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Then I just got a terrible, terrible burn. My face was sunburned; it was windburned; it was campfire burned - - all 3. And I thought I’d caught some kind of a disease in the river. I was so afraid my children might get it that I . . . anybody that went into Vegas, I’d have them get me some Listerine and some cotton. And I was taking this pure Listerine and this cotton and dabbing my face, so I was drying it out and burning it with the Listerine as well as what was already there. It was just getting so terrible, I said to my husband, “I’ve got to go to a doctor and see what’s the matter with my face.” And he would laugh at me, because when I would change expression, I’d get little cracks, and they’d bleed. So we stopped at the Six Companies camp that I was telling you about in Boulder, and we went to the doctor there. He said, “I can’t even look at a woman or a child; you’ve got to go to Las Vegas. All I am here for is to give the men a physical and see if they can do a day’s work before we give them a job.” Now, this was the Depression, and so many men had walked miles and miles, and they had been without food also. So we had to go into Las Vegas. But you couldn’t go into Las Vegas until you set a car in the river for 3 days. All the cars had wooden spokes in those days, and the spokes dried out so bad that they just rattled and came loose. So if you were going to go to Las Vegas, you had to set your car in the river, and then you had to move it a little bit - - not enough so as it’d float down the river, but enough so as the spokes would soak up - - before you could go into Las Vegas. So, we made the trip to Las Vegas, and needless to say, there wasn’t any highway. It was just up hills and down dale and in the arroyos and stuff and dust. And the very first doctor’s sign that I saw, I remember it was in the old Beckley Building upstairs, and I think that was Second and Fremont. Now, Fremont in those days only came out 6 blocks, and the last 2 blocks were residential. The first 4 blocks were casinos and a few little stores. So I went up, and the minute I opened the door and went into the doctor’s office, he took one look at me, and he said, “My God, woman! You’ve got the worst case of desert sunburn and windburn I’ve ever seen in my life!” And so he gave me a wash - - it was a liquid - - and also a prescription of salve that was in a zinc oxide base, and it just felt like heaven when I put it on my face. Within the next few years I must have given away $200 or $300 worth of that prescription, because I always got it as soon as I got out or gave it to somebody. I mean, I bought it and then gave it to them, because they had my prescription on file so I could get it at the White Cross Drug in Las Vegas. Men used to go without a shirt, and then they would get such blisters on their back that sometimes they would be festered. And babies, especially - - people thought that they’d be cooler if they run around without anything, and they’d get these terrible sun blisters, and then they would open, and they would be infected. So I gave that away constantly for 3 years.

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Copyright University of Nevada Oral History Program 2002
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Before You Build the Dam	Politics of Building the Dam	Construction of the Dam
Controversy over Naming the Dam	Oral Histories	A Last Look at the Hoover Dam