1 NEVADA STATE MUSEUM & HISTORICAL SOCIETY LAS VEGAS, NEVADA THE LAS VEGAS I REMEMBER INTERVIEW WITH LEE TILMAN 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. WRIGHT: Okay. He's rolling the tape. You might as well start off by telling us who you are. MR. TILMAN: I'm Lee Tilman. I live in Boulder City. I've spent a good many years on Boulder Dam. Born in Idaho. MR. WRIGHT: I know you've been in the Las Vegas area, southern Nevada for a long time. But maybe you could tell us just a little bit about the towns that you grew up in and the times that you grew up in, and just give us a little bit of a description of that if you would. MR. TILMAN: Yes. The towns that made the greatest impression on me growing up -- and I lived in a great number of towns due to the fact that my father was an itinerant worker and jobs were not too plentiful. And he moved around a lot. And I used to tell my brothers Dad found that it was cheaper to move than pay rent, so for that reason he moved quite often. That's supposed to be one of my better jokes, but you don't have to laugh at it. The towns that really made an impression on me were towns where we lived probably two or three years, or maybe even as much as four or five years. And I can remember a town in Idaho by the name of Silver City, and it's now a ghost town. I was probably around about nine years old when I moved there and probably lived there until I was about 11 or 12, something like that. And it was an unusual town in that we TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 3 were snowed in for about three or four months out of the year. Due to the fact that this was a mining town and due to the fact that they had been able to have quite a little political influence -- you know how mining towns are. They discover gold or silver or something along those lines, and the population increases all at once until you're the largest and most flourishing town in the area. And when that happens, why, then you are maybe able to become a county seat or something like that. And that was the case of Silver City. And being the county seat, they had all of the county offices and officers located there. And it was educational for a young chap. And I was at the age that I just soaked up information. It was a very interesting place to live. The adults actually just practiced the same recreation that the kids did. I remember we rode skis, and we had bobsleds. And plays would sometimes, just for entertainment, would have adults as well as children in them. And I just thought it was a very wonderful experience. MR. WRIGHT: Just sort of a Norman Rockwell, idyllic kind of place for a kid to grow up in, Silver City. MR. TILMAN: Yes. It reminds me very much of the recent book that Hillary Clinton has written, It Takes a Village. And when I read that and thought about it, it made TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 4 me really, really believe that she really knows what she's talking about. It does take a village. MR. WRIGHT: And you then came to Nevada. And you lived in a little place, I think you told me, called Hamilton. MR. TILMAN: Yes. MR. WRIGHT: Maybe you could tell us where Hamilton was. And it's not a name that's going to be familiar to very many Las Vegans. MR. TILMAN: Well, it's in White Pine County. It's west of Ely, Nevada, about 50 miles. When I moved there was in about 1925 or '26. And the Tonopah-Belmont Company, which was a well-known mining company in Nevada at that time, had either purchased or located a mining operation which was about three miles from Hamilton, Nevada. And they built a mill there to separate the values in the ore; it was lead and silver. And my stepfather was a millwright, and I'm a young chap. I think I'm probably about 13, 14 years old at this time. And we went to school in Hamilton, Nevada. I had three brothers. MR. WRIGHT: How big a town was Hamilton about that time? MR. TILMAN: At that time there was probably, counting the ranchers around there and the mines -- little, small independent operators -- I'd say probably a hundred TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 5 people. In the town itself, there might have been 75 or a hundred people. MR. WRIGHT: And that's in a town that was, quite a few years before you were there, one of Nevada's real boom towns -- MR. TILMAN: Absolutely. MR. WRIGHT: -- for a very brief time. MR. TILMAN: Yes, it was. They had something like 5 or 6,000 people there, maybe more than that. MR. WRIGHT: Sort of a typical Nevada story about boom to bust. MR. TILMAN: Typical Nevada, yep. Typical Nevada story. It sure was. And I can't tell you much about it other than there was some primitive buildings built even during that period, the boom period that you speak of. And they were made of brick. And one of them was a hotel, and it was still standing. And also there was a lady operating the hotel when I was there. She mostly had an eating place and a drinking place. And the hotel itself, it seemed to me, was pretty well shot. And I can't remember whether or not she actually had rooms for rent. But I do remember the hotel, and I remember her. She had an Italian name. I believe it might have been Martileti (phonetic) or something like that. And her first name was Rose. I remember that. Now it's coming back to me. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 6 And she had a son that went to school with us. And I believe his name was Lester. MR. WRIGHT: You remember that very clearly. MR. TILMAN: Yeah. That's surprising me that I remember, tell you the truth about it. When you get to chatting about something like this, sometimes things do come back to you. MR. WRIGHT: Okay. You're still a young man at this time. Maybe we could come up to the point where you could tell us how and why it was you decided to come south and where you were at the time. MR. TILMAN: Well, I graduated from the eighth grade in Hamilton, Nevada. I've always thought it was the biggest mistake that ever happened in my life. I skipped the eighth grade in fact. I was in the seventh grade. And in those days the educational system in Nevada was such that, I suppose it was some kind of official in the educational system would come around, and he would give examinations to the kids in these little country schools and what have you. And I remember he decided that I was ready to go from the seventh grade into high school. And this was really a big mistake. I really needed the eighth grade. I found that out after I got into high school, but that's what happened. And I went to high school my first year in Idaho after graduating from Hamilton Grade School. And I had a TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 7 grandmother that lived in Emmett, Idaho, and she graciously allowed me to come and live with her and go to my first year in high school in Emmett, Idaho. Then I went back to Nevada after school was out. This was in 1927. I can remember that quite well because of the Dempsey-Tunney fight. And we were all fight fans, the kids my age. And I remember I was a Tunney fan, and most everybody else was a Jack Dempsey fan. And I cleaned up on that because Tunney won the fight. And we bet everything from our pocket knives to our belts. Money was very scarce. MR. WRIGHT: Well, Dempsey would have been a natural because he had fought all over Utah, Nevada, that whole area, so he would have been the local favorite, I'm sure. MR. TILMAN: Absolutely, he sure was. Then I went from there back to Hamilton, Nevada, and helped with my stepfather. By this time the Tonopah-Belmont Company was about ready to give up this mining operation at what was called the Tonopah-Belmont Mine and Mill. But he was kept on there as a caretaker with the idea that maybe they would open it up again. And so he stayed there for a year or so after that. And I went into Ely and went to high school my second year in Ely. And then, back in those days, they had dormitories both for boys and girls that came from outlying districts. And Ely had a high school with a dormitory for TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 8 boys and girls. And money was very short for me, so I went to the lady that was called a matron. She was the overseer of the dormitories. And I told her that I'd like to find some work. And she said, "Well, we always hire a couple of boys to help with washing dishes and in the dining room." And she said, "If you want that job, that will pay for your board and your room." I jumped at that, of course. And so that's the way I got my second year of high school in Ely, Nevada. And I was able to come back the third year, and this was right in the heart of the Depression. And it come that class pictures were due and I don't know what all, and I didn't have the money. And I said, "Well, I think I'd better just skip it and go back to school later." And so I went out and took a job sheering sheep with a crew that traveled around from one ranch to another. They had one fellow that would go ahead, and he would contract sheering the sheep, and then we would move from one place to another. And it was quite interesting. Some of the names that I'll drop are old-timers' names that own ranches in White Pine County, if you're interested in that. I remember the Whipple Ranch. We sheered the sheep for Mr. Whipple. By the way, he had a couple of real nice looking daughters too. I remember that. And then there was Jim Reardon, and he had a ranch in what's now very near Sunnyside. Whipple owned what's now the TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 9 Sunnyside Ranch. And Jim Reardon's ranch was north of there about maybe 20 miles. And these are people that are no longer around, I'm sure. And even most of their descendants, I think, are gone. MR. WRIGHT: Did you get over into the Spring Valley area during that period? MR. TILMAN: Yes, I did. And I worked for the Cleveland Ranch to begin with in Spring Valley. And the Cleveland Ranch was actually established by, I believe it was either a brother or a close relative of Grover Cleveland who was a president of the United States, I believe, at one time. And it's a well-known ranch, and it's still known as the Cleveland Ranch. It's changed hands many times since then. And my job there was helping put up the hay. And that was quite an interesting experience. One of the first things that happened in the morning at the Cleveland Ranch was you had to get out and -- they kept a large number of horses. This was quite a large operation for those days. I think they would run about six mowers. In those days, instead of having the combines where they bail hay and like that, they mowed the hay, then they raked it, then they stacked it, and it took a lot more people to put up hay. And mowing hay is very hard on horses. In heavy hay, it's very hard for them to pull the weight because it not only has the mowing machine, but it has a cutter that cuts the TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 10 hay. And it wasn't unusual to have one good steady, well-broke horse and then one practically broken horse. But you changed every four hours because these horses, it'd just wear them out. And I always remember the Cleveland Ranch had a Mexican chap that had one hand missing, but he was really good with a rope. And he'd go out and he'd rope these wilder horses. Some of the gentler ones, you didn't have to rope them. You could go up and get them all right. But he would rope a wild one for you, and then you had to take that along with a gentle horse. And it was quite an experience for me just getting out of high school, you know, and working out there with those fellas putting up hay. MR. WRIGHT: So now we're right in the, as you say, in the Great Depression. And maybe jobs aren't too plentiful up there or did you just decide that you wanted to see some more of the West? MR. TILMAN: No. The situation there was the farmers or ranchers really were having a difficult time. I can kind of give you a little insight on what my wife's father told me after I was married. I think it was 1936 before he was able to pay anything on the principal. He had been in debt all of his life on a ranch, and he had been able to pay the interest and that was it. But in 1936, for some reason or other, things were a little better. And he told me, "Lee, you know, TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 11 this is the first time I've ever been able to pay anything on the principal on what I owe." So that kind of gives you an idea of what the situation was like. I worked for him probably a week or two. And we would move from one ranch to another. He was in Spring Valley also. MR. WRIGHT: And is that during the period when you met the woman that was to become your wife? MR. TILMAN: Yes, yes. That's where I met the woman that later became my wife. And then I worked for several ranches in Spring Valley. You mentioned Spring Valley. The Eldridges, they're still operating there. And, oh, let's see. There was several others. I can't remember. Oh, Pete Johannsson (phonetic). I remember he was at Bastian Creek. I say "crick," other people say creek. I don't know why. MR. WRIGHT: Well, I came out of the West too. I grew up saying "crick." I had to train myself to learn creek, so I know how it sounds in Nevada. MR. TILMAN: I hear people say creek all the time, but when I'm not thinking about it, I say "crick." That's the way we said it, I guess. But his place was a sheep ranch, Pete Johannsson. And the fact is, most of those ranches at that time were sheep ranches up there. Now they're all cattle ranches and very few sheep ranches up there. Some of the range they ran their livestock on out of Spring Valley was in the Mount Moriah TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 12 area. MR. WRIGHT: That's right over near the Utah border; right? MR. TILMAN: It is. Snake Valley is on the east side and Spring Valley is on the west side. Snake Valley is bisected pretty much by the Utah and Nevada state line. And the streams on the Snake Valley side are, like, Smith Creek. Let's see, several of them along there. I can't just call them to mind now. And on the Spring Valley side, there's, of course, the Kalamazoo is one stream there and Cleve Creek which feeds the water into the Cleveland Ranch. Bassett Creek, which at one time there was a man by the name of Bassett who owned a ranch. He no longer is probably even alive. I think the Eldridges bought that Bassett place. And then on north is Muncy Creek. Well, first comes Kalamazoo and then Muncy Creek. MR. WRIGHT: And there's one stream that comes off the east side there that didn't have a politically correct name; am I right there? MR. TILMAN: Yes. That happens to be the one that my wife was raised on. And I suppose it would be all right to say. It was called Nigger Creek and it still is by the people that live up there. It was taken off of the map, and I think they called in maybe Negro Creek. I'm not sure. But it has always been known and is still known as Nigger Creek in that TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 13 area up there. There was absolutely no disrespect to colored people. Nobody even thought about it from that viewpoint, but it was one of those things that did change. MR. WRIGHT: That's an interesting description of Spring Valley. Maybe we could sort of move along a little bit. Tell us how you came to your decision to come to southern Nevada. MR. TILMAN: Well, I think what really made me realize it, I was able to get a job in the mines out of Ely at what was called the Kimberly operation. It was Nevada Consolidated Copper Company, as I remember it, and was later purchased by the Kennecott people. But I did actually work in the Emma shaft up there at Kimberly. MR. WRIGHT: Did you like being an underground miner? MR. TILMAN: I didn't like it for several reasons, and that's probably what made me come of the conclusion that I didn't want to follow mining really. The air was bad down in those mines. They sort of put you back in there too quick after they dynamited. It was wet and it was hot. Most all of the people working down underground were what we called Bohunks in those days, which could mean anything from Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, most of those countries, and Polish. MR. WRIGHT: Sort of central eastern European? TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 14 MR. TILMAN: Greeks. Yes. And we just more or less called them Bohunks. I don't know why. And most of them didn't speak English very well, if at all. MR. WRIGHT: May I ask how much you made as a young miner? MR. TILMAN: Yeah. Underground, at that time, I believe they had to pay you $4 a day. It was some law and so the pay was pretty good, I mean considering. You'd have to live in a company-owned town to realize that the company actually has control of you just almost to the point of life and death. MR. WRIGHT: Yeah. If you would maybe say just a couple of things about that. Ely was a company town. MR. TILMAN: Yes. MR. WRIGHT: Can you explain a little bit about what a company town was in a mining environment? MR. TILMAN: Well, Kennecott was also operating there at that time, and they are very intrusive. When I say "they," the company. And if you check the mining laws in the state of Nevada, they haven't changed since the 1800s. And we still have the same mining laws practically they had then. And they definitely should be changed. Those laws were put into effect by company-owned towns and company-owned politicians. Ely was a very good example of it. MR. WRIGHT: So it's like the old song, "in debt to TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 15 the company store." MR. TILMAN: Yeah, very much like that. And they had members on the school board. Practically every facet of life in a company town has to be more or less sanctioned by the company. And the company normally is generally one person that's the president. That's just the way it was. MR. WRIGHT: So you decided mining wasn't going to be your career. Then what? MR. TILMAN: The next best thing at that time, seemed to me, since we had heard about they were going to build a big dam down on the Colorado River near Las Vegas, and I decided that maybe that was where I should go. MR. WRIGHT: And you were how old at this time? MR. TILMAN: I was about 17, I think, around 17, pretty close to 18 years old. And I'd knocked around on ranches and sheep outfits and mining operations, milling operations. Jobs were very short, and I was learning all the time, of course. As far as pay was concerned, it was very low for the most part. It wasn't unusual to work for $2 a day on a ranch. And, you know, that is hard to believe, a lot of people nowadays, but that's the way it was. We had no social security or unemployment insurance. None of those things were available. And you just had to take what they would offer you. And you learned to negotiate your own contracts and mostly it had to be in favor of who was TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 16 hiring. But you could maybe, if you happened to be a pretty good hand and they heard about you, why, they might make a few concessions, maybe let you sleep in the bunkhouse instead of the in the haystack or something like that. Then I decided to come down here and see if I could get a job on Boulder Dam. And another chap and I came down here in an old Dodge. Our first night was spent out about where Cashman Field is at the present time, and that was known in those days as the old ranch, I believe. MR. WRIGHT: Try to picture your trip down here a little bit if you could. MR. TILMAN: Yeah. MR. WRIGHT: There weren't big, wide, paved roads with yellow lines in the middle. MR. TILMAN: No. MR. WRIGHT: Tell us a little bit about your experience coming down here with your friend. MR. TILMAN: All right. In those days most of us had the bare necessities that we carried with us like a bedroll, and a change of clothes, and perhaps a razor, and a bar of soap, and a towel, a few things like that, and maybe a frying pan, and a little stew kettle of some kind, and probably a few fish hooks in our hats. And that was about the sort of thing that we had learned to survive with. This chap I came down here with owned an old Dodge TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 17 car. And we made it to Pioche the first day, and we slept out in the cedar trees around Pioche there. MR. WRIGHT: No motels to pull into, if you had any money. MR. TILMAN: We didn't have any money anyway. But, no, we wouldn't even think of spending money for a place to sleep. That would be out of the question. I mean, you know, we're looking for a job. I can't remember how much capital I had, but I wouldn't be surprised that it was under $20 that I had, and that had to see me through until I got another job. MR. WRIGHT: How many other cars would you pass in a day coming down that way? Just two or three, or maybe 50 or a hundred? MR. TILMAN: You know, I don't really remember passing any cars. I guess they were all going in that direction. There was nobody coming back up where we -- MR. WRIGHT: Nobody going back up there. MR. TILMAN: And there were not very many going in the same direction we were going either. And interesting enough, we came down what's called the Meadow Valley Wash. It goes down through Elgin and Carp and winds up down around Glendale there. Moapa and Glendale is where we came in. I think out probably north and a little bit east of Glendale is where that road hits now, which is I-15, and it was a terrible road. It was washed out and rough TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 18 and twisted around. It didn't take a direct course. There was a graded road, as I remember, into Glendale. And I'm not sure, but it seems to me like it was a graded road clear on into Las Vegas. But it might be that there might have been a little oil someplace, but I don't remember it. MR. WRIGHT: Yeah. I think they were probably oiling the road through the late '20s, I think. So you probably did hit some oil. MR. TILMAN: Yeah. It seems to me like there's a possibility that we did hit some oil before we come into Las Vegas. MR. WRIGHT: It took you, what, just a couple of days to make the trip? MR. TILMAN: Yes. MR. WRIGHT: You made it in two days? MR. TILMAN: Yeah. And we were in Las Vegas early enough to go out there in the mesquite trees. And there's one of these typical Nevada rainstorms. I guess I shouldn't tell you. It's probably not the place to tell you what a Nevada rainstorm is right now. I'll tell you off the record sometime. MR. WRIGHT: Okay. MR. TILMAN: And one of those rainstorms hit during the night. And we were down there in that slick, smelly TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 19 alkali and caliche that nothing but a mesquite tree can grow in. And it can't survive very good because after it gets so big, it eats around the perimeter of the tree. And I guess a tree has to have a bark on it to survive. It's kind of like a beaver. And that alkali will do that. It did that to a lot of mesquite trees. They'd get to be pretty good size trees, and then all at once they'd die. And there was a lot of dead stuff out in that area. MR. WRIGHT: And you say this was out about where Cashman Field is? MR. TILMAN: Yeah, in that general area there. MR. WRIGHT: About that time -- and maybe you can confirm this from your own recollections -- very close to there, there was a little settlement they used to call Hooverville. Were you close to that? It was out just beyond the city cemetery. MR. TILMAN: The city cemetery? Now, you're talking about the cemetery that is located where the Rancho High School is there? MR. WRIGHT: Yeah, that one over there. MR. TILMAN: That's the one you're speaking of? MR. WRIGHT: Right. MR. TILMAN: Yes. I remember that cemetery. And there was also, right at the bottom of the hill, you came out of -- I guess that's still there -- you go down a hill there TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 20 on Main Street. It parallels the railroad. And right at the bottom of the hill there was a place called the Rose Gardens. And I remember that. Of course, it's long since disappeared. And there was Updike's Dairy on one side. Years later they put a dairy -- actually, it was where they bottled the milk and like that. Their dairy was out on what we'd know as Vegas Heights now. The fact is, Updike owns some property out there. In fact, he had a farm out there. He had a couple of daughters that later married some people. Did you ever hear of the Dillmans? MR. WRIGHT: That's not a name that's familiar to me, no. MR. TILMAN: Jake Dillman probably pretty much pioneered the large cranes. We called them cherry pickers back in those days. MR. WRIGHT: Oh, that would be Jake's Crane, then. MR. TILMAN: Yeah. MR. WRIGHT: Oh, okay. MR. TILMAN: Yeah. He married one of the Updike girls. And another very well-known man in Boulder City was DeWitt Tracht. He owned a grocery store there. And he has a son, in fact, in Las Vegas now that's a dentist, Kenneth Tracht. Kenneth's mother, as I remember, was an Updike. And that was the name of one of the early dairies. I don't think there is an Updike Dairy anymore, is there? TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 21 MR. WRIGHT: No, I don't believe so. MR. TILMAN: I don't think so. MR. WRIGHT: It was here for a long time. MR. TILMAN: Yeah. MR. WRIGHT: Okay. So you and your friend camp out in the mesquite trees. What did you do, just kind of wander through, take a look at your new surroundings downtown? MR. TILMAN: No. We only stayed overnight, and we spent about two hours getting out of there the next morning because this old Dodge went right in there without any problems at all. When that water all drained into that area down there, it was slick. It was just like being on ice, only it was mud. And we were a couple of pretty crummy looking characters to start with. We looked a lot worse than that when we got out of there. But the chap I was with had an inside track with a personnel man that had, at one time, worked for the copper companies up there. And he knew he had hired this young man. He was a man then of, I'd say, about 35 maybe. And he had hired him a time or two up around Ely, and so he was able to get in contact with him when we got down here. And he gave us, since I was with him, he gave us a pass into Boulder City. And so we didn't spend any time in Las Vegas at that time. So when you asked the question about -- what was the question you asked me? TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 22 MR. WRIGHT: Well, at some point maybe it would be appropriate if we come back to it later. But I want to get your sense of Las Vegas. MR. TILMAN: Hooverville you asked me about. MR. WRIGHT: Originally, going back to that one. MR. TILMAN: I had heard of Hooverville, but I didn't go into Hooverville. No, I heard about it many times after that. Well, you know, anything that would make Herbert Hoover look bad in those days, we worked at making him look bad because we didn't like Herbert Hoover. MR. WRIGHT: Well, it was filled with people like yourselves looking for work and trying to survive. MR. TILMAN: Yeah, yeah, of course. Now I know better. But in those days, he managed, from our viewpoint in those days, to put us all on bread lines and out of a job. Well, actually, I don't think it was really his fault. He might have had something to do with it, but it certainly wasn't all his fault. MR. WRIGHT: No. He sure took a lot of the onus of responsibility at the time; right. MR. TILMAN: There was 30 percent of the work force at that time was out of a job. And, you know, you hear people nowadays say, "My gosh, there's four or five percent of the people don't have a job." Why, people don't know what it's like nowadays. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 23 MR. WRIGHT: So your friend had a pass to Boulder City. What happens then? MR. TILMAN: They wanted miners down there. And I think that strike had just been settled at that time. I'm not sure about that. But anyway, he went right down there and went to work. And, of course, I had a lot tougher time. I had to take just whatever I could get. And there was several subcontractors operating in the area at that time. Right at that time in 1931, it was in the latter part of August, the Lewis Construction Company was probably a subcontractor of one of the Six Companies. Anyway, they were working on the railroad, and I think they were just completing the railroad. And I got on with them on a cleanup or what they called a bull gang. And I worked probably for two weeks around Boulder City, and I remember I was short on money. When he went to work, the Six Companies issued, I think it was, five pieces of brass they called them. They had their number on them. They had a badge, and then the brass you could use for money was what it amounted to. And they would charge it and deduct it from your check. And so I was able to use one of his brass and eat in the Anderson Mess Hall, not steady but some of the time. And I was able to stay in his room. He had a room in the barracks that were for the people working down at the dam. He was TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 24 working night shift, and he would sleep in the daytime. But his bed was vacant at night, so I'd sleep in his room at nights. And so that's the way I really spent the first two weeks. In the meantime, this millwright stepfather of mine had moved down here for the same reasons that all the rest of us did. But he had heard about these mines out in Eldorado Canyon and Searchlight and that area. And he had gone out there in preference to trying to get a job. He was a veteran of World War I and was married, and he would have had a lot of the qualifications for a job in those days. That's one of the first things they would ask you is, when you go in the employment office, "Are you a veteran; are you married; and, do you have any children?" They were really trying to place people that needed the jobs worse. So a person like me that wasn't barely 18 years old or in that area, unmarried and not a veteran, I just had to take, you know, whatever was left over. MR. WRIGHT: You probably were pretty lucky to get -- MR. TILMAN: And lucky to get that. MR. WRIGHT: August of '31 is pretty early in the life of Boulder City. MR. TILMAN: Yes. MR. WRIGHT: Give us just a bird's eye description of what Boulder City looked like about that time, if you can. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 25 MR. TILMAN: At that time Boulder City reminded me to a great extent of mining operations that were just getting under way. They were building houses just as fast as they could. And they were making streets as fast as they could. And they were getting water, which it was absolutely imperative to have water there. And one of the first things they did was they built that tank. There's two tanks there now. I guess you'd say one would be east and the other one would be west. And the west tank was the first one that was built. I believe that tank holds like two or three million gallons of water. And they were pumping water out of the river, not out of Lake Mead, but out of the river. And they had a 12-inch pipeline. And they had a booster station about halfway from the river to Boulder City because it was too much pressure on the line to try to pump that water all the way to Boulder City. Boulder City has an elevation to 2,000 feet, roughly, and that tank is probably maybe 2100 feet in Boulder City. The river down there was, where they were pumping that water from, was probably 4 or 500 feet above sea level. So you can see how much pressure or how much head there was on that pipeline. So they had to put a booster station which relieved about half of that pressure. Then they boosted it on into Boulder City from the booster station, and they were putting water in that tank. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 26 MR. WRIGHT: Presumably settling some of the sand and silt out of it at the same time? MR. TILMAN: To begin with they had a treatment plant and a smaller tank, right to begin with. By 1932 anyway, I remember definitely being up there. Fact is, I have a picture of myself right at that tank. And that was probably in 1932. But in '31, I doubt very much that they were actually putting water in that tank. But they did have a filter plant where they were filtering the water and trying to make it palatable. MR. WRIGHT: So you only worked for Lewis Construction then for a couple of weeks or so? MR. TILMAN: Yeah. Um-hm. MR. WRIGHT: What then? MR. TILMAN: As I said, my stepfather and my mother had moved down here, and they were out at Searchlight. He got a light for the Searchlight Gold Corporation, Duplex Mine, I believe it was. I decided, and the fellow that came up here with me, he pretty much wanted to do the same. He knew them too. And so he said, "Well, hey, how would you like to go?" I said, "Yeah, I'd like to go over to Searchlight and see what's going on over there, see my folks." So we jumped in his car, and we headed over there. We went down across that dry lake that is between Boulder City and Searchlight and had to go out to Railroad Pass. Well, the TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 27 road now is different, but at that time you went directly from Railroad Pass right down that little canyon or draw that goes down through there to a dry lake. MR. WRIGHT: I think I recall you telling us once that there was a little businessman selling some wares out on the lake. MR. TILMAN: Yeah, you're absolutely right. You know, it was a total surprise. You'd be driving along on that dry lake. There were not any cars, maybe one or two cars a day going on that road at that time, maybe three or four. But we looked out on that dry lake and here was a piece of canvas. I can't even remember a vehicle, but there must have been a vehicle there. But we kept getting closer and closer, and this guy had this canvas as a shade. And we stopped, of course. There was hardly any tracks on the dry lake. The road went right across the dry lake. And we stopped. And that fella had a washtub full of ice and some home-brew, and I believe he sold to us for something like -- I can't remember now -- but it was some ridiculous price like maybe 15 cents, or maybe at the most a quarter for a good sized bottle of beer. And that was the best tasting beer I believe I ever drank in my life. It was cold, and it was hot. Now, I'm not sure that this is true, but I later heard that this fella's name was Scrap Iron something or other. I can't remember what the other part of his handle was. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 28 MR. WRIGHT: I think we can safely say that Boulder City wasn't bursting with saloons at this time. MR. TILMAN: No, there was two of everything. That was the ideal government town. They didn't let anybody have a monopoly, so they did have two of everything. But when I think about it, I can remember only one pool hall. And that was, I think, called Laubach's (phonetic). And they did serve 3.2 beer. MR. WRIGHT: That was probably after a little while. Still prohibition there right in '30 -- '32 probably still prohibitioned. MR. TILMAN: Yeah, yeah. I can't remember. Do you know when that -- MR. WRIGHT: I think the 3.2 thing came maybe in 1932, 1933. I'm not really sure. MR. TILMAN: Well, okay. I do remember. Of course, I was in Boulder City after that off and on because I made my living either in Boulder City or Las Vegas. So I can't just remember the dates. There was a former world champion prize fighter. I think he was the manager of that Laubach's Pool Hall. And he was that English, light heavyweight champion, I believe. MR. WRIGHT: I don't know the name there. MR. TILMAN: Yeah, it's easy to check up and find out who he was. But he was actually running that place at that TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 29 time. And, say, in three or four years later, or two or three years later probably, he put on an exhibition fight with I believe it was Jack Johnson. MR. WRIGHT: Jack Johnson did come into town during the war years. MR. TILMAN: And I believe they put on an exhibition fight in Boulder City. MR. WRIGHT: Would that have been Frank Fitzsimmons? MR. TILMAN: Yeah, it could have been. MR. WRIGHT: Okay. MR. TILMAN: Yeah, it could have been Fitzsimmons. Yeah, he was English? This guy was English. MR. WRIGHT: I'll look. MR. TILMAN: You might be right. It might have been Fitzsimmons, yeah. MR. WRIGHT: Anyway, I interrupted you. You're not even halfway yet to Searchlight. So let's sort of continue our trip down to Searchlight. MR. TILMAN: We went on into Searchlight and found my folks. And my stepdad, of course, I had worked around him from the time I was about, oh, say, nine years, ten years old up until this time which was about 18. So I had a lot of experience around mines and mills and that sort of thing, all pretty much just helping him. But he said, "Hey, I think I can get you a job TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 30 here." So I said, "Yeah, I haven't got anything permanent at all. Fact is, I'd be glad to get a job." So he did. He went to the boss and got me a job operating a ball mill for this Duplex Mine. I think they called it the Searchlight Gold Corporation. And so I spent about a year in Searchlight, and that was an experience in itself. MR. WRIGHT: There was some serious mining going on and there was also some sculduggery, was there not, going on in some of the mines? Could you tell us a little bit about the latter? MR. TILMAN: Well, like I say, I've told some of these things. I'm not sure just what the truth is, but I grew up in that atmosphere. And it wasn't unusual for what you call these real small mining operations to be a little on the, I'd say, fraudulent side, to say the least, such things as salting of mines. And getting someone to finance these, promoters were really good at probably getting a doctor or somebody that had more money than he knew what to do with, or at least the promoter felt that he had more money than he knew what to do with. And they would give them a story about this real rich mine out here in Nevada. Normally, these people were in Chicago or New York or someplace like that. And they'd actually raise the capital to come out and get a mining operation under way. Well, it was pretty common knowledge in those days TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 31 that the man that was financing this Searchlight Gold Corporation was, well, they said he was an eastern doctor. That's all I knew about him. Even the people working there, it was common talk that went around among the help. And as long as they could keep him putting up the money, we all had jobs. And the way that my stepfather happened to get out there in the first place is the milling operation was not extracting from the ore the amount of values that they expected when they bought the equipment. This was a Denver equipment company that sold them their equipment. And so my stepfather was kind of a troubleshooter for this sort of a situation. And so that's how he happened to be there. And it's an interesting thing to me that quite often these so-called experts is just somebody from someplace else. People in the area don't think anybody knows anything about milling or mining. But you bring in somebody from the outside, say, "Now, we're bringing in an expert," why, that was pretty much what he was. The various places he was pretty much considered him an expert. But he's dead now. He was like many others I suppose, so-called experts. Regardless of how much they paid him, he didn't think it was really quite enough. So he would always take a percentage out of the improvements that he made in the milling operation. And, of course, I wasn't privileged TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 32 to share in what he was able to take out of the milling operation. But he was very reasonable. If he improved their operation, we'll say 25 percent, he would consider maybe if he took 10 percent of that for himself. And that was done by putting a trap in the various parts of the milling operation where he could actually get some of the values. MR. WRIGHT: Wasn't there a way also of convincing potential investors that the values were higher than they really were? MR. TILMAN: Well, see, the promoters did that. MR. WRIGHT: And tell us how that worked, if you would, talking about salting mines perhaps. MR. TILMAN: Oh, yeah. Well, I have never actually seen this done, but I'm very much aware that it is done. It was done in those days. It wasn't uncommon to, say, load a shotgun shell with, say, an ounce of gold. And an ounce of gold in those days was probably only worth about 16 or $17. It isn't $300 an ounce like it is now or $400, or even as high as $800 an ounce. But in those days, gold was probably somewhere between 14 and $20 an ounce. So they could load a shotgun shell with this and go back into the face of a drift, or a tunnel, and fire this shotgun shell and scatter that gold into the rock. There might probably be a little stringer of silica and maybe a little quartz in there that had some values to begin with. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 33 That's what they called salting it. And then the very careful investor would bring his own help along and say, "Now, I want some samples right in that mine." And so they would go in there and maybe his help might even be in on the deal to begin with. But anyway, he'd go in and, right in front of him, pick this stuff off around. And he'd say, "Now, that looks like nice values there, but let's take some down here where it don't look so good so we get an average here of what we have here." And then when he gets the sample, and this man's right here watching him take the sample from all over, then they take it and say, "Let's take it to a private assayer. Let's don't depend on these people here to assay this for us. Let's go to a private assayer." So they'd say, "Yeah, I think that's a good idea." So they go in and they take this to a private assayer and, my God, it's worth maybe 2 or $3,000 a ton, and this guy can't get his money invested fast enough. I mean, this was one of the schemes. MR. WRIGHT: Not a whole lot of government regulation on those kind of schemes in those years. MR. TILMAN: Apparently not. MR. WRIGHT: In the time that you were at Searchlight, there were some fairly famous people that lived at Searchlight and some people who were yet to become famous. I was thinking specifically about the Rocking Horse Ranch. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 34 MR. TILMAN: Yeah. That was owned by a movie actor by the name of Rex Bell. And he was married to a very popular woman, and she was called the "It Girl," and her name was Clara Bow. And they came into Searchlight and gambled there and drank there and came to the dances with their help from the ranch. They had about probably five or six cowboys that came in there with them. They'd all come in there together, and they were very friendly towards everybody. And it wasn't uncommon to see them there all the time. Clara Bow, I believe that she had a drinking problem, and Rex Bell was always very protective. Either if he wasn't trying to watch her, why, he had somebody else that was watching her. MR. WRIGHT: Of course, he went on to a political career, did he not? MR. TILMAN: Yeah. I think he became lieutenant governor. In Las Vegas he had a clothing store, a western clothing store. I remember that. I believe he had two or three boys -- two boys, I believe. When he was out there, they were just little fellas then. I don't know whether they were born there or later in Las Vegas. I'm not sure about that. But she was a beautiful woman. Clara Bow was a very beautiful woman. I remember she had the most beautiful hair. It was real heavy and it had a reddish almost like an auburn TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 35 colored hair. She had large, beautiful eyes and just a flawless skin. She was really a beautiful woman and very friendly and outgoing. She wasn't at all stuck-up. She'd come in, just mingle right with the people there and crack jokes and stuff like that. MR. WRIGHT: And there's another family name associated with Searchlight too. There's a United States senator whose family traces back to -- MR. TILMAN: Yeah, that's very interesting. Fact is, Harry Reid is named after one of his uncles, Harry. And Harry, his uncle, was about my age. And he had another uncle, a brother to Harry, whose name was Mason. And another uncle of Harry Reid, the senator, was Robert Reid. And I knew them all very well. And I knew his grandparents, both his mother and his father. They were there in Searchlight at that time. And Harry Reid's father's name was -- he was one of the younger boys. I can't remember what his name was now. But they lived right in Searchlight. They had a house right in Searchlight, the old folks. And the boys worked in the mines around there. Some of them worked at a mine down in Eldorado Canyon called Techatticup, I believe it was called or something. MR. WRIGHT: Right. Techatticup is still down there; right. MR. TILMAN: Yeah. What's the name of one of those TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 36 other mines down there? MR. WRIGHT: Let's see, Wall Street. MR. TILMAN: Yeah, Wall Street was one. MR. WRIGHT: And I've forgotten some of the others. It just doesn't occur to me. I'll have to look. MR. TILMAN: Yeah, there's another one. And the Reid boys all worked in the various mines around there. And in fact, the one that I knew probably the best was Mason Reid, and he worked in the same place I did, in the mill there. And I used to buddy around. But later I got to know Bob Reid in Las Vegas. And fact is, he was in the wood business with us one winter in there when we were hauling wood out of Charleston and out of those mesquite groves down there that I told you about. So, yeah, I'm quite familiar with the Reids. And old John Silvero was sheriff out there. I remember him. He was an old frontier type sheriff. He was a deputy sheriff, actually. MR. WRIGHT: Do you remember a fellow named Yeager? MR. TILMAN: Yeager, yes, yes. MR. WRIGHT: He was what? Deputy sheriff or a constable or something like that? MR. TILMAN: Yeah, Yeager was. And I'll tell you something more about him. In the very early days there, they had a cafe, the Yeagers did, and it was called the Texas TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 37 Cafe. I believe they must have come from Texas. They had two daughters. And I'm not sure of the Yeager you speak of. MR. WRIGHT: Well, I have a friend named John Yeager, who is much younger and who still lives in Searchlight. So I know his family went way back there. MR. TILMAN: If you get an opportunity, I wish you'd find out if that is a descendant of the original Yeagers that had the Texas Cafe. MR. WRIGHT: I'll ask. I think they lived on Texas Street when they moved into Henderson, but I don't know whether that's a connection or not. MR. TILMAN: Well, they had these two blond daughters. They were just the right age, you know, for someone like me to be interested in. I remember one night at a dance -- just to kind of give you the feeling of what Searchlight was like. They had a club there. Fact is, they only had one club of any -- they had several little clubs, but this one was the main club there, and they had a dance floor. And I was dancing with one of these blond girls from the Texas Cafe, and all at once I saw nothing but stars. Some guy stepped out of the side and he hit me on the side of the head. Down I went right on the floor. I shook my head and I got up. This guy says, "You come on outside. I'm going just do you-know-what to me." And, of course, I staggered around. I had two or three TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 38 friends there too, and they come with me. And I said okay. So we went out and we flew at it outside. And I did a little better outside than I did inside. MR. WRIGHT: Just sort of a typical Saturday night in Searchlight. MR. TILMAN: But I just wanted you to get the feeling of what could happen there. Maybe he thought he was engaged. She told me that she didn't hardly even know him. But, of course, you know how those things are too. MR. WRIGHT: So that job lasted a year or so down in Searchlight, and you ended up coming back to Vegas. You ended up living in Las Vegas for some time. What I'd like for you to do, if you can, is to try to give somebody a sense of what Las Vegas felt like and what it looked like, just kind of an impression, not door-to-door, but just kind of an impression of what this little town of Las Vegas was like in the 1930s. Could you give that a try? MR. TILMAN: Yes. Naturally, when I do this, I have to do it from my viewpoint. And my viewpoint was, in the early days of Las Vegas, it was always to me the most important thing in life, I'd have to say that, was to get a good job. So I have to look at it from that viewpoint. And I probably had a very wide experience in Las Vegas from that viewpoint because I had to take almost any kind of a job that was available. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 39 There was a transfer company there at that time called Young's Transfer. And they were in competition with another transfer outfit, and I can't remember them. Oh, yeah, I can too. MR. WRIGHT: Did that become Young and Rue or something like that? MR. TILMAN: Yeah, that was Young's Transfer. Originally, it was Young's Transfer. But I worked for him, and our job primarily was to meet the trains coming in and move the stuff from the train to various places of business that he had contracts with to supply them. And there was another transfer outfit was doing the same thing. And I knew them quite well. Wadsworth was the other one. And one of those fellas worked out at the dam at the same time I did also later. And at that time we were both working for a transfer company. And there's on old chap by the name of Tiel or Kiel (phonetic). Kiel, I guess. And he had a canvas shop right near what would be now not too far from the Union Plaza. There was a stream in those days that flowed from Lorenzi's Resort. There was a man by the name of Lorenzi had the Twin Lakes, the water out there at that time. And there was a pond out there and a swimming pool and a dance hall, and it was quite an interesting place for someone my age to go out there and dance and meet girls and what have you. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 40 But that stream came right down through pretty much where the Union Pacific operation is. The Union Pacific owned a great section of Las Vegas through there. I guess they held onto it for many years. But that stream crossed the tracks and came down just north of what I believe would be where the Union Plaza is now. And it crossed what would be Main Street. And there was a blacksmith shop right where it crossed Main Street. And just on the other side of the stream, maybe a hundred yards on north, was a canvas shop. And this man, Kiel, operated this canvas shop. And I walked into his place of business one day and I said, "I'm looking for some work. Would you have any work for me?" And he said, "Did you ever shingle a roof?" And I said, "No, that's one thing I haven't done. I'll be honest with you." "Well," he said, "I have a roof on a place out in back here I need shingling." He said, "Do you want to do that?" And he said, "I'll show you how." And I said, "I sure do." So I went out and I got broke in with him a little bit, shingled a roof and helped him do a few other things. And he was a real nice old guy. And one day he came and he said, "Hey, I got a job putting an awning out in front of the Tivoli." MR. WRIGHT: And you might explain what the Tivoli was and where it was, if you would. MR. TILMAN: Well, if I remember right, it was right TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 41 across from the Nevada Club. I'm not sure whether it was Second Street or Third Street. I'm not certain. MR. WRIGHT: Somewhere right smack-dab downtown in other words? MR. TILMAN: Oh, yeah, right downtown Las Vegas. Well, and this Tivoli, the first time I was ever in there, they had a real nice bar. That was during prohibition the first time I was in there. And they had a little peephole that they looked at you when you'd come up to the door, and then they'd open the door and pass you in if you looked all right. That was when they were looking out for prohis. So it was a speakeasy, I guess you'd say, a bar. And I don't remember any gambling in there at all. It was just strictly a bar, as I remember, at that time. Well, anyway, he said, "Hey, I've got a job to build an awning out in front of the Tivoli." So I did it. That was pretty much more in my line of work, like drilling holes in concrete and things like that and using a single jack and stuff like that and bending pipe. I knew quite a bit about that. And so I actually installed that, and he did all the sewing. He had this canvas shop, and it was green I remember. And it came clear out to the end of the sidewalk, so people could drive up to the sidewalk and be covered as they went into the Tivoli. And that will just give you a rough idea of the kind of jobs that I did around Las Vegas. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 42 MR. WRIGHT: That sounds like one of the classier places in town. MR. TILMAN: It was. It really was; yeah. MR. WRIGHT: You got married sometime not too many years after you got here. MR. TILMAN: Yeah, I got married in 1934. But by this time I had gone back to work out at the dam, and I was working for Six Companies proper. I wasn't working for a subcontractor. MR. WRIGHT: Six Companies was the huge combine that was actually building the dam. MR. TILMAN: Yeah, there were six companies that banded together. And I got a job driving a truck out there. But before that, I also joined the Civilian Conservation Corps. And the first camp that was at Charleston, when they built all of the campgrounds and the trails and actually put water into the campground and all that kind of stuff, I was in the first CC camp that was in Charleston. And that was really a good experience. I drove a truck there and got on the gravy train right quick up there. And they made an ambulance driver out of me. And that ambulance was used by all of the officers to come in and nightclub in Las Vegas. I was really on the inside. I'd bring them in and let them off wherever they wanted to go. And they'd say, "You be back here at a certain time and pick TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 43 us up." And I had the ambulance, and I could do whatever I wanted to. MR. WRIGHT: You had the evening free to enjoy the night life. MR. TILMAN: Yeah, which I did. But when they said you be back here at a certain time, I was there. But I could tell you quite a bit of stories about what took place and that but this interview is liable to go -- MR. WRIGHT: Well, we can do a second interview if you choose. MR. TILMAN: Okay. Well, are you interested in the early development of Mount Charleston? MR. WRIGHT: Why don't you tell us just a little bit about it. I think people see it now as a ski resort and so on, but it was something quite different back in the '30s. MR. TILMAN: Yeah. MR. WRIGHT: Let's come back to that one in a minute, shall we? Yeah, I want to get back to that. I want to get maybe just a little bit about what Charleston was in those years. MR. TILMAN: All right. Charleston at that time was absolutely undeveloped. There was a little old ranch about where that hotel is up there now. And I think somebody was living there all right. That's in the forest reserve. It's above BLM land. And the forest service actually had control TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 44 over the Charleston area, maybe they still do. I don't know. But they wanted to develop it as a recreation area for people in Las Vegas. Of course, there weren't that many people in Las Vegas. But it was a dirt road up there, and it was steep in places and a little bit difficult to negotiate. There had been a burned-over area about where that hotel is now and on up into the canyon. They had had a forest fire up there, and it had killed a lot of quite large trees in there. And those trees were still standing at the start area before you went into the canyon proper. And you go on up the canyon. About one of the first things the CC boys did there was build a barracks and a mess hall about where that ranger station is there now, I believe. There was no development up there at all, absolutely nothing. And they also built a telephone line from Las Vegas up there. The CC boys built that. MR. WRIGHT: I think it's worth knowing that this New Deal agency of the 1930s helped develop a lot of Las Vegas and, in this case, Mount Charleston as well. MR. TILMAN: Yeah, you see, this was one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's things, this CCs; Civilian Conservation Corps is what that is. And the idea was to take any of the young fellas, especially out of the cities like Chicago and down in the south, and to move them out of that area and get them into other areas. And it was a really wonderful thing in TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 45 that it broadened everybody that came into contact with each other. And there was a lot of, like for instance, these little Utah towns that had become almost just isolated. And when the CC boys moved in there, it was one of the best things that ever happened. Of course, these were all pretty much Mormon settlements in Utah and these small towns and what have you. And I've heard any number of LDS people say that one of the best things that ever happened to the state of Utah was to have those boys come in from all over the country. And some of them married some of the Mormon girls and settled down in the communities, and some of them took the girls where they came from. And it was good in a way. MR. WRIGHT: Okay. You were sort of trying to give us a little bit of the feel of Las Vegas from your standpoint. Is there anything else that you can think of that would help a modern day listener understand what living in Las Vegas was like in the 1930s? MR. TILMAN: Yeah. Well, from my viewpoint, of course, recreation to me was second to having a job. And all young fellas were out to have a good time. And my early experience was naturally involved in the gambling end of it because there was always a chance that you could run a quarter up to 3 or $4. And I can remember some of the clubs that catered to, you might say, we poor people. Like the Big 4, TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 46 for instance, in the early days you could go in there and gamble on anything in the place with nickels. You didn't have to have dollars. You could play roulette, for instance, for nickels. And you could get in a poker game or anything. They had everything. Of course, like all young guys, I had to try my hand at all of these various things. And it didn't take me too long to realize that those guys that run those clubs were way ahead of me, and I quit donating to them probably within a year. MR. WRIGHT: I recall your telling us about a little cafe. You mentioned the Big 4 Club. Wasn't there a little cafe inside? You had a great story about that cafe. MR. TILMAN: Yeah. You want me to tell you that story? MR. WRIGHT: Would you please? MR. TILMAN: Yeah. This Big 4, right next to it in fact -- MR. WRIGHT: And this is on First Street, just off of Fremont? MR. TILMAN: Yeah, uh-huh. Right next to it was a little cafe called the Midget Cafe. And you could go in there and for 25 cents you could get a T-bone steak, biscuits and potatoes, and I mean all the biscuits you could eat. You only got one T-bone steak, but they told you you could have all of the biscuits you wanted to eat and coffee for 25 cents. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 47 Well, I have to get kind of away from that for just a minute. But later, maybe four or five years later, I was working out at the dam. This might have been about 1937 or something like that. And fact is, let's see, the war came on in '40, didn't it? In the '40s? MR. WRIGHT: Yeah, it started in Europe in '39. Of course, Pearl Harbor was in '41. MR. TILMAN: Yeah. Well, it was during this period when they began to call people up from this country that, out at the dam, we had to -- all of these young men were leaving and some of the older ones were leaving. And we just had hired women, and we had old men, maybe 65 or 70 years old, that we were hiring out there at that time. And I remember I was working out in, I believe, in No. 2 tunnel putting some big cable in out there. By this time, I was kind of in charge of this operation. And they sent an old fella out there. He came out and he walked right up to me and says, "Are you the boss man?" And I said, "Well you call me that, I guess, if you want to. Everybody calls me Lee." He said, "Well, Lee, I'm going to be honest with you. I don't know the first thing about this." He said, "I used to operate restaurants, and I don't know a thing about this kind of work. But I'm a willing worker and a hard worker, and I can learn." And he's on old man too. And I said, "You know, it seems to me like I've seen TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 48 you before." And he said, "Yeah, I used to run a cafe in Las Vegas." And I said, "Yeah, it was the Midget Cafe, wasn't it?" And he said yeah. I said, "Well, you know, I had always been wondering how in the world you could serve T-bone steaks, biscuits, potatoes and coffee, and all the biscuits you could eat. How in the world could you do that for 25 cents?" I never will forget. And I don't know to this day whether he was pulling my leg a little bit or not. He come over confidential, you know. He said, "Lee, you know, we saved those T-bones." I said, "What do you mean 'saved those T-bones?'" "Well," he said, "when the T-bones, you know, they couldn't eat the bones, and when the bones came back in the kitchen, we would just take the bones, very carefully put them in an old flank steak on the meat block there and then hit them with the broad side of a cleaver. And they'd go right down into this flank steak and," he said, "it's cheap; ten cents a pound stuff, you know." "And," he said, "then that's the way we'd make the T-bones." "And, you know," he said, "I can honestly tell you that we have sold as many as five or six T-bones on one T-bone." MR. WRIGHT: That says quite a bit about Las Vegas and the Depression right there, I think. MR. TILMAN: This old fella, he died while he was working there at the dam. He stayed there. MR. WRIGHT: Okay. You lived in Las Vegas. Tell us TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 49 where you lived. You lived in a couple of different places. MR. TILMAN: Yeah. The first place I lived was on what was called Clark Avenue, right near where the Moulin Rouge is. It's about Eighth Street. I lived there for maybe off and on -- my folks lived there. I didn't really live there. I was there part of the time. Part of the time I was someplace else. After I got married in 1934, I first lived right near the Fifth Street grammar school. Do you remember that? It later became a government office where they -- MR. WRIGHT: That's the one that probably used to stand where the Foley Federal Building is there now. MR. TILMAN: There was a grammar school there and it was on Fifth Street. MR. WRIGHT: It was between Fourth and Fifth. MR. TILMAN: Yeah, between Fourth and Fifth. MR. WRIGHT: And, I think, that's the one that probably they tore down to build the present federal building that's there. MR. TILMAN: All right. There was a tennis court there too, and I lived on Fourth Street, I guess. You might say I could probably throw a baseball over into the tennis courts, which was right next to this Fifth -- and I lived there for probably six months or such a matter. And then I had an opportunity to move on out of town, TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 50 which is out there where I told you that the Fifth Street at that time, which is Las Vegas Boulevard now, and the Main Street came together out there, which they still do. And right at that point and a little bit west of there, I rented a house there. And this is where the Monte Carlo Auto Court, I'm going to say, and Mike Pappas had a little water well there. And he pumped water and furnished this water, and I lived right adjoining of that. And that's pretty close to what 1600 South Main is now. MR. WRIGHT: And 1600 South Main was your address at that time? MR. TILMAN: That was the address at that time. MR. WRIGHT: And you considered that out of town -- MR. TILMAN: It was out of town. MR. WRIGHT: -- at that point. MR. TILMAN: Let me tell you, it was out of town. But why old Mike Pappas was out there -- he wasn't really on the highway either because the highway was what was Fifth Street, actually. And Main and Fifth Street became one out there. And there was a little motel cabin camp, I guess you'd call it. It was what later become motels, you know. But in those days they were cabins. Up there at that point that's all that was there. Then on out, the only casino was the Pair-O-Dice, like Pair-O-Dice. It was located out there. And then on out TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 51 there maybe a mile or so beyond that was the Red Rooster. MR. WRIGHT: Did you ever go to the Red Rooster? MR. TILMAN: Yeah. MR. WRIGHT: If you would, describe it for us. Do you recall who owned it first of all? MR. TILMAN: No, I don't. MR. WRIGHT: Gracie Hayes, who later became Gracie Hayes Lodge. MR. TILMAN: I don't remember who owned it. I do remember it though. MR. WRIGHT: If you'd describe it just in a sentence or two, if you would please. MR. TILMAN: Well, to me the Pair-O-Dice, for instance, was really uptown. It was really a classy joint in comparison to the Red Rooster. MR. WRIGHT: The Pair-O-Dice is about where the Frontier is now, approximately, became part of that complex there. MR. TILMAN: It could be. That's changed so much it would be hard for me to say. But those were the only two. And the Red Rooster, I'd say, was pretty much as the Green Shack. They had a poker table and a 21 table, as I remember, and a bar. And it was just a very small operation at that time. MR. WRIGHT: And that's what we now call the TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 52 Las Vegas Strip in the 1930s version. MR. TILMAN: Yeah, that's the Las Vegas Strip. MR. WRIGHT: Okay. You finally got a good steady day-in-day-out, week-in-week-out job at the dam construction site. What was that? MR. TILMAN: The first job I got after Six Companies now -- see, Six Companies, I was driving truck down there. And I hauled a load of men back and forth, like probably 25 other people that were living in Las Vegas because they couldn't get housing in Boulder City. And that's when I lived there where the Stratosphere is now. MR. WRIGHT: Oh, I wanted to ask you about that before we go on. I think you mentioned to us once before that you had a chance to buy some property right in there? MR. TILMAN: Yes. MR. WRIGHT: Did you jump at the chance? MR. TILMAN: No, I turned it down like a dummy. The lady that owned that -- well, she and her husband owned it when I rented it, and they got a divorce. And she wound up with that property. And what it was, it was about a three-room house. And then in back of it, they had a little two-room very, very poor house. But I rented the whole thing from them. By this time I'm married and I'm working on a steady job at Boulder Dam. I believe I am. I had so many breaks in those early days. But by 1936 I was still living TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 53 there. And in 1936 I definitely had a permanent job that was ready to turn civil service for the government. But this woman, during this period, she came and she said, "Lee, would you buy this property from me?" And I said, "Well, gosh, I don't think so because as soon as we get this dam built out here, why, I think this Las Vegas is going to fold up like an accordion." And she said, "Well, I'll sell it to you for $800." And I said, "$800 is a lot of money." And I said, "No, I don't think I'm interested in it. I appreciate you giving me the chance." But I turned her down on it. That property right now, I know, is worth $50,000 a front foot. But that's just one of the mistakes I made. MR. WRIGHT: Well, I've heard people say these were the Depression years. And, as you've said, nobody expected this town to grow anything like what it is today. You lived in Las Vegas and drove every day out to Boulder City to work, didn't you? MR. TILMAN: Yes. MR. WRIGHT: You've sort of described a little bit about what the Los Angeles Highway was, what The Strip was in the 1930s. Can you sort of describe your trip, which you did twice a day, from your home in Las Vegas out to Boulder City? What was that trip like and what was Boulder Highway like? What kind of establishments and so forth? MR. TILMAN: Yeah. As I remember, there was Four TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 54 Mile, which in those days I think they called it Purple Sage. And there was a big, large grove. I think they were cottonwood trees back in there. And there was a dance hall back there. It was off of the road a little ways. And that drainage out of the Las Vegas area used to drain right through there. It's called Four Mile. There was a bridge that crossed the road there. And that was one of the places, in those days, they had what they called taxi dancers. And I don't know. It wasn't exactly to be compared to, say, Block 16 or houses of prostitution. Somehow or another, we didn't think of it that way. MR. WRIGHT: Go ahead and explain what you meant by the taxi dancers. MR. TILMAN: You could go in there, and you could buy tickets. And there was girls there, and you could pick out whichever girl you wanted to dance with, but she'd take a ticket. And that's what they called taxi dancers. I think a lot of them are perfectly nice girls. There might have been a few of them that might have been practicing prostitution. But for the most part, at least from my viewpoint, they were nice girls. MR. WRIGHT: Okay. You mentioned Block 16. Just briefly, where and what was Block 16? MR. TILMAN: Block 16, I think, was on First Street. And there was two clubs there that I remember. One was the TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 55 Arizona Club. And across the street from it -- I've forgotten the name of the one across the street. MR. WRIGHT: There were a couple of places out there. The Golden Camel, I think, was close by out there. MR. TILMAN: But that wasn't really on Block 16. MR. WRIGHT: No, no. MR. TILMAN: But where the girls sat out, if you go down Block 16, you'd see -- I'm talking about, say, from '32 to '36 when the Army closed down Block 16. So that might have been even '38 or something like that. MR. WRIGHT: I think they tried to close it several times. But when the Army finally came to town they said, "You're going to close the block or we're not going to let our servicemen into town." MR. TILMAN: That's what closed it. You're right. But if you'd drive through Block 16, the girls would motion to you to come on in. Or if you walked by, they were hustling business, and it didn't matter who you were. That was their business and if you were interested, why they'd take you by the arm. And I can honestly say I never patronized any of them, but I've walked through there many a time. But sometimes the girls that you'd be going with would say, "Would you take me down? I'd like to see Block 16." And so I've driven through there with girls. And it was always just one of those things, lark, I guess you'd say, that TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 56 young people thought -- MR. WRIGHT: Yeah, even the Review-Journal in those years used to say that there were two major tourist attractions in Las Vegas: One was Boulder Dam, and the other was Block 16. But just the kind of thing that you were talking about. MR. TILMAN: Yeah, that's the sort of thing. You said it much better than I can. MR. WRIGHT: Probably we should mention that prostitution was legal during the 1930s, so they weren't at all hassled by law enforcement kinds of things. But going back a little bit to, say, maybe the prohibition years, did the police, any kind of authority, try to limit the sale of alcoholic beverages? Well, let's see. I sort of put that badly. In the early '30s, going back again a bit to when you first came here, gambling was illegal and prohibition was in effect. What kind of relationship existed between the saloon keepers, for example, and law enforcement officials? Talking specifically about were they occasionally raided or that sort of thing? MR. TILMAN: I'd have to ask a question there. When did -- MR. WRIGHT: Prohibition went off in '33. MR. TILMAN: I mean the prostitution. You said TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 57 that -- MR. WRIGHT: That continued more or less legally until 1940. MR. TILMAN: Well, it was legal as far back as I can remember. MR. WRIGHT: Yeah, right. MR. TILMAN: Did it become legal or was it always legal? MR. WRIGHT: It was legal up until, within the city limits, up until, as you mentioned, the Army came to town. And basically what happened was -- MR. TILMAN: I was trying to go back before though. Ever since I can remember in Nevada towns, there's been houses of prostitution. Was there ever an act that made them legal? MR. WRIGHT: I think the situation was there was never an act that made them illegal except on a county option basis. In two large counties, Washoe and Clark County, it is illegal. MR. TILMAN: Now, there was something that these girls had to be inspected. MR. WRIGHT: Well, my understanding is that there was a local doctor that gave the medical inspection once a month. MR. TILMAN: Well, now, that apparently had something to do with the law. MR. WRIGHT: Yeah. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 58 MR. TILMAN: They legally had to be inspected, and they also had to stay in a certain area in every town I was ever in in Nevada. They were not supposed to come out. They did on occasion, but they were supposed to stay in the area designated for that purpose. Now, that had to be some kind of legal maneuvering that did that. MR. WRIGHT: Presumably, yes. MR. TILMAN: Uh-huh. MR. WRIGHT: I was thinking more specifically about the prohibition aspect of that. Of course, that was gone pretty much by 1933. But there were occasional raids, were there not? We mentioned that one individual who sold home-brew out on Eldorado Dry Lake. But occasionally the prohibition agents would come into town, would they not? MR. TILMAN: Yes, they would. See, there was somebody making this booze besides the retailer. In other words, they had these stills. For instance, in Boulder City there's a canyon there called Bootleg Canyon. And there's supposed to have been a still there. And I think there was. I was never in it. And I remember a chap by the name of Pat Pansy. Pat might not be right, but his last name was Pansy. I remember one time a Greek fella came from Southern California. And I was operating a wood yard in Las Vegas at that time. We were hauling wood from the Charleston area that I told you about, TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 59 the burned-over area. We'd go up there and get a load of that pine and bring it down and saw it up and peddle wood around. It was just one of the things I was involved in. And this relative of Harry Reid, Bob Reid, was in business with us. When I say "business," it was really a shoestring business. We had an old Model T Ford pickup that I used to deliver wood with and also jacked one wheel up on it to run a buzz saw off of the same outfit that we delivered the wood with. But this Bob Reid had a Ford truck. And he and my two brothers that were involved with me would go to Charleston with this truck and load it up with wood and bring it back down to the wood yard. And I did most of the sawing and delivering of the wood. But we got by one winter that way. And fact is, we'd split up the proceeds at the end of the week and by just mutual agreement with my brothers, we'd always give Bob Reid a little more than we took because he was married and had a couple of kids and we didn't. So we always gave him a little more than we took. MR. WRIGHT: I sort of led you on a side trail back there. We're kind of on the home stretch now, I think. We've been talking for quite a while. Tell us just a little bit about what your job became in Boulder City and what kinds of work you did from that point on. MR. TILMAN: Well, I went to work as electrician TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 60 helper for the government. And previous to that I was working at this ice plant in Las Vegas, icing cars. And the boss there told me one day, "Lee, this place is going to fold. This ice business is on its way out. You know, if I was a young fella, I'd go out and get a job with the government." And I said, "Well, I'm just going to take your advice." And so I did. And I went to the employment office and put in an application, and they were hiring electrician helpers. And I'd had a little experience and I actually qualified. MR. WRIGHT: And this is for the Bureau of Reclamation? MR. TILMAN: That's for the Bureau of Reclamation. And they hired me as electrician helper for $4.96 a day for the government. That was before civil service. And then I stayed there and worked for the government from 1936 until I retired in 1969. And the only time I was away are short periods that I was detailed someplace else, like down in Needles and places like that where, among other things, I became an instructor for first aid, like the Bureau of Mines. And I actually became an instructor of instructors, so they shipped me out once in a while to do that. But other than that, I stayed right on Boulder Dam. And during World War II, I spent six months in the Army at Fort Lewis, Washington. They found out I was from Boulder Dam and that was I was an electrician. And instead of TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 61 sending me overseas with my outfit, why, they put me teaching school at Fort Lewis, Washington. So that's what I did is taught electrical theory and, well, practical electricity. But as the years went by on Boulder Dam in the total of 32 years for the government, I gradually moved up the ladder from electrician helper to a journeyman electrician and worked as journeyman electrician on the installation of the generators. What you see inside of Boulder Dam now, I've probably worked on most, if not all, parts of it at some time or another. And I wound up as an operations foreman. During the interim periods there, I worked as a general foreman, as a relief foreman, as an electrical foreman for the electric shop. I had various jobs through those years. But the best job -- it was the last job I had there -- was the operations foreman, which was when I was on shift, I was the top man for the government. There was four of us, I guess. And it's interesting when you think about it. The operations foreman actually was in charge of Boulder Dam much longer than the top wheels were because they worked day shift with Saturdays and Sundays off. We covered 24 hours a day. And the only time that the top people actually were in charge were five days a week, eight hours a day. And the rest of the time was actually either a general foreman or an operations foreman, or somebody like that was actually in charge down there. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 62 MR. WRIGHT: Okay. Just a couple of side things I might just ask you about very briefly. Being a government employee, there were certain things that you were not supposed to do, for example, homestead or take advantage of some of the homesteading. And I think people would be interested in knowing a little bit about the homesteading. And I think your family had an experience there that would be interesting as well. MR. TILMAN: Yes. I can't give you dates on this, but out here in Paradise Valley, the BLM -- and I don't know just how this worked -- but anyway, they had five-acre homesteads. And, I think, for $250 and maybe -- no, you didn't have to do anything else. I think you could buy that homestead, actually, for $250 because that's what they did. And it was five acres. And all of the information coming across our desks down there at the dam said that, for government employees, that was taboo. You were not to even apply for those homesteads out there or even get involved in it because they said that since we worked for the government that we were not eligible. Well, by this time I had climbed up the ladder quite a ways, and I was looking forward to retirement and to promotions and things like that. And so I really had a lot invested in civil service, actually. And so I took them at their word. I didn't take any chances. I didn't get involved TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 63 in that out there. But I knew any number of people that did that said, "Oh, what the hell, the government can't fire me if I do it." And they did, and the government didn't fire them. And some of them got as many as two or three of those five acres, and they made fortunes. I know any number of people that made a fortune on that land. But I didn't. But my mother, like mothers are, she was able to get a hold of some acreage out there. And I wound up, as a free gift from her, with two acres of land out there in Paradise Valley. MR. WRIGHT: Can you tell us, in today's terms, about where that would be? MR. TILMAN: Yes. That land today would be on the corner of Fort Apache and Wigwam, I believe. And this particular parcel that she had was on the corner. And luckily, it was five acres. And she gave me the five acres, but later she needed three acres of it for other reasons. And I just told her, "You can have it all. You gave it to me." But she said, "No, I want you to keep a couple of acres of that." So I did. And that two acres I kept is right on that corner. And I'd say 15 years went by, and I just paid the taxes on it and figured, well, someday maybe it will be worth something. You know, all at once, about 15 or 20 years later, I began to get letters from real estate people saying, "We have TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 64 a buyer for land out where we understand you" -- by this time I owned it myself. My mother had died, and so it was my property. And they began to write these letters to me. I just kind of ignored them for a while. All at once they began calling me on the phone. And finally somebody came out with a contract and had a check for $1,000 and said, "We'll give you $15,000 an acre for that land," something like that. I said, "Well, if it's worth $15,000 an acre to you, I think I'll just hang onto it." And he said, "Well, how much will you take for it?" You know, I didn't need the money by this time. I got a pretty good job, you know. I said, "How about $100,000?" He said, "Oh, no, there's land selling all around out there for $25,000 an acre." I said, "Well, you come back and see me when it's worth $100,000 'cause I'm going to keep it. I'm going to lay in the weeds for $100,000." They turned me down. And so I went another two or three years and somebody else came out and said, "Say, we have a buyer for this land out here." They said, "How much do you want for it?" And I said, "Well, I've always said I'd sell it for $100,000, but I've kept it now and I don't know whether I'd better let it go for $100,000 or not." "Would you take $100,000 for it?" And I said, well, I'd think about it. He was representing a buyer. I'll tell you the buyer was a man that now owns the Las Vegas Auto Parts. He told me that this guy owned a TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 65 Las Vegas Auto Parts, and he thought he might could get me $100,000 for it. I thought, well, maybe he wants to put up a store. Two acres would be just right for an auto parts, see. I said, "Well, I'll think about it." And so he went back and talked to him and he came back and he said, "Yeah, he'll go $100,000 for that." I said, "Well, I've been thinking about it. I think I've got to have a little more than $100,000. I'll go 125,000 for it." So he went back and talked to the guy. See, I made a counteroffer, and the guy took it. I said, "I want it set up in this way: I think I'm going to live another ten years, and I don't want all that money at one time. I want it to come in over a period of ten years. And the first five years you pay me nine percent interest, and the second five years you pay me ten percent interest. And that's my final offer. And there's no use trying to change it. If he'll meet those terms, he's bought himself a piece of property." He come back in about three or four days and said, "He's going to take you up on it." So it turned out that I did pretty well at it without ever risking my job out there. MR. WRIGHT: It paid you to keep up the taxes on that piece of property. MR. TILMAN: Yeah, it really did. MR. WRIGHT: Okay. Let's just kind of maybe wrap things up. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 66 (End of tape.) * * * * * 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 ??