Copyright University of Nevada Oral History Program 2002
We encourage researchers to use this material. To view our use policy,
please check our Web
site or call us at 775/784/6932.
Guy
Rocha with Marion Allen:
Guy Rocha: Marion Allen, when you came to the project
in December 1931, Boulder City was in the final stages
of completion- -at least the housing. Could you talk
about your initial living arrangements?
Marion Allen: well, my father had been working here
since spring, and he was able to get a house. You
were on priorities on houses. You had to be here and
know that you were going to be here some time before
they’d give you a house. He was able to get
a small house; I think it was on Fifth Street- -it
might have been New Mexico. The house was quite small-
-a little, 2-room house- -but it had a large porch
on it. It wasn’t too much of a house, but it
was shelter.
Of course, in those times. . . it’s just a little
hard to compare times. That’s where people get
off a little… Air conditioning was something
we really hadn’t even heard of. Refrigeration
was very new. You got a cake of ice, and before you
got home it was gone. [laughs]
When we come here, not all of Boulder City wasn’t
near completed. But we lived in that house for some
time. It was pretty crowded, but we had a big porch
for beds. Then my wife wanted her own house, so she
finally wrangled a house down on Seventh Street. This
was a one-room, cold-water flat because they didn’t
have any water heaters. Otherwise, it had a small
gas stove furnished; the company was selling refrigerators
(that was one of our first investments), and that
was really a luxury. Then, of course, radios were
even quite new at that time. We got a small radio,
and I think they had a station in Las Vegas that we
got. But I tell some of the kids today about we never
had any TV . . . .
This little house down there on Seventh Street, what
the wife kicked about, the sand come in off the desert,
and the floor would get about a half inch deep of
sand, you know. She’d sweep it out; by the time
she got it swept out, it would move back in. But there
wasn’t really hardships. . .we wasn’t
used to the things that we take for granted today.
We lived there in that house pretty near 4 years.
Rent was enormous; it was $15 a month. I think we
paid $2 a month for water, but there was a restriction
on that water- -you didn’t water a yard, not
even a green plant out there. If you did that, they’d
be right down and they’d give you trouble and
charge you double, which would be about $4, which
wouldn’t have been bad, but the second time,
that was it. But they didn’t kick about you
running the water all night on the roof. And that
was our cooling system. We’d fix the hose so
it’d spray the roof and run down over the burlap
canvas. That made our cooling. So that worked out
pretty good. Otherwise, the worst thing we had to
contend with was the heat- -trying to sleep. About
the time you’d cool off a little- -about 6:00,
6:30 or 7:00 in the morning- -you had to be on the
bus going to work. So as far as I was concerned, that
was the hardest part of it. Otherwise, we were probably
some of the fortunate ones. The other people that
lived in the camps in tents and all- -who didn’t
have any refrigeration and very little water- -probably
suffered a lot more. |
|
National
Archives and Records Administration