Ray D. Merrill interview, March 14, 1978: transcript

UNLV University Libraries Ray Merrill 1 An Interview with Ray Merrill An Oral History Conducted by Rick Merrill 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 Ray Merrill 2 © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2020 UNLV University Libraries Ray Merrill 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 Ray Merrill 4 Abstract On March 14, 1978, collector Rick Merrill interviewed his father Ray Merrill (born May 22nd, 1933 in Wynona, Oklahoma) about living in Southern Nevada. In this interview, Mr. Merrill speaks extensively about working while growing up in Las Vegas, Nevada. From eleven years old on, he worked as a paperboy, shoe shiner, and grocery store clerk, among other jobs. He also talks about being a student at Las Vegas High School and what he and others did for recreation. The discussion also includes the history of hospitals in Las Vegas as well as what doctors’ offices were like. UNLV University Libraries Ray Merrill 5 The interviewee is Ray D. Merrill. The date is March 14th, 1978. The time is ten o’clock p.m. The place: 3112 Orr Avenue, North Las Vegas, Nevada. The interviewer is Rick A. Merrill of the same address. Project: Local History Project, Some Changes in Nevada. Ray has been a resident of Nevada for thirty-six years, arriving here from his home state of Oklahoma in the middle of World War II. He has resided all of those years in Southern Nevada. Dad, briefly explain what the town looked like when you first arrived. Well, when I first came here in 1942, there were very, very few housing tracts. None at all as a matter of fact. The—most people lived in what few houses there were, were all centrally located in Downtown Las Vegas between Main Street and about Seventh or Eighth Street. Some—a few scattered homes around Ninth and Tenth. But a big part of people lived in trailer parks at the time, which is what they called them, because there was no such thing as a mobile home. They were trailer houses. We first came here, we lived in one. It was homemade, total length of about sixteen feet. But my mother and my father, two brothers and myself, all lived there, because there was no other housing to be found at that time. It was during the early part of World War II and the big boom was on. Basic Magnesium Plant was going. People lived in tents, lived in cars, just about any, any place they could find for shelter was what they lived in. But we lived that way for the first year in Las Vegas, then we moved to what is now called Henderson, but it was BMI at that time. Basic, we’d call it. Short for Basic Magnesium out there. And we again lived in our trailer, which we built a kind of a lean to side room deal on it, which worked out all right in the summertime, but it got kinda cold in the wintertime. But at that time, there was still tent cities all around where the construction workers lived, and this one big trailer park that was out there, it’s vacant land there now, it’s right about the UNLV University Libraries Ray Merrill 6 same area the Dodge Dealership is on Boulder Highway, but as kids, we didn’t think too much of it. I mean, it was just a way of life. It was like camping out every day. But we went to school, went to what was then called the Pittman School for one year. I went there in the fifth grade. Then I went to Henderson School, Basic, for half of the sixth grade. And then we moved back into Las Vegas. There again, living in our trailer again. And I went to the North Ninth Street School. The buildings are still standing. I don't know if it’s still used for school or not, at Ninth and Bonanza. In those days, Bonanza didn't go through Las Vegas. Las Vegas was a very small town in those days. They had built Kelso Turner area, which was all low cost housing for a lot of the military, 'cause they had what is called Nellis now, was Army Air Force Gunnery Base, where they trained all the gunners for the big bombers, the B-17s, the B-24s, all the—all of those old (unintelligible) bombers that they used during World War II, which as a kid, we saw them all over the sky, every day. Soon got to know all of 'em. But that was—what is now known as Nellis, that was way out of town at the time. It was about, oh, nobody ever went out there because it was a military base. You weren't allowed out there. But North Las Vegas ended right about where Lake Mead and Main, Main Street is right now. That was the end of North Las Vegas. Anything beyond that was desert, outside of one or two little trailer parks on further out, along the Salt Lake Highway. But as kids growing up there, we saw a lot of changes. Fremont Street past—oh, past Fifteenth Street on Fremont, there was absolutely nothing till you got down to what is now Twenty-Fifth and Charleston. There was a few bars and dance halls, this type of thing along the Boulder Highway. A couple of old restaurants down there, with one still standing—The Green Shack. It's still there, it's still in business. But most of the—from there all the way to Henderson, UNLV University Libraries Ray Merrill 7 there was practically nothing outside of, along—well, it's called East Las Vegas now. It used to be called Whitney. A few more trailer parks and cabin courts, shacks thrown up for the workers out at the plant. Then you got to Pittman, which now was a part of Henderson, there were a few more cabin courts, trailer parks, and that, and then on into Henderson, which at that time they had a few of the government houses thrown up there. They were all prefabricated. Every time we'd get a big, strong windstorm, two or three of them would blow over (laughs), fall down, and then they built Victory Village, which was apartments. There were usually four units to an apartment, which was all built for workers of—people that were working in the plant out there. But along Fremont Street, down along about Tenth and Fremont, from there on they had board sidewalks, if they had any sidewalk at all, otherwise it was dirt. From there on, all the way out, there was nothing, no sidewalks. Charleston Boulevard was a gravel road. There was no Strip at all. What we call the Strip now consisted of the El Rancho Hotel and The Last Frontier Hotel. And there was, as a young boy, was quite interested in horses and horsemanship, and it's—they had rodeo's down at the Last Frontier occasionally. But where the Sands Hotel is now used to be a service station and cafe—beer bar, and a fellow that we used to ride horses with all the time, he used to take us in there. We'd ride out that far and we'd stop in there, get cold drinks and then we would ride on back into town. Las Vegas itself was very small. I believe around fifteen thousand people population at that time. What made you decide to move here? Well, we came here because my father was came first. He came out first and was working. He had a good job. It was during war time and everybody was making good money. There were no opportunities in Oklahoma such as that, so he came out first. And then my mother came out and she looked the country over and she decided to come back and get my two brothers and myself, UNLV University Libraries Ray Merrill 8 we drove out then. We came out in a 1936 Chevrolet, which I remember crossing Hoover Dam, it was called Boulder Dam at that time, and we had to have an armed guard escort to take us across. You weren't allowed to have any windows open and you weren't to throw anything out. They rode along beside you in a Jeep with a 50 caliper machine gun trained on your cars. In those times, it was war time, if anyone threw anything out or did anything suspicious, they would just shoot, no questions asked. I remember this old car we had, it—the rear window in the backseat where I was sitting was broke out and they made me hold a blanket up over this window as we crossed the dam. They kept telling us, they warned us you know, if anything fell out or threw out, then they were gonna shoot, and I was scared to death really (laughs). But that was my—then after we came down a hill in Boulder Dam (Hoover Dam) there, through Boulder City, then I saw the lights of Las Vegas, which is nothing compared to now because it was just a little, small spot that you could see from up there then. Now you look down from the hills up there now, you see quite a metropolis up there. What one factor impressed you the most about Nevada? Oh, one factor is the opportunities here, plus the weather. I love the weather here. I get awful tired of the desert sometimes but having been other places and seen other places, I think there's no place like Las Vegas as far as work opportunities and year-round climate. What has been the biggest change on the Strip? Biggest change in the Strip, naturally, has been its growth. The way it's blossomed up out of nothing but desert, sand and sagebrush. Like I said before, there was a few small motels, gas stations along there, but there was really nothing out there. The Strip started growing oh, it was during war time they started building the Flamingo Hotel. It wasn't completed until around 1946 UNLV University Libraries Ray Merrill 9 or '47. And that was really the elite place at that time. There were a few other small places along the Strip. I remember where the Sahara Hotel is, American Legion used to have a building out there where they held some of their meetings. And then they had the Club Bingo there, the Bingo Club, where the Sahara is, and it built from there and grew and built until to what it is right now, which is quite a place. And then the other hotels, the Sands Hotel was built. The Riviera was built. The Thunderbird Hotel was built. Just—it just kept growing and growing from there. Every time you look, they were building a new hotel out there. And it’s quite a fascinating phenomenon really that the amount of money there is in gambling, the people that spend it to create this growth. How have the buildings changed? Buildings? When I first came here, all the buildings were one or two story buildings, three at the most. Because Las Vegas supposedly sits on an underground river here. And they couldn't build high rises because of the water problem that—they wouldn't let 'em build. They wouldn't 'em build more than about—three stories was tops. But since then, they found new construction, new ways of doing it and now look what we have here. We have buildings up over twenty stories high here, which just looking at the skyline now, you see 'em all over the town, these tall buildings (unintelligible). But in the old days, a big part of the houses, a lot of them were made of adobe. Adobe block, which was very strong, very thick and heavy. It was good insulation. A lot of the old railroad houses were made out of this old block. At one time, there was houses around here made out of railroad ties. All these things revert back to railroading, which was the big industry, the thing that made Las Vegas was the railroad. That's why, where the Union Plaza hotel is now, they had the old railroad depot set there for many, many years. It was, as kids in high school, like UNLV University Libraries Ray Merrill 10 so many youngsters today, we'd drive up and down Fremont Street in our cars and we'd make a circle around the depot and go back down the other way. But when I was a kid growing up in this town, along Fremont Street, where the Fremont hotel sits used to be a Shell gas station. Next door to it was a drive-in restaurant. And ninety percent of the businesses were right on Fremont Street, between Main Street and Sixth Street. Sears Roebuck used to be right Downtown where the Las Vegas Club is. There was several drugstores Downtown. A few bars, cafe's along First Street, where the Main Hotel takes up the whole block now, where these things used to be. Then you go on further down Fremont Street, at Third and Fremont, one corner was a gas station, across the street used to be a grocery store where I think C.D. Baker Shoes is at now. Where, used to be Bond's Jeweler's there at Third and Fremont there, that was a used car lot. And the same with Fourth and Fremont. They had gas stations, little—along the street, little bakery shops and restaurants, drugstores, the whole business was all done right on Fremont Street within about a six block area, which is kinda hard for some people to imagine now because the way Fremont Street is today. But the streets were numbered from Main Street, then it went First, Second, Third, all the way down, which they changed the names. Second Street is now Casino Center Drive and Fifth Street is Las Vegas Boulevard North and South. But if you went south towards what is now called the Strip on Las Vegas Boulevard, you got down six or seven blocks off of Fremont Street, you're out in the desert again. There was just nothing there. The only big housing tract that they had going in the town about that time was the old Huntridge addition, which, that used to be way out in the country, you know. There was—only some of the elite that had money could live out there, because that was quite expensive at the time. The houses cost almost five thousand dollars. Compared to now, they're worth several UNLV University Libraries Ray Merrill 11 thousand more than that. But just looking back on the town, the growth and everything, it's very hard to believe that all these things have come about. What other question do you have? You had traveled throughout Nevada, what made you choose to stay in Las Vegas? Well, having traveled throughout Nevada, not to a great extent, but I'd been north one way as far as Elko up through Ely, up to some of those, what they call cow counties. The towns are small, they're mostly mining and ranching up through there, which I don't have an interest in either one. And going the other way, towards, up towards Reno, you find a lot of the same thing until you get to Reno, which Reno is, it's like Las Vegas. It's growing too. It's getting bigger all the time. But the climate up there, I'm not too much for snow and bad weather, so I choose Las Vegas for that. How has the political scene changed? Oh, I don't know if the political scene itself has changed too much. Basically we've always had politicians. We have a lot of 'em that work hard and try to build this community up, do a lot of good for the community. And of course, everybody has their own feelings on politics, which, you have yours, I have mine. But, I can't see that politics have changed too terribly much over the years. There's a few instances that well, I don't always agree with everything the politicians do (unintelligible). What did people do for recreation back then, around the war time? Well, when I was growing up here—of course, we only had one high school here, and during the war years, they had a USO club down at, it was at Fourth and Stewart there. It's a city parking lot now. But they had a USO club there where they held dances for the servicemen and we had, across the street in the old city hall, which at that time was the War Memorial Building, we used to go roller skating in there. And we went swimming. We swam a lot. There were several UNLV University Libraries Ray Merrill 12 pools—public pools in town where we'd go swimming. It'd cost you a dime to get in, you know, that's a nominal fee for the time. But as a child growing up here, I—we always had plenty to do. We didn't have to really look too hard for entertainment because we had plenty of it. The USO building, when the war was over, that was turned over to the city, and they made a recreation center for the teenagers, which was called the Wildcat Lair. And well, when I was in grade school and high school, my last year of grade school before I went into high school we had dances there every Friday night during the school term, and every Saturday night during the summertime. We had dances with a live band. I think it cost us a quarter to get in and usually after the dances, we went to one of the local cafe's Downtown and ate, you know, sodas and hamburgers and this type thing. And we always found plenty to do. During the school term, there was always the football games, basketball games, track meets and all this. And after all the football games and the basketball games, there was always a big dance then, which, there again, we had live music for the cost of a quarter. The teenage club was turned over to the high school students, which—we ran it, we managed it and took care of it. And naturally the city had somebody to oversee the whole thing, but most of it was managed by high school people, which I think is a great thing at that time. But we always—we had the mountains and we had the lake. We'd go to the mountains in the wintertime, load a bunch of us up. Well many time we went up in an old dump truck. We'd load the back end of it full of kids and one of the guys dad's owned it and he would drive it and we'd go up to the mountains, lay in the snow. Or we would all go to the lake for a big watermelon bust. We never were without something to do, someplace to go, or something to do to have fun. Our teenage club was open to us six days a week, every night. School nights it closed, you know, right before curfew time, a quarter to ten, something like that. It would close UNLV University Libraries Ray Merrill 13 to give you time to get home. But there was always ping pong or we had the gyms open for basketball or weight lifting classes or any number of things. We always had plenty to do. I wonder today what young people find to do today. They're too young to go to bars, they're too young to get into clubs, to gamble. They haven't left too much for them in this area. What did the police and fire departments look like when you first arrived? Well, the police department and the fire department both were in one building on Second Street, right well—right where the Horseshoe parking lot is right now. That used to be the police station set right in there, and the fire department. It was mostly a volunteer fire department at that time. They had—they didn't have the best equipment. They only had a couple patrol cars to patrol the whole city. Of course, we had the sheriff's department, that's still a separate department, but they didn't have a very big force either. But that old police station stayed there for years and years. I think it was after World War II when they built the new police station. On further down the street, at well, down past First and Stewart, around First and Mesquite is closer to the location of it. They built the police station in there, and then they built a new fire station down there, close to it. But, that's all changed now so much throughout the years. The new Metropolitan Police Station, I don't know how many hundred policemen they have now (laughs). In those days, they only had a handful, fifteen or twenty at the most probably. But they didn't need 'em. The Strip shows, what were they like back then? Well the shows that they had were nothing as extravagant as what we have now on the Strip, but we still had top entertainers come in. When I say top for the times, Ted Lewis, Sophie Tucker. They played the El Rancho a lot. You had a lot of the other entertainers which would come in and play the Last Frontier. In those days, that was about all you had to begin with. And then as UNLV University Libraries Ray Merrill 14 the town grew and you had the Thunderbird Hotel, the Riviera, and the Flamingo came in, then we started getting bigger shows, but not elaborate like they are now. And you'd have some of your top entertainers, your top singers, all that were around at the time would come in and play the shows. But in those days, the shows weren't the big thing, the gambling was. You could go in and watch the show. If it was a dinner show, naturally, you were expected to buy, you know, dinner, which, the prices weren't really all that bad. I think oh, probably the least expensive was probably fried chicken for a buck and a quarter, which—and then steak, you know, were three or four dollars probably for a steak dinner if that's what you wanted. And you got the show, everything else. Or you could go to the evening shows, which were strictly cocktail shows. For the price of a drink, you could sit there and watch a show, which I know, going to high school, was always the big thing. After the proms, we would all go out to one of the hotels and go in and watch a floor show, which most of 'em consisted of one of top named entertainers, a singer usually. And then they always had the dancers, and usually a couple of entertainers on one bill. You'd sit there, a show would take an hour, so we'd go in and order Coke's, 'cause that's all we were allowed to have, otherwise we'd have ordered something else I imagine. But we could sit there and watch a show for the price of our Coke's, which were about thirty-five cents, you know. Well nowadays, naturally, you can't do that because they've got such a cover charge. But everything has changed quite a bit through the years. A lot of the big attractions still come to Las Vegas, but they get a lot bigger money now than what they used to. Used to be the shows were just about for free so they'd get you in on the gambling tables. That's basically how UNLV University Libraries Ray Merrill 15 they worked it then. Now they try to make money on the shows or break even anyway, and still get you in on the gambling tables. The school system, how was it—what was it like back then? Well, when I went to school here, I started grade school. My first year here in grade school was in the fourth grade. It was an old two-story school building where the federal building sits now at Las Vegas Boulevard and Bridger. (Tape one ends) That old school building was—well, they finally tore it down. But when the Fifth Street Grammar School was right next to it, it was all within that one block. Now those old buildings are still standing there. The old stucco, Spanish style buildings. They went from the fifth grade up through the eighth grade. And you went the eighth grade and you would graduate. You had a big graduation ceremony and then you went into high school. You started high school in the ninth grade here then, which, there were only I believe two schools that went up to the eighth grade. It was the Fifth Street Grammar School, which all the kids from all around came into there. We lived in North Las Vegas and we had to catch a bus. We weren't bused, not like kids today are. We had to catch a bus and ride a bicycle or walk or sometimes parents took us, but it was up to us to get to school. And the other school that went up to the eighth grade was the John S. Park School, which was over in the Huntridge addition, which well, we liked to say that's where the rich kids come from, you know. But they were just average kids as we came to know them after we got into high school. Everybody went to one high school, that's all we had up until about 1954 I think it was, when Rancho High School was built. Then there was two. Rancho took care of North Las Vegas and part of Westside, while Las Vegas High School took care of the rest of the area. But since UNLV University Libraries Ray Merrill 16 then, they've just kept—they've been adding more schools, more junior high schools, more high schools, more grade schools as this valley has grown and filled up. It's been quite an anomaly just to watch all the new schools that have been built here. And yet, they're still wanting to build more, which is good. The university as I remember it getting started was around oh, 1955 I believe. It started in the Las Vegas High School auditorium and held classes in there. There was no university buildings or anything else in those days. And the local kids that wanted to go to university, that's where they went. They took it upon themselves to get this thing going. Then they—different members of the school board, trusted community leaders, they finally started what we know now as the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, which was quite a big difference over the beginning that they had in that big auditorium. But in those days, they didn't have—there wasn't too many classes offered. There wasn't too many people going to those classes. It was very small. And most of the people, when they would graduate, they would go either to University of Reno or to other schools in other states for their education. There was just in those days nothing offered down here in Southern Nevada for 'em. That's why they started the university now. And they became what was Nevada Southern University, which is where they picked up the name of the (unintelligible). But it's been a lot of changes made in this town, in this whole area it seems. What about the outside areas of Las Vegas, such as West Las Vegas and Paradise Valley? Well, West Las Vegas when I first came here, there wasn't a segregated community in those days. It was mostly all white people lived over there. What blacks there were, weren't too many, and they lived way at the far end of Westside in those days, which—there was a lot of prejudice in this town in those days. Blacks couldn't—well, they stayed in that part of town. They didn't—UNLV University Libraries Ray Merrill 17 they weren't allowed in the casinos Downtown and they definitely weren't allowed on the Strip. They finally—they had some of their own clubs and places to go to, and that was about the extent of it. The front part of Westside was all—a lot of the old time families, a lot of old families lived there. In the original beginning, that was Las Vegas over there. But of course, that's all changed now as when the railroad subdivided all the lots, down along First, Second, Third and Fourth Street down through there and started building homes for people. Well, Las Vegas moved over to that side of the tracks because the railroad—well that was everything in those days. That was the big business, was the railroad. But when you look at other areas, you look at Paradise Valley, most of that was all homestead at one time. You put up a small dwelling, whatever it took to qualify for the Homestead Act and it cost you something like two hundred and fifty dollars to homestead five acres out there, which a lot of the local people did in those days. But most of that land was, well, in those days was way out in the sticks, way out in the country, which very few people wanted to live that far out of town. You know, you live five miles out of town out in the desert, you know, there's no glamour to that. So it took a while for that to all fill up. But as the Strip started going that way, going South, well that land became more valuable, which as most people know today, that is very valuable property down there. But we were, when we were kids, we used to rent horses at the old Last Frontier Hotel and we would ride out through Paradise Valley and it was nothing but desert. A couple of ranches out in there, but most of it was—it was all desert out there. We would ride for miles around out there. We never had to worry about cars or traffic, or anything else in those days. But like I said, it's all changed. UNLV University Libraries Ray Merrill 18 The airport has expanded. The airport has taken over a big part of it out there. It started out as a very small airport with a few planes a day coming in here and air traffic wasn't a big thing in those days. A big part of your people, the tourists who came to Las Vegas, they'd come in on the train. They had special trains from Salt Lake and special trains from Los Angeles in here every day. And the trains brought a lot of people in those days, which goes back to us being a railroad town. But more and more and more, the trains became too slow and your super highways and high powered automobiles made people—a lot of people drove in here, they drove in and then air traffic, air travel started getting more sophisticated so people were using airplanes more 'cause it's faster and price wise, it wasn't that much difference in price to fly from here to Los Angeles or something like that. But they didn't have the Convention Authority here then, we didn't have a convention center here. But they didn't have anything to really offer these people to bring them into Las Vegas. But today we have all these things and we bring people in here from some eastern cities, all over the world we bring 'em into Las Vegas now, which I think is quite a thing. I remember as a kid when a couple of trips we made back to Oklahoma, and they'd ask us where we were from, we'd say Las Vegas, and they'd say, “where's that?” Nobody knew where Las Vegas was. It didn't mean anything then to anybody. If you asked people now, you'd tell 'em your from Las Vegas and they know where Las Vegas is because it's been put on the map. The recreational areas? Well, when I was a young boy growing up here, of course we had Lake Mead, which in those days the facilities out there weren't very good. You had a few change houses and a few oh, picnic tables at Vegas Wash, and that was about it for then. But then I remember when I was a kid, we lived in Henderson. We would ride our bicycles or hitchhike out to the lake, stay overnight, just UNLV University Libraries Ray Merrill 19 take a few cans of beans or whatever with us, and we'd camp out overnight out there and fish. Fishing was terrific in those days. You didn't need much to catch nice size bass out there. The water was clean. No pollution, none of the things we have today. And of course, the boat docks out there was like a couple of boards strapped over some ferals, and that was your boat docks in those days. They didn't have anything out there. Since the boats were all small, mostly rowboats with very small outboards on them, nothing like what we have out here today. And then you go the other way, you go up towards Mount Charleston, that was a gravel road that went up around through there to get up to Deer Creek. That was all a two lane gravel road with no guardrails or anything on it, just you took your chances as you went up there. I remember there used to be an operating saw mill up there. They cut timber and it was cut and milled and everything right up there, and then hauled into Vegas here and sold. Sold it to a lot of the different lumber yards they had here, which they only had about three in those days. But then you go back to what Twin Lakes is now, Twin Lakes has been there for a long time, a lot of years. But it was never—there wasn't a housing subdivision around it until around, I guess that started about 1954, around in there, '54, '55. But before that, we would go out there. We swam out there. And it was quite a thing. They had a theater out there, open air theater, and they had concerts and all these things. It was quite a big deal to go out there then. But there again, that was way out in the country when you went out there. It wasn't like five minutes from Downtown like it is now. And this whole area has grown quite a bit since I was a child. What opportunities did Nevada have for the young people? Well, when we first came here in 1942 during the wartime, I used to sell newspapers on the street. I'd buy 'em two for a nickel and sell 'em for a nickel a piece. So I always made sure that I always had fifteen or twenty cents in my pocket and I could go down and buy so many UNLV University Libraries Ray Merrill 20 newspapers. Then I'd go out and double my money, and then I would turn around and run back and buy some more and go out and sell them until I had a dollar or two in