In the 60-plus years I’ve known this city, I can attest to radical changes when it comes to growing up: people walked all over town and thus made constant contact.
Unlike the bumper-to-bumper routine of today’s rush-minute, traffic was sparse in the ’40s and ’50s, except for the Fourth of July. Fitness afficionados appear to be the only people to walk any distance today. These days people seem less prone to physical aggression because they are more insulated from one another.
In the ’40s and ’50s, Las Vegas was more stratified. The Silk Stocking District comprised Sixth, Seventh and Eighth streets. My neighborhood, the 900 block of Railroad, was unpaved, crowded, obviously lived in and sometimes stocking-less.
Remember, most people walked. We walked to Immaculate Conception School, about six blocks west. But we needed a daily running plan to avoid trouble.
On Mondays, the toughest guy on the block, a boxer named Gibber usually got a ride to another school, so it was safe to walk past his house, even if it meant going two blocks out of the way. Most days, taking the direct route was murder, because that’s where Silver and Don lived, and though they walked even farther, to Castle Junior High, they always had time to anticipate our passing and to invite us to exchange niceties.
The nature of life in Las Vegas sometimes made it necessary for us to leave for school several minutes early. Mom and Dad didn’t own a car, but on occasion Dad borrowed one from the Ford dealership where he worked. It’s amazing the bravado a peace-loving boy acquires passing by bullies’ houses in a car. Of course, having Dad around helped.
Mom and Dad never appeared to be aware of scrapes my brother Severino and I got into. It would have been unthinkable for me to say, “Mom, Dad, today I repeatedly pummeled this guy’s knee with my nose.”
Because most people walked, meeting a group of boys on the street often meant a kind of West Side Story standoff, to determine which group needed to step off the sidewalk. There was a code that no matter how desperate the situation got, we never told our parents, nor did we ever play hooky to avoid a playground fight. On occasion the bullies got theirs, and once this peace-lover came across as the aggressor
A neighbor my age, whose name I didn’t even know, looked funny to me as he pedaled his bike, lugging a loaf of bread as if it were a suitcase. I wondered what would happen if I chased him. I caught up to him and made a roar as if attacking. Instead of stopping his bike and making me sorry, he let out a wail, dropped his bike and ran home, slices of bread squirting out of the loaf. That incident did much to bolster my ego.
At I.C., there was a fight a day. The favorite spot was the playground, which is now a parking lot, but the surface was just as hard then. Fights started with little provocation, lasted a long time, in my memory, and never included girls.
The I.C. faculty consisted of nuns, who never were around for the fights. The only male teacher was the late “Coach” Nick DiDomenico, who broke up a number of fights.
Earning extra money was an ordeal. In those days there were Optic sellers and carriers called “Little Merchants.” Six days a week (yes, there was a Saturday paper then), some 30 boys crowded into an alcove at the Optic, waiting for the paper to come out. The press, run by Carlos Crespin and Pete Garcia, was a behemoth, and the men took their lives into their hands each day when they fired up the beast.
The paper was seldom on time. Boys from ages 9 to about 18 jockeyed for position to buy their papers for resale, three cents a piece, to be sold for a nickel, one-tenth its current price.
An army of paper boys fanned out to all parts of town. The West Las Vegas crew covered Bridge Street and the Plaza area, while we eastsiders concentrated on Douglas and Grand. By accident, I discovered the existence of a number of motels (they used to be called “courts”) on north Grand. That was uncharted territory! It seemed no other paper boy was aware of businesses north of Washington Avenue. The discovery turned out to be profitable, as many as five newspaper sales a day, which in one week would buy 12 Cokes, two burgers or almost four children’s tickets to the movies.
Every Little Merchant knew the inside of every restaurant and saloon in town. They were much smokier in those days. Juke boxes had only two selections, “Good Night, Irene,” and “Harbor Lights.” A hangout was a pool hall, where a lot of paper boys spent their day’s profits.
The late Milky Maese was the Optic’s circulation manager. In spite of a tough exterior, he had a heart. Once, he conducted a competition in which the team with the most new subscriptions would get treated to a chicken dinner at the Flamingo. A couple of dozen boys got one of the best meals of their young lives.
For the losing team? Well, we got fed too. But everything was beans. The main entree was pintos, with a side of green beans and lima beans. Instead of ice cream, we got jelly beans.
Even though we trudged through biting-cold winters and and fought off barking dogs, many Optic paperboy alumni now believe it was worth it. Somehow, we managed to buy bikes and shoes out of our earnings. And it gave us a very early initiation into the business world.
One of us got his lights punched out by an irate soldier during one of the daily troop-train stops at the Las Vegas depot during the Korean Conflict. Another boy actually found a $20 bill near a curb. Saying it seemed like a million dollars, he marched into the Las Vegas Savings Bank to inquire as to whether someone had reported it lost. Nobody had, and amid incredulous laughter from some of the tellers who thought he was putting them on, he emerged from the bank, guilt-free and feeling a million dollars richer.
By walking more, we were able to discover the world on our terms. Sometimes this meant getting into scrapes, but it also meant enlarging our understanding of the world in which we grew up.