Transcript of interview with Danny Lee by Claytee White and Stefani Evans, May 23, 2016

i AN INTERVIEW WITH CLARK D. "DANNY" LEE An Oral History Conducted by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White The Building Las Vegas Oral History Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ©The Building Las Vegas Oral History Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2016 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Editor: Stefani Evans Transcribers: Kristin Hicks, Frances Smith Interviewers: Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White Project Manager: Stefani Evans iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of the UNLV University Libraries. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff 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 and the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes 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 accompany the individual interviews. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Building Las Vegas Oral History Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University Nevada, Las Vegas iv PREFACE Folks who graduated Boulder City High School in 1953 and who began kindergarten there might remember being in kindergarten class with Clark D. "Danny" Lee. They would be excused for not remembering the towheaded Lee; after all, he was in Boulder City only for the first half of the year. They also would be excused for not remembering Lee because he never stayed in school once he arrived. Danny was the child whose mother faithfully brought him to class every day. And every day, as soon as his mother dropped him off, he took off and beat his mother home. Danny Lee was born in his grandparents’ house in North Las Vegas, grew up on 10 Bonneville Street, and (except for his first semester of kindergarten in Boulder City) attended Fifth Street Elementary School and Las Vegas High School, where he graduated in 1953 with Rex Bell. In 1960 he married fellow Las Vegas High grad and former Rhythmette, Dorothy Damron; they have raised four children. Here, Lee talks about the difficulties his father had finding work and supporting a family during the Great Depression—of living with relatives and moving from place to place in the small travel trailer as his father found work. He describes a hardscrabble Las Vegas, where he and other kids in in multiethnic groups found temporary work helping drovers in the stockyards or filling blocks of ice in the icehouse. He recalls working for Superior Tire during high school and for the Union Pacific Railroad in a variety of jobs after graduation and the U.S. Army—including a stint as a Union Pacific tour director. v Lee’s early kindergarten career seems an unlikely academic indicator for a man who would spend most of his adult life volunteering for and lobbying on behalf of Clark County public libraries and who the American Library Association would select as the 1990 Library Trustee of the Year. Ironically, Lee was asked to serve on the Clark County Library District board of directors to get rid of a troublesome library director. Instead, he became one of the director’s staunchest advocates. It is appropriate that Danny and his wife, Dorothy, are pictured here surrounded by library books. The native Las Vegan built a lifetime career as a State Farm Insurance salesman, but in this interview he focuses on his public library advocacy, his time as trustee for the Clark County Library District; the formation of the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District; the ambitious building program funded by $80 million in voter-approved statewide bonds; and the political wrangling in Carson City necessary to achieve these ends. Lee’s oral history complements that of his wife, Dorothy Lee, and of Charles Hunsberger, who was the “troublesome” library director at the time Lee was trustee. Lee made his living as an insurance salesman. Lee’s ability to sell a product—whether it be insurance or an $80 million bond issue—is the attribute that made Danny Lee so valuable as a trustee to the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District and consequently, to all Clark County residents who value public library services. However, his passion, and dedication, and unbowed determination earned him the Library Trustee of the Year award. As Lee closes the interview, he locks eyes with Dorothy and muses, "Let me tell you what I'm most proud of in all . . . I've been married to this lady for fifty six years now. . . . I've lived a very blessed life. Being born in my grandmother's house and having lived in little travel trailers, it's just good. It's worked. We're living like we've always wanted to live right now." vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Clark D. "Danny" Lee May 23rd, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White Preface……………………………………………………………………………..……………..iv Describes his family and the people and places of his youth: 1843 Stanford Street, North Las Vegas; Boulder City; H Street and Owens Avenue, and 10 Bonneville Street. Talks about helping the drovers in the stockyards behind the icehouse and about putting fresh water in the hollows of the ice stored within the ice house. Speaks to diversity of work crews—Hispanics, Japanese, and Chinese—and friends Costello (Mexican) and Enomoto (Japanese). Tells of Fifth Street Elementary School, graduating Las Vegas High School in 1953 with Rex Bell, and first job during high school at Superior Tire for Garland Ronald and later as baggage agent and other jobs with Union Pacific Railroad ……………………………………………………………..…..……. 1-19 Recalls Red Kessler and becoming a tour director for the Chicago & North Western-Union Pacific Department of Tours; remembers the Biltmore Hotel and Bob Taylor’s Ranch House, an unsuccessful [1972] run for the Nevada State Assembly, his courtship of and marriage to Dorothy Damron, and beginning his career with State Farm Insurance by sharing a rented office on East Charleston Boulevard with Joe Rowan. Talks about office locations in his thirty-four years with State Farm and how in 1983 he became involved with and began lobbying for the Clark County Library District at suggestion of Clark County Commissioner Manny Cortez. Discusses library director Charles Hunsberger, formation of Las Vegas-Clark County Library District, lobbying for the District in Carson City, Nevada voters passing the LV-CCLD $80 million statewide bond in 1991, the District obtaining land designated for libraries from Mark Fine in Green Valley and in Summerlin, and of working with architects David Welles, David Pugsley, and Antione Predock….……………………………………………………..…………...………..…….... 19-36 Describes the magnetic-levitation People Mover transit system proposed by entrepreneur Bob Snow that was supposed to stop at a station at the headquarters library downtown; recalls how the Green Valley Library was rezoned to Henderson Library District; talks of siting and building the library on the Westside (West Las Vegas Library near Doolittle Center), of designating and designing the library on Las Vegas Boulevard North for use as the District headquarters, of selecting Antoine Predock as the architect and of the building’s architectural features, and of working with architect Michael Graves on the Flamingo Library. Reflects on his lobbying career for LV-CCLD and the Nevada Library Association and with Ashley Hall and John "Jack" Vergiels. Talks of receiving the American Libraries Association's 1990 award for Library Trustee of the Year, of getting to know Manny Cortez, and of not letting Charles Hunsberger accompany him to Carson City………………………………………………………………………...….……. 36-53 vii 1 Today is May 23rd, 2016. We are in the home of Danny Lee. This is Claytee White and...? And I'm Stefani Evans. So Danny, could you pronounce and spell your first and last name? Clark, C-L-A-R-K; Lee, L-E-E. Tell me about Danny. Danny? My nickname was—my middle name was Danehl. Would you spell that? 1937: Danny and Grandad Lee with trailer at 1843 Stanford Street, North Las Vegas 1935: Danny and his mother, Sophia, at 1843 Stanford Street, North Las Vegas D-A-N-E-H-L. But I was never called that. I was called Danny. 2 So could you tell me about your early life, a little about your family, how you grew up? Well, I was born in 1935, which is in the middle of the Depression. So as far as my dad's job, it was whatever he could get as far as money. At the time they had a small travel trailer, which was parked in my grandmother's backyard and we were living there and he would find jobs and leave when he could. Where? It was in North Las Vegas, 1843 Stanford Street in North Las Vegas. In my grandmother's house at the time were my two grandparents on the Lee side of the family, Jenny and Christy. I had a cousin and an aunt living in the house; also, my aunt Bernice and my cousin Barbara. So it was a 1937: Danny in front of 1843 Stanford Street, North Las Vegas 1935: Danny and his mother, Sophia, 1843 Stanford Street, North Las Vegas 3 great family. And then two blocks away was my uncle and my aunt and another cousin in North Las Vegas. I was born in that house, 1843 Stanford, in my grandmother and grandfather's bed. I can't tell you the name of the doctor. I think it was Slaven, but I'm not sure. [Ed. Note: The doctor was likely Hale B. Slavin (b. 1906), who was licensed in Nevada in 1933 and practiced in Las Vegas at least through the early 1950s.] What are your parents' names? My dad was Clark and my mother was Sophia, S-O-P-H-I-A. His middle name was Ward and I don't think she had a middle name. No, I don't think so. So do you remember the neighborhood, what it was like? No, because... My dad was working in construction. And so when he would get a job, he would leave. And we had this little travel trailer and when he got set up someplace, we would hook it up to a Model-A Ford and my mother would tow it; we would go where he was. So the first five years of my life basically was moving. When he didn't have a job, I was either at my grandmother's house in North Las Vegas or in my mother's grandma's house, my Grandma Potter's house, on South Second Street; that's where we would try to find a place to live because we didn't bring the trailer home most of the time. They were also in Alamo, the Potter family. So sometimes we would go to Alamo and wait for him to have a job. So the first five years were spent more in central California and northern Nevada than anywhere, all those little towns—Orland, Verdi, Truckee; all those. I hardly remember them. I remember doing things. We lived in the little travel trailer all the time. I spent a winter in Truckee in that little son of a gun, liked to froze to death. So tell me about school. Well, that's part of why we came back to Vegas is that I was turning five and my dad was 4 moving all the time and they decided that it was probably time to find a job and settle down. So he found a job at the dam. He was a machinist welder. We lived in Boulder City for a very short while. I went to half a year of kindergarten there. Do you remember Boulder City at all? Yes. I could tell you some real funny stories. I didn't want to go to school. So my mother would walk me to school and sometimes I would beat her home. She would take me in the classroom and I would beat her home. One of the funniest things—I would just keep doing this—so my dad had talked to one of the guys that... Out there [in Boulder City] they didn't have sheriffs and that; they had the government marshals. So he had one of them come take me one morning. He took me over to the airport and I got to sit in an airplane and he did this and he did that and he told me all these things I couldn't do if I didn't go to school and get smart. So the next day, guess what I did? They took me to school and I came home. Now, I finally started going to school. I can't tell you why I decided all of a sudden school wasn't too bad. Then halfway through kindergarten we moved to Las Vegas and lived in West Las Vegas, H [Street] and Owens [Avenue]—somewhere over there, a little, tiny place—until they could find another place to live. Then they bought the house that I grew up in, at 10 Bonneville Street. Do you remember H and Owens at that time? Yes, kind of, because my mother's cousin—who, they were like sisters—the Romero family were living there. You might have known Neal Romero, Gary Romero, all that. And so they knew this place was available. So we lived there just until we found someplace else to live. Where did you go to school when you were living at H and Owens? We moved over here and I went to Fifth Street [Elementary School]. I'm not even sure there was 5 another grade school at that particular time, in 1940. I think North Ninth [Street Elementary School] was later, and John S. Park [Elementary School] was well into the forties. So you did not go to the Westside School? No, and I can't tell you why I didn't. But we didn't live over... We only lived in West Las Vegas probably a couple of months, I think, not very long So tell me about Tenth and Bonneville; that area. Ten Bonneville. Ten Bonneville. Ten Bonneville was... They always used to say, "Why do you live at 10 Bonneville?" And I said, "Because it's cheap." But 10 Bonneville at the time was an unusual neighborhood, in that Main Street was the main highway. So every diesel truck and whatever that came through town was on Main Street; it was Highway 95. Right next to it was, of course, the big icehouse and that was our play place. They didn't worry about kids. We could go anywhere we wanted in that icehouse. Behind the icehouse was the stockyards. It was an interesting place, because they would have to take these animals out of the trains at certain times and exercise them. And they had what they called drovers that went with them; they actually had a car on the railroad to take care of them as they were moving. They thought it was great because we wanted to help them load and unload. When we'd come home, we'd smell so bad my mom would meet me out in the backyard. [I was] naked and [she'd] squirt me with the hose before she would let me inside. But it was great fun. It was a good area. It wasn't much. The other side of Charleston? Just some rich people lived over there. Huntridge hadn't been built in 1940; I think it started in '44, somewhere in that area. So Las Vegas was just a small town. But unusually, as bad a location as it was with the trains and the traffic and that, there were actually some very wealthy people lived right on First Street. 6 Tell me about the icehouse. Describe it to me. The icehouse was an interesting place in that, as I say, they did it all with cold water; brine is how they made the ice, and they made it in four-hundred-pound blocks. They all were covered by these big pads, insulated pads when they were making the ice. When they started freezing the outside, they would actually suck the inside out, which I always thought was interesting, and they would put fresh water in so there wouldn't be bubbles all over the middle. They used to let us do that. The kids, we'd go over there. We could do anything we wanted. They had one big area where they stored [the ice]. Then, of course, they had the big rack where they would bring in the cars that needed to have ice put in them. The train cars. Train cars, big ones. Each end of those cars had a bulkhead in it and had openings. So they would ring a big buzzer or bell or something when they needed help, and it was almost all Spanish, Mexican help that would show up. They would just work, I guess, by the hour; I don't know. But they would come, and because of that there were quite a few Hispanics in that neighborhood. And we always had Japanese and we had Chinese. One of my best friends was a kid named Steve Costello, and his grandmother owned a place around the corner. She had a big living room with like a table, and the food was on your honor; you would serve yourself. For these guys working at the ice plant that they would just come in there. Like I always said, I didn't know tortillas didn't taste like kerosene until I went to a regular Mexican restaurant because all the Mexicans heat their food with kerosene stoves and they'd always just manage their house the way did a tortilla. So was that a boarding house? No. Nobody... The Costello family lived there with their grandmother. Anytime Steve and I 7 wanted something to eat, we'd just go in. There was always beans and hamburger and so forth and you could just serve yourself. And it was all on the honor system for these guys; they would just put the money in a bucket. Just pay for what they ate? Yes. Was that any relation to Tom Costello? Not that I'm aware of. No. That's kind of an unusual name for a Hispanic person, Costello. Oh, they were Hispanic? Yes, they were Hispanic. Because that's an Irish name. DOROTHY: This is Castillo. Yes, but it wasn't. It was Costello, spelled Costello. But, yes, he was one of my best buddies. Then John Enomoto was my other good buddy, and McCarley. We had Irish. We had everything over there. So where did the Asians live? He lived right around the corner, John Enomoto, the Enomoto family. They had been in the area for quite a while. My dad knew them when he worked at the railroad and she was a cook in what they call a section house, a railroad car that held the section hands; they actually lived in one when my dad first met them. Are those section houses, those little railroad houses? Well, no. These section houses—I said section house, probably the wrong thing. They lived in an actual railroad car that served food to the gandy dancers, they called them, yes, the gandies. My dad worked for the Signal Department at the railroad. So he knew them at the very first in that 8 count. Then they ended up buying the house over on Main Street. So the section houses were— They're more in Third and Fourth Street. The old railroad houses were on Third and Fourth Street. And they had some section houses, they call it Dog Patch, which is over across from the depot, over in that area, which I guess there's a road goes through there now. They actually called it Dog Patch; they were just little houses. So the little houses that we are talking, are these the ones that we have one now at the County Museum? Are those the houses you are referring to? Well, I doubt it, because these were frame houses and the railroad houses—that's a frame one? It could have been then. Like four rooms or three rooms or something. Yes, they're very small. Okay, yes. Yes, because the old railroad houses, they were all made out of block. They were more substantial. So these were frame houses that were across from the depot? Yes, over in that area. It was kind of a nice area, a lot of trees around there. But it was noisy because the trains were coming through all the time. But you had to work for the railroad. The one that I knew that I went to school with, the name Roger Oakes was around town. His family was around for a long time. His mother worked at the railroad for forever. What did women do on the railroad? They were mainly clerks in the freight office. So they worked in the office. 9 Ticket office, freight office. So tell me more about school. You started school where? I started at Basic School—I mean, excuse me, Boulder City; I went there for one semester. Then we moved into Vegas and I went to Fifth Street [Elementary] School and I went all through school at Fifth Street to the eighth grade. Now, did you actually stay at school at the Fifth Street School or did you beat your mother home there, too? I was pretty good about going to school then. The academic part didn't strike me as good as the social part of it. But you did see a value in it. Yes, and there was athletics over there. I could play basketball and everything over there. No, Fifth Street, it was kind of a pretty little school. My first class was in the kindergarten building way at the end; it was a small one. Then you had the great big one and then they had another small one and then the new one. You didn't get to the new one until you were in the sixth grade. So now, is this the school that burned down? The old high school had been where this new... The old high school had been there, and it had burned down. Then when they replaced it, they replaced it with the building that's over there now. So have you seen it since it was renovated? One time. One time, and it's been awhile ago. But the gymnasium, I played a lot of basketball and went to a lot of... One I think I really remember this was when [President Franklin Delano] Roosevelt died. They took us all in the gymnasium with the seats and that and had a thing for him. Jimmy Schofield gave the talk. I'll never forget it. He was really good. 10 What grade were you in then? That was nineteen, what, forty-five? He died in '44, '45. [Ed. Note: Roosevelt died at age 63 years on April 12, 1945, at Warm Springs, Georgia.] So I was probably about sixth grade, sixth or seventh grade; somewhere in that area. No, Fifth Street was an interesting school. You went from real old buildings to what was then pretty darn new buildings. They had a lot of grass, a lot of playgrounds. We all lived within walking distance of it, just about, I think. I don't know anybody that—a couple of people that lived up in Blue Diamond and that; they would have to come in by bus, but that was about it. And high school was? I started at Vegas High School; that was the only school in town. I graduated in 1953 and that was the last year that there was only one high school in this city. Caption on reverse: My buddies, 1951, 10 Bonneville 11 So who were some of your classmates in '53? Oh, in my class... It was really funny. The Class of '56 turned out to all be politicians. In my class probably one of the better known ones was Rex Bell, Jr. I grew up with Rex, spent a lot of time with he and his dad over in Searchlight at their place. I was trying to think who else in my class ever really got totally involved. Kind of a quiet class. But I knew like Richard Bryan was in that Class of '56; that group. So tell me about the Walking Box Ranch. Well, I went there probably twice. There are just some things you don't mention. So did you meet his mother? Yes, yes, and she was a lovely lady, lovely lady. When I went there the two times they had like a little, tiny place where you could... They call it a swimming pool; it wasn't. Now, I understand later on they put in a nice swimming pool, but I was never there with that bigger swimming pool. This was just kind of a little place you could splash around in; it wasn't very deep. But it's lovely country down there especially in the winter. So do you remember the ranch at all? Do you remember the buildings, the barn? Do you remember any of that? Well, I remember the inside of the house was lovely. It was kind of like Rex's house over here; he had the old beautiful furniture, a lot of wood and, of course, western style. Because he moved some of that furniture into that house you're talking about. Right, exactly. So when you walked in the front door, what...? I probably wouldn't have noticed. When we got there we were ready to go out and chase and run around. Later on I quail hunted in that area a lot. So I knew the area from then, but not for that 12 reason. It was just kind of a neat trip to be with Rex and Clara because they were pretty... They were celebrities. Yes, they were celebrities. Rex was a great guy. His son was a good guy and the father was really a good guy. So tell me what happened after high school and how you got involved in your work. I had worked all through high school doing yards, doing lawns, doing whatever it took. Then near the end of the high school year, I started to work at a tire company called Superior Tire, which was over on Main Street. I knew the fellow that owned it, a guy named Garland Ronald. I worked there part time and I'd work evenings around Christmas putting bicycles together, stuff like that, help unload the railroad car of tires. So when I got out of high school, he had promised me a raise and a job, the guy that was the manager. So I went over there and started to work. He said I wasn't ready for a raise yet. So I left and went to another tire company. Which one was that one? Well, it was called Kramer's. It was over on Main and about Bonanza [Road], over in that area somewhere. I actually worked there four hours. The second one? Yes. This guy's wife would not be quiet. So then I went home and I was just looking for whatever job I could and my mom said that she knew someone at church that was a baggage agent at the [Union Pacific] Railroad and that somebody was on a medical leave and there was a job opening in the baggage room. So I took it. This fellow didn't come back for a long time and I was doing good over there. If I worked the night shift, I would go in the ticket office and there was a lady in there that would help me learn how to do the tickets and this and that and the other. It was all seniority. So then things started moving around and I ended up over at the freight 13 house. I had a job called demurrage. I was a demurrage clerk. Explain that. D-U-M-M-A...D...demurrage. What is it is, if you park a railroad car behind your place and it's full of stuff, you get two days to do it. After that they charge you for having it there. That was my job for a while, to take care of that. Then I got a job as night warehouse foreman over there, which was an interesting job because the town was small. And they used to have what they called a merchandise special that came in every night about two or three o'clock and there would be about six cars full of food and supplies and so forth would come up to the freight dock at the old freight office and I would hire part-time guys to unload them. They would be waiting. And how much came in was how many got to work. And they all worked for Las Vegas Transfer and Storage, the Wadsworth family. And so it was kind of a trade deal. I would hire them and then when it was unloaded, I got a job and I got off at seven in the morning to drive a truck. So what would happen to the merchandise? It would be delivered. You would take it out of the cars and put it in sections of the town and load it on a truck and then it would be delivered every day. So give me an idea of what came in? It was all dry goods. Was this the stuff that, say, store owners had ordered? Yes. So it was already— Yes, it was pretty much package, just like...It always had an address and that. The only thing we had to do is check it out and make sure it was the proper amounts and stuff like that. It was in lieu of a lot of trucks that used to do it. I had no idea because I had left. 14 So finally I got a job at the ticket office and I was working a shift that was five days and three different shifts and it was kind of crazy because two of them were graveyard and on graveyard you had to do the books. You had to put everything together that had happened during the day and do that. Other than the guy over in the baggage room, you were there; you owned the depot. A very unusual thing happened to me one night there. About two o'clock, two thirty in the morning, I was getting my bookkeeping done and this fellow came up, hat on, suit, tie, well dressed. He came up. And I said, "Yeah, what can I do for you?" And he started asking me all these questions, "How much is this to Chicago? How much if I do this? How much this? This, this, this?" It's kind of a challenge. So I was nice. Finally he said, "Do you have any idea who I am?" I said, "I don't have a prayer who you are." He says, "Open up the timetable." And I opened it up. He said, "See that right there? That's me." His name was something—Red Kessler. I forget his first name, Red Kessler. He was a big wheel. With the railroad? Yes. And he said, "Did you know we had a tour department?" And I said, "Yes, I see those guys come through here once in a while." He said, "How would you like to do that?" I said, "I would love to do that." And so not too long after—he took a bunch of information and gave me something to fill out and I sent it. Pretty soon he called and he said, "I think you're going to go to Chicago this year and be a tour escort." I was excited. I had never stayed in a hotel. [Ed. Note: This was for the Chicago & North Western-Union Pacific Department of Tours.] What is a tour escort? Well, like if you go on one of these escorted tours, the guy that takes care of your luggage, makes sure the bus is on time, and answers questions, and does all that. Now, first, I had never stayed in a hotel, never. I had really never eaten at a decent restaurant other than drive-ins or 15 something. Then he called me a short time later and he said, "I didn't realize how young you were and we're having trouble getting you bonded because we handle not money, but things worth money." And I thought, oh my god. Then he called back and said, "Okay, here's a ticket; be in Chicago on a certain date." So I went to Chicago. That was kind of fun. Had you—oh, no. You were only how old? I was twenty. Eighteen I thought. Well, no. I was twenty when I went to Chicago. I was eighteen when I started in the railroad in the baggage room and the freight office and all that stuff. So I got back there and I hadn't been to any of these places. I had been to Zion, Bryce, and Grand [Canyon], but I hadn't been to Yellowstone or any of those. So they showed us a lot of movies of where we were going and stuff like that. So the first trip I took, we went to Yellowstone, Tetons, Zion, Bryce, and Grand all in two weeks, and I had sixty-something people. I was scared to death. I have one picture of me sitting in front of the old depot in Cedar City with all these people around me. I think I know where it's at. I got back. You give them a card to fill out and see about how you did and how they enjoyed the trip, and I guess it was pretty good. But those are the kind of trips... That one was all coach. There were no sleepers [sleeping cars] on that coach. That was a cheap one, and that's the way they started us. The next one they sent me to Denver, which was a one-week [trip], and it was, again, just coach because there it wasn't overnight. So I did those two, and finally they gave me one where I had part coach and part others and it came through Las Vegas. So I came through Las Vegas on that one. Then I worked that year and came back to Vegas at the ticket office. 16 So I want to stop you before you tell us your next job. So at Main and Bonanza, do you remember the Biltmore [Hotel]? Oh, yes. Tell me just anything you remember about the Biltmore. I remember the Biltmore because it had a pool we used to sneak in right on the corner. I think a lot of kids snuck in that pool. It wasn't a really big place. Then I remember a little later because at the railroad I worked with a guy named Charles Strathouse, Charlie Strathouse, who taught me probably more than anybody could that you can be a guy and you can be nice, one of those guys. I hadn't grown up in that kind of atmosphere. Charlie danced. He was a gentleman. Then he worked at the ticket office with me. We used to go down there and he liked to dance and we would go to the Biltmore. In the evening they had dancing there. Then Charlie and I later on actually shared a place, which is very unusual. Bob Taylor's Ranch House? Well, I was looking for an apartment. And at that time it was a very small place, Bob Taylor's Ranch House. Where? He had a little apartment there. She doesn't know where. Way out on Boulder— Way out on the highway going to Reno, U.S. Highway 95, out there. It was off the road. This lady's name was Nyla. Her first husband was named Larkin and he had Larkin... They were drugstores around town. They got a divorce and she ended up with this piece of property out there. Then she met this Taylor and they got married. They started this steakhouse [Bob Taylor's Ranch House], which was by far the best steakhouse in town. Well, Charlie had a place out the