NEVADA STATE MUSEUM & HISTORICAL SOCIETY LAS VEGAS, NEVADA THE LAS VEGAS I REMEMBER INTERVIEW WITH JIM CASHMAN, JR. Taken At KNPR Studios 5151 Boulder Highway Las Vegas, Nevada TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 2 MR. ANDERSON: This is February 27th, 1998. I'm Tim Anderson. This is for The Las Vegas I Remember project. And, sir, if you could please introduce yourself. MR. CASHMAN: I'm Jim Cashman, Jr. MR. ANDERSON: And I guess we'll just get started with some of your family background before your father came to Southern Nevada. MR. CASHMAN: Well, my dad was born in Missouri. And as a very young man, he headed west. He stopped in Colorado for a while, worked in the steel mills there. Then he just kept coming west, and he finally ended up in Las Vegas in 1904. He was working on the railroad as a section hand. And they were still working on the railroad between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles at that time. But he just hung around. He didn't think there was too much future in what he was doing on the railroad. And he heard about a mining boom over in a little town called Searchlight, which is about 50 miles from here. So he decided he'd go over to Searchlight and see if he could go to work in the mines, which he did. And he worked in the mines over there for quite a while. There was no way to really get across the Colorado River at that time. And most of the activity in that area centered around the town of Kingman, Arizona. So he was trying to figure a way to get from Searchlight and Eldorado Canyon where the mines were to Kingman, Arizona. So he came TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 3 up with the idea, he and a couple of other fellows, to build some ferries across the Colorado. He got some trucks together that was financed by a banker friend of his out of Needles, California. And they went ahead and built these three ferries across the Colorado. One is up where the dam site is now, one was down at Searchlight, and one was at Nelson. He would transport people from that area into Kingman on the stage line that he had put together. He also had a bunch of trucks, and he was hauling the crushed ore from the mines on his trucks, putting them on the ferry, taking it over to Kingman and putting the ore on the Santa Fe Railroad, and they took it down to Los Angeles to have the gold processed. Well, that went along for quite a while. And he got involved in the telephone company, and he started to do a little work with that over in Searchlight. He ended up owning the telephone company. He had a stage line and a truck line, and he just had a lot of things going for himself, very industrious young man. Well, the mines played out. This was the late teens and heading toward the early 1920s. Las Vegas had taken root and started to expand. So he decided to come to Las Vegas. By this time he had already been in the franchise automobile business in Searchlight. And he came over to Las Vegas and built what they called Cashman's Garage. MR. ANDERSON: And could you tell me what part of TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 4 town that was in? MR. CASHMAN: Well, the original garage was in the Overland Hotel, which is now the Las Vegas Club. MR. ANDERSON: Okay. MR. CASHMAN: And then he went across the street later on and built another facility right next to the Union Plaza Hotel. Then he had another piece of property down towards Main Street Station where we had the used car lot and the parking lot. But that's where he got started, and he stayed there until 1973 when I built the new store out on East Sahara. MR. ANDERSON: Now, in addition to your father's many enterprises, a lot of times he was working days and nights, and he was just a working man. MR. CASHMAN: That's right. Hard work was not a problem for him. MR. ANDERSON: He didn't seem to take much time off. MR. CASHMAN: No. MR. ANDERSON: He got involved in politics in the '20s. MR. CASHMAN: Yes, he was elected to the county commission. He served two or three terms, I don't remember which. And he ended up as chairman of the county commission in the late '20s. MR. ANDERSON: And there was a big project for which TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 5 a lot of credit goes to him. Could you tell us about that, the building of the road to Baker? MR. CASHMAN: Oh, yeah. While he was chairman of the county commission, the old road, the only way you could get from Los Angeles on the road was to drive from Needles through Searchlight to Saint Thomas and over to Saint George. Now, Saint Thomas is under water now; it's at the bottom of Lake Mead. But he decided that wasn't the proper way for him to go. So he went to the county commissioners in San Bernardino County, and they made a deal that he would take the county equipment that we had here in Clark County and they would rough in a road, bust a road through from Las Vegas over Mountain Pass down into Baker, California. San Bernardino County agreed to put up the money necessary to do that job. The county furnished the equipment to do the actual work and that was the way the road originally got built where it is now. MR. ANDERSON: Now, you were just a little boy probably when that happened. MR. CASHMAN: Oh, yeah. MR. ANDERSON: You made it sound simple, but was it that simple? MR. CASHMAN: No. I wasn't alive at that time. MR. ANDERSON: Okay. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 6 MR. CASHMAN: Well, I was. I was born in 1926 and this is probably '28 or '29. MR. ANDERSON: You don't have many recollections of him saying? MR. CASHMAN: No, I don't really. I remember Dad talking about it. It was quite a project at that time to get that road built. MR. ANDERSON: It certainly must have been. Now, a little bit later when the dam began to be built, your dad was in contact with a lot of people and did some business with Caterpillar. MR. CASHMAN: Yes. Frank Crowe, who was the chief engineer on that project for the Six Companies building the dam, he came to Dad one time, and he said, "Jim, you know, we're going to need an awful lot of construction equipment on this job. And the only place I can get it today is to either go to Salt Lake City or Los Angeles." And he says, "We're going to need a lot of Caterpillar equipment." He says, "Why don't you go to Caterpillar and see if you can't get the franchise?" Well, Dad thought it was a pretty good idea, and he did. And he did very well during the construction of the dam. MR. ANDERSON: I should say. I've got a note here about a man named Everett Sullivan. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 7 MR. CASHMAN: Emmett? MR. ANDERSON: Excuse me. Is it Emmett? I miscopied it then. Emmett Sullivan? MR. CASHMAN: Yeah. MR. ANDERSON: Who is Emmett Sullivan? MR. CASHMAN: Oh, he's a dear buddy of mine. We went to school together. His father, Mark, and my dad were very close. In fact, they were partners at one time in the automobile business. And this goes into the Helldorado aspect of it. MR. ANDERSON: Okay. That's right. Yeah. Your dad was a big community booster, with a few other guys. He had great faith in Southern Nevada and Las Vegas. After the dam was done, I guess there was a little lull in activity and some people just thought this town was just going to be a little tourist town and wouldn't really amount to much, except for people like your dad didn't feel that way and wanted to get something going. How did this idea of Helldorado come about? MR. CASHMAN: Well, like you said, after the dam project was over with, they really did go into a slump. And there wasn't much activity in Las Vegas. And they were looking around for a project that they could put together that would be a community activity, like a big get-together, and could attract tourists from Los Angeles and Utah and other areas if they did it right, and fortunately they did. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 8 He went to the Union Pacific Railroad and talked to his friend, George Ashby, who was president of the Union Pacific at that time. And he sent a fellow by the name of Steve Hannegan out here, who did their public relations and publicity work for the Union Pacific. And he and Dad and a group of the local businessmen came up with this idea of an annual celebration called Helldorado. And the Union Pacific was really responsible for promoting it in L.A. and other areas that they were headquartered in. MR. ANDERSON: So, Steve Hannegan was in on this as well? MR. CASHMAN: Oh, yeah. MR. ANDERSON: Okay, because I've heard about him connected with the Live Wire Fund in the '40s. MR. CASHMAN: Um-hm. MR. ANDERSON: But I didn't know he was involved with Helldorado. MR. CASHMAN: Oh, yeah. MR. ANDERSON: Oh, so then the Union Pacific really backed this also? MR. CASHMAN: Oh, yeah. Um-hm. MR. ANDERSON: Okay. And like you said, this was to be a community thing, something that everybody would get involved in and they did. Now the Elks, your father was involved with the Elks? TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 9 MR. CASHMAN: Yes, he was the chairman of the board of trustees of the Elks for years and years and years. And the Elks took on this project, Helldorado. And I remember the first Helldorado we had was down on Sixth and Fremont on a vacant lot, and there was nothing there but tents, but it was quite a celebration. I tried to sneak in under one of the tents. They had a hoochie-coochie show going on. I was just a young man, real young. And I remember somebody bopping me on the head with a bottle to get me out of there because I was too young to come in. MR. ANDERSON: Now, what kind of show might that have been back then, a girlie kind of show? MR. CASHMAN: Oh, yeah. MR. ANDERSON: Yeah? MR. CASHMAN: They had all kinds of entertainment but this was for adults, not for 12-year-old kids. MR. ANDERSON: Yeah, who were just curious enough to want to be interested in that. What other kind of activity? Could you tell me about the rodeo and the Helldorado Village? MR. CASHMAN: Well, they had this celebration, like I say, down on the original site for a couple of years. And it got to be quite an interesting thing, but they didn't have any facilities. It was all tents. They put it up, and they TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 10 didn't have a place for a rodeo or any other activities other than just the celebration. They had a parade on Sunday. But then they decided to build what they called the Helldorado Village, which would be a permanent site, supposedly, for the Helldorado celebration, and that was on Bonanza and Fifth Street, on the corner. So they did. The Elks all got together, and the whole community got behind them. Through donated labor and donated equipment and things like that, they built this permanent village, and it was called the Helldorado Village. And right across the street was the city park. That's where the city hall is right now. And that's where they held the first rodeo was over in that city park. And after a while, it kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger, the celebration, and we even ran out of space at the Helldorado Village so we had to figure out something else to do. I say "we," I mean my dad and his group. So he went to George Ashby. Like I say, he was president of the Union Pacific at that time. And there were about 70 acres of ground down on North Fifth Street that belonged to the Union Pacific Railroad, where the original springs were. And he got George to get the Union Pacific to sell that ground to the Elks Lodge at $100 an acre for this particular project. And that was the start of what they call now Cashman Field. And Dad and his cronies got together and they built a TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 11 sizable stadium. We didn't have any stadium in Las Vegas at that time. The only thing we had in the way of a stadium was a football field at Las Vegas High School called Butcher Field. But it would seat about 12, 13,000 people when they finally got through with it. But it was quite a project. And we were going to build it on a hillside. The idea was to just go ahead and just level out the hillside and terrace it down to make seating arrangements, and everything was concrete. But once they stuck a pick in the ground up there, they hit water. That was when there was water just anywhere you wanted to look for it in this valley. And we had a terrible project trying to get that water out of that hill so we could go ahead and build the stadium, which we did eventually. We had to just dig big drainage channels all through that hill and fill them with rocks and boulders and get that water flowing to where we wanted it to go so we could go ahead and complete the project, which we did. Then the Elks eventually built their own headquarters down there too. And that's where the Helldorado celebration took place from that time on. MR. ANDERSON: Well, what did the Helldorado Village actually look like? MR. CASHMAN: It was just a bunch of wooden buildings. Well, it's just like a carnival atmosphere. They had carnival rides there too, but there was a big dance hall TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 12 and a bar. And there were different cubicles where people had games, and it was just kind of a carnival type of an arrangement. It was made out of wood. In fact, we didn't have much lumber around here and we needed some big timbers. And Dad and Doc Martin, a friend of his, had a bunch of property up at Lee Canyon. And they had a lot of trees on it. So they decided to take a saw mill up there. And they took a saw mill up at Lee Canyon, and they cut these dead trees down, sawed them up and brought the timbers down from Lee Canyon to build this Helldorado Village, at least structurally. But we didn't have enough trucks. It took a lot of trucks. And one day a friend of his that was a big contractor in Salt Lake City, Bill Bilyew, was moving a construction crew of his from Los Angeles, where he had a big building project that he had just completed, on his way back to Salt Lake City. And the old man commandeered all that equipment and those trucks, told the foreman that Bill had told them to stay here and help haul that timber out of Lee Canyon down here. They were here for two weeks, and Bill Bilyew didn't even know where his construction outfit was. But that's the things that they did in those days. MR. ANDERSON: Now, I was listening back to Harley Harmon's tape with us the other day, and he was saying that one day he called up the guy who was in charge of the county TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 13 equipment and said, "Where's all of our equipment?" And he says, "Well, don't you know?" He goes, "No, that's why I'm calling." He says, "Well, Big Jim Cashman has commandeered that and he took it down there to help finish that stadium down there." So he did the same thing with the county equipment too? MR. CASHMAN: And also with the state highway department. He had all the state equipment there, he had all the county equipment and all of our equipment. We were Caterpillar dealers at that time. So every piece of equipment in Clark County was working on that stadium at one time or another, including Bilyew's stuff out of Salt Lake City. MR. ANDERSON: Oh, you couldn't get away with that for anything today. MR. CASHMAN: Not anymore. MR. ANDERSON: Now, there was a time when they ran out of money to try to build a stadium, and your dad came up with a pretty novel solution to that. MR. CASHMAN: Well, they did. It got a little more expensive than they anticipated. And some of these things you can't get donated, you have to pay for and buy some of the materials. I think they were running 20, $25,000 short, and the Elks were out of money. They had spent everything that they had on the project. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 14 So Dad got a hold of Harlow Curtis, who was a friend of his and the president of General Motors Corporation. And at that time, it was right after the war, and Cadillacs were very scarce and hard to get and much in demand. So he talked Harlow Curtis into sending him three carloads of new Cadillacs. When they got here, I don't know whether they advertised it, I don't recall that, but he put the word out he had these 12 Cadillacs I think it was. I think there were four to a car, yeah. And if you wanted to buy one, you had to pay $2,000 over list price. And that money was going to go to finance the finishing of the stadium. And on top of that, he donated all of his profit from those 12 cars, and he raised enough money to go ahead and finish the stadium with those cars from General Motors. MR. ANDERSON: That's amazing. When I came to see you that day, we had had our preliminary interview with Peg Crockett. Then when we got her to do the taping, we talked about that kind of community spirit where the whole town came together to build Helldorado Village. A lot of people at one time or another volunteered their services to build Cashman Field. A lot of people don't understand that kind of spirit. What was it about Las Vegas, and I'm sure about other towns all over the country, that if people wanted something done, they just got up -- people like your dad and yourself, they got up and did it themselves without waiting for Clark County TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 15 Parks and Recreation or some government subsidy. They just did it themselves. MR. CASHMAN: We didn't have any of those things in those days. If you wanted to get it done, you had to do it yourself, and Dad was quite an organizer. He got a project in mind, and he knew how to get the cooperation and get the thing done. MR. ANDERSON: Now, the one thing I hear about Helldorado is that absolutely everybody in the town came out to that thing. MR. CASHMAN: Oh, yeah. In the final stages of Helldorado, in our day, people from California were in here. We had beautiful parades. We had floats that you couldn't even -- I mean, that would rival the Rose Parade. In fact, the judges for our Helldorado parades for three or four years where the people from the Rose Parade in Pasadena. They'd come out here and judge our floats. I went down there one year and helped judge theirs. MR. ANDERSON: And this was all community generated. MR. CASHMAN: All community generated, and the Elks Club was the backbone of the whole thing. MR. ANDERSON: That's just amazing. And people today just wouldn't -- MR. CASHMAN: Well, they refused to let the town die. Vegas has been going through cycles all its life. Of TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 16 course, now if my dad could see Las Vegas right now, he would probably flip. But they just refused to let this place die. MR. ANDERSON: That's amazing spirit. Okay. Let's see. Where are we going here? Oh, yeah, the women really contributed to Helldorado too. Tell me how the women were getting involved. MR. CASHMAN: Well, they were fixing food for the workers. My mother, every Saturday and Sunday she would cook up pots of beans and make sandwiches, and she'd get the other women to help her, and they'd feed all of these workers that were working. We did most of the hard work on the weekends because other people had other jobs to do, and they still had to make a living. But on weekends they all turned out to work, and the women would get together and they'd feed them. MR. ANDERSON: So in the mid '30s, the population of Las Vegas was about what? MR. CASHMAN: Oh, I would say 25, maybe, about a thousand. I don't really know. MR. ANDERSON: Okay. MR. CASHMAN: That would just be a guess. MR. ANDERSON: All right. Now, up in the '50s you took over where your dad left off in Helldorado, and this became, like you said, a celebration that people from California, Utah came in, and also a lot of big movie stars got involved in this, didn't they? TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 17 MR. CASHMAN: Oh, yeah. Roy Rogers would come out here for it, he and Dale Evans and Loretta Young. I'm trying to think who else. We had a number of them, though. They liked Las Vegas. MR. ANDERSON: A lot of people think that the popular story about Tommy Hull and the El Rancho Vegas, of him getting a flat tire -- and you set me straight on that. Maybe you could tell me that story about he and your dad. MR. CASHMAN: Well, Tommy Hull was a good friend of my dad's. Well, he had what they call the chain of Hull Hotels and their flagship was the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel down in Hollywood, California, and he had some others scattered around in Bakersfield and elsewhere. But he was a friend of my dad's, and he was visiting Las Vegas. He liked to come up here every once in a while. Dad and he, I remember seeing a picture of them, and I've got the picture someplace. And they're standing, at about 2:00 o'clock in the morning, out in front of the Apache Hotel, which is now the Horseshoe, and he and Dad are talking. Dad is trying to convince Tommy to build a hotel in Las Vegas. We only had maybe three: We had the Apache, had the Sal Sagev, had the Overland, and the Wollman. That was about all we had. The Strip hadn't even started then. Art Ham had a piece of property out at Maryland Parkway and what was then San Francisco, is now Sahara. And TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 18 he and Dad took Tommy out to look at that. And Tommy decided, "No, if I'm going to build something, that's not where I want to build it. I want to build it on a highway coming in from Los Angeles into Las Vegas." So that conversation led to more. And Tommy said, "By God, Jim, I just might try something." So he went out and bought a piece of property right where the Sahara Hotel is, right across from there, and built the first resort hotel on the Strip, the El Rancho Vegas. MR. ANDERSON: So that story about the flat tire -- MR. CASHMAN: The flat tire didn't have anything to do with it. Tommy was just here and he got conned into building a hotel. MR. ANDERSON: Moe Dalitz was another real tremendous booster of Las Vegas and did a lot of work with funding different projects around town: Sunrise Hospital, I guess the first synagogue in town he helped build. MR. CASHMAN: The first Catholic church on the Strip. MR. ANDERSON: Just like your dad, involved in many things. Of course, the Kefauver hearings were coming in the '50s, and he told your dad something before all that happened. MR. CASHMAN: He told me. MR. ANDERSON: He told you? Oh, okay. I got that TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 19 wrong. MR. CASHMAN: No, he told me. He got a hold of me and said, "I want to talk to you in my office." Moe was a good friend of mine. I says, "Sure, Moe." So I went out to the Desert Inn, went up to his office, and he says, "You're going to be hearing and reading an awful lot of things about me, and these Kefauver hearings are coming to Las Vegas." And he said, "I don't know how you're going to take it, but I am interested in you knowing the facts." And he says, "Other than the fact that I have not had any business association with these people," he says, "I do know who they are, and I've had to cooperate on certain things with them. But all of my life the only thing I've ever done illegal is I've been a bootlegger and a gambler. And that's the extent of it. And I have no affiliation or involvement with what they call a Mafia or the syndicate or that element." He said, "I have to put up with them when they're here, but I don't have any business relationship with them whatsoever." But he says, "I have been a bootlegger and I have been a gambler, and that's where I made my money. MR. ANDERSON: And the Kefauver hearings, nothing ever came of that? MR. CASHMAN: No. MR. ANDERSON: They were never able to pin anything on him? TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 20 MR. CASHMAN: Oh, no. MR. ANDERSON: So your confidence in him was not shaken? MR. CASHMAN: Not at all. Moe was a fine man in my opinion. MR. ANDERSON: That's all I ever hear. MR. CASHMAN: That's right. MR. ANDERSON: That he was a guy who did a lot of good for this town. MR. CASHMAN: That's right. MR. ANDERSON: You know, there's one guy that won't sit down with us here that I would really like to have, but I guess we're not going to be able to get him, but Ralph Lamb. Do you have a favorite Ralph Lamb story? MR. CASHMAN: Well, Ralph was a dear friend of mine. In fact, the Lamb dynasty was pretty powerful in this town for a while. You had Ralph as a sheriff, Darwin as a county commissioner, and Floyd as the senior member of the finance committee in the legislature, and Pres Lamb was the head of the county road department. And I'm trying to think of the other. The city commissioner was married to a Lamb, Wes Howery. And these people were all in this influence package all at the same time, and they carried a lot of weight around here. I got a kick out of Ralph. Ralph, during Helldorado, TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 21 his job was to put the rodeo on. And he would get so upset because he couldn't get this done or get that done the way he wanted to, but Ralph always did a good job and he was always there. He was a sheriff, but he was always there to put that rodeo on when Helldorado came around. MR. ANDERSON: A lot of people say he was one of the last of the old-time sheriffs. The old-time Western sheriffs, that he had that kind of attitude that he took towards his job. MR. CASHMAN: Ralph, as far as I know, you know, Ralph was one of a kind. He called it the way he saw it, and if he didn't like it, you didn't like it. And if you liked something that he didn't like, he didn't like you. So... MR. ANDERSON: I hear a story, and I've heard it a couple of times and I'd like to confirm it. I don't know if it's true, about the Hell's Angels wanting to come into Las Vegas and he knew that they were coming, and that he went out to the border out there by Primm and stopped them and said you're not coming in here and turned them around. Do you know anything about that? MR. CASHMAN: No. MR. ANDERSON: Okay. MR. CASHMAN: No, I hadn't heard that. MR. ANDERSON: Okay. MR. CASHMAN: But it sounds like something Ralph TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 22 would do. MR. ANDERSON: Were you acquainted with Howard Hughes? I don't believe we talked about that. MR. CASHMAN: I have met Howard a couple of times. He would come to town. He would usually take a bungalow at the El Rancho. I would see him. That was my favorite hangout when I was growing up, and I would see him out there. And I knew him and he knew me, but we didn't have any social relationship. MR. ANDERSON: What was your impression of this guy? And what year might this have been? MR. CASHMAN: Oh, I guess this is probably in the late '40s, early '50s. He was very nice. He was pleasant to talk to, but he was kind of reserved and he didn't volunteer any information. If he wanted something, you either got it or you didn't, but you had to ask because he wouldn't volunteer it. MR. ANDERSON: Peg Crockett told us some good stories about Howard Hughes. MR. CASHMAN: Oh, yeah. He and George were very close and Peg. MR. ANDERSON: Right. What an amazing man, a real genius, a true genius. MR. CASHMAN: That's right. MR. ANDERSON: Las Vegas was lucky to have a guy like TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 23 that around. MR. CASHMAN: Well, he came at the right time. MR. ANDERSON: Well, that's what Harley Harmon said, and you sort of confirmed it here, is that Vegas was always saved at the right time. MR. CASHMAN: Yeah. MR. ANDERSON: You know, it was the dam; it was, during the war, the development of Nellis and BMI; and that after the war, the huge Live Wire campaign; then the test site; and then the casino boom which began in the '50s and continued and hasn't stopped yet. MR. CASHMAN: No. MR. ANDERSON: There's always something. The vitality of the people in this town has just been amazing and, like you've said, they refused to let it die. MR. CASHMAN: That's right. MR. ANDERSON: I don't know if we talked about this in our first conversation, but do you remember that 1959 mayoral election campaign between Oran Gragson and Wendell Bunker? MR. CASHMAN: Well, in what respect? MR. ANDERSON: Well, I've talked to Oran Gragson about this and he gave us a wonderful account of it. I guess nobody gave him much of a chance to win that election. MR. CASHMAN: I don't know. I think I supported TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 24 him. MR. ANDERSON: He told us what both the papers had said. And I can't get them straight here, but one paper said he'd more likely be the first man on the moon than get elected; the other one said it would be the political miracle of all time if he were elected. And he won by the biggest majority till that time. MR. CASHMAN: Yeah. Oran was a fine man. He still is. MR. ANDERSON: Oh, the first time I talked to him, I was just in awe of his bedrock integrity. MR. CASHMAN: Amazing. And you know, and he was a good communicator even though he had a speech impediment. Everybody felt sorry for him for a while, but he got along so well that everybody forgot about that. MR. ANDERSON: Yeah, he didn't seem to let it slow him down. MR. CASHMAN: No, not a bit. MR. ANDERSON: He's not afraid to talk and he knows he's got that, but it doesn't matter to him. And I guess there was a place in that campaign where Wendell Bunker had challenged him to a debate, and people thought that was a low blow. And the way Oran told it, he said, "Dewey never challenged Roosevelt to a foot race." MR. CASHMAN: That's a good analogy. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 25 MR. ANDERSON: I thought that was pretty interesting. Gosh, we went through this a lot faster than I thought we were going to. Is there anything you think we left out or you'd like to talk about or sort of put in perspective about the Cashman family and about the work that your family continues to do in this town and where Las Vegas is going or anything like that? MR. CASHMAN: Well, the whole family has always been strong supporters of Las Vegas, and they've always put forth all of the energy necessary that they had to promote the town. I had two boys, one of them passed away, unfortunately, who were very civic minded. In fact, my youngest son, Tim, is very active now in the chamber of commerce. He's legislative action committee chairman, and he's involved with the Nevada Taxpayers Association, YPO. He put on the last two YMCA fund-raiser functions, Why Not Night. He's going to be the chairman of the senior golf tournament next year and the year after that out at TPC. He is a Cadillac dealer now. I sold out to him about three years ago. He's also involved with the Harley-Davidson distributorships, two of them, he and a partner of his, Don Andrus. My daughter, Rhonda, she's my oldest child. She's very active in the golf tournaments. She's one of the head scorers. We've just all, as a family, we've done everything TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 26 that we could and anything anybody asked us to do to help the town grow and prosper, and we've grown and prospered along with it. MR. ANDERSON: Can you remember any time in your young life when your dad told you what his philosophy was or why he did the things he did, because this seems to be the strong motivation in the Cashman family to always be there, to always be involved. Is there something that he told you why he did this or how he developed this philosophy? MR. CASHMAN: No, he didn't. It was just Big Jim, that's all it was. He could not stand inactivity. And if he saw something that he felt should be done, damn it, he went and did it, or he got enough people together to get it done. It was just the way he lived his life. He thought more of community activities than he did his own business. In fact, right after World War II, I came back home. I was in the air corps, and I wanted to go to college. And I said, "Dad, I want to go to university. I want to go to college." He said, "I haven't got time for it." I said, "What do you mean?" He says, "Well, I've got a lot of things I've got to get done around here." He says, "Working in this place is not one of them." He says, "I want you to go to work right now." We had the Cadillac and the Buick and the Oldsmobile and the GMC truck franchises along with Caterpillar. And he said, "I'm getting out of that, and TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 27 you're taking over." So in '49 I took over as president of all of those companies and he went on about doing his thing. MR. ANDERSON: That must have been a big job for you. MR. CASHMAN: It was because I was very inexperienced, but I learned the hard way. MR. ANDERSON: That story about there was a ditch he wanted you to fill in. MR. CASHMAN: Oh, I told you that hill was full of water when we were building the stadium down there. And we had to take this big backhoe -- Smiley Rupert had the only big backhoe in town. Plumbing, he was a plumber, Rupert Plumbing. And he'd dig these big trenches right through that hill, half a dozen of them, and we had to fill them all with rocks so water would drain through them. And at 2:00 o'clock in the morning, Dad called me one morning and he says, "Jim," and I said, "Yeah, Dad." He says, "I don't think we've got enough rock in that last ditch we dug up there on the hill." He says, "I want you to go up there and start throwing some more boulders in there." I said, "Dad, I'll be glad to do it first thing in the morning." He said, "I didn't say morning, I said now." So at 2:00 o'clock in the morning I get dressed, get up, go down to the hill and start throwing boulders in there until about 6:00 or 8:00 o'clock in the morning. That was my dad. MR. ANDERSON: That's an amazing story. He never TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 28 quit thinking. MR. CASHMAN: No. MR. ANDERSON: Wow, that's amazing. That's really amazing. MR. CASHMAN: That was my dad. MR. ANDERSON: I think we've just about got it wrapped up, and this is a real honor to talk to you. MR. CASHMAN: Well, I'm glad to be here, Tim. MR. ANDERSON: And it's just been so terrific to talk to so many people who made this town what it is and to see the kind of spirit that lives on in Las Vegans. And I'm sure this happened in a lot of other towns, too, people who just said, "Okay, this is what we see could be done and, by God, we're going to get up and do it." And you know, when I talked to Peg Crockett, it just dawned on me that with all the programs we have for this, that, and the other thing today, now I see why people don't want the government doing these things. They don't want the invasion of private initiative. Because when you have other people doing things for you, you don't have the motivation to do it yourself. And when you lose that, then you lose your pride, you lose your sense of involvement, you lose your sense of community. And that's what happens to big places like this or any other. But when people are left to fend for themselves, it TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 29 may be difficult, but what they produce is theirs, and it's something they're proud of, like Helldorado, like Cashman Field, and like a lot of other things that happened in this town and many others. So when you've got some subsidy or someone coming in to do something for you, it's not the same. MR. CASHMAN: That's right. MR. ANDERSON: And now I see why people say, "No, we don't want that." And some people would just go, "Well, why not? It's going to be easier that way." Well, yeah, it might be easier that way, but it's really not something that you have a part of. And I'm starting to understand that in a different way. Okay. MR. CASHMAN: Okay. MR. ANDERSON: That'll do it. (End of tape.) TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 30 * * * * * ATTEST: The foregoing transcript of the interview was transcribed fully and accurately from the audio tape provided by KNPR Radio. Eunice G. Jones, Transcriptionist TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 ??