Theresa Thomas interview, February 29, 1980: transcript

F &b T H b l<r$o Oral History Interview with Therese Conrtnre Thomas conducted by Roberta Zaplatilak February 29, 1980 The informant is Theresa Thomas. The date is February 29,1980. The time is two o'clock in the afternoon. The place is 1010 East Bracken Avenue, Las Vegas, Nevada. The collector is Roberta Zaplatilak from 1010 East Bracken, Las Vegas, Nevada. The project is Local History Project in Oral Interview about the life of a Las Vegas old timer. 1 OK, Terry. Tell me about your family. Well, I'll start with my great grandparents. Their name was Higbee. And my great grandfather was the custodian [on the grounds] of the tabernacle in Salt Lake City. The way they came over ... The Mormon missionaries had come to England and they were preaching and getting converts, and I guess my great grandfather and his brother were Mormons when they came here. My great grandmother and he were married and her name was Caroline. They were from London, England. They had a son and a daughter that came over, and the daughter was my grandmother. She was Louisa Anne Matilda Higbee and my grandfather was William Hemming. I don't think any of Grandfather's parents came from England. They came here due to the Mormons, and they wanted to go to the great city of Salt Lake where their Mormon leadership was. Grandmother used to tell about the missionaries that said the streets were paved with gold, and when she got here she found out they weren't. It was cobblestones. 1 don t know how true that is, but that was her little joke about it. My father was the son of John Courture.2 He married a German girl named Theresa, and he was French Canadian. They moved to Iowa from Canada. My father had one brother who [he put through West Point] after [their] father died. He was valedictorian of his class, but he didn't get to be that because he sneaked out to see his girl friend. He never did even get to graduate because they caught him. My mother was one of five children. She was born in Salt Lake City. They moved to Thistle, Utah to work on the railroad. My grandfather had been a railroad worker at Salt Lake and Thistle was a little railroad town in between Price and Spanish Fork.3 My father came there to work as a carpenter with a construction firm during the building of this new railroad town. He met my mother who was fifteen. He dated her, and when he left he told her, "You grow up while I'm gone, and I'll come back and get you." And this is what he did. [On July 5] 1917 I was born, and they were living in Thistle, Utah. Father was then working on the railroad. The railroad had a strike, which caused many people to leave Thistle. We were among the families that left. We went to Provo, Utah. There we bought an old castle that an old German doctor had built for his very young bride. It had four towers on it. It was made with walls eighteen inches thick out of adobe, great huge, beautiful rooms, and all kinds of fancy things on the ceiling. Very European type of home. It had three huge fireplaces, and paintings in one hallway, paintings up in the little arches that were framed. And we lived in this house for all the time we were in Provo. My father had great plans to convert it into a very lovely Spanish type of home. He was going to change it from a German castle to a Spanish home. When my father worked for Columbia Steel in Utah, he decided to go into business with a friend of his as a construction company. They built many homes in Provo, many big apartment buildings and things. Very unfortunate: this was just in 1928 prior to the '29 dilemma. By 1930 they had lost everything they had gone into and built. He had to come to Boulder City [Nevada] for work.4 Evidently it was the only place in the United States where anyone could get work. People from all over the United States were here. I remember we used to try to find a state that there wasn't a license [plate] from in Las Vegas. Every state in the union, there were people there working. He went to work as a laborer, although he had signed up in Las Vegas in four different capacities under different names, because it was so long a wait.5 You had to go to Las Vegas for the waiting and going to work in Boulder City. They had no hiring hall in Boulder City. And it was very union. They were a very strong union here at that time. The people that came here to go to work, there was no housing. Las Vegas was just a tiny, tiny little place. [People] were camped out in the parks. And over on Bonanza [Road], in what they call the West Side, was all kinds of little tent buildings that had maybe the bottom of them was wood, and the top was a canvas cover. They rented these to people to live in .6 I remember the first house we came to after my mother decided we'd move down here with Father, was a small house in behind a bigger house over somewhere just north of Fremont [Street], between Eighth and Ninth Street. There was just loads of trees here. The people had really planted lots of cottonwood trees, mainly. In fact, the streets of Las Vegas were all lined with trees in the early days, and as they began to build, the trees [were] pulled out, and we hated that. We didn't like it at all when they started tearing up all those trees because it was hot here. This was still in the early 1930s ? Yeah, this was '32.1 had started in my music then. You wanted to know a little bit how I got into my profession. I started in my music by collecting songs and words to songs, and I knew almost every song that ever came out. I used to listen to the Lucky Strike Hit Parade and make copies of all the words and learn all the songs. I wasn't a musician exactly, but I loved music. My mother had had a girl stay with us in Utah that went to BYU,7 and although I had taken piano lessons and dancing lessons, I still couldn't play real good. But I learned from her to play by ear, as they call it. I learned how to make chords. I started playing. Inst Night on the Back Porch was the first song I ever played. Mother said she took the girl to the railroad station, and when she came back I was playing. Also, I got started in the dancing which I did here because I could play. My dancing teacher let me play for her classes, and I helped her teach. Now, 1 was thirteen and fourteen when 1 was helping her teach. Tap was the mam thing then, tap dancing. We had some ballet and barre work and things like that, acrobatic. But tap was the thing in these days. Not like the lost art it is now, it seems. I had a hard time to get my students, when I finally got my studios going, to take ballet. The mothers weren't the least bit interested. They wanted their girls to be Eleanor Powell or Ann Miller or Ginger Rogers. So anyway, we moved to Boulder City, finally [from Las Vegas]. You wanted me to be sure and mention how we got here. My father had been hurt on the dam. In building the dam, they had to clear the way for the place the dam would be by digging two tunnels on each side, [two] on the Arizona side [and two] on the Boulder City [Nevada] side.8 The water was going through these two tunnels on each side, and then they put dirt down in as a back-up for the river in order to keep the bed dry to put the dam down.9 They had to blast these tunnels and my father was hurt in the tunnel cave-in because they were all inside digging the pieces that hadn't blasted away, and there was a cave-in. So Mother went from Vegas to Boulder City to visit him [in the hospital] for about three weeks I think, and then we moved to Boulder City because she finally found a house that a very kind gentleman let us rent because his wife had been very disgusted with Boulder City's heat and gone back to New York. His house was empty. He lived in a little place he'd built in the back to live in while he was building his home. It was his own home. In Boulder City—you want me to tell about the houses? Yes. In Boulder City the houses were built by the people as they came in, if they juld build their own house.™ If they couldn't, they rented houses.1 There was few private little places that people built. I will say firs, [that] almost ev«y ouse in Boulder had a screened porch. That's where you kept cool in the ummertime. They had no air conditioners and things like that. They had a wamp cooler that the water ran and ran and ran, and thats one reason Lr. 'egas was getting low on water, I do believe. They were beginning to worry bouti, even in those days. ( ^ ip [1933] 1 was getting a Our power came from Los Ang _ ,esl3 made our power go out, so >ermanent, and the big earthquake S , . • ^ didn't ge, my permanent finished. I was jus, sitting with the ,lungs my hair. And the solution was on your hair already? Yes. It was kind of half-way done, but it didn't look very good. Anyway, the coolers were swamp, and people sometimes made them with just a fan and a little bit of gunny sack over a box. And even some people used what they called a cooler for a refrigerator. [It was] the same idea. They let the water drain down from a pan that held the water and they'd put their butter and milk and beans in there and try to keep it from spoiling. Now, the second nice house was the Henderson houses,14 which a gentleman built and rented out to people. They had the big screened porches and two rooms in the back. Then the Six Companies built their houses with a fairly decent plan, but there were rows and rows and rows of them all alike. They had the screen porch in an "L" shape around one side and the other side of the house, and two bedrooms and a living room and a small kitchen. Most of our cooking was with gas. We had to get the gas from trucks that hauled it, and they filled your tank. While I speak of this, I want to tell you about the little family in Las Vegas [of the] man that sold this gas. His family had a tragic accident. Someone had lit a cigarette, evidently, was all they could find out, and the light had followed the path of the leaking gas and went right through their house and it killed quite a few members of the [family]. I can't remember the name of the family. But I do remember the girl was our prom queen or something. She was a very popular girl in school. In Boulder City—I can't remember my ninth grade. We were such an upset family at that time. I think I went to the ninth grade in Boulder in a small house, as I remember.16 I know I remember I went to the tenth grade in the nice school. By then the government had built a nice school. 1^ You mentioned [going] to school in buses ?1 That was for my eleventh and twelfth grade. The buses were big, long, red rattling trap buses, but I guess in those days they were nice. We drove to Las Vegas everyday and went to high school for my eleventh and twelfth grade. I was baptized a Mormon in Utah and I was very active in church. I went to everything. I helped with the programs because I could dance and I taught a few little steps to people. And in school assemblies I'd help with the programs there, playing for kids to sing and playing for other little dancers that could dance already, or acrobatics, or whatever was on. And then I'd teach some of the kids a little routine to go with their song. I remember one girl in particular, Mary Beth Nelson, had a very nice voice. Her father was Judge Nelson^9 in Boulder City in later years. She and I use to work a lot of programs together. Also, in school, I used to play for the noon dances. I wondered if you wanted me to mention some of the kids I went to school with. Yeah, yeah. Especially those that became prominent citizens. There was Virginia Beckley, the Dotson children. Ted [Dotson] was the one that lost the arm and I still see him occasionally now. He had an automobile accident coming up the hill from North Las Vegas to go to school.20 And there was Virgil and Art Ham. And Judge Francis Horsey. Art Ham. That's [who] the Artlemus] Ham Hall at the university [is name after]. And they just tore their famous home down not too long ago here, too. And the Wasdens, Edith and Howard. Howard now has a school named after him. Sherwin Garside.21 And the Whitney boys. Their folks are from the city of Whitney.22 My sister used to go with Roy. And Bernadine Bowman. The Bowmans had their grocery store over on Bonanza [Road], And Robert Lias, ex-postmaster. Jack Hanson from the Allen Hanson clothing. And the Tomiyasu children. Their father had a big Japanese colony here. He eventually owned quite a bit of property out in Paradise Valley which he tragically lost through some kind of tax politics. I shouldn't say that, but he did. Lee Rand Orr, who is now a judge, I believe. Barbara and Shirley Ferron. Their father had the White Cross Drug Store. George Von Tobel, and he had a younger brother. I think we called him Angel in those days. Bryn Armstrong^ who's with the newspaper. Harley Harmon. And BUI NeUis,24 who NeUis Air Base is named after. I remember when the Fifth Street School burned down.25 , remember also a lion being on the highway in between Boulder City and Las Vega, I. was just fed up to a little post out there. 1. was quite a tourist attraction »i people used to stop and look a, it. One little girl from Boulder C ty go. too c e and she ended up with some terrible scars. I think that's when they got rid Well, do you have a question now? No, I think you've just about covered... . My father put his time in in Boulder City. He'd get another, better job, and a better job, and when we lived on Avenue B in 1934—we were in a Six Company house—my mother saved grocery money without him knowing it and bought me my first piano. He was so angry he wouldn't even play it. My dad played, and my grandmother played, too, his mother. And he finally one day came in and sat down and played, and we knew all was forgiven. 1 think it was interesting it was so hot. You had to wet the sheets? Oh, yes. This was when Dad first came here. The first two or three years of construction it was so hot here the men would get up and wet their sheets and go back to sleep, go back to bed, and put the sheet over them so they could sleep. And as soon as the sheet dried out, they'd have to get up and wet it again. Then I want to tell you about the man that tied himself into the river. He put a rope under his arms, and a rope around the rock on the shore, and he just had part of his body in the river and was just keeping cool so he could sleep. And luckily some people came along and saw him laying there. The river had a tendency to creep up after they started the dam. They had the cofferdam in, and they let certain amounts of water through, but it still was creeping up a little. They pulled him out and it saved his life. Should I tell you about the ferries that used to be? Yes. I rode on the ferry. Murl EmeryZS ran ,he ferry and it went across from the Nevada side to the Arizona side.2? In the old days that's how they got to the the dam. 1 have one little note, kind of a joke. One time my brother, who was wtth some friends of his down there, they used to go down and dive and swtm nght around where the ferry was, even though they weren't supposed to. A man was r i j nic fal<;p teeth in the water. He had tne on the ferry going across and he droppe kids dive and trying to find his false teeth! Did they ever find them? No, they never found them. But my mother almost died when she found out what my brother had been doing. It must have been dangerous. Yes, the river was always very treacherous. It had currents, undercurrents. Even after the lake formed. The first few years there were quite a few deaths from boats. One of my very dear friends was drowned in his sail boat.28 It collapsed and his body was dragged under. They found his boat but they never did find his body. I will tell about some of the clubs in Vegas. That's an interesting part of the history. OK. When I first came here, of course, I was too young. But I still remember a lot of the little clubs that were all along the highway. There were so many of them, and they were just kind of like little dumps. They really should have been banned by the health department. There were a few nice ones. The one nice one that was built first was the Meadows.2^ I remember how we knew that nobody decent went out to the Meadows. One time when I was in the eleventh grade I had a boyfriend that took me to a dance. My mother used to let me go to the dances with her chaperoning. She kind of liked this young man, so she let him take me home and she'd go on home. He took me over there [to the Meadows] to have dinner without her knowledge. By the time we got served dinner and got back home it was so late that she met him at the door and scared the pants off him. He never did come back. I got to see the great Meadows. Later on I used to go there when I got to know the musicians and I'd go out there to see friends. They still had dances there, but it was never a big club after '34 and '35. It was never much of anything. I saw many of the clubs that are mentioned in the new book that's come out. The Black Cat had a great big black pussycat facing in. The door was right below his mouth. [Was] the Colony Club [here] at this time? Well .he Colony Club was built later. That's the one that burned down [on July 5,1944]. It was near the Showboat. What about the Green Shack? The Green Shack [has been there] as long as I can remember. There were two sisters that owned it. I think they had a cafe in Boulder City and then they had the Green Shack in Las Vegas.3° At this time I had been teaching dancing a little, and, like I say, was helping with the programs everywhere. I got permission from Sims Ely31 for my dancing classes and 1 held my first classes in the Mormon Church. I went to California and studied, or Utah in the summer. Then I'd come back and have my classes. I got a real nice studio in the Episcopal Church basement in Boulder City. 1 had an offer to go to teach in Ogden and run the studio there for the [theatrical] artists. But I liked Boulder City because I was Big Frog in a little pool, and if I went to another place I found out I was a little frog and didn't have that much chance. 1 bought my first instrument for playing with mallets, which was a marimba, from Mr. Garehime32. He had a store in Boulder City, and it was the wooden keys. I got it for $15. Mr. Garehime was a very dear friend to me. He always let me have my instruments and I could pay for them as I could pay for them. I bought a nice piano from him, traded the one my mother had gotten me for it. Before I get too far from the early days, I want to tell you about Block 16.33 Yes. We used to drive up Block 16, groups in the car, and wave at the girls. They didn't like it. They'd always make faces at us, and yell and swear. Girls that would frequent the clubs? The girls were working for the club. You mean cocktail waitresses, like? Oh, no. They were just girls that lived in the little rooms back there. They were the prostitutes of Las Vegas. Of course, there were always bars there. The girls would stand out in front of the building they worked in, in the most gaudy costumes you ever saw. I mean some of them were very reminiscent of dresses that you might have seen just two or three years ago. Bright colors and wild combinations of things. The [reason] that Block 16 was removed was when the gunnery air school came into Las Vegas, before it became Nellis [Air Force Base], that's what they called it. It was a bad influence to the boys, I guess, so they kind of began to get rid of it then. They had tried before, and it didn't work. Then eventually, when they really ruled out prostitution here, was after Glen Jones34 was sheriff. They got rid of prostitution entirely. Do you remember about what year that was? I have that somewhere here. Anyway, Mr. Garehime used to tell me, "Terry, please buy some of this property out here in the desert. It's only a dollar an acre and it's going to be valuable someday." I wish I'd have done it. I saved money and studied dancing and taught dancmg here right through [until] I graduated from Las Vegas High [School] with ninety kids. That was a big graduation class for then. We had moved up to Utah Street35 [in Boulder City). My father was working for the government. He was Carpenter Foreman for the government and when President Roosevelt dedicated the dam» Dad built the podium he stood by. President Roosevelt had polio and he had to have something to hold onto. We were very proud of the fact that he built this. Also, he designed the canopy that was shading where the tourists stood, because he said tourists couldn't stand m that hot sun and they needed some shade. He used to change some of the plans as they went along budding in the dam, and right up untd the tune he was he couldn't work, they were calling up or coming to the house to ftnd out how something should be done. As a thing that big is being bud,, there are chang that have to be made as you build along, and [Dadl was the one tn charge of „, so they had to come to him to find out. 11 Our first Helldorado,37 I was present. I made a lovely little cowboy outfit out of white pique and I took my accordion and my folks took me to Las Vegas to play. I let them go home without me because I had not finished. So I went to hitchhike home and I got as far as the Three Pigs,38 which was one of the many little bars along the way, and I couldn't get any farther until finally the milkman came along and he took me home. I knew him from school because he always delivered the milk at school. My folks had gone to Las Vegas to find me because I hadn't gotten home and somebody told my mother she'd heard me say I was going to Los Angeles, and Mother thought I'd run away from home. So when they called and I was the one who answered the phone, my mother just fainted. My dad had to finish the conversation. I'm continuing the interview with Terry. Well, I'm talking so fast and you're not getting anything in. But I must go back just a bit. When I was in high school, Oran Gragson, who we all know as the mayor, had a little second-hand store on Fremont [Street]. Very old, antique things in it, and I used to go in and talk with him in those early days. He later built a nice furniture store. And then, as everyone knows, he became our mayor.39 Also, I wanted to talk about the little swimming pool on Fremont IStreet] we used to go in.« when we were in high school that's where we used to go swimming. , I will tell you about my father finishing the new school. The man that had the contract couldn't get it finished on time. The government took ,t over and Father finished the new school in Boulder City that was for the seventh and e,g Twanuo tell you about one of my teachers, Eva Adams. She used to teach in the Las Vegas High School, and she became Secretary o t e money United States. She used to signed the greenbacks. Also, one of my teachers was Harvey Dondero. His wtfe everyoneknov^f now.43 And Maude Frazier I knew very well. She was my P Nelson, he now works with Liberace in his museum. He was on musicians in Boulder City. And Clark Higgins.44 Hls father was m the leg.sla at one time.45 Then, you wanted me to tell you about the water release on the dam. After the president was here to dedicate the dam, which I took a picture of him as he drove by our house on Utah Street—we were then living in a government house. He a year later pushed a button in Washington that signaled the release for the water.46 I saw that when all the water came out of all the valves. It looked like a huge waterfall coming from each side and the spray was just all over the whole sky, clear up as high as the dam was filled with the spray. I guess even if you were standing on the dam you'd have got sprayed. Were as many people out for that [as for the dedication] ? I wasn't down there when the president dedicated the dam. You had a hard time getting down there. We were on the side. As I remember, we were down around the curve. My father was there because he, being a worker, went down and he was right there. There's a place where you go around almost like a full circle, and some of us were still backed up in that full circle, so we couldn't see what the capacity of the crowd was. But it was tremendous. They didn't let any cars down there. You had to walk. You had to park up in the very beginning going down through that rock where the road is just before the dam and walk down. But I was there when they opened the valves. I got pictures of that. That was about 1936? Yes. That was in '36. Shall I continue with the things I did in Boulder City? Yes. While I was leaching I had recitals each year. I gave Dwarves [on April 22 and 25, 1938] and there was huge write-ups ,n the pa P about it, and .Ms made me fee. like the big frog I felt like. And "J assistance to Mr. Earl Brothers47 who had the theater in ou er amateur contests. 1 played for Rex Jarret. and he won a pnze. And my first prize doing a tap dance. You used to make the costumes? For my recitals. Designed them and sewed half of them because some of the mothers couldn't sew. And I made uniforms. I had 44 students in my 1935 class I believe it was, or '36. Anyway I made uniforms for every one of them. They were little blue skirts that came off, and then they had the little short jumper underneath for their acrobatics. I designed the sets and [my father] built them. He also put the barres up for my barre work in the basement of the church. The church wouldn't rent to me anymore, so I went over to Garehime's old music building—he was out of that, then. [My father] put the barres up over there. Also, I had classes in Las Vegas. I had the old bakery building on Fourth Street that wasn't being used anymore, and I made a lovely studio in there. It had hardwood floors. Boy, was it nice. And you wanted me to be sure and tell about Queho.48 Yes. I had my classes the last year in the other side of the Park Mortuary, which was [then] not being used in Boulder City.49 It was Garehime's old music building. And the restroom was in the center part, and my little girls used to go in ther wash their hands or go to the bathroom. They came running out one day and said, "Oh, Terry! There's bones in there!" And I said, "Bones?" And I went running in there and there was this skeleton laying on the table in there. I later found out it was good old Queho [she pronounces it Kwee-ho]. They had found him up in the mountains in this cave. Was he the renegade Indian that had been living in the cave killing all these people. Yes. He had died of starvation, evidently, and someone found his bones. A there they were in the restroom of my dance studio. , ... U J Sww Le was in '38. Thai was my big class. 1 had met a lady m "^had come horn California to ge, a divorce. She was a dancing teacher ^shefelUr love with Las Vegas and she wanted to stay here. Her name wanted have her dance studio here, and she came and go a^uamedw. It had turned out to be a really huge thing, and I was very g help me with that. It was so good I had to put it on twice, and then I had to bring it into Las Vegas. People wanted me to put it on the Mormon Church stage in here. Also, I had helped with a music teacher bunch [who had] come in here teaching children music. They put on a little thing called the Enchanted Forest, I think it was. My studio helped with that program and put on a little story dance skit. Let's see. When I taught in Garehime's that was my last year of teaching. I had married. My husband was a guide on the dam.50 They cut down their forces. I don't know if this was because of the war situation that was forming or what. Anyway, they laid him off. He went to California and I stayed in Boulder City. He went down to work in the ship yards. That's when I was hostess on the boat.51 They had two boats. One big one and one nice small one. This nice small one was called Paiute, and I think the other one was called Paiute number 2.5^ But anyway, one was a long boat that took lots of people and the other was a small boat if they didn't have too many people who wanted to go. I played my accordion and answered all their questions and told them all the details about the building of the dam and how high and how deep, pointed out all the beautiful points of interest going up into Grand Canyon. Gave them their lunch. Sometimes when they came back and it was storming, we'd take the people over to a place in by the mouth [of the Grand Canyon], a place that was for boats to dock,53 and they'd go back by car, and we'd bring the boat on home. One time I was very pleasantly surprised with finding out that Henry Fonda and his wife were one of our tourists.5^ After we got back that night they asked the pilot and myself if we'd like to go to Las Vegas with them and have dinner and go all over town. This we did, and of course everyone where we went—we ate in the Green Shack (there weren't too many great and wonderful places here then and that was a very good food place). We danced, the pilot danced with his [Fonda's] wife ®dl danced with Henry Fonda and people would come up and say, Isn t th Henry Fonda you're with? Bring him over to the table. I remember when came to pick me up at the house he was fixing something in the car. He put his foot up on the dashboard and was pushing and he broke the back of the seat in his convertible. We fixed it so his wife could go ahead and sit there. But also when I was hostess on the boat Phil Harris and Alice Faye got marne , aild I used to take their newspaper up to them every day an t y 15 honeymooning out on the lake on a boat. They were married here and they spent their honeymoon here. We were getting so many well-known people here then. Also we were getting a few gangsters. I played music for a lot of the people around here: Buck Blaine55 [who] was connected with the Golden Nugget [Hotel and Casino]. And we went to his house and played music one time when Cliff Jones56 was there and Guy McAfee 57 Also, Paul Ralli.58 I went over to his house with the little trio I was playing with, and we played for them over at his house. These details come in my mind, just that main part of who it was and where I was [but] I don't remember too much about all that. I played one time out on Dry Lake59 when they had a barbecue for a political rally, I think. Lieutenant Governor Fred [S. Alward]60 asked me to play out there. I played for everybody who had a community sing. Talking about your music career, was it around this time you played on KENO radio? This was in 1939 and my husband had lost his job on the dam and we came over here [Las Vegas] and lived on West Side, believe it or not. Everybody lived on West Side that wanted to. We didn't have too many colored families here. I graduated with the first colored boy that ever graduated from Las Vegas High. His name was Percy something, I can't remember it now.6^ Everybody lived there. The housing was cheap over there and my husband didn't have a job. We got acquainted with some people that had the radio station started. It happened to be Max Kelch and John [Strock].6^ They had a girl, a secretary, I remember her being there. The union didn't like the idea we were playing on the radio station. We were called the Wanderers of the Wasteland, and we got fan mail and requests. But you weren't even employed there, were you7 No, we were just playing because we wanted to get a start. Thats the w y young kids are, or were then, maybe. You just played to get start something like that. And I wasn't really a musician yet. 1 didn't belong to t e union. But believe me, the union was trying to get us off that stage. And the i s 16 that had the station told them they were going to have us play whether they liked it or not. But we ended up getting off the stage. The union won out. Helldorado was getting bigger and better all the time, and we played for rodeos that were here and we played for the dances and things. We had a nice little trio, my husband and his friend, Charlie Guy. I bet lots of people in Las Vegas know him. And myself. The floats were getting prettier because as they built hotels, the hotels put in some of the most gorgeous floats you ever saw. They had running waterfalls on them and beautiful girls. And they were compara