Transcript of interview with Stella Champo Iaconis by Kay Long, May 14, 1997 & September 1997

An Interview with Stella Champo Iaconis Born – September 16, 1910 Moche, Italy At rest – January 18, 1998 An Oral History conducted by Kay Long May – September 1997 ____________________________________ Las Vegas Women Oral History Project University of Nevada, Las Vegas 1998 ii Production of An Interview with Stella Champo Iaconis was made possible in part by a grant from the UNLV Foundation. ?Las Vegas Women Oral History Project UNLV, 1998 Revised, 2010 Produced by: Las Vegas Women Oral History Project Department of History, University of Nevada, Las Vegas 89154-5020 iii iv v The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of the Foundation at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The History Department of the university provided a home for the project and a wide variety of in-kind services. The department, as well as the college and university administration, enabled students and faculty to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank the university for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing. These measures include 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. In several cases, photographic sources (housed separately) accompany the collection as slides or black and white photographs. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Las Vegas Women Oral History Project. Additional transcripts may be found under that series title. Joanne Goodwin, Project Director Associate Professor, Department of History University of Nevada, Las Vegas vi Preface The Champo family, Jacinta and Manuel Champo and their daughter Stella came from Italy to Las Vegas in 1912. They lived in a room at the Union Hotel, which was located at Main and Bridger. In 1917, the Champo family bought a small ranch located about three miles south of what is Henderson today. Manuel grew fruits and vegetables at the ranch and sold them in town door to door. Stella began her education at Las Vegas Grammar School at Fourth and Bridger in 1918 and started babysitting for many of the local women when she was only ten years old. Jacinta’s death in 1927 was hard on both Stella and Manuel. Stella decided not to finish her education. Maude Frazier, who was the principal at the High School, tried to persuade Stella to stay at school. However, Stella had no more interest in school and at eighteen years old she started her career as a waitress. Her first job was at a small Italian restaurant at the Union Hotel where she learned the business. She worked as a waitress and cashier and when P.O. Silvagni opened the Apache Hotel at Second and Fremont she went to work there. Stella continued to work at the Apache until she moved to Los Angeles where she worked as a waitress for eighteen years. Stella had married John Iaconis in 1953 and they moved back to Las Vegas. Both John and Stella went to work at the Sahara Hotel. Stella was a showroom waitress and John was a tailor with his own valet shop in the Sahara Hotel. Stella worked in a showroom at Sahara for three years because it was physically demanding work. Stella went to work at Larry’s where she stayed for twenty years. vii Stella continued to live in Las Vegas until her death on January 18, 1998 . She was happily retired and always remembered the past and the lessons she learned from her hard work. Stella was a very optimistic and totally self-reliant woman. viii An Interview with Stella Champo Iaconis An Oral History Conducted by Kay Long It is May 14, 1997 and this is Kay Long talking with Stella Iaconis at her home at 620 South Seventh Avenue in Las Vegas, Nevada. We are going to talk today about the early years of Las Vegas and Stella’s school-girl memories. First let me ask you Stella, where were you born and a little bit about your family -- your brothers, sisters. I was born in Italy in 1910, in September, and we came to the United States in 1911, in April. Then we came to Las Vegas in April of 1912. Were you in New York to begin with? No. We landed in New York but we came directly to Utah because my dad was following the mining camps. He had been here already [for] three years before he came and got my mother. So your mother, your father, and yourself -- Yes. Because I snuck in. In the meantime, I kind of settled the affair. Then we came to Las Vegas. My dad went to work in the mining camps in Goldfield, Jackrabbit -- I don’t remember all the names of the mining camps. There was a lot of them in those days. We stayed in Las Vegas. He just went to the mining camps. You and your mother stayed in Las Vegas. Yes. My mother was a cook for the Union Pacific Railroad, [for] the man that worked there. She worked for the Union Hotel. So she was a cook for the Union Hotel. Is that where the Union Plaza is today? Well, no, not the Union Plaza. It’s a hotel on Main and Bridger. Then my dad would come home for maybe three or four months, six months maybe, according to how long 2 camp lasted. Then he gave up mining and he worked for the railroad a little bit. He didn’t like that so he bought a ranch in 1917. Do you know where the ranch was located? The ranch was located about three miles south of what is Henderson today. There was no road to go to the ranch because of course we had horse and wagon in those days. I used to help my dad. Where Henderson is today, on top of the mountain was all rocks and evidently there had been an earthquake or volcano or something in those days. Is that the mountain that has the big “B” on it for Basic High School? Where Henderson is today. So then in 1917 I started school. I went to Las Vegas Grammar School up until 1927. You were at the same school? Well, I started high school in 1927, naturally. That was Las Vegas High School? Yes. But in the meantime, my mother committed suicide. She was sick and she committed suicide and I would not go back to school. What year was that? 1927. So that was at the beginning of your high school education? Yes. I would not go back to school because I was afraid of what the kids [would say]. In those days, it was the only suicide. 3 Was your mother still working as a cook in Las Vegas? Oh, no. She went to the ranch. Did you have a house and stables out at the ranch? Yes. We had a house. We had horses and different kinds of animals. We had vegetables and fruit trees. My dad used to come to town and sell vegetables from the wagon -- go house to house. So the ranch was self-supporting you then. Oh, yeah. Then whatever he didn’t sell by the end of the day, he sold it to the grocery store. There was a grocery store on the corner of First and Fremont. It’s hard to imagine a grocery store on the corner of First and Fremont now, isn’t it? Yes. It’s a little different. That was as early as 1917 then, and he continued ranching with you and your mother helping? No, I went to school. For nine months of school, my folks boarded me out here in town because we had a little red school house that the Japs had for their kids, but they had five kids. I was an only child and my folks wouldn’t send me to the little red school house. Was the little red school house close to your ranch? About three miles or so. But they didn’t want you going there. They wanted you to be in Las Vegas in what I’m assuming they thought was a proper school. Where did you stay in Las Vegas? 4 With different families. I boarded out. Maybe they’d take me the next year, maybe they wouldn’t. I guess I was an ornery little kid. Were these friends or was it actually a business-type agreement? Well, we knew everybody in Las Vegas. In those days, the population wasn’t that much and you knew everybody. Las Vegas was only [from] Stewart Avenue to -- what’s the name of that street? Charleston? No, not Charleston. There was no Charleston. Okay, how about Bonneville? No, the next street. Garces. And Main Street and Las Vegas Boulevard, which was Fifth Street in those days, and that was Las Vegas. Was that where the homes were built? That’s where the homes, the schools, the businesses, everything. That was it. That was Las Vegas. Everybody lived in that section. Fremont Street is in that section. Were the hotels being built on Fremont Street? There was the Sal Sagev Hotel, which in those days was the Nevada Hotel, and the Overland Hotel, which was right across the street. Then they finally built one on Fourth and Fremont. I can’t even think of the name of it now but there was a little smaller hotel. That was downtown. That’s it. Where was the school house? 5 The school was on Fourth and Bridger. Is that where Las Vegas Academy is now? No, that’s the high school, that’s right up the street here. Two blocks from here. The high school burned down and after the high school burned down they built this one on Seventh Street. I didn’t burn it down. [laughing] But in 1927, would that have been where you were going to go? I think it burned down in 1928. I forget the exact date. So you didn’t attend the new high school at all? No I didn’t. I went to work. So it’s 1927 and your mother has committed suicide and you’re sixteen or seventeen years old? Yeah, I was about sixteen when she died. Was you father still running the ranch by himself? My father had the ranch and that was it. In 1921, I think it was, we had a big flood and it washed our ranch away. [It] washed everything away, all the vegetables, all the fruit trees. The animals protected themselves. They kind of hid. Evidentally they know when a storm is coming because they already protected themselves. They didn’t get washed away but our whole ranch was cleaned out. Did it tear down the house? Not the house. The house was up on top of the hill. The ranch was down in the valley 6 where the creek was. Was that the Las Vegas Wash? Yes. Well, the one that goes through Flamingo, that’s the one that washed away and was going down to the ranch. I think where your ranch was close to is also where they built Lake Las Vegas, on the other side of the mountain it would be? Well, there was several ranches there. The Jap had the ranch, Johnny Miller had a ranch. I don’t even remember the name of the other one but there was two or three other ranches. They were about two or three miles from us. Were they doing the same thing, growing fruits and vegetables? Yes. It must have been good soil then. Well, it was. But they didn’t get washed out because the creek didn’t run through their place. It just went through ours. Did the creek have water in it most of the time? No. It had water to water the ranch, natural water, but this was from the rain in the mountains. Yes, that comes down from Red Rock down Flamingo Wash and then heads right on out to Lake Mead. I had not realized that ranches were out in that Las Vegas Wash area in the beginning of Las Vegas. 7 It’s so different, the country like that. Then the old Las Vegas highway to Los Angeles, which today is Paradise. That was the old Los Angeles Highway and there was ranches along there too. It doesn’t seem like there was water along there. Oh, we had lots of water. But we don’t now. It was all natural springs. That’s out in the Paradise Spa area. Yes. So those were natural springs out there. All natural springs. They all had water. We had water, plenty of water. Was there plenty of water in town? Oh, yes. They had plenty of water. Now the population is too heavy, that’s why. Go home! Well, I agree with you. In the research that I’ve done on Las Vegas, I have not seen where there were ranches in Las Vegas that were producing fruits and vegetables. Because they didn’t write about the ranches. They didn’t make any publicity, that there was any ranches or anything. There was no gambling. There was gambling but it wasn’t legal. Not then. Legal gambling came in the 1930s, around 1931 I think it was. So you’re just starting work in 1927. 8 I went to work in 1928 really, I guess. And then after my mother died, in 1929 my dad took me to Europe. Well, first he took me to California in 1927 after my mother died. I had a cousin in Los Angeles, so he drove and we went from Las Vegas to Salt Lake, and then Salt Lake to Reno, and Reno to Lake Tahoe, then from Tahoe to San Francisco. Was this a vacation? Yes. He took about four or five months. Then we went to Los Angeles and met my cousin there, and his wife and his little girl. We went to San Diego and Tijuana [laughing], naturally, then back to Los Angeles and then to Las Vegas. [He] went back to work and then in 1929 my dad took me to Europe. We were in Europe for six months In Italy? In Italy, because he had a sister there and my mother had a sister. My mother was the youngest of sixteen [children]. Were the others still in Italy? Well, some were in France, some were in Italy. We were scattered around. Was your mother the only one who migrated to America? Yes, she was the only one. Tell me a little bit about Italy and what you thought of it in 1929. Well, I’ll tell you. I was a teenager and after being raised in the United States, Italy stunk. Because they’re not modern like they are today. They had outdoor toilets and things that we didn’t have and I wasn’t used to, except when we were in the ranch [in Las Vegas]. But I only stayed on the ranch the three months that school was out. The rest of 9 the time I was always in town. Oh, I’d go out there at Christmas for a week or at Easter for a few days but otherwise I always stayed in town for nine months. So you were used to a modern home. A modern home, modern everything. Were there swamp coolers in the homes in Las Vegas at that time? No. No cooling. If I worked nights, I had a little fan and I’d take a napkin and wet the napkin and tie it to the fan and then put it by the bed. And that was it. It was hot, then, during the day and I worked mostly nights so naturally I couldn’t sleep during the day too much. But I made my own air-conditioning. When you came back from Italy, were you glad to come back to the comforts of Las Vegas? Yes. In fact I had a job in Torino [Italy], to go to work as an interpretess. In Italy. In Italy. Because I spoke three languages -- Italian, American, and Spanish. So I could have worked in Torino but my dad said, “Oh, we’re going to stay here.” I started to cry. I cried and cried because I didn’t want to stay in Italy. I wanted to come home. I just couldn’t see it, living over there. [I] had everything I needed. My dad had his sister there and her family and all. No. And I spoke good Italian. In six months I heard a lot. I was one of those who was kind of easy to pick up on a foreign language. It just came to me. I was learning French pretty good. My dad spoke good French but I never did get into it. I could understand quite a bit but I never got into it like I did the Italian and the Spanish. Did you learn Spanish in Las Vegas? 10 I learned that, here. From Spanish farm workers? Yes, because there was a few families here, you know. I remember even when I was going to school, I took Spanish. The teacher used to say to me, “Your pronunciation is better than mine. Your accent is better.” You had that Italian behind you. You could roll those “r”s. I guess. That means you were valuable with the Spanish-speaking people of the city, and the Italians. There were other Italians in the city? Not too many, but there was some. Then I used to go to like when they had the Spanish fiestas and all, I used to go to them all the time. These people would take me and I’d go because they had good times. Is this when you were younger, Stella? Yes. In September they would have -- well my birthday was the 16th and on the 15th was a Mexican holiday and so they’d take me for my birthday. Here in Las Vegas or in the Moapa area? No, no. Here. Was there a certain part of town where the Spanish lived? Oh, no. They lived any place. The colored people lived mostly on the north side of Fremont, where the “red-light district” was. 11 Block Sixteen? Yes, Block Sixteen. In fact I was asked to go to work at Block Sixteen. I was about eighteen and one of the guys there wanted me to go to work up there. As a prostitute? Yes. I said, “Not hardley!” [laughing] Was this after you came back from Italy? Oh, yeah. What type of work were you doing in Las Vegas? I was working in the little restaurants. Then when the Apache [Hotel] opened on Second and Fremont, I went to work there. And that was in 1930 -- and a part of 1931. Before that you had been working at private restaurants? Yes. I was learning the business As a waitress? Yes. Waitress and cashier. Do you remember what you got paid? Oh, yes. Well when I first went to work at the Apache, we didn’t even get paid. You got tips. Yes. Then they gave us twenty-five cents an hour and you worked sometimes ten or twelve hours a day. 12 Did you work split shifts, do a breakfast and then maybe come back and do a dinner? Oh, yeah. Sometimes you did that, sometimes you worked straight through. You just worked, period. A girl had to get it. Were there certain women that worked with you, that you became friends with? Oh, yeah. In fact P.O. Silvagni, that owned the restaurant, his daughter still lives here. I see her now and then. Well, I haven’t seen her for about four or five years. Of course, she’s not in very good health. Did she work as a waitress? No. Her mother and her father were split and the mother lived in Utah. The father opened the restaurant, here. There was four kids and the two oldest ones worked here with their dad and the young ones stayed home with the mother. You said that he owned the restaurant. Did he own the Apache or did he just lease out the rest? He owned the Apache and he owned the hotel and everything. Did he build it? Yes. Before he bought that lot, it was just a big hole in the ground. A big hole in the ground, and they had boards across it so people wouldn’t fall in or go near it. They had originally dug the dirt out and used it somewhere? I don’t know what they were going to build there. I was working at a little Italian restaurant at the Union Hotel where my folks used to be. I worked with them and P.O. Silvagni used to come in there and eat and he said, “When I getta’ my hotel do you 13 wanna come over and worka for me.” That was P.O. Silvagni. Italian? Yes. So that’s how you got the job at the Apache. How many waitresses were working there at that time?1 Some of them I remembered. About seven to eight. Did you cover all the shifts? Well, there was three shifts but at first they didn’t have but only two shifts. Then they made three shifts and there was at least two girls in the dining room and at least four or five girls on each shift. Was it open twenty-four hours a day then, to do three shifts? Oh, yeah. They finally opened it twenty-four hours a day. So Las Vegas has been a twenty-four-hour-a-day town for quite some time? Yes. That’s after the gambling came in. The gambling was open twenty-four hours a day so then the restaurant would stay open twenty-four hours. Did he have gambling at the Apache Hotel? No, he never had the gambling. He rented that out. He rented the hotel out. He lived there, him and his daughter and his son. They all lived there but he rented that all out. John Russell had the hotel. 1End side 1, tape 1. 14 Had he been in Las Vegas for a while? Not too long that I can remember but he came, I think, from California. Were you getting people from California moving into Las Vegas? No, they were tourists mostly. For the gambling, do you think? Naturally for the gambling. Of course it wasn’t like it is today. Then we used to get movie stars. Rex Bell and Clara Bow, they stayed at the Apache for a long time when they moved here. Were you still working at the Apache then? Yes. How long did you work there? About four years. Then I moved to Los Angeles for a while. My dad was single. He’d been widowed for about seven years or so I guess. I knew he had a girlfriend and that he would never get married if I’d have stayed home. He was very devoted to you. Well, I was an only child and he wouldn’t do anything, probably to bring me a step mother. Was he still on the ranch then? Oh, yes. He sold the ranch after the 1940s. 15 But you were living in town while you were a waitress, right? Oh, yeah. So was he because he wasn’t running the ranch. He went into bootlegging. He did! That was a good time to go into it, wasn’t it? After he got washed out, there was nothing more he could do. So he went into bootlegging. Out at the ranch? Yes. He had the perfect place. I had forgotten about the days he went into bootlegging in the 1920s. So after the flood of 1921 and the vegetable garden and the fruit trees and everything was gone, the country was in prohibition, Las Vegas definitely wants alcohol, and so he went into bootlegging. How long was he involved in bootlegging? Yes. I don’t remember just how many years he was into bootlegging. I guess it was up until the early 1930s. Because then he had rented the ranch out to other bootleggers. When he quit, then there was other people that wanted it to bootleg. So that’s how he left the ranch and was in town. Were you living together in a house in town then? Oh yes. And then I figured if I stay home, he won’t get married. So I had my cousin in Los Angeles and I moved down there with them. They had a little girl. In fact she lives here now, too. Was that someone who was your age? No. She was fifteen years younger than I was. She was born in 1926 and we met her in 16 1927. She was just few months old. What is her name? Norma Borla. What was your maiden name? Champo. So then I went to work in Los Angeles. I worked down there in a restaurant, cashier and hostessing. What type of restaurants were you working in? Italian restaurants. It was a very famous restaurant [Little Joe’s]. It was known all over the United States. We had people from every state in the union. It was in the Civic Center on North Broadway in Los Angeles. How long did you stay there? I stayed there about fifteen or sixteen years. Then I came back home and I went back to the Apache. They were after me all the time. I was home an average of six to eight times a year. So you still stayed close with your father. Did he get married again? Oh yeah. He got married and I got a half sister and she’s six years old now [when Iocanis came back to Las Vegas]. Everybody thinks she’s my daughter because there’s twenty five years difference. She used to come to Los Angeles during her summer vacations and stay with me. Did you have your own apartment in Los Angeles then? 17 Well, I had my own home. I had gotten married. When did you get married? Well I don’t know. The first time I was married was 1934. Then I divorced and then I remarried after three or four years. In fact Little Joe, my boss, wanted to marry me. At the Italian restaurant? Yes. He was a millionaire. But he was as old as my dad and I just didn’t feel right. So then I married my husband John and we were married for forty six years. John Iaconis was your third husband. Second. I’ve got you too many husbands. You married him in California. No I married him here. We always came to Las Vegas. I could never stay away. My boss used to say to me, “Stella, I see you’re getting a little homesick.” You know to this day, I think people feel that way about Las Vegas. I see people who move away from Las Vegas, and I’m one of them, and we always end up back here in Las Vegas. My sister hasn’t, but she still has to come home at least a couple of times a year to feel like she’s come home. I don’t know why but there is something that drives you here. Of course to me, this was home. This is my only home, really, that I knew. I had never been out of Las Vegas, actually, until after my mother died. It was home. And then my father and I were always very close. We were very, very close. Of course being an only kid, I wasn’t spoiled much but I was spoiled a little. 18 It sounds like for the times, you had a very nice life. Oh, I’ve had a beautiful life. I had a good home and a good bringing up. My folks were very good to me. I didn’t get everything I wanted because there wasn’t no money in the early days, up until the bootleg days. There wasn’t too much money around and then I was always one that wanted to work anyway. I was a babysitter from the time I was around nine or ten years old because we had railroad wives that had kids and they were young ladies. They wanted to go dancing and they’d have maybe one or two kids and [they’d say], “Stella, come over and babysit tonight.” Or if they wanted to go to the store in the afternoon or they wanted to go play cards, they’d call me and I used to babysit. From the stories that I’ve read, the railroads sort of helped build Las Vegas, so you saw that too, that it was a very important part of Las Vegas. Oh absolutely. Were the railroad women of a higher status than other women? Well maybe I shouldn’t say this but I know a lot of the railroad men married women from the “red-light” district. But they made the best wives because they wanted to settle down. They’d get married and maybe they’d have one or two kids, three or four maybe. Some had five and six. They were true to their husbands. They weren’t “chippies” or anything. Were they good mothers? Good mothers. Some of them were good mothers. And the fact that they had worked in the “red-light” district at one time was gone once they were married. That was the thing that was forgotten. 19 That’s kind of nice to be in a world like that. Yeah, because it’s no honor to be a prostitute. But some of them, I guess they had no other ways of working. Maybe they were runaways from home. They have them today, more than ever. In fact, if they would listen to me they would make prostitution legal because these ladies that were prostitutes, they were examined by a doctor every week. Every Friday was “prostitution day” for the doctor and so you knew they were clean. That’s when prostitution was restricted to one area of Las Vegas. On Block Sixteen, you had to. I worked and I knew some of those prostitutes, from working. If you saw them on the street you didn’t speak to them. You didn’t? You didn’t know them. They didn’t want you to know them. You didn’t want to know them. So that social boundary was there then. Yes and they were very, very nice. But you knew them as a waitress as someone coming in for food. Oh, they were very nice to wait on. Today it’s not legal and its a different story entirely any more. No control. It’s going to be a crime if they’re caught. That’s it and I believed in legal prostitution. It seems to me from what I’ve read and what you’ve told me, that there was a place for 20 it and it did work when it was legal. That’s it. I imagine the sheriff was the person who controlled and made these rules. Absolutely. Do you remember who the social elite of Las Vegas was? There was a few, yeah, like the lawyers -- the MacNamees and the Foleys. The MacNamees I guess are just about all gone. Then there was the Mesquite Club. They had the Mesquite Club in the 1930s because they used to have their meeting at the Apache. We had a basement downstairs where they had their meetings, for big banquets and big things. The Mesquite Club was a women’s organization for the social -- Elite, yes. They were the social elite from what I understand. Yes, they were. In fact I was asked to join the Mesquite Club in the early stages but I worked and I couldn’t be bothered in clubs. I was too busy between dating and dancing. There was much more to do, and I have a feeling they were older women at that time too. Oh yeah, they were old. Most of them all had kids Was the Stewart family involved in that? Oh, yeah. I can’t even think of all the names of people in those days, or all the ones that 21 worked at the court house. We didn’t have a federal building in those days but they were all big shots. Also they were community-leader types, wives of community leaders. The “blue blood.” The original blood of Las Vegas, in the middle of the desert but we’re still going to have blue bloods aren’t we? And in the summer time, the blue bloods went to California to the beach. Stella I’m going to turn the tape off now and we’ll come back to your life in California on another day. Okay. Whatever you want, I don’t care. This concludes my interview with Stella, today on May 14. We agreed to meet again on May 21 and instead of speaking about her time in California we’re going to discuss life in Las Vegas and some of the people in Las Vegas. We’re also going to discuss how the development of the [Hoover] dam changed Las Vegas. We will continue on May 21.2 This is Kay Long, continuing my conversation with Stella Iaconis at her home. Today we’re going to talk about the early years in Las Vegas and the entertainment business as it became an industry. We were talking a little bit last time about Helldorado. What are your memories about the first Helldorado? The first Helldorado was around 1932 or 1933. There used to be a big crowd down Fremont Street. They had a parade and everything for Helldorado. 2End side 2, tape 1. 22 Was it an event representing the “wild west?” Yes. It was given by the Elk’s club and it was the old wild west. Everybody dressed western. Even when they worked they dressed western, which they don’t do anymore. In those days, you went to work in western clothes. If you had a uniform to wear to work at a restaurant or a hotel during the Helldorado Days, you would wear your western clothes instead. You wear western. You don’t wear your uniform. When I think of Helldorado today, I think of the rodeo more than anything else. Was a rodeo part of the original Helldorado Days? Oh yes. It was everything western. Do you remember where the rodeos were held? They didn’t have Cashman Field, did they? Probably in the desert because everything was wide open and you could have it any place. They didn’t have laws. To set it up where you wanted to set it up. That’s it. Do you think the Helldorado Days was set up to bring people into Las Vegas? Yes, tourists used to come to see the Helldorado because they didn’t have it no place else. California wasn’t quite as “wild west” then. That’s right. Las Vegas was wild west. 23 Do you know if they were advertising to people outside of California? Did they advertise in Arizona or Utah? I don’t remember but they must have advertised because the tourists used to come. And they didn’t have television in those days. They might have had it on radio for a little bit. But it did draw a lot of people into Las Vegas. Oh yes, it drew quite a few people and the local people were very active in it. And that was everyone from the community? Oh yeah, very much so. That was one form of entertainment that came once a year. As a local and growing up here in Las Vegas, at what age did you first start going out? Were there age limits as to when you could go into places and drink and gamble? No, you couldn’t gamble until you were twenty one. You would not drink until you were twenty one. Although I know I snuck drinks and I wasn’t quite twenty one. But you could do like all the kids do, you sneak a little bit. Of course the bartenders knew you. Everybody knew everybody. It wasn’t like today. So if you walked in and the bartender was familiar with you and you weren’t twenty one, it was not a problem giving you a drink. [Yes]. But gambling was very fussy. You couldn’t gamble unless you were twenty one. Who was gambling at that time in Las Vegas, local people? Local people. The locals like to gamble too. They still do. 24 Were there any local clubs that you remember going to, after you turned twenty one? Well there was clubs downtown in those days, before the Strip. Then a friend of mine opened up the Last Frontier. In fact I was checking coats and hats out there. They owned it and were friends of mine. I used to work at the Apache and then in the evening I’d go out to the Last Frontier and check hats and coats. So you were working two jobs then. Yes. Do you know what year it was when the Last Frontier opened? The Last Frontier must have opened around 1930. Was the El Rancho Vegas already built then