. Okay. And we came down to—my father had set me up in Twin Falls because he thought my prospective husband was too old for me. And he thought out of sight might be out of mind. And he was going to SMU in Dallas, Texas, and he was working the twelve hour tower, dressing to UNLV University Libraries Madeline Taylor Knighten 12 oil wells around the area. He was working over there (unintelligible). And we’d drive about thirty miles to get over to our town to see me for half an hour to an hour. And my father—I told him we were going to marry as soon as my husband finished college. He didn’t like the idea and said he was too old for me and he had lived too rough a life knocking around the country, and he didn’t want me to have anything more to do with him. When I wouldn’t agree to it, he—I wasn’t old enough to go on my own, but when I wouldn’t agree to it, he packed me off to Salt Lake City, to my sister who lived there. And they were just in the process of moving up to Twin Falls, Idaho. Her husband was a roofing man. He put six hundred carloads, I think, of American (unintelligible) and asphalt roofing into the Twin Falls area soon after we got up there. But that’s how I got to Twin Falls. And my husband of course didn’t forget. He came out and we were married that fall. He worked the rest of the summer because, of course he had to earn his money. And, he didn’t go back to school incidentally. That was the end of his college career. But we went down to Salt Lake because he knew if he could get work at something there. Mm-hmm. And he looked nice. He had nice clothing going to college. In those days, college boys wore suits and overcoats, suits with vests, and shirts and ties, and overcoats. They didn’t wear just (Laughs) jeans or anything. He went into this Sullivan Machinery Company that was there in Salt Lake City, huge big office on the street floor. And he intended to see if there was any sort of job he could, of course, but they didn’t know that, and they thought he wanted to write a contract with them. Well they all got together and they said they haven’t anything that he could do right then, but they gave him a card to a friend of theirs who had a diamond drilling company. Now my husband had drilled, he was a tool dresser on cable tools in the Oklahoma and Texas oil fields, he’d done that, as well as his cooking, which he didn’t really like to do. And, he took it. He went UNLV University Libraries Madeline Taylor Knighten 13 to the Eagleson Brothers Diamond Drilling Company there in Salt Lake City, and they gave him a job as a—what they called a helper. That’s not the one who runs the drill, but the one who hands things to the one who runs the drill. And he runs up the ladder to the top and unscrews the car barrel, as they call it, which is a steel rod that the car is kept, by the diamonds and goes up to the steel casing. And that can be taken off and the car all let out. Well, that’s what he did for three months, and then he was put to drilling, to running the drill, and they called them drillers. On the oil tools, they were called drillers, but on the diamond drill, the driller was called a runner. They had helpers, and runners, and diamond setters. The diamond setter was usually the foreman of the job, and he—the bits were handset bits in those days. And the diamond setters set the diamonds in the bits and hand ‘em to the crews to use and woe be to a driller who ever burned the bit, because they couldn’t burn in the bits and lose several thousand dollars worth of diamonds, right there, if they didn’t know what they were doing and watched their drills carefully. Oh, my husband was a diamond driller for about, I forget how many years, I think it was about three years after that until he learned to set diamonds, then he was a diamond setter and a foreman after that. And that, of course, is what he did when he came into Boulder City. They had called him back here and he had six drills going at first when he came back, with three crews to each drill. And he couldn’t keep up with that many diamond bits of course. Now when you came on the bus here, what was your husband doing at that time? At that time, he was cooking at the Green Hut Café for his lifetime friend Cindy Lou and Clarence Newlin— Mm-hmm. Who had the government concession to put in the Green Hut Café here. And that’s what he came up to do, to help Clarence get his business started. He was starting from scratch here, and he UNLV University Libraries Madeline Taylor Knighten 14 wanted people he could really trust and people he knew to come in and, people he could depend on to really put out the kind of food he wanted. Where did you stay when you came? When I came up to visit in the fall of ’32, there still was nowhere for me to really live. My husband and the head waiter at the Green Hut had the corner room of Dr. Fulbright’s office, his dental offices. Dr. Fulbright had a suite of five or six rooms there. He had his own laboratory. Well, he put an army cot down the hall by his laboratory, and of course, there were bathrooms there, and put the head waiter down in the hall on the cot, with his clothes over behind a string curtain—a curtain on a string, I should say. And this corner room that should have been the other dentist’s office if he had gotten the other dentist he planned on in. He turned into a bedroom because of the great need for bedrooms here in Boulder City. And my husband and this head waiter shared this bedroom. He had put in a huge four poster, if you can imagine, bed. Where he got it, it probably came down from Utah somewhere. He was down from Utah. That’s probably where the bed came from. Mm-hmm. And a stand table, which was something like a lamp table of today. It was very old fashioned unit at that time, the stand table. And one chair, and the screen across the corner with two boards fastened on the wall, some nails driven into the board. Dang clothing went straight across the garter, with calico curtains down from it. That was the (unintelligible) room. Then there was a lovely, big, beautiful blue hand basin, because it wasn’t in his office, they needed the lavatory. They had this lovely, big, beautiful hand basin with hot and cold running water, which was very elegant for a room in Boulder City in those day. And that’s where I first stayed. But I stayed UNLV University Libraries Madeline Taylor Knighten 15 about two months, then I had to go back to Los Angeles. There still was nowhere for me to live, where we could really have our own room. And, I went back about the 1st of February of ’33, if I remember right, back to my little apartment in Los Angeles. And in March of ’33 that pitiful earthquake hit down there. Do you remember the Long Beach, Los Angeles earthquake? And my husband wasn’t even able to get a telephone message in to me for three days. Fortunately, I was in a lesser affected part of it. And parts that were one hundred or more dead, so that earthquake scattered over the county. But, I was in a lesser affected portion of the town, and we got a terrible shake. It was a—it would scare you for the rest of your life, but fortunately no one died in our area. But, he came down as quick as they would let him get in. They didn’t let people indiscriminately in and out for several days. But as quick as he could get in, which I think was about a week, he came down and got me. He wasn’t going to let me—and in the meantime, just that week, the houses up on Utah Street behind the Episcopal church, there were four big, framed government houses there, and the engineers, or at least two or three of them were engineers had moved into them, had got into their houses, and he got a bedroom on the second house off Arizona Street. On Utah Street, it was oh, maybe 407—I don’t really remember the number, because we got our mail in the post office then. There was no mail delivery. We got all of our mail from the post office. There was no bank. We banked at the post office too, just from savings or as our bank in those days. And that’s where he brought me back to. And it was lovely. It was really a beautiful, huge bedroom. Those government houses were very well built, and brand new. You could still smell the shavings, they were just brand new, so lovely. But we had this huge, big bedroom with a walk in clothes closet, with a window in it. The clothes closet (unintelligible), which was good, UNLV University Libraries Madeline Taylor Knighten 16 ‘cause you needed all the wood that you could get to get the air through. We’d hang—that first summer of ’33, when I stayed all summer—we’d hang our dampened sheets, we’d ring them out in the bathtub, and huge, big bath towels, wring them out in the bathtub, and pin them up on the screen from the wide open window with safety pins. And have our electric fan running, and that’s how—that was our air conditioning system in those days. There were no desert coolers here then. That came about maybe ’35 or ‘6 I think. Mm-hmm. The desert coolers here, what’s called a swamp cooler now. But that’s where I stayed, the first place in Boulder City. Then I’d go down to the Green Hut to eat. My husband of course, took all his meals there. I’d go down to eat whenever I’d felt like it. And I would walk between Utah. And believe it or not, in those days, walking between Utah, the Episcopal church on one side and the Mormon church on the other side of the intersection there of Arizona, there was only the red school building , the elementary school building, and the (unintelligible) building down on Nevada Highway. There were only those two buildings between Utah Street and Nevada Highway on the north side of Arizona. On the south side of Arizona, of course, (unintelligible) Episcopal church, was the Mormon church, they’d been coming down past the ranger station, as we called it in those days, on Arizona. All that area was the ranger station, except for (unintelligible), which you only entered from the inside, no outside door. And it was the judge’s room. And then, you would have to go outside and come around, and come up big steps. Now their post office in those days was a huge, big area, up the big steps where our present library is, and that was the way you got in. You came up those big steps to the post office. That was a US Post Office. Down underneath our post office, on the north side was our library, a tiny little area with books from the Library of Congress in it. UNLV University Libraries Madeline Taylor Knighten 17 Mm-hmm. And it was just a little dark room down there. ‘Course they had lights on. They had to have the lights that would light just a little dark room. That was the little library. And over on the other side of the big steps, down the slope, was the jail, just as it is today. And of course our new post office we have now is—the one that we have now, has been moved in recent years. But high school was bussed into Las Vegas in those days. The elementary school is there. The red brick building was there, and it had kindergarten through eighth grade. But high school was bussed into Las Vegas every day. And that went on until the late ‘30’s, when World War II was starting before we got our first high school in the concrete building, the one that’s called the Recreation Center now. ‘Course our old red elementary school is our city hall and city offices now. And, on the other side of the street, on the south side of the Arizona, between—this is where I work every day, going down to eat, you see, that’s why I remember it so well—there was the ranger station and the little parks which have always been there, the little open areas which have always been there. And then, a very large open area, where Central Market is now, and sitting back in it out near the sidewalk was just dirt in that area. And you could park, you could drive up it there and park. And Burt’s Swiss little root beer stand was there, sitting in the corner. And the older day people here in Boulder will remember Burt’s Swiss Root Beer Stand, because it was a good one, and you could get good root beer, hot dogs, that sort of thing, there. Popcorn, I think sometimes, but root beer is what I remember ‘cause we drank lots of cold root beer in those days. Then, there was the theater building, which was just getting finished up. I think I saw the first show at the Boulder Theater. Earl Brothers came in from Oklahoma City, I believe, and built the theater building on that area. It had a sweet shop (unintelligible), which of course, we UNLV University Libraries Madeline Taylor Knighten 18 stopped (unintelligible). I know Mr. Trimble, our first ranger chief, or police chief, as he would be called now, he was called ranger chief, then, chief ranger. Mr. Trimble—Mrs. Trimble managed the sweet shop at one period, but I’m not sure if that was early on or if it was a little later. And, oh I can’t think what I thought was in the other parts of the building, some doctors I think upstairs, possibly, a lawyer upstairs. I don’t remember. I never went to doctors in those days. And, the theater itself, and I think Mae West Come Up and See Me Sometime picture was the first show after the theater opened that I remember seeing. Edward G. Robinson in Silver Dollar, about Leadville, Colorado, where my first child was born later. And (unintelligible) the senator from Colorado who made such a fortune in silver at Leadville, and other places possibly. And they wrote this story of his life, which was originally called Silver Dollar, and the movie—very good, Edward G. Robinson, I remember. Okay. And, let me see then, going on, there was a hardware store. Next to the theater building was the hardware building. That had been built by the Lamb’s. And, going on down, the hotel was just being built, Boulder Dam Hotel. Much as it looks today, it was a beautiful colonial type hotel. Most of our architecture here in Boulder was Spanish type, desert type. But the man who built the Boulder Dam Hotel, built it a beautiful, quite colonial hotel. It was a lovely place. It was a lovely place to go. Many of our organizations would have their dinners served in the dining room there, would have meetings there. It was a very lovely hotel. And on beyond that, there was nothing till you got to the Texaco Station on Nevada Highway. And this is where you would walk everyday down to the (unintelligible)? Yes, I’d walk every day, down to—the Green Hut was across the street, (unintelligible) corner from the Texaco Station. UNLV University Libraries Madeline Taylor Knighten 19 How many hours a day did your husband work? Oh, ten or twelve. That’s a long day. It was a long day, but the people on the dam, most of them were working eight hours. Some of them would lap over, and it was nothing in those days for people to work ten to twelve hours. And, a lot of them wanted to, a great many of them wanted to. One of the things we liked to do in these days would be go down—after he would get off at night—we would go down these hot summer nights, and down to the dam, down to the lookout point, up at the top of the canyon and look over. Everything was so lighted, it was just like daylight down there, because of the immense electrical system that they had to use because they worked twenty-four hours a day. And we would hang over Lookout Point there, with their animals on the wall, you know, and hang over that, and watch the work going on down there. It was just like a—watching an ant hill. You wouldn’t believe the immense amount of work. And when I first saw the canyon, the water was still there, they were just starting to build the cofferdam, late in ’32 when I first saw the project. The water was—the river was still going through, they were drilling the big—moving the dirt out of the, rock, out of the tunnels which were about fifty foot tunnels. The pipe that went into them was a thirty foot pipe, I believe. It was so large they had to put the BMW to Babcock-Wilcox Pipe Fabricating Plant down at the—back from the canyon a bit, to make that huge pipe there, because it was too large to ship into the country on a railway car. They did have a railway system going from the BMW Plant down to the dam, but it was made especially for that sort of flat car things that they would run down that track with these huge big sections of thirty foot, I think, pipe to put in these big tunnels they were drilling out, to let the water go around the cofferdam. The rock and dirt cofferdam was put out to divert the water when the UNLV University Libraries Madeline Taylor Knighten 20 tunnels were ready. It would divert the water around. Then they could get in and really build the dam, really start scaling it off at the bottom and pouring their concrete. ‘Course we watched a great deal of that over the years too, pouring of the concrete and blasting. We watched a great deal of blasting. From up there, you could see where they would—the scalers would come down and scale up the canyon, then the driller—the people who use jackhammer drills, would drill holes in, place the dynamite, everyone would get out of there (unintelligible) kept back out of the area. And they would blast off a huge, big portion of the canyon, and the high scalers would go up again, or come down, really again on their ropes, on their cables, and their seats. They would swing down the side of the canyon and the high scalers would scale off all this rock. And that’s—that’s the way they got the wide rock of the canyon to have a decent place to, a safe place to start pouring the concrete. It must have been very fascinating— It was. And y