NEVADA STATE MUSEUM & HISTORICAL SOCIETY LAS VEGAS, NEVADA THE LAS VEGAS I REMEMBER INTERVIEW WITH HARLEY E. HARMON DECEMBER 16, 1997 Taken At KNPR Studios 5151 Boulder Highway Las Vegas, Nevada 2 MR. WRIGHT: First, I want to introduce myself. I'm Frank Wright, and this is The Las Vegas I Remember. And I'd like our guest to introduce himself. MR. HARMON: My name is Harley E. Harmon, and I was born in Las Vegas, 11-21-1918. MR. WRIGHT: So you go back a little ways. MR. HARMON: A little ways. MR. WRIGHT: Okay. And today's date, I guess we'll get it on the record, is 12-16-1997. MR. HARMON: Yeah. MR. WRIGHT: Okay. The Harmon name obviously goes back a long ways. How did the Harmon family first become associated with this place called Las Vegas? MR. HARMON: My father came to Las Vegas in 1905 on the railroad, which was then the old Los Angeles-Salt Lake City Railroad. And he didn't live here until 1908, but he was in and out of the town. In 1908 he brought his mother, Mrs. Elmer Harmon, to run a little rooming house so that they could get along. The company only had one small rooming house. So she came in 1908 and stayed until about 1910. MR. WRIGHT: Before that, where was your father living? MR. HARMON: He was living in Los Angeles, but the Harmons originated in Weir, Kansas. And my grandfather, Elmer Harmon, was an attorney, and they migrated to Los Angeles. He 3 was a law associate with the famous criminal attorney Earl Rogers. And my grandfather died of consumption, and my grandmother was left with two boys to raise. Elmer Harmon was my uncle, who died young of TB. And then my father, Harley A., who was a butcher boy that was selling newspapers and sandwiches and everything on the old red line between San Pedro and Los Angeles. MR. WRIGHT: Which became part of the other railroad later; right? MR. HARMON: That's right. And then he worked as a butcher boy delivering meat and everything in those days. That's the way they did. And women would call and give the order. And he was a great acquaintance through the years with Gene Biculuse (phonetic), who for years was sheriff of L.A. County. And I remember as a boy we used to go in and visit with Gene Biculuse. And believe it or not, my father was 21 years of age, and he ran for city clerk of Los Angeles and lost by a few votes. MR. WRIGHT: Los Angeles was a good deal smaller then. MR. HARMON: Yeah, a good deal smaller. MR. WRIGHT: So even though your father didn't live in Las Vegas, he saw its birth, did he not? 4 MR. HARMON: That's right. He saw the birth. And he was there at the auctioning and so on and so forth. But the actual residence he took up in 1908. MR. WRIGHT: Did he tell you any stories about the auction, about the first days and weeks of the town? MR. HARMON: Well, yeah. In this respect, there was already a town site called Williams, remember? And we call it Westside, but it was Williams to start with, and that's where the township originally started. But then the people decided that that was on the wrong side of the tracks. MR. WRIGHT: West of the tracks. MR. HARMON: Yeah, west of the tracks. Yeah, so they came over on the east side. And that's where they had the auction and everything in front of the railroad station. MR. WRIGHT: So your grandmother, did she operate a rooming house, or did your father stay at the railroad rooming house? MR. HARMON: No, he stayed with her. And she had met a man there by the name of William Studnickea. He was an engineer. Part of his room that he was expected to pay -- she did cook for him -- he had to bring the ice from the icehouse every day and put it in the icebox. Well, those days, you know, it was on the top. And my grandmother always used to open the old evaporated milk. Remember, it had the cow, Pet? And sometimes she didn't care whether the cow was upside down 5 or whatever, she'd just punch holes in it. So he'd come, and being German descent, he was very, very particular about everything. And he wouldn't look to see where the holes were. He saw the cow upside down, and of course, the milk would drain down and drop down into the refrigerator. And she stood about four foot seven. And he was a big man, about six foot three, handlebar mustache. And she'd stand and shake the finger at him, "Studnickea, if you do that again, you won't put your feet under my table." Anyway, to make a long story short, they got married and they went back to Los Angeles then. He did extremely well. His old saying was ten percent of everything you earn is yours to keep. And he later on, with a real estate man, started buying and selling avocado farms. They did extremely well. And then he died, and my grandmother remained in the L.A. home. And she'd have roomers for a while, but then she got to the point where she didn't need that anymore. But we used to go down and stay with her. In fact, when my mother died, I stayed for almost a year and a half with my grandmother in Los Angeles. MR. WRIGHT: Your father wasn't here very long before he became very central to events. He went right to the center of what was happening in the town. Could you tell us a little 6 bit about that? MR. HARMON: Well, my father was a very outgoing man. He'd walk down the street and say hello to everybody, and if he didn't know them, he would introduce himself. I know when we'd walk down the street in L.A., I'd get a headache looking at everybody because that's what we learned from him. Yeah, he got interested and they wanted to have the separation from Lincoln County. MR. WRIGHT: Can you explain just a little bit for people who are new to the area why that seemed such a good idea at the time? MR. HARMON: Well, they envisioned that Las Vegas was going to grow. Also, it was a central stopping point for the national cross-section of the railroad. The people have to come to get onto a railroad would have to come to Las Vegas or they couldn't get on Caliente. But they envisioned one of these days they wouldn't be stopping in Caliente, so they thought it would be a good idea to separate from Lincoln. MR. WRIGHT: The county seat of Lincoln was? MR. HARMON: Pioche. MR. WRIGHT: That's quite a ways a way. MR. HARMON: Quite a ways away. So to make records for your property and everything, it was a long jaunt up there. So they got together. Ed Clark was the leader of it, 7 and he was originally from Lincoln County. And he had started the Clark Forwarding Company. And my dad was, of course, interested, and he was a Democrat. In those days there was a lot of Democrats around, not like today, but there was a lot of them. So he and Ed Clark and the rest of them, they had a convention, and they went to Caliente, which had more hotel space than they would in Pioche. And they had the convention, and they were stalemated. And he went to Ed Clark and he said, "Ed, we're a stalemate, but if you'll pay for a case of whiskey, why, I'll assure you we'll get the votes." So he got the case of whiskey, and the next day they had the votes for the separation, Lincoln and Clark. MR. WRIGHT: That was the votes for the commission, a fine old Nevada tradition of encouraging the voters just a little bit. MR. HARMON: That's right. And he was the first Exalted Ruler of the Elks, and he was the organizer of the stray Elks, Elks from all over the area that belonged to other lodges but were working in Las Vegas. A lot of people don't remember, but Las Vegas really was a railroad town and the whole thing centered around that railroad. Everybody other than the professional men and politicians worked for the railroad. I had an uncle that at 14 years of age, Delano 8 Wengert, was a call boy. Now, if you ask people who a call boy is, in those days they didn't have telephones, so they had to make sure that the man was notified that he had to go out on a certain run. My uncle would get on the bicycle and go over and knock on the door and say, "You've got to be on the run at 5:00 o'clock. I'm here at 2:00 to wake you up and get you on the way." Later on, believe it or not, Delano Wengert became the general superintendent of the Union Pacific Railroad. MR. WRIGHT: So a good proportion of the town's population worked for the railroad. MR. HARMON: That's right. MR. WRIGHT: And if you didn't work for the railroad, you sold them shoes and groceries. MR. HARMON: That's right. Or you had a dairy. Mr. George Ullom, he had a ranch on Shadow Lane. And his dairy, the Ullom Dairy, I used to deliver milk. I was the guy that run to the porch and put the milk on the porch. MR. WRIGHT: Did you know George? MR. HARMON: Oh, yeah. The father? Oh, yeah. They had that ranch on Shadow Lane. MR. WRIGHT: There's an interesting story about that. There were two other dairies in town at the time. But I think it was his mother, the doctor advised her she had to have Guernsey milk or Jersey milk, I've forgotten which. So 9 he started a dairy. MR. HARMON: That's right. MR. WRIGHT: And that's out about where the University Medical Center is now, just about? MR. HARMON: It's really where the health department is. That's where it really is, on Valley and Shadow Lane. MR. WRIGHT: Just sort of thinking about the town in your younger years, and trying to get some kind of visual description of the town, I know that area was just called southwest of town. That was so far out of the town -- MR. HARMON: Well, that's where what's now UMC, that's where the old folks home was eventually. And then there was a lot of veteran rights that they could file up there, which was originally Hyde Park the west side of town, that whole hillside was people that they could get some veteran rights. I forget what they called that in those days. But William Scott, Helen Scott Reid's husband, he was an old railroader that became a lawyer and became an assistant DA. They bought some land out there. Al Cahlan bought land out there. Ernie Cragin. And I could go on and on, on the west side of town. MR. WRIGHT: Sort of the central figures in Las Vegas's early years. MR. HARMON: Yeah, um-hm. 10 MR. WRIGHT: I wanted to know something a little bit more about maybe some of the stories that your father told you. You mentioned there were a lot of Democrats. There was one Republican and he was the sheriff. MR. HARMON: Yeah, that was the -- MR. WRIGHT: That was Sam Gay, obviously. MR. HARMON: Old Sam Gay, yeah. His big stomach and he had the gold chain across and he had the big mustache. And there used to be a restaurant originally -- before it became the Las Vegas Club, there was a restaurant in there. And I remember as a kid we used to go and stand and watch Sam Gay eat lunch. He knew we were watching, so he'd always make a big exaggeration taking the spoon way out so his stomach wouldn't be in the way and then get the soup. And he always had the big napkin wrapped around his neck. He always had the ten-gallon hat and so forth. He was quite a character. MR. WRIGHT: He got into a little difference of opinion from time to time with your father, as I recall, once over gambling. MR. HARMON: Yeah. MR. WRIGHT: Do you recall that story? MR. HARMON: No. I got fragments of it, but I don't have enough to be authentic on it so I won't. MR. WRIGHT: Okay. MR. HARMON: But I know that they didn't agree on a 11 lot of things. MR. WRIGHT: Another Republican in town in those years, and maybe the most important one, was Pop Squires. Well, Pop Squires, and another big Republican was Art Ham, Senior. MR. WRIGHT: Can you tell us a little bit about those two gentlemen? You must have known them well over the years. MR. HARMON: Well, Art Ham, Senior, and my father both came from Boyle Heights in Los Angeles. And his father also was a conductor on the railroad. And Art, Senior, came to Las Vegas to open a law practice. And my father and he went back to the days in Boyle Heights where they knew each other. And they always got along, and Art, Senior, was quite a man. He had a great law practice, and later on he was a partner in the Golden Nugget membership and so forth. Pop Squires was quite a character. He had the Las Vegas Age, and he was a Republican. And he was kind of one of those Republicans, there was no such thing as a good Democrat, which was fine. Also, his wife was a real go-getter. A lot of women liked her, and she was the society editor and so forth. She was popular. I remember one story that they told. Pop Squires and my dad and mother were in Carson, and they went up to Lake Tahoe. And in those days of prohibition and gaming, you came 12 to the outer bar and you could have a coke or whatever it was. And you could give them the password that had been given to you with the other, and then they'd open up and take you into the back room. So my father gave the word and nothing happened. And finally, he decided, "Well, I better look to find the owner." And he went over and wanted to know why they hadn't gotten in. And he said, "Mr. Harmon, we really don't know that gentleman. He looks like he's a minister, and we're not so sure we want to let him in." My dad laughed. He said, "He's publisher of the Las Vegas Age. He's far from a minister, let him in." So, that was a little amusing story that my dad always used to tell. Pop Squires would start giving him hell, and he'd say, "Well, maybe you were a minister at one time." MR. WRIGHT: He lived for a long, long time, 94 or something like that. MR. HARMON: Yeah, uh-huh. MR. WRIGHT: So he saw the whole thing. MR. HARMON: He saw a lot. And he had a lot to do with a lot. MR. WRIGHT: Your father was a railroad man and worked for some time after coming to Las Vegas for the railroad. Then he got into law, did he not? MR. HARMON: Well, what happened was he was on the engine going into Yermo and the thing exploded, the boiler. 13 And he called in, and they said "Well, you're reporting this and you're fired." He says, "Like hell I am. I quit an hour ago." And he came back and because of the New Deal, they appointed him as the first county clerk. And then they formed a city, and he was city clerk at the grand sum totaling of $25 a month for taking the records for the city. He got quite involved with the clerk's office, and he spent a lot of time in the courtroom listening to attorneys and so on and so forth. There was an attorney that came here. His name was Stevens. And he was a professor of law at Stanford, and he contracted TB, and they told him to go to the desert. Well, he went to Arizona, and on his way back, he didn't like Arizona, but he fell in love with Las Vegas and he stayed. And of course, being a professor of law at Stanford and everything, he had no trouble getting a shingle to hang out. And he took a liking to my dad. And he said to him one day, "Harley, why don't you study and read the law?" And my dad says, "Who's going to teach me?" And he says, "I will." So my dad read the law with him for almost five years. And in those days you didn't take a written exam, you went before the Supreme Court and it was a verbal examination. And after three days, why, then he heard about a week later that he passed. So then he ran for district 14 attorney, and he served three terms as district attorney in Clark County. MR. WRIGHT: In roughly what time period? MR. HARMON: Roughly from '27 and then it was through the construction of Hoover Dam, Boulder Dam then and Hoover after the Republicans got in, which was no more than right. He was quite powerful. He was the lead Democrat within the town. He had his opposition, an old gal by the name of Betsy O'Reilly Gamble was her name. MR. WRIGHT: That's an interesting story about her. Would you tell us a little bit about Betsy O'Reilly Gamble? MR. HARMON: Well, Betsy, all I can remember really -- and I wouldn't be in all fairness to her -- she was quite active. She was very active in the Democratic party. She was a great friend of my mother's mother, Teresa McGovern. Incidentally, McGovern was also on the first city commission. And there was a little animosity between -- my brother died, and I don't know what happened. They buried him in Los Angeles, I think. And my mother or my grandmother wanted him buried here. But anyway, there was bad blood and it slopped over to Betsy O'Reilly Gamble disliking Harley because of Teresa McGovern, my grandmother. MR. WRIGHT: Now, one of the things that I noted some time ago about Betsy O'Reilly Gamble, she was great a friend 15 of miners and prospectors -- MR. HARMON: Yes. Yeah, she certainly was. MR. WRIGHT: -- at holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. MR. HARMON: Oh, yeah, she was. Listen, she was an outstanding character in the early days. I was young at the time, and so I don't remember too much about her, only the family talk at the time, you know. But every time that my father ran, you could bet your bottom dollar Betsy O'Reilly Gamble was going to be against him, but she never won. MR. WRIGHT: Okay. So you came along again in what year? 1916 was it? MR. HARMON: Who? MR. WRIGHT: You. MR. HARMON: Oh, '18. MR. WRIGHT: '18. And where was the family living at that time? MR. HARMON: Here in Las Vegas. We were living at Fifth and Bridger. We had a home at Fifth and Bridger. MR. WRIGHT: Which was probably the elite residential area. MR. HARMON: Oh, yeah, it was out of town. It was four blocks out of town. But we lived there, and then my father built a home at Sixth and Garces, and that was an interesting house. It was built out of adobe, big bricks at 16 the bottom and then tapered up. In the summertime, my mother would get up early in the morning, close the windows and draw the drapes to keep the house cool during the day, and then at night, open them up again. It cooled off at night earlier in the early days. MR. WRIGHT: Was it right on the corner of Sixth and Garces; do you recall? MR. HARMON: Yeah. MR. WRIGHT: Which corner? I know those streets run a little weird out there. MR. HARMON: Well, except Garces went through. MR. WRIGHT: Right. 'Cause there's a vacant lot on one of them. I'm just wondering if -- MR. HARMON: No, that vacant lot was where Jimmy Powers had a -- it was on the other. Well, no, it was up a block. Maybe it wasn't Garces. We'd have to look it up on the map to clear that up. MR. WRIGHT: I've just gotten to know that area for a number of reasons. MR. HARMON: Yeah. MR. WRIGHT: But that was a ways out of town. MR. HARMON: Yeah. And then Pennington bought that for a funeral home and added on to it, which later on was Palm Funeral. MR. WRIGHT: Obviously, you went to school. Where 17 did you go to school? MR. HARMON: Well, I went to school on Fifth Street. And on the first one, which was grammar school, and then the next building was grammar school. And then down at the far end of the block was a high school, which later on when they built the high school, then they moved the upper grades, middle school into there. MR. WRIGHT: How long was your class, for example, to give us some idea? MR. HARMON: Classes were probably around 30, 25. I remember there was a prof by the name of Albert Edwards, big man, stood about six foot three and he had big hands. His fingers would probably be three of my fingers. And he'd snap his fingers like that, and everybody would stand at attention. The second floor, down below, is a maintenance building, and Bob Owens worked there. And he was a nut about reptiles, and he had snakes and everything down there and the kids would go. Not me, I was always afraid of snakes. Anyway, Vince Herrington and I were sitting at the back of the class, and we were talking, not paying attention. We weren't paying attention to him, and he walked around to the back of us and just picked the both of us up by the seat of our pants and walked to the window and looked back and said to the kids, "Shall I drop them?" And of course, all the kids 18 yelled out, "Yeah, drop him, drop him." Well after letting make believe like he was going to drop us about five minutes, he brought us back. Needless to say, we always paid attention in his class and behaved ourselves afterwards. And an odd light on that, when I was president of Frontier Fidelity and he was retired, I hired him at Frontier. I told him I was going to get even with him, I wasn't even going to give him a good salary. MR. WRIGHT: And he became quite an eminent historian of Southern Nevada. MR. HARMON: Yes. He wrote for us, and we'd send them out in our statements, history of all of the leading men in those days, like Jim Cashman, Senior, Ed Clark, and all of them. And he was also instrumental in going to the school board and recommending the Bracken school and a lot of those. MR. WRIGHT: Any names among your classmates that people might still recall? MR. HARMON: Well, of course, there's quite a few of them that are dead. Willard Owens, he was in the class, he's dead. And then you got to remember, around the construction of Boulder Dam, remember, they bussed all the kids from Boulder City in, so there was a lot of influx where we only saw those kids just during the school day. We never saw them at night or anything like that unless we went out there to a dance or something. And you know, a lot of them have left 19 town. And a lot of them, yeah, like Karl Krause, he's living. Art Terlease, former city manager, is still here. He wasn't in my class, 'cause I'm older than he was. But Karl Krause was my age. MR. WRIGHT: He was on the city commission for a while. MR. HARMON: His father was. MR. WRIGHT: Oh, is that his father? MR. HARMON: It was his father. MR. WRIGHT: I see. MR. HARMON: His name was Herb Krause. MR. WRIGHT: Oh, sure. MR. HARMON: And this was his son, Karl. He had another brother by the name of Kermit, and another brother by the name of Wesley. Kermit is dead. Karl is still alive, and Wesley lives here and goes to California to visit his son occasionally, but he's here most of the time, he and his wife. MR. WRIGHT: The town was so small. It started growing rapidly in '29, '30, and '31, but what the heck was there to do for kids and what did kids do in those days? MR. HARMON: Oh, boy, there was plenty to do. Facing Fifth Street, they used to have all of the workout equipment, the chin bar, and they had various things over there for us to do. Then, during the summertime, the old Mermaid Swimming 20 Pool, that's where Baskin's Restaurant used to be, that first block right off it's Mermaid Swimming Pool. And we all bought season tickets, and we'd spend the day. The shallow end of it was covered and the deep end you could get out. We'd spend all day long. MR. WRIGHT: Yeah, the fact that this was just a little bit off of Fremont Street at Las Vegas Boulevard gives some idea of just how small the town was then. MR. HARMON: Well, yeah. Yeah, because you had the McNamee house, you had the Bracken house, you had the Ferron house. MR. WRIGHT: That was right on Fremont Street. MR. HARMON: That was right on Fremont Street, yeah. And Ferrons always used to have a big fence with chicken wire and then two-by-fours across and everything. MR. WRIGHT: And Ferron was a drug store. MR. HARMON: Drug store. MR. WRIGHT: Druggist, uh-huh. MR. HARMON: And I can remember old Gary Cooper sitting there with his cowboy hat and Levis and boots on, his heels into the first strip of two-by-four down below. And he rolled his own cigarettes and everything else. But you know, those people used to come to town and we never bothered them. They liked it because they were left alone. MR. WRIGHT: I hadn't heard about Gary Cooper. I 21 knew Clark Gable used to come down quite frequently. MR. HARMON: Yeah. MR. WRIGHT: And nobody just thought anything about it. MR. HARMON: No, huh-uh. He'd come and stop on his way hunting. Sometimes he'd stay at the Apache Hotel and go on. MR. WRIGHT: The Apache, of course, is now Binion's Horseshoe. MR. HARMON: Binion's Horseshoe. MR. WRIGHT: There were other swimming pools a little further out of town. MR. HARMON: Well, there was originally. Before the Mermaid was the old Las Vegas pool, which was down where the Elks Lodge is now, just below the Elks Lodge. MR. WRIGHT: Near Cashman Field. MR. HARMON: Yeah, it was right in there. And that's where they got the water and everything was the overflow coming from the wells, and the water would come down in the stream and then go into that. MR. WRIGHT: And out where I work at the museum, a guy by the name of David Lorenzi had -- did you ever get out to Lorenzi Resort? MR. HARMON: Oh, yeah, sure, sure. Did they ever tell you how he built that thing by hand himself? 22 MR. WRIGHT: I'd like to hear a little bit about it if you recall. MR. HARMON: Oh, yeah. He built that whole thing. He'd take the horse, and he'd take the great big scraper, and he'd get it out, and then when he had to get to the edges, he and a couple of guys would stand out there with shovels. Yeah, he had quite a thing. And then there was the dance hall that he had, and he had the lake and the swimming pool. MR. WRIGHT: There was a band shell out there. Were there band concerts and that sort of thing? MR. HARMON: Yeah, you'd have band concerts and you'd have dances. Oh, yeah. MR. WRIGHT: Later on rodeos, I understand. MR. HARMON: Yeah. I don't remember the rodeos because I think that was after we left, but I sure remember as a kid going out there and swimming and watching them dance and so on and so forth. MR. WRIGHT: Along the same line, there was a place called the Beanery. All of the old-timers of Las Vegas recall the Beanery very fondly. What was the Beanery? MR. HARMON: Well, the Beanery was run by the railroad, and it was a very nice place. And as I remember, you walked in and they had the counter where you could sit, and then in the back they had a back room that would open up at night for a nice dining room. And the first Rotary Club, 23 that's where they used to meet all the time, at the Beanery. As a kid, my uncle would sometimes take me, Cyril Wengert. I can remember Mr. Corradetti who had the cleaning plant, and he was quite a guy. He was the city commissioner. He was one of those guys that he would never taste his food, but he'd always grab the salt shaker and put on salt. Well, he got up -- they had staged that he was wanted out in front. So as soon as he got up, the guy took the top off and just poured all of the salt over the food, you know. And old Corradetti, he came in and sat down, and he tasted a little bit, and then he put some more salt on, and he ate the whole thing. And these guys, they were thinking that he would grab for the water and start choking, but he didn't. He didn't let on. Yeah, and the Beanery and the railroad was the center of attraction. A lot of people would just go down to watch and see who was coming in and who was leaving. And you talk, see this guy and that guy doing his job. Yeah, every night. Then of course, my dad being an ex-railroad man and being in politics, he'd go down and make sure that he saw who was the engineer and who was the fireman and who was the conductor and who was the guy checking the rods and so forth. MR. WRIGHT: The depot, of course, was right at the head of Fremont Street, where Jackie Gaughan's Plaza is now. Just about a block and a half up there on North First was a 24 rather famous area of town. MR. HARMON: Block 16. MR. WRIGHT: Were you sort of warned away from Block 16? MR. HARMON: Yeah. That's why I got shipped to L.A. to my grandmother. The girls were confined to that place, and they'd want somebody to run errands, to go to the drug store to get something for them or so on and so forth. So I was doing that for about two or three days in the afternoon, and my father found out about it. And there was a day of reckoning over that one, I'll assure you. And a short time after that I was shipped down to California to stay with my grandmother. MR. WRIGHT: Speaking of going to California or perhaps Mount Charleston, one of the things that always, I think, interests people is that it was so darned hot here and there was no air conditioning. Was that a fairly common thing? You just kind of escaped from town for long periods at a stretch? MR. HARMON: No, not too much of that. I don't think there was anybody in town other than the banker and so forth could afford it. But as I recollect, the days were hot and the women used to carry a parasol. And my mother would get out to work in the yard. She planted asparagus and everything, and she always had her arms covered up and a big 25 hat and so on and so forth. But at night, as I remember, it wasn't exactly cool, but it wasn't uncomfortable to stay in the house and sleep. But you wouldn't have any blankets on or anything. And the windows were open and sometimes you'd get the breeze through. MR. WRIGHT: Yeah, I understand. Some people have said they occasionally slept outdoors on the hottest nights of the year. MR. HARMON: Yeah, yeah. MR. WRIGHT: I remember John Cahlan told a story of working in the newspaper building all the time and then going home and pouring a bathtub of cold water and spending the evening in the bathtub. MR. HARMON: Oh, yeah. MR. WRIGHT: I've got a note here about a gentleman named Kip Rylander. And I remember you talked about it earlier, but I don't remember the context. MR. HARMON: Well, Kip Rylander came from a wealthy Philadelphia and New York family, and they had department stores in Philadelphia and one in New York. And he was the only son, and he was quite active in the store and quite known all over the area. And he met this girl, and he took her out several times. And he was enamored with her, and he kept saying to her, "Well, I'd like to meet your parents." And she said, "Well, my parents are not here, they're on a trip." And 26 she always had some excuse. So anyway they got married, and he found out. She took him over later to Harlan to introduce him to her mother and father. Now, this is way back in 1926, '27. And he knew that if his family knew this that there would be real trouble. In those days the law in New York, you had to prove adultery, and that was difficult to do. So he came to Nevada and he was referred to my dad. By my dad being district attorney, they thought, well, this will be the man. So he came here, and he adopted the name Taylor instead of Rylander. And he fell in love in Las Vegas. And it took almost a year and a half to get the divorce because they had to take the train, and they'd go to Saint Louis and hold the meetings with the attorneys from New York and then back. And he always used to take two cars, one of the sleeping cars and the other was the car where they could entertain. And they always had several cases of liquor and that sort of thing. And they'd be gone for sometimes ten days, two weeks and then come back. Kip Rylander bought a lot of real estate, and he also had several home sites up in Mount Charleston. He finally got his divorce, and he still stayed around for a while. And he came to my dad, and he says, "Well, it's time for me to pay up." And he said, "I'm going to give you this." And he gave from 15th Street down to where Boulder Highway connected, 27 across to Fremont, gave him title to that. And then he gave him title from Main Street up to Fifth Street, down to just short of where Denny's Restaurant is now, just short of that, across, gave that to him, plus the fact he gave him $10,000 in cash for the divorce. Prohibition, of course, was still in effect, and they had the old Golden Camel. And my father walked in and laid the cash on the bar, and he said, "When it's gone, take me home." My mother could have killed him. Anyway, he had a lot of friends in town, so everybody had a big drunk, you know. MR. WRIGHT: It must have taken a while to go through that much money. MR. HARMON: Well, yeah. But when you're buying drinks for everybody all over the town -- well, anyway, that was his story. He let the property go back for taxes. MR. WRIGHT: And that was fairly common in the '30s. MR. HARMON: Yeah. MR. WRIGHT: Your father always had a lot of confidence in Las Vegas, but it might have been a little difficult at some point in the '30s when he couldn't afford to pay taxes on all that property. MR. HARMON: But you know, Vegas was always rescued at the right time. The railroad, of course, left, moved their yards and everything up to Milford. And then they started construction of Hoover Dam. That got us through the 28 Depression. In fact, we used to have, I remember, the guards to keep the hobos from getting off and everything. They'd just keep them on the railroad and go down. But we still had a lot of the hobos and everything used to go down what they called Hooverville, and it was down just below where the Cashman Field is now. MR. WRIGHT: Not too far from the cemetery out there? MR. HARMON: Yeah. And then after that, back after the war, of course, Vegas prospered. They had the old El Rancho, and they had what was later the Frontier there. And that started, and that was a shot in the arm. And then after the war came the problem, well, what are we going to do now? And old man Ashby, who was the head of the Union Pacific Railroad, really liked Las Vegas. In fact, he built a home here. He retired. That's where he was going to retire. And he recommended a big public relations firm out of New York by the name of Steve Hannegan. Steve Hannegan came out. They established the Live Wire Fund. And they had Don Payne and they had Don English, and they had Art Forrest, who were the major dominoes and did the work for Steve Hannegan. And then, of course, they had Bill Moore. Ruthe Deskin can tell you about that because she worked for Bill, and she also worked at the El Cortez. But the Steve Hannegan was the shot in the arm, because that organization 29 started where Las Vegas became known the world over. MR. WRIGHT: And that was through also the chamber of commerce. MR. HARMON: Oh, yeah, sure, the Live Wire Fund and the whole thing. But Ashby's the one that recommended that Steve Hannegan be hired, and they hired him. And I think Ruthe would agree with me, that started and did a terrific job. Don Payne and those guys, Don English and Art Forrest, and those fellows, they just really did a stand-out job. MR. WRIGHT: So many people knew about Las Vegas when it was still a relatively small town because of the publicity. MR. HARMON: That's right, yeah. MR. WRIGHT: I wanted to back up just a little bit, sort of after the dam is finished, and get some of the flavor of the town. Again, they faced the same problem: People are moving out of the town. What do you do to promote the town? So they started a thing called Helldorado. And you might not recall the first, but maybe some of the early Helldorados. What kind of things were they? MR. HARMON: Oh, they were great. They had Helldorado Village. The one big motivating guy in that whole thing was Jim Cashman, Senior. And they built a stadium down there. I was on the county commission. One day I called the road superintendent, and I said, "Where have you got the equipment?" And he says, "You don't know?" And I said, 30 "That's why I'm calling, I want to find out." He said, "Well, call big Jim Cashman. He's commandeered it all." So they built the old original stadium down there. And Jim recruited everybody in town, and yours truly, I put a few hours in down there. But Helldorado, I was in the parade one time because I was Exalted Ruler of the Elks. I even fell off the horse making the grand entry. Mike Hines gave me his quarter horse and he says, "Be careful how you touch the reins." And I went a little too hard. I got up and took a bow to the right and left and everything, and everybody laughed. But yeah, Helldorado was a cohesive thing as far as the town was concerned. They made a big celebration out of it. MR. WRIGHT: And eventually, a number of movie stars participated. MR. HARMON: Yeah. Participated in it. In the parade you had these guys with the silver saddles and all the bridles and everything. They all came. They were great parades. And Jim was the one that organized those things. He put a lot of time in. MR. WRIGHT: And Cashman Field was aptly named. Were you involved at all with the building of Cashman Field? MR. HARMON: Well, as I just explained -- MR. WRIGHT: Oh, I thought you were talking about the 31 Helldorado Village. MR. HARMON: Well, Cashman Field was built too, you remember. Then they had big shows down there and Night of the Stars used to appear, Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball and a lot of them for that. MR. WRIGHT: Before we get out of that era, I wanted you to do maybe a relatively short version of a story you told about a gentleman named Isadore Bloom. MR. HARMON: Ikie Bloom. MR. WRIGHT: Ikie Bloom? MR. HARMON: Isadore. Well, Ikie or Isadore was from a very, very outstanding Jewish family in New York. His family was in the export/import business, but he was the black sheep. He ended up in Goldfield at the time of the big fight, and he decided to stay because Goldfield was quite a rousing town then. And he got acquainted with and fell in love with a prostitute, and she got him on the dope. And he spent about two years in Sparks being cured. MR. WRIGHT: Sparks was the -- MR. HARMON: Insane asylum outside of Reno. And he came to Las Vegas. Now, the exact date that he came, I don't really remember, but I know that he came and got acquainted with my father, and my dad saw his handwriting. In those days, the court records were all written in hand. And he was short of money on several occasions, and he'd come and want to 32 sell a pair of cuff links or whatever it was to my father. Sometimes my father would buy, other times he wouldn't, and Ike would go someplace else. Anyway he became quite a character and he was, if you want to call him then, was a circulation manager. And when I was peddling newspapers and delivering them, Ikie was the one that shelled us the paper, and when we came back, we had to pay him off. And 'cause he didn't have much money, he always slept in a big piano box that they had out in back of the Review-Journal. And he got quite well known. And my dad got to corresponding with his sister, and we found out that she was going to go to Beverly Hills and she would like to see us. And we were going to be in town, so my mother and I went out to Beverly Hills and spent about an hour talking to her. Very lovely woman, as I remember, very aristocratic with the pinched-nose glasses and gray hair. And so my mother extended an invitation to her to come and stay at our house. So we went back, and she said, "Harley, you people have got to do something because Ikie said that he's a partner in the Oasis Cafe, big things, and you can't have her see him like he is, you know." His teeth was missing, and he had a couple of teeth left, that was all. And so old Doc Smith, well, they got him to give him the plates. And Art Harris had the barber shop. And in back of the barber shop he had two 33 bathtubs, and they got him in there and got him cleaned up. MR. WRIGHT: Art Harris's barber shop was right downtown? MR. HARMON: Oh, yeah, right where the Sal Sagev is now. So anyway, they put him in the Overland Hotel, where the Las Vegas Hotel is. And they got him cleaned up, and they got him a suit. And then they went around and told everybody they thought could come in contact don't call him Ikie, but call him Isadore. So the day arrived that she came to town. And my dad had an open-door Essex. And it was beautiful weather. It was in October and the top was down, and we got her in. And then, old Young, had the Young Transfer, he got her trunks, because she had about three trunks, and brought her over to our house on Sixth Street. And we were standing and showing her her bedroom and everything, and in comes Young. And he says, "Ikie, you must have a wealthy sister, look at all these trunks." Well, old Ikie almost died. He was jabbing him. And my father got Young out and said, "You were supposed to say Isadore." "Oh, Harley I forgot." Well, anyway, my mother had several dinners at the house and, of course, Ikie was there. And it came time to leave and she called us together, and she said, "I want to 34 thank you for being so nice to me." And she said, "I admire you, and I appreciate all of the Vegas people that have been so nice to me to try to cover up what my brother really is." MR. WRIGHT: Wasn't fooled a bit. MR. HARMON: Wasn't fooled one bit. And for about five or six years after that, I always got a Christmas present from her and a letter to the folks, you know. And then when old Ikie died, they had the big banner across the Review-Journal, Ikie Bloom dies and so forth. And the town closed during the funeral services and so forth. MR. WRIGHT: I think that story says a lot about Las Vegas -- MR. HARMON: It sure does. MR. WRIGHT: -- and how so many people could pull together in a personal situation. MR. HARMON: That's right. MR. WRIGHT: Sort of following your story, when did you graduate? Well, you went to high school in Las Vegas, obviously. MR. HARMON: Well, I went to high school for my freshman and sophomore year. In 1934, my family moved to Carson. My dad was appointed head of the public service commission. I spent a semester at Carson. And the following year, my dad decided that I should go to a private school, Bellarmine in San Jose, a Jesuit 35 school. Sounds a little rough, but what he told the priest, he says, "If you can't straighten him out, get him into shape, get him in line, pack his suitcase and show him where the railroad is over there and let him jump the rails. Maybe he can get someplace." Well, that scared the dickens out of me. Anyway, I spent two years in Bellarmine. I graduated from there. Then I came back, and I went to the University of Nevada, and I spent the legislative session as an attache in Carson. And then I left, and I went to Washington, D.C., under the patronage of Berkeley Bunker, who'd been appointed United States senator to take Key Pittman's place. Berkeley was very nice to me. I stayed in his home until I found a place to live in Washington. MR. WRIGHT: And I'm sort of guessing that your father's involvement in politics and so forth had opened all of these -- MR. HARMON: Oh, yeah, no question about it. THE WITNESS: -- political avenues for you. MR. HARMON: No problem. In fact, my father was head of the Truckers Association, State of Nevada, and he was very active in lobbying and that sort of thing. Then I worked in Washington D.C. when I left to go to New York to work for PanAmerican Airways. And then when Pearl Harbor happened, the next day I was on a train back to Reno, 36 and I joined the Navy. I got out in '46, and I went a semester in Reno. And then I thought, "What the heck am I doing here? I should go back home." So I came back to Las Vegas, and I ran a tobacco business. MR. WRIGHT: Now, where are we relative to the years of World War II here? MR. HARMON: It's after World War II. MR. WRIGHT: After World War II. MR. HARMON: Yeah. MR. WRIGHT: You told us something, I think, about your attempt to go with PanAm and there's a story about that. MR. HARMON: Well, I asked Berkeley Bunker as long as we weren't at war, and why be drafted, could I get in draft exempt. And I was thinking about aviation. There was another fellow from Fallon, Nevada, that I was friendly with, Don Downs, that wanted to get state department. I went to Berkeley, and Berkeley told me, he says, "I can't help you, Harley. You've got to get a guy with juice. Go see McCarran." So I did, and Don Downs was there. Downs wanted to be with the state department. McCarran had his secretary get Cordell Hull on the phone. MR. WRIGHT: This was the kind of power that Pat McCarran had -- MR. HARMON: Oh, yeah. MR. WRIGHT: -- in those years. 37 MR. HARMON: She came in and said that Cordell was in a conference, and he couldn't be disturbed. And he said, "You tell Cordell he has to be before the Appropriations Committee tomorrow, and I expect him to answer my call." Five minutes later, Cordell was on the phone. Anyway, he made arrangements for Don Downs to go over and be examined, be hired. Don had to take a physical and they found albumin in his urine, and they said, "Well, we couldn't hire him." So McCarran says, "Well, we'll take care of that." So he called Bethesda, the Naval hospital, and arranged for Don to stay three days over there and give him the medication, and after the medication, then take the test, which he did. He passed, and he went to work for the state department. I wanted to work for an airline because they were exempt, so I tried Eastern Airlines. Eddie Rickenbacker, the one I met, was interviewed, but I didn't care for that. But I did like PanAmerican, so he said fine. So I got a job, and I reported to work in New York in the purchasing department. And that was in June, and in August they sent around information that they were taking applications for single individuals to go to Bathurst, Africa, where they were opening a run from Bathurst to Cairo. And so I made application, and I was accepted. And one day I got a call from Juan Tripp's office -- this was in November I guess -- wanting me to come 38 to his office, which was in the Chrysler Building up on the top floor. MR. WRIGHT: And Juan Tripp is the president; correct? MR. HARMON: Yeah. So I went, and I couldn't figure out why I was wanted, so I went over. I walked in and here's Senator McCarran talking to Mr. Tripp. And I said, "Senator, what are you doing here?" And he said, "Well, I'm concerned about you." And I said, "Why are you concerned about me?" He says, "Well, I hear you want to go to Bathurst, and you've been accepted." I said, "That's right." He said, "Well, I can't let you go." "What do you mean you can't let me go?" And I looked at Mr. Tripp, and he went like this (indicating), you know. And he said, "Well, you might go native." I said, "You've been seeing too many movies." Remember, Joan Crawford was in a movie. I forget the guy that was the star with her, and it was about being in Africa and how this guy went native, and he became a drunk and all that stuff, you know. I said, "Senator, you're wrong." So anyway, I couldn't convince him. Had I gotten that job, it was $1500 a month deposited in gold in New York. I was to get $500 expense money in Bathurst and get my room and board free. Also, get a vacation starting in New York for one month with 39 salary paid. It was a beautiful opportunity. Every one of those fellows that went ended up with a commission in the Army/Air Force, major up. So I ended up being a second class gunners mate in the Navy. So I went to see him one time, when I was in Washington on my way back home, and I walked into his office and he said, "Harley, glad to see you." And I said, "Take a look at me. Look what you've done to me. Here I am an enlisted man. I could have been..." He laughed. He says, "Well, I still think it was the best." MR. WRIGHT: Great story. MR. HARMON: Yeah. He's a great guy as far as I'm concerned. I liked him. MR. WRIGHT: Protege to a lot of future leaders, too, in the community -- MR. HARMON: Yeah, yeah. MR. WRIGHT: -- including yourself, obviously. You came back from the war, had a tobacco shop. MR. HARMON: No, it was a wholesale. MR. WRIGHT: Or wholesale tobacco business. MR. HARMON: Wholesale. I worked for Southworth and Company out of Reno. Good friend of mine, who is now dead, Paul Azenarz, came down with me, and he ran the office and did the bookkeeping. And I was out calling on the trade. And then the best thing that happened in my life, I 40 married. I saw a beautiful girl at a dance and finally met her, took her out, and we were engaged. We got married in January, the 23rd. Here we just celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary. MR. WRIGHT: Whoa. MR. HARMON: So Las Vegas has been good to me, and I hope I've been good to Las Vegas. MR. WRIGHT: And you went to work after a short time for Bonanza. MR. HARMON: Well, that's Bonanza Airlines. That's where I met Florence Murphy the first time and Ed Converse. And I was hired kind of like a marketing man. At that time University of Nevada Reno had an outstanding football team, and we had two DC-3s that weren't too busy. So Mr. Converse came up with the idea, well, maybe we ought to try to put together a group that would fly up to these games. Well, I contacted every football nut that I knew, and we sold those two planes out every day. And they would go up to San Francisco or they'd fly to Reno or Sacramento, where one time they played. And I worked for them. And then I ran for the state legislature, the time Harry Claiborne was up there. MR. WRIGHT: That was 1948; is that correct? MR. HARMON: Yeah. I wasn't too crazy about the legislature because it just seems like you never could get 41 anything done, you know. MR. WRIGHT: Do you recall any outstanding issues? I know you only served one term. MR. HARMON: Yeah, we had the creation of Las Vegas Valley Water District. A fellow by the name of Harry Miller and Bill Moore from the Frontier Hotel were very active in it, and we got it through the legislature. C.D. Baker was senator. Jim Ryan was a majority floor leader. It was a good session from getting things accomplished. I think the big thing that came for us was the Las Vegas Valley Water District, and we created it. MR. WRIGHT: There had been some real severe water problems during the '40s in Southern Nevada. MR. HARMON: Well, it wasn't so much shortage, the problem. Don't forget we had those two large artesian wells. But the Las Vegas Land and Water, which was owned by the Union Pacific Railroad, the mains were all cedarwood, and they were leaking. And rightfully so, Jim Cashman, Senior, was also involved in that. Tom Campbell. Oh, gosh, you can name a lot of them. And Las Vegas Valley Water District was created, and the first thing they did, of course, was rebuild all of the mains and everything else that they had in the town. Of course, later on, back in the '60s, Alan Bible got the water deal brought in. Remember, they built the big tunnel and everything to bring the water in. That was a real 42 critical thing, because then the authority took over all of the wells and everything else, and they wouldn't issue new well permits, that sort of thing. MR. WRIGHT: So that really was a major step forward, let's put it that way -- MR. HARMON: Oh, I think, yeah. MR. WRIGHT: -- in terms of preparing for the future. MR. HARMON: No doubt about it. MR. WRIGHT: Before we go on to your years on the county commission, I wanted to ask you about a fellow that I forgot to ask you about earlier, a gentleman by the name of Robert Russell. MR. HARMON: Bob Russell, Colonel Russell. MR. WRIGHT: Colonel Bob Russell. MR. HARMON: Colonel Bob Russell. Bob Russell came from Los Angeles. He had a big barber shop on Broadway. He had something like 25 barbers who worked for him, ten or 15 manicurists. And he met and married the widow Mrs. Beamon. Fred Beamon is still alive, her son, living up Hurricane, Utah. And they had a contract to run the Apache Hotel with P.O. Silvagni as the landlord. And Bob was very, very interested in chamber of commerce. He was very interested in the welfare of the community and so forth. The one story I remember quite prominently about Bob 43 is that they had a big picture of Lake Mead and then, of course, they had barracuda. Now, barracuda, how in the heck would you get barracuda into fresh water? So they asked Bob about it, and he said, "Well, son, don't you understand how that took place?" "No, we don't understand how that took place, Bob." "Well, son, I want you to know that there is an underground river that ran from San Diego and came uphill, believe that or not, to Lake Mead, and it brought those barracudas in. Now that's a true story, son. Old Colonel Bob Russell told you so." MR. WRIGHT: I saw a wonderful picture of him with Death Valley Scotty. MR. HARMON: Yeah. MR. WRIGHT: So I guess they must have compared notes about -- MR. HARMON: Oh, I tell you. This is another story that was funny. Bob Russell, again. We had the Rotary Club at the Tropicana in the Blue Room. And Bud Harris was the president, and he had paid this guy to come in from San Diego. Well, he was the world's worst speaker. He was terrible. All he was, he was a salesman and he mumbled. And he says, "I sell these pencils," and everything else. It was kind of ridiculous. Well, everybody got bored. I was sitting next to Bob 44 Russell, and I forget who was on the other side. And he says, "I'm going to get us out of here. Just do what I tell you." So, he puts a big act on like he's having a heart attack, and he falls down on the floor. And I reached and got him. And he says, "Pick me up and get me the hell out of here." We picked him up and we walked out. Well, of course, a hell of a lot of people walked out with us. And we got out to where the bar was, away from the room, and he says, "That's okay, fellows, let me down." And he says, "Aren't you thankful I had brains enough to get you out of this mess?" MR. WRIGHT: Had a remarkable recovery? MR. HARMON: Yeah, he had a remarkable recovery. Oh, you could go on for hours talking about Bob. He'd see you on the street. He'd say, "Stand right where you are. Now, just stand right this way. Look this way. A photographer's coming to take our picture. You're an outstanding man to be with an outstanding gentleman like me." MR. WRIGHT: Looked a bit like Buffalo Bill, too. MR. HARMON: Oh, yeah, he was something. He was something. MR. WRIGHT: Yeah. I think, in a way, it's characters like that -- MR. HARMON: Oh, the town was filled with them, yeah. Bob Russell, fond memories. MR. WRIGHT: Las Vegas after the war, it had changed 45 a whole bunch by the time you got back, I assume. MR. HARMON: Yep. MR. WRIGHT: And different people are in town, and you run for the commission. What led you to do that? MR. HARMON: Well, there was a fellow by the name of Roscoe Thomas who had been very, very friendly with my father. And he was one of the original owners of the Palace Theater with Arthur Brick. And my father and Rod Foley, Senior, had law offices up above the theater. Oh, I forgot the train of thought. MR. WRIGHT: You're deciding to run for the commission. MR. HARMON: And Roscoe Thomas was an owner, one of the owners of the Golden Nugget. And he came to me, and he said, "Why don't you run for county commissioner?" I said, "Well, I don't want to run for the assembly, that's a cinch." And he said, "Well, why don't you run for county commissioner." So I said, "All right." So I ran and got elected. I defeated Ira Earl. And there was a Chrysler dealer, C.C. McDaniel. They were Republicans, and I was a Democrat. I didn't have Democratic opposition, so I had to run against one of those again in the general election. And C.C. McDaniel had beat Ira Earl, and then I ran and defeated C.C. McDaniel. That was a two-year term, and then I ran again for a 46 four-year term, and then on top of that another four. That was a great experience in my life. I enjoyed it. It was at a time when we needed leadership, and I think that our commission gave it. We had Rodney Colton and Harvey McDonald for a while. And then we had Bud Albright join, and then Rodney Colton was defeated by the guy that just used to have a clothing store on Fremont Street. I'll think of it in a minute. And we had just the three-man commission, and it was pretty easy to get things done. Bud, he had the idea, wanted to develop the convention authority. And I said, "I'll support you. And I want to build a sanitation district." And he says, "And I'll support you." So we did. And I think the convention hall, while it was quite controversial, it's really done a great job for the community. MR. WRIGHT: Who were some of the other key figures, not political figures necessarily, but key business figures that were involved with it? MR. HARMON: Well, we had all of the hotel people -- Benny Goffstein, Gus Greenbaum, Moe Dalitz. You can go down the whole list of them, were all in favor of the convention authority. Locally, the business leaders, Johnny DeLuca was a big help. Herb McDonald, Frank Scott. My uncle, Cyril Wengert, who was in the background. We had a lot of the leaders of the community. And the convention authority was 47 created. The Live Wire Fund at the time was very helpful. Don Payne, and English and Art Forrest, and those people. MR. WRIGHT: Now, this was a genuine community effort. MR. HARMON: Yeah. It was tough to do, you know. The convention authority, to sell the bonds, they wanted a lien against all of the properties, which is all right. But how did you satisfy people in Boulder City and Mesquite and Bunkerville and everything else that had motels? What were they going to get out of it? So, that's when they had the Ferron Recreation Board deal, and we built a swimming pool and so forth out in Mesquite behind the school. We built one in Henderson. We built another one in Boulder City. And that's the way we got around that thing, and eventually that need wasn't there anymore, and so they just changed it and made it the convention authority. MR. WRIGHT: Something occurs to me, too. You mentioned some gentlemen's names, I want to get back to them. But these were also the years, were they not, when Las Vegas had its eyes on the Las Vegas Strip and wanted to do some annexing out in the county? MR. HARMON: Yeah. MR. WRIGHT: What happened there? MR. HARMON: Well, I guess I get the blame for it. C.D. Baker was mayor and C.D. was a good mayor. We had 48 already formed Winchester and Paradise townships, and there was a difference in the tax rate. C.D. wanted to annex, and he came to me, and he said, "Why don't you let us annex?" And I said, "Well, C.D. what are you going to do for the Strip? If you're just going to annex and put your rate on that and that, and so forth, and your gaming fees, what are they going to get in return?" He says, "Well, what are you looking for?" I said, "Oh, we're looking for sanitation. Obviously, these people can't go on just having their own plants and so forth." So he said, "Well, it'll be four or five years before we can get this done." I said, "Well, heck, all mighty, I think we can form a district before that." And one day I was sitting in my insurance office in the Friedman Building on Fremont, and a man walked in, and he said, "I hear you're looking to put a sanitation district together." And I said, "Yes, I am." And he said, "Well, I'm your man." And I said, "Well, who are you?" And he said, "I'm Loren Gibbs from Salt Lake." And I said, "Well, what makes you think you can put a district together?" He said, "Because I've done a lot of them in Utah." And he said, "I can help you." And I said, "Well, we need to move fast." And he said, "Well, the legislature is in session. I'll fly to Denver and I'll get old Melvin E. Meyers, and we'll drive the bill and so forth, create another district, but you've got to decide what the boundaries are." And I said, "Well, wait a 49 minute, what's in it for you?" And he said, "Well, very simple, you'll have to have bonds. I'll buy all the bonds, and I'll sell them, and that's where I'll make my fee." And I said, "Well, that's fair enough, as far as I'm concerned, but we'll have to talk to the two other members." He talked to the two other members, and while he was at it, he talked to Bud about financing and so forth for the convention. So I said, "Well, take care of sanitation first, and then we'll get..." Bud says, "Sure, go ahead." So he flew, came back, and asked if I'd be in a meeting in Carson. And I met him in Carson, and we went to the legislature. And we got that darn bill through the legislature in a hurry. Came back, we had decided on the boundaries and so forth. And we had to get petitions signed, and we had the petitions signed and everything. And we created the district. MR. WRIGHT: And so that was one way of sort of placating the voters so it took the steam out of the annexation movement. MR. HARMON: Yeah, for the time. MR. WRIGHT: For the time being, right. You were commissioner for some really crucial years. Conventional wisdom has it that these were the years that the Mob ran Las Vegas. You knew some of these people. What was your interpretation of events during the '50s particularly, or 50 the early '60s? MR. HARMON: Well, yeah. We had people, I'm sure, that had Mob connections. But let's take a look at it this way, too. There wasn't any viable means of financing. The banks would not put up the money. You couldn't get an insurance company to come with money. Wilbur Clark is a good example. He set that there with just the foundation showing and everything else because he had run out of money, and he couldn't get any more. MR. WRIGHT: At the Desert Inn? MR. HARMON: At the Desert Inn. So at the advent of Mr. Dalitz and his group out of Cleveland, illegal gambling, yeah. Sure, they had illegal gambling. Never admitted that, they didn't. They always said, "Well, sure, everything was illegal." Odd thing about it was you recall that when the cashier used to pay in silver dollars to the employees, remember that? Employee would come to the window after his shift and they'd say in dollars, whatever it was, in silver stacks for them. Well, it wasn't long before the government stepped in and said, well, withholding and all this kind of stuff, you know. Anyway, yeah, Mr. Dalitz or Moe Dalitz and his crowd, they put the money up. And they built, finished off the Desert Inn. The Sands started, remember Kaufman, and denied 51 him, and then they brought in people from Texas and down in Louisiana and that sort of thing. MR. WRIGHT: And there was, you mentioned, a couple of individuals like Gus Greenbaum, Ben Goffstein, you know, some of those people. MR. HARMON: Well, you had Jack Entratter and Carl Cohen and all those people at the Sands. And then you had Goffstein, and you had Gus Greenbaum at the Flamingo, later on at the Riviera. MR. WRIGHT: One thing, almost nobody ever says a bad word about these fellows, that they were so very community-minded and did an awful lot for the community. MR. HARMON: Well, consider this. They were very community-minded. But look at it this way. This is the first place in their lives that they had been where it was legal. And they weren't going to do anything to upset the apple cart. And they figured, "We've got to be a part of the community. We have to help build a community, and if we don't, then we're shortsighted." Now, you could go to them. Like they went for building Gorman High School, the first synagogue in town. Go right on down the line the things that they did. Mr. Dalitz is the one that they used to have, it wasn't United Way, it was something else. And he said, "You've got to get with the national deal, let's have United Way." He brought United Way 52 in. He's the one that put the arm on all the rest of the owners. "You've got to get behind this." Skimming, probably. I'm sure that those fellows weren't around trying to run a charitable organization. And I'm sure that if these people back in the East or whatever it was put up the money that they were wanting to get repaid. MR. WRIGHT: And, you know, everybody sort of assumed that -- MR. HARMON: Yeah. MR. WRIGHT: -- and didn't pay a whole lot of attention. MR. HARMON: And Las Vegas was out of bounds as far as any murders or gunning people down and so forth. If they did kill somebody, I'm sure that it happened probably in the desert in California or wherever it was. MR. WRIGHT: One fellow that came to town shortly after the war was a man named Hank Greenspun. He had a little different take on some of these things. MR. HARMON: I remember Hank, he used to hang onto the parking meters in front of the bookie joint on Fremont Street. I personally liked Hank very much. I've often wondered what made him like he was to start with. And I think it was because he came from a culture and a society back in New York where he was raised and everything else that was 53 completely foreign to him. Prostitution, the kind of laissez-faire approach that government had towards these various things. And Hank was ambitious. Hank had a newspaper that he took over, and he had to make a success of that. I for one feel that Hank did the community a lot of good. There's a couple of times that I disagreed with him. We used to have friendly arguments. He for a while there wasn't too in favor of the convention authority. But that'll change later. But Hank, without a doubt in my mind, had the welfare of the community at heart. He raised a lovely family. Barbara, his wife, he couldn't ask for a finer woman. But he was very controversial, and he could do a lot of damage when he wanted to. And he did do, you know, to some people. He'd give them a nickname and, you know, that would be the end of them. But even then, sometimes he'd get on national TV and kind of irritate a few people in what he said. But if you looked basically behind what he was trying to do, then I have to say he did a good job. MR. WRIGHT: He certainly did some exposes on some of the so-called mob activities. MR. HARMON: Well, that, and then the politics he got on. He called this guy "Big Juice" and the other guy "Big Pockets," you know. He accomplished what he basically and fundamentally thought was right, and you can't fault somebody 54 when they take a strong stand. He fought McCarran, and I think that McCarran was wrong in what he attempted to do. I mean, he was attempting to silence Hank, and he couldn't do that, and that was wrong right from the very start. And Hank had the guts enough andthing. Look what he did with McCarthy. Jeez, I was driving back from a political meeting and I had the radio on and I heard that going on, and I pulled off to the side of the road and listened to the whole thing. Hank was right. He had internal intestinal fortitude that, by God, he was going to stand up, and he was going to stand for what was right. And McCarthy was wrong, and you know that he was wrong, and I knew he was wrong, but Hank was the only one in the country that had guts enough. No senator would take him on, except Truman. So, no, I would defend Hank. I remember Hank very well, before he was going to UCLA, and we stood out in front of the Las Vegas Country Club and we talked for about an hour, and it was great. And I had a chance to tell him what I thought, if he did well. And we just had a real fine meeting, and I always will treasure it. Just like I had a chance to talk to Moe Dalitz before he died. I said, "Moe, I'm sure that as time has gone on that nobody's ever thanked you for the things that you've done for the community." He told his partners -- they wanted to sell 55 Las Vegas Country Club to Hilton -- Moe said, "No. It's got to go to the local people." And he stuck by his guns on those things. Moe looked at me and he said, "Harley, I appreciate being told, thanks." So, I was lucky. I've had a nice talk with Hank for a good solid hour, more than that probably. We stood and we talked about a lot of things. But I still think that he did a good job. MR. WRIGHT: Anything else about those years, the county commission years, something that I haven't asked about that you think is significant? MR. HARMON: Well, I think that those were years where we laid the foundation for a lot of things. I think we started the convention authority. We started the sanitation district. I remember one time we didn't have the money to put sidewalks in, but we could go ahead, and we put asphalt sidewalks along the Strip. Remember where the Mirage is now? Remember that big piece of property there? We went and put the damn walk on there, and the property owner, he says, "By God, you can't do that to us." And we said, "Well, we did it. Now what are you going to do?" MR. WRIGHT: I know pedestrians had to walk through a lot of dirt and gravel to walk up and down the Strip. MR. HARMON: Yeah, we did that. So, there was a lot 56 of things. We opened a lot of roads. They weren't the best of roads, but they followed the contour, and they were paved, and you didn't have to fight the gravel or anything. But they'd get you to where you wanted to go. Maryland Parkway was a good example, Tropicana, Desert Inn. A lot of those that just opened up the area so that later on the county could come along and put the assessment district in it and build the roads that they should. MR. WRIGHT: What about growth since? That was almost 30 years ago that you were on the county commission. I'm just kind of summing up now or sort of asking a question to give you some space to sum up. What do you think about the comparison of Las Vegas today with the years you've described? MR. HARMON: Well, we were the formative days. We were the days "Laying the foundation," if you will. One of the basic problems that we had then, and they're solving part of the problem now, we always lacked enough roads east and west. We compounded the problem when we have the railroad and then we turn around and we put the freeway right alongside. We didn't have control over that. That came from the state highway department. We wanted the road to be down to where Nellis Boulevard is. Our thinking was, if we did that, then the east and west we could finance through secondary road funds, and that would really ease the problem. But the state 57 highway department gave in to downtown casinos who said, "No, we want it." Buck Blaine wanted them to come right in the front door, you know. But the east-west, like Desert Inn is a great thoroughfare now. Harmon Road is going to be put through, that'll be another great road. The only one left that probably should be done is Oakey. Whether it's going to be a railroad crossing or whether it's going to be under a tunnel or what, but Oakey has to be done one of these days. If I were a city commissioner, then I would say to the highway department and the rest of them that now's a good time to go in and do Bonanza underpass over again, make it bigger, solve the water problem. MR. WRIGHT: 'Cause that underpass goes back to the '20s. MR. HARMON: Oh, yeah, that was one of the first. MR. WRIGHT: And even the Charleston underpass. MR. HARMON: The Charleston underpass. They've got enough right of way that they could widen and put that underpass bigger. But east and west is a major, major problem. I always used to think that we were pretty farsighted, but we never really gave the thought to the circle. We thought about it, but we didn't do anything about it because we thought, well, we're imagining way out. And to be honest with you, we thought that some of the places we just 58 couldn't get right of way, which we could have very easily. But we didn't do it and shame on us. MR. WRIGHT: Well, I'm just thinking too. I've read a lot of newspapers from earlier decades, and a lot of them had these predictions of astounding growth, that by the end of the century there might be 100,000 people in this valley. I'm not sure anybody dreamed that by the end of the century there would be a million people in this valley. MR. HARMON: Well, on the contrary, we had a study made when we built the courthouse, which later -- it's not going to be a judiciary thing. When we built that, we had Weldon Beckett make it a survey for us, because we felt that we were going to have to have substations for the assessor and the rest of them in Henderson and the valleys and so forth. What was the population going to be? They came back -- and it's probably in some file that nobody can find. They predicted by the '90s, I think that it was '97 or '98, we would have a population of a million five hundred. MR. WRIGHT: That's an amazingly, almost clairvoyant prediction. MR. HARMON: That's right. They predicted that. No one really believed them. We believed them because we thought, well, if that's it, then we're really on the right track when we start talking about substations in Henderson and the likes. In my life, I had never imagined that Summerlin 59 and the Hughes property would develop like it has. I knew that we were going to have a big city out there, but I could never envision as to what took place. MR. WRIGHT: Of course, that property was purchased by Howard Hughes in the 1950s. MR. HARMON: Yeah, that's right. MR. WRIGHT: And he obviously had something in mind. MR. HARMON: Well, he originally came on the Hughes site, and we put a center road right through the Hughes site. He could have closed us down. That right of way, we usurped really. MR. WRIGHT: Hughes wasn't quite so secretive in those years. Did you know Howard Hughes at all? MR. HARMON: I met him once and that was back '50 or '51, somewhere in there. He was at the Flamingo. He was staying there, and he was playing the slot machines when Goffstein introduced me to him. He used to hang out at the El Rancho. Cashman, Jim, Junior, and those fellows active in Jaycees used to meet him a lot of times. He arranged for them to fly the TWA back when they put the burro on it and took it back. Remember that? But when he came on the Hughes site, that's when he was real secretive. And his attorney was Bud Lummis, who'd been very active in the state legislature and so forth. But, yeah, Hughes site and that whole area, I always thought that 60 Red Rock Canyon up where they were that that would always be a big development. In fact, we had a chance to buy that property for a corrupt deal, and we didn't do it. MR. WRIGHT: You mean the county? MR. HARMON: No, I'm talking about Jim Cashman, Junior, and myself. We had a chance to buy that, and we wanted to know what the water rights were going to be. MR. WRIGHT: Well, then Hughes, of course, ended up selling. MR. HARMON: Yeah. MR. WRIGHT: Okay. Anything else that I haven't asked you about, things that you think people really should know about Las Vegas, something that will tell them about how Las Vegas was, what made it become the way it is? MR. HARMON: Oh, Las Vegas when I was a kid was just great. Just ride on your bicycle. And I remember one night I went over to Grandma Wengert's house to make root beer. My dad had the old, big-sided Buick. Remember? And we had all the bottles in the back, and he said, "For God's sake, you kids lay on top of those bottles so they won't think that we're bootlegging." And then we had a little basement under the house where we would put them. The root beer would pop up every once in a while and, oops, there it goes again. We had a lot of fun. And had Anderson Dairy. My dad got him three 61 divorces and he couldn't pay for them, and he gave us a Shetland pony. My dad said, "What the hell do I want with something that eats?" But anyway, Lady June was her name. And then Dr. Park had that big house, his father's house, and then his house, a ranch style house. MR. WRIGHT: Is that the one on East Charleston? MR. HARMON: Yeah. At East Charleston. And they had the big ranch, and he had a horse corral and everything. And we kept Lady June there. And he bought for his son John, a horse that was trained for polo, but it shied at something going on his eyes, so he bought that. And my brother and John used to ride that. I can remember they were supposed to be home at 5:00 o'clock, and 8:00 o'clock there was no Charles or no John. And we built a big bonfire out in front so that they could find their way back. My brother came walking into the -- I'll never forget that. My dad said, "Where in the hell you been?" And he says, "Well, we got lost," and he said, "Lady June, we just dropped the reins" -- I mean the horse. I forget the name of the big horse. He says, "Just let the reins drop, and she just headed for the corral and Lady June along with him." So then he came down Sixth Street. He walked down Sixth Street. But, yeah, it was a great town. We had Frank Butcher, at Butcher Field, had the first football team in Las Vegas. Mahlon Brown, Rex Garrett. God, you can go right 62 on down the list. Jim Downs is dead, of course. They played for the state championship. And you know where the Las Vegas Cement is? That used to be a big field over there, and that's where they played their game. MR. WRIGHT: That was before they built Butcher Field, then? MR. HARMON: Yeah. And then the next year they built Butcher Field. He was quite a guy, that Butcher was. MR. WRIGHT: There's quite a story about him, came to an unfortunate end. MR. HARMON: He died. He was trying to heat the hot water, and he put the kerosine on and it exploded, burnt him to death. MR. WRIGHT: He was the Wildcats' first football coach. MR. HARMON: Yeah. MR. WRIGHT: I think the team won the state championship the next year, didn't that? MR. HARMON: That's right. And Dashiell came and we had a famous athlete. Lee Beatty went to Brown University on a scholarship, injured his knee, and that was the end of him. One of the greatest athletes they ever had here. Still alive. But, oh, yeah. And then even after the war, remember when they had the good football teams with Angelo Collis, and 63 we'd play Anaheim and all of those people, and we all sat on that side, and they had the boosters club. MR. WRIGHT: Yeah. I guess it was probably earlier than that period, Wildcat Bill Morris -- MR. HARMON: Oh, yeah, Wildcat. MR. WRIGHT: -- went on to play for UNR, or UN at the time. MR. HARMON: Yeah. Oh, we could sit and reminisce. MR. WRIGHT: Yeah. I noticed some material on here about nuclear testing during that era, particularly the '50s when you were on the county commission. Were there some things about that era that you would find interesting for people to know about? MR. HARMON: Well, only on a personal basis, from the standpoint of one of the scientists up there was a local boy by the name of Bill Ogle, who was very active with EG&G and the government. And he helped develop the camera and everything else for them. At the old airport, I was out there one night, and I saw Bill and I went to walk over to say hello to him, and the guards came this way, and Bill said, "It's all right." So I went over and talked to him. He was born and raised here and then he went to the University of Nevada. I was there at the UN when he was a senior, and he waited table at our fraternity. And Bill was quite a scientist. 64 I think that I was so busy making a living as first-time commissioner that I think I was shocked on the first time that they exploded something, because our windows in the house rattled and everything else. MR. WRIGHT: People really weren't all that concerned in those years? MR. HARMON: No, huh-uh. MR. WRIGHT: It's just, oh, there's another atomic blast. MR. HARMON: Yeah, yeah. I think that came afterwards, with the concern, you know. Nobody thought in their right mind, at least I didn't give it any thought, that that thing went up in the air and that the winds would send it over Utah, et cetera. MR. WRIGHT: I understand people, even some of the hotels used to take trips up into the mountains, sort of a picnic event, and watch those clouds go by. MR. HARMON: Yeah. It was only afterwards that people got interested in it. All I can remember is that we were doing a new county decal, and we showed the mushroom in the decal. Remember that? MR. WRIGHT: Yeah. I think almost every trace of that has been erased. I don't think there's a single copy anywhere of the county seal, is there? MR. HARMON: No, I don't think so. 65 MR. WRIGHT: Weren't they even chiseled off of the county courthouse? MR. HARMON: I don't know about that. That probably was. But yeah, oh, yeah, we had the decal. We thought that was great. MR. WRIGHT: County cars had the county seal with the mushroom cloud on it, I'm sure. MR. HARMON: Yeah. MR. WRIGHT: That's funny. MR. HARMON: But times change. I guess somebody like my son would say, "Well, we've gotten a lot smarter than you were." Probably true. (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 ??