Transcript of interview with Peter Perazzo by Claytee White, July 22, 2016

i AN INTERVIEW WITH PETER F. PERAZZO An Oral History Conducted by 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 and Vishe Y. Redmond 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 v TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Peter F. Perazzo July 22, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Claytee D. White Preface…………………………………………………………………………………………..iv Moved to Las Vegas from Reno; Flintkote Company; Circle Park and Twin Lakes; Holmes and Narver; Bonnie Springs and Red Rock; Western Shoshone; family weekends at Lake Mead, Valley of Fire and Mt. Charleston……………………………………………………………1-10 Being a professional land surveyor; federal surveying with Department of Transportation (DOT); Nevada earthquake of 1915; Boulder City Bypass; GPS and resource grade; reopening of F Street; JT McWilliams………………………………………………………………..………11-22 vi Preface/Summary Peter Perazzo, a land surveyor born and raised in Las Vegas, talks about his family, his Native American ancestry, and how construction and land surveying have changed over the years. Peter’s father, Frederick Perazzo, moved temporarily to Las Vegas from Reno in the 1940s to find employment. He worked as a draftsman, and later an architect. He designed public building and residential buildings around the valley as well as at Area 51 (Atomic Test Site). His temporary move became permanent in 1953 with the purchase of a family home in Northwest Las Vegas, across from Twin Lakes. Peter’s early life was spent playing in clover in the family’s yard and enjoying his four grandmothers. Peter began his land surveying career working for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in 1985. He describes how he became hooked on the profession and describes surveying terms like monuments, townships, and “the dumb end of the tape”. Later Peter worked for the Nevada Department of Transportation, where he was involved in many state projects such as the Hoover Dam bypass, Red Rock state road, and widening freeways. Peter tells us of his work renovating F Street and the many considerations that impacted the project’s final results. Of special note is Peter’s perspective on oral histories and Native Americans’ concept of time. Reflecting on his continuing passion for land surveying he reflects, “. It is still the same thrill digging things up and finding out that you were the first one to see it. Even in the Valley here there is so much. The haste to build sometimes destroys more than it preserves.” 1 This is Claytee White. It is July 22, 2016 and I am here in Peter's house this morning in Las Vegas. Peter, could you please pronounce and spell your full name. My name is Peter Perazzo. P – e – r – a – z – z – o. Wonderful. I would like to start today just by talking about your early life. Tell me where you grew up, what that was like, what your family formation was like. Also, tell me about past generations too because you mentioned that you have five generations here in Nevada on your mother's side. That is correct. Good. I want you to tell me a little about your early life but I want you to go back on that side of the family. My family moved to Las Vegas where my mother and father met. He could not get a job and Las Vegas was starting its growth. They moved down on the behest of a close family friend who was the administrator of the Winnemucca Power Company, who had just been tapped to be on the Colorado River Commission and he came down in the 1940s. When my parents moved down here, my dad came down first, and they helped him find an apartment on 15th and Charleston, which was on the edge of town in 1951. My sister had just been born and when my mother came down they had decided not to bring everything that they owned because it was a temporary move. He found a job, I'm not sure of the order, with the Flintkote Company, which owned the Blue Diamond Gypsum. He was a draftsman before he moved down here and he was employed as a draftsman, helping with the company town, called Blue Diamond. He would do various things they assigned him to do. That was a temporary job and it didn't last very long. Before or after that he worked for Clark County and he helped redesign some of the oldest buildings, one 2 of which was the Las Vegas High School downtown, which they had problems with because the design was Art Deco but it didn't take into consideration some of the atmospheric problems with Art Deco, meaning that the building would take on a huge heat load that they couldn't get rid of. He helped design awnings over the windows. That was prior to least effective A/C and plenum duct work. Give me your father's name. Frederick Perazzo. He also helped design the Western High School athletic complex, the football field and the bleachers and things like that. I think he did several of those types of projects. I am not sure, but maybe have with Clark County's inspections. He would do inspections because he was familiar with architecture so they would send him out on various jobs. We are not real sure of the particulars on that. There is a story of a subdivision that was put in, one of the first subdivisions, which was around Circle Park, between Decatur and Valley View and Charleston and Alta. They couldn't get a contractor who could do such a large project so they had advertised in California and they got a gentleman up from Los Angeles. The story goes he would build and they would say, "No you need to do this." And he would say, "We don't do that in Los Angeles." They would say, "This is Las Vegas and you need to do that or we won't pay you." One of the sticklers was, when he was almost done and putting the roofs on the houses, they said, "No, you need roof vents because it is very hot in the attics." He said, "We don't need to do that because we don't do that in Los Angeles." They said, "But, you need to do that here." So he dutifully went out and got roof vents and years later when the home owners couldn't figure out why their houses were so hot they would go up in the attic and find out that he just nailed them to the house and never cut a 3 hole in the roof. [Laughter] It could be even folk lore. I knew a guy who lived there so it was true on his house. When my mother was pregnant with my older brother Paul she said we cannot live in this apartment anymore because it is too small. What we found out was that my father's good friend, John Hessimen, who worked on the Alaska railroad and his close family friend, a very wonderful black man who befriended him in the choral group in Reno, Ken Hyliger who became an architect, were also living in this one bedroom apartment on 15th Street. My father, my mother, and these two guys, one whom slept on a cot in the kitchen and one slept on the couch in the living room, both whom had to get up before breakfast so my mother could go fix breakfast. She said enough is enough. You need to find me a house. So, the couple that took my father and mother under their wing, who came down to be on the Colorado River Commission, were the Shavers, AJ Shaver was his name and Maria Pall, who taught Latin at Las Vegas High School. We just called her grandma. I thought she was my third grandma. Of course I didn't count very good at that time. She said go to AJ to help them look for a house and they went into the Northwest where a new subdivision was going up across from the dude ranch and the divorcee mill called Twin Lakes, which later turned into Lorenzi Park. Found a nice house that was being built and it was the largest one of that particular subdivision. It had two full bathrooms, very elite. It was also tract house. It only had carports, no garages. They moved in somewhere in 1953 before my older brother was born. Everything was fine and they settled into suburbia. I am not sure where he found work at that time but the house was very expensive and they had to refinance twice on a $13,900 loan. Life was very different back then. At that time the folk lore was that we were the last house in the Northwest part of town. Well, that wasn't true because we recovered photographs of the whole subdivision being 4 built. It was close, but not exactly the last one. The pictures showed that Washington Street, which fronted on the north side of Lorenzi Park was a dirt road and the road to the dude ranch (they had big parties at Twin Lakes) was paved. So the priorities at that time and still are where ever the money was that was where the infrastructure would go. My father was very good friends with the architecture community, of course with the engineers, the movers and shakers in the engineering companies and private companies. Finally when the test site got going he got a job with Holmes and Narver and he met some people there. An engineer by the name of Bob Cambric, I'm not sure he worked there, but he did work there with a gentleman by the name of Benjamin Sweet, who aspired to be a land surveyor. There were also some other people. Elmo Bruner, he was an engineer. Ms. Bruner was my fourth grandmother who made the most wonderful corn meal waffles. Oh my gosh! She was an artist and taught Art in a bus in rural Nevada. Did they own a business? Bob Cambric owned his own business and Elmo Bruner owned his own business, I believe, in engineering. They talked, they had social familiarity and they realized my dad really wanted to be an architect, which was his heart's desire. He was employed as a draftsman for Holmes and Narver. He encouraged my father to sit for the architect test. The architecture test at that time I believe was three days, but it could have been longer. Regardless, it was very difficult. My father sat for the test, it is my understanding, for ten times. Perhaps that was folklore. Finally Mr. Cambric told the board, look you better give him his license he is not going to go away. [Laughter] During that time Holmes and Narver was run pretty authoritarian and Mr. Sweet had had enough. He had sat for his professional land surveyor test and passed and he left Holmes and Narver to start his own business, Ben Sweet Land Surveying, and he encouraged my dad to 5 do the same. At that time he hadn't passed his license for architecture yet, but in due time all three had joined a loose partnership after my dad was licensed and they did work for each other in that respect. Some of the jobs they did were Bonnie Springs Ranch, at Red Rock, and a host of smaller [projects]. For instance, a person had a corner lot and they wanted what would become a strip mall with rows of businesses; they did many of those. My father met a gentleman and I am not sure how, by the name of Arthur Passerelli, a developer. He came with capital and would buy things. One of the things he did was he was very keen on buying properties next to something, with the understanding that if that business went well they would need my hotel and business services. He built a hotel across the street from the convention center. [He figured] the people needed to stay there since the convention was across the street. He kept that and it is still there. They tried to buy him out and he didn't want to sell because he knew it was a cash cow. Do you know where that is? It is across Desert Inn, just directly south of the convention center, the older convention center. That was Arthur Passerelli's. Did your father have anything to do with building that? He designed it. It is like an apartment type setting. He did a lot of smaller apartments for different people. He did the building at 3601 West Sahara, The Gallery of History. It was different than the other buildings; in fact there was interior space – like an atrium. Any of them that stand out when you are driving around? A lot of them have been torn down. That was a long time ago. It was fast and furious; it was the building boom of the late 1960s that carried into the 70s. A lot of people came in, like today, and need a house, need it quick. He did a lot of homeowners' redesign; your kitchen doesn't work 6 well, you need to add on. He would do lot of those in a lot of areas, by word of mouth. They would say you need to go talk to Fred, he knows how to do that. He did a lot of home renovation type work for the workers, the middle class at that time. Did your mom ever work outside the home? My mother was a home maker until the mid-1960s. She already had a teacher's certificate from the University of Reno and she taught at a little town in central Nevada called Hawthorne. At Hawthorne she was a grade school teacher because at that time the Navy base was running full time and they had a small military company town called Babbitt, which was just north. That was where all the workers lived. That plant was decommissioning all the bombs from World War Two. She taught there one or two years, I'm not sure of the year exactly, maybe 1946, went back to Reno, and met my father. There is a long story there how they met. My mom's family had moved to Sparks somewhere in the late twenties because my mom was born in Fallon in 1923. They had moved from Fallon and previously my grandmother moved from Austin, NV, which is in the central part of the state. The reason she was in Austin was because her mother was born on a ranch south of Austin, somewhere in the 1890s. They were from a tribe in central Nevada called Western Shoshone. The history from that period previously is unknown. The Shoshone were not native to the central area except in spots. The biggest area of Western Shoshone was up in the Elko area. There were several areas; Duckwater is another Western Shoshone area. We don't know why this particular great-grandmother was estranged from those groups. That is where she grew up, on a ranch called Burcham. She was later a laundress and seamstress and my great grandmother had saved up enough money to buy a pedal sewing machine so she could work more as a seamstress and charge more and do better work, etc. We never throw anything away. We also have original manifests from that purchase 7 for the sewing machine. She had to have a cosigner for the loan. There are a lot of historical things that because we never throw anything away, we go through a box and gosh, here is a manifest for a sewing machine in 1890 or 1910. That's my mother's historical references. Grandmother was all oral history. My father's historical reference was that his father was a rancher in Yerington, which is southeast of Reno. My grandmother on my father's side came from Colorado, Fort Collins Greely, and came out to Yerington, also to be a school teacher, and they met and married. One thing and another and circumstances arose and they said you can't raise a child here in this farming community. You need to move to the big city, so they moved to Reno. That was the ‘big’ city. He was a dairy farmer at that time. Both my father and his sister were born in Yerington, actually they were born in San Francisco but they grew up in Yerington. When they moved to Reno he went to school there and decided at that time he didn't want to be a tradesman like so many others, he wanted to be an architect. He went to the Oakland Polytechnic School with some family relatives putting him up in their home. During the war years he was not drafted because of his trade value, he went to Boeing in Seattle and helped design the airplanes and whatnot at that time and moved back to Reno after the war. Which, under the circumstances he shouldn't have because of the gas rationing. He was drafted (deferred rescinded) to Japan for the occupation, post war and then came back. That's when he met my mother and got married there in Reno. That’s the short version. I want to go back for a minute. When your father worked for Holmes and Narver did they build housing developments? No. They were government contractors for the test site. They had base housing up at the test site. I am not sure how much of that he was involved in, but they would have community 8 days and there would be weeks he would have to stay out there. We found out much later because of the program to recompense test site workers for exposure that he was the chief architecture overseer and inter-agency go-to guy for a lot of the base buildings. There were a lot of workshops and office type situations where he designed and oversaw the building of those projects. Those were usually in Mercury. Are you talking about the houses that he constructed so they could be blown apart? He did mention that later on. He said an architect's job isn't to build a house the best that he could so they could explode it and see how it’s destroyed. He wasn't very happy about that. He did do a lot of the other situational housing for the workers and scientists. Some more important than others. Are there other projects that he worked on at other times of his life that you remember? I have a really bad memory in my old age. [Laughter] Do you have any of his papers? We have, like I said, we never throw anything away, so we have all his papers. We haven't categorized or gone through a lot of them other than that particular program (EEOICP) for the test site workers radiation. We also have all my mother's papers and my grandmother's papers and my great grandmother's papers. So are you ready to donate them to the University? I am not ready but I am willing and my wife is more than willing. OK. You know that we would love to send an archivist. I talked to them. I don't remember how long ago it was. You remember who you spoke with? 9 No. At that time they were not accepting any more donations. I don't know why. To the people it is history but to the archivist it may be that we don't need that particular kind of paper. I don't know what it was. It is OK. Don't blame anybody. I am not blaming anyone. There is a lot of original [papers]. I have my [great] grandmother's original deed when she bought the house. Ten dollars in 1930. And this house was where? This house was in Reno. So that amount of money did they have to finance it? No, she didn't. She was very wealthy. This is my father's grandmother. Her father homesteaded in Folsom, CA, near Sacramento. That was where she met my great grandfather, who was a cattleman. He started acquiring land. He was a big land trader. At one time he owned over ten thousand acres in Folsom and five thousand acres in Yerington. They were big landowners. They had to because they ran cattle. Especially in Nevada with dry land you have to have more area. So she was very wealthy, very wealthy. We saw very little of it. They found gold on that property near the American River. We would love to look at those papers. Tell me about your life. I was born here. I grew up in the house they bought in the northwest across from Lorenzi Park. My earliest memory is my father changing things. He didn't like the way the front yard was. He wanted a circular driveway because at that time circular driveways showed that your status had improved. He re-did the front yard and he loved rocks and he brought rocks from all over to have his rock garden, which showed another step in the social climbing. Because it was originally part of that larger ranch that had been carved up for houses, the land was very rich and 10 our front yard wasn't grass for years, it was clover. So I grew up out front running in clover and then across the street was 80 acres of raw pasture land and we could run and have fun. Early years it was a real small town. 1960s was when the big boom came and then again in the 1980s. We had one of the earliest black and white [TV], there were only three stations. My uncle built TVs so we had a TV that was tubes but it was color and we got to see the Wizard of Oz and the Horse of a Different Color, and that horse actually changed colors as it moved. That was a revelation to see these things. That was early on, first bicycle, walked to schools, all schools up to high school. At that time land planning was a little different. There was an area feeder type of planning you went to grade school, and then the middle school was close enough so you could walk, and then the high school was an area high school so you didn't necessarily need a car or bussing to get there. We would also take trips up to Mt. Charleston. It seemed like he had some involvement in some of the forest service improvements. There was a piece of paper where he was contracted to do forest service re-design of some sort. I don't remember the particulars. Of course the Feds have all their own regulations and situations. That is probably why the paperwork survived because anything that touches the government thrives on paperwork. So growing up it was a good life. We had friends. We knew everyone on the block and they had kids and we were all growing up pretty much [together]. There was somebody in your school class from the neighborhood. Most of the people there were middle class. The gentleman up the street was a railroad engineer. The person next to us, not sure what his occupation was, I think banker, but he was retired. Mr. Hollingsworth, of "the" Hollingsworth’s, lived next door. Yeah, they are very old family here in Las Vegas. Conti, they lived two houses up/ and the son is 11 in some position in the city of Las Vegas, I am not sure now. That was my younger brother's age so I am fuzzy on that one. We would regularly spend all weekend at Lake Mead and enjoyed the other areas - Valley of Fire, Mt. Charleston, and different places as family trips. In the early days it seemed like the weather was much harsher because there wasn't as much development to keep the weather stable? Maybe not. The wind would blow huge amount of dust for days. The rainstorm of 1955, the year after I was born, was so heavy that it cut the routes back and forth across the railroads. The railroad acted as a dam. The Charleston underpass had just been built and it filled up with water and that was the end of that. So we had to stay in the third grandmother's house until the floods receded. That was 1955; I believe I saw an article in the paper that it has been fifty years since this occurred. I went to the vocational technical center which had just been built up on the hill down here (Russell and Mountain View), carpenter's apprenticeship, one thing or another trade school. Went to UNLV three times, didn't graduate, but it was there and it was available. My parents believed in education of course and they said we will pay for your first year so everybody went at least one year. I didn't have a major and they kept pressuring me to decide on a major and I said I'm not the type to be pressured. I fell into land surveyor so that is my occupation and my profession. What is it? Professional land surveying. Out of high school I just kind of drifted around odd jobs. There was a place in the Boulevard Mall called Toy Paradise. It was the first time anybody had created such a store, I believe. A toy store, where there were toys you could play with to get acquainted with what they looked like. We helped build it. The friends I had graduated with from high 12 school all hung together and we would go find jobs together. We worked for a rent a car company for years. It was Las Vegas and you would meet all kinds of people in the rent a car business and that was an experience. I was a custodian at the First Methodist Church downtown, which is where my parents attended and I attended. It was the oldest church in Las Vegas and had been the mother church for much of the religious community. The groups didn't have the money or the wherewithal to have a building so they would meet on different days in this church. When they got enough [money] they would go off and build their own facility. I was a custodian. They needed a custodian. I was there seven years. The last pastor that was there said you are wasting your talents. You need to broaden your horizons. It allowed me enough pin money for gas and my car and I had two days off and that was plenty for me at that time. He said you need to apply yourself so I applied for the government jobs of firefighter, land surveyor, and I forget what the third job was. I thought well I would get firefighter and that was what I thought needed. It turned out that they needed a land surveyor helper at that time. It was a helper position. They were in the middle of a project in Reno and that was familiar enough. One grandmother lived in Reno at that time and I could stay with her. The job was in Carson Valley. My first year, 1985, I went up there and worked the last half of the season there. You were employed by whom? BLM. This was a government job. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) would hire temporary workers. 1985 I worked in Carson Valley and then we went over to Wells, which is East of Elko, and then down to Ely. In Ely in 1985 they had a massive snow storm, two feet of snow but we still kept working. Tell me what the work entailed. 13 It was called dependent re-survey, which means there was an original survey in the 1800s, and the task was to recover those monuments? pipes with stampable tops which described the particulars of that spot for newer section corners. What is a section corner? The grid that established land ownership was developed and finalized in the 1800s which consisted of a thirty-six mile square of one mile grids. That was called a township. In land disposal at that time they need to have a description of a particular piece that was easily recognizable. So there was Township nineteen south of range sixty-three East, Section ten, Southeast quarter. That would be their description for the release of land from the government. They were teaching you to survey land because you had no experience? I had no experience when Mr. Sweet showed me when I was ten or eleven which was “this is my survey instrument, this is what we do, hold the end of this tape measure, no, not like that, like this.” With my father I would go measure lots for development and I would be the helper, I would be on the "dumb end of the tape", that is what they called it. You didn't have to read any numbers. My very first day on the BLM job I think I was yelled at about fifty times, which is normal for a newbie, because I really had no idea. The direction of the survey would be along cardinal lines, North South East West, and we were going off in a particular direction and I had to know not only what direction I was going to stay on that course, but also know when to stop walking. I didn't know either of those so I had a short orientation on how to find a particular direction and what to look for to keep a straight line and then to count how many steps I took, which is how they did it in the 1800s. We had radios, which was good because they would say you are a little off or long/short you need to come back. So I would come back. They were at the 14 instrument and I was at the forward position and they said look around. I said what am I looking for? You are looking for a pile of rocks. Normally in the 1800s they would monument the corners with rocks and they would scribe something on the rocks so you knew that was the corner position. I said all I see is a pile of rocks. They said don't touch it. There was a stone in that pile that had been chiseled in 1886 and I was hooked. No one had seen this corner for over 100 years. That was my introduction to land surveying. I spent seven years with the BLM as a temporary seasonal employee. Then I was fired. The story is that when Bill Clinton came into office he eliminated all [federal] temporary positions. He said that if you have been a temporary employee for more than seven years you should be made permanent. The back story to that is there was a black gentleman who was a custodian at the Washington Monument and he died. His wife said he is a federal employee they have to bury him. They said no, he was a temporary employee for twenty-eight years. It went to court and the guy lost and they [the federal government] had to bury him. So Bill Clinton said no more temporary employees; we are not burying all these people. I don't know how much of that is true but it is a good story and that is how I lost my job with the BLM. After that, I was looking for another job and my younger brother said there is an opening at the highway department in the survey department. I said I didn't know the highway department had a survey department. I was in Reno at the time and they said we can do an interview. We can have it here, just come on down to Carson City. I went to Carson City. The boss at that time and the number one field director were both ex-BLM surveyors so they said we like you and your job is in Las Vegas. I said that is good because I am familiar with Las Vegas. Did you become a full surveyor while at BLM? 15 No. I had worked my way up to principal assistant. It was underneath the land surveyor but you graduated to the smart end of the tape. There were a lot of lessons in those seven years. This was 1995 I started with the DOT (Department of Transportation). Somewhere along the way I had the idea that I should sit for the test and become a professional. You do not have to be licensed in the federal realm. They are covered by the statue that applies to federal surveyors. In the private [sector] you need to be licensed; that is their requirement. I don't remember how I got to that point because you need recommendations, you need to have time and service, and you need to prove all that, and you have to have recommendations to considered to be worthy to sit for the test. So all those things came together. Somewhere in there I decided to sit for the test and also get married in the same year. I sat for the test. There are two parts to the test. One is a national part and one is state specific. Are these hands-on? Were you actually doing the position? No. This is all academic; your knowledge is put to the test on paper. I passed the national but I didn't pass the state specific. You could re-test so six months later I re-tested for the state specific and I passed, in 2000. Part of the problem of being descended from Native Americans is that Native Americans have trouble with the western view of time. That is my take on it. The way that grandmother spoke was she would say things like that was the year of the big snow and that was when Jimmy was born and then Bobby was two years after that but that can't be because Bobby was born the year we moved. It wasn’t the year of but the event of. The event described the occasion and that was the time stamping. It wasn't like in 1922 we did this. I say that because when you become a professional land surveyor they have a ceremony. They send you a little piece of paper in the mail and it says “Welcome” it is on such and such a date and there is a ceremony. Well, I got the date wrong so I didn't get a fully integrated “welcome to the club” 16 kind of situation because I read the date wrong. There is a joke now in my family that unless it is a really big occasion I’m is not going to remember the date. But the events are very clear. I can recite my family's history back three generations by event, not by date. Grandmother remembers the Nevada earthquake of 1915 but she remembers it as being earlier in her life than it actually occurred. She said it was when she was a teenager. But it was