Sin City in My Blood

Credit: Thomas Wolfe, www.foto-tw.de
Photo has been cropped.

According to the City of Las Vegas online site, Las Vegas, Nevada is 110 years old today, having been incorporated as a city on June 1, 1911.  I love Vegas and have a long family history with it.

I was born in Los Angeles in April 1962.  I don't believe my maternal grandparents were in Las Vegas yet, because they were defiintely still living in Miami when my parents arrived in Los Angeles (having driven across the country very soon after they were married on October 21, 1961; my mother always complained that it took three whole days to drive through Texas), mostly likely in November.  In fact, when my parents left Florida, my grandmother didn't even know yet that my mother was pregnant with me!  The first person to learn about that was the woman who would become my godmother, Ruthie Cochran, who was my grandmother's oldest friend.  My mother told me that Ruthie was the first person she told about being pregnant.

When they arrived in the Los Angeles area, my parents were broke and my father didn't have a job.  So they did what lots of people in similar circumstances do:  They found a relative or close friend to stay with.  That was Ruthie, who lived in Whittier at the time.  So that's how Ruthie became the first person — besides my father and mother — to learn my mother was pregnant.

I'm pretty sure that very soon after that my grandparents learned about the upcoming happy event.  I suspect that one of the reasons, if not the primary reason, they moved west was because of that announcement.  What I know for certain is that my earliest memory is of taking a train to Las Vegas to visit my grandparents when I was about 2 1/2 years old, so roughly late 1964.  It had to have been after June 16, because my younger sister had been born.  That might even have been the reason for the trip, for my grandmother to see the new baby.

After my grandparents moved to Vegas, we visited them a lot.  My grandmother, Bubbie (Yiddish for grandmother), worked in the casinos as a cashier, and I remember as a child walking through the casinos with her and my parents.  Nowadays they have fits if that happens, but it was just normal stuff back in the 1960's.  Somehow I didn't turn into a gambling addict, either.

Something that influenced me later in life was visiting the Tropicana, one of the classic Vegas casinos.  I fell in love with the gorgeous macaws and cockatoos who lined the long corridor that went from the casino in the front of the propety to the hotel rooms at the rear.  And now I have three macaws!

I remember Bubbie telling me when I was very young that you should only gamble what you can afford to lose.  I asked her about that years later, and she swore she didn't say it, but if it wasn't her I don't know who did.  I took the advice to heart, whoever said it to me.

Bubbie wasn't big into gambling herself, but she did like to play the slots occasionally.  She would walk down an aisle and then decide *that* one looked good.  Once she won $40 on a penny slot playing with only 7 cents.  She just had a knack with slots.  Does Vegas even have penny slots anymore?

For some time Bubbie worked at the Thunderbird, which became the Silver Bird when Major Riddle leased it (he liked naming his casinos Silver Something).  Once when we visited I remember we had French toast made with huge, deep slices of Texas toast, behind the scenes in the hotel kitchen.

Later Bubbie worked at the MGM Grand (the *real* MGM casino) on the Strip.  She was there in November 1980 when the MGM had a huge fire.  She and her coworkers made it out fine, but then one young woman went back in because she forgot her brand-new coat.  She didn't make it back out the second time.  Even now I don't like being on high floors in hotels, just in case.

On one visit to Vegas I went with Bubbie and someone else, I think my mother or my godmother?, to the Silver Slipper (owned by Howard Hughes, not by Major Riddle) to see the famous Boylesque female impersonator show.  I thought it was in 1989, when we had a big family reunion in Vegas to celebrate my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary, but according to Wikipeida the Silver Slipper closed permanently in 1988, so that timing is a little off.  But I know I saw the show!

Before I started college in 1979 I lived in Las Vegas with my grandparents.  Their apartment building was just behind the Imperial Palace, on the Strip.  During that stay, my grandfather wanted to teach me how to bet on craps.  When I discovered that you make money on craps by betting on the player, not by playing yourself, I lost interest.  I attended a couple of hours of the Jerry Lewis–Muscular Dystrophy Labor Day Telethon while I was living there.

Several years later, after I had moved to Oakland, California, I was visiting Las Vegas annually because I regularly attended a trade show held there.  After being at a couple of other hotels, it ended up at The Orleans, about a mile west of the Strip and a very nice hotel.  Not only did I enjoy going to the trade show and seeing Vegas, I also visited my grandaunt Florence every time I was in town.  I think I did that for about ten years or so.  Florence and I would always go out to a buffet, and she would tuck a bread roll or two and some napkins into her purse before we left.

One tradition I built during those trade show years was going to the fantastic sushi restaurant in the San Remo (apparently more properly Hôtel San Rémo), just behind the Tropicana.  An industry colleague and I alternated paying to take the other out, because we both loved great sushi.  I had been told that the casino was marketed heavily to Japanese businessmen, explaining the high quality of the restaurant, and I learned from the Wikipedia page that it was indeed owned by a Japanese hotelier from 1989–2006, which fits with the years I was visiting.

And now that I've done all this reminiscing about Las Vegas, I want to go!  But it doesn't look as though the Oyo (current name for the San Remo property) still has the great sushi restaurant.  Well, foo.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Moving On Out

It's Saturday, so that must mean it's time for Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.  Let's see what tonight's theme is:

Here is your assignment, if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music, please!):

1.  Where did you go the first time you moved out of your parents' home?  Did you have roommates? Did you live by yourself?  Did you get married right away?  Tell the story — your children and grandchildren will want to know!

2.  Share your story in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or on Facebook.  Please leave a comment with a link to your post here.

The first time I moved out of my parents' home was when I was getting ready to go to college in 1979.  But instead of going straight to college, I lived with my grandparnents in Las Vegas during the summer.

I don't remember now why that decision was made.  It could have been my desire to get the hell out of Florida during the summer.  My grandparents might have offered to have me visit.  I'm pretty sure, however, that it wasn't my mother's idea, because she didn't want me going to the other side of the country at all.

We made a big trip out of it.  I packed all the clothes I thought I would need for the school year.  My mother and I flew to the San Francisco Bay area first and visited my aunt and uncle (my mother's brother and his wife).  I think we stayed about a week or so and did a bunch of touristy things.  One place we visited was Pier 39, where we ran into one of those age and weight guessers.  I decided to take her on.  She went on about how "the eyes are the windows to the soul" and would let her know how old I was.  She finally wrapped up her shpiel by saying I was 27.  I told her that I was only 17, and it really seemed to throw her off.  She was very disconcerted.  I offered to show her my driver license, but she said it was okay, she believed me.  I don't remember what I won for stumping her.

After that visit, Mommy and I flew down to Los Angeles for my USC freshman orientation, which was a few days or so.  Walk around the campus, kind of figure out where things are, see the dorm.  Get blown off by the advisor in my academic department (yeah, I still remember that).  Nothing exciting.

Then we flew to Vegas, where I stayed and my mother then went back to Florida.  I don't remember if I had my own room or if I slept on a couch, but I had a lovely time staying with my grandparents, except for when my grandfather would kvetch that I wasn't getting enough exercise.  He kept telling me I should go out for a walk, so one day I did.  I walked around in 107° and came back after an hour, long enough for him to be worried.  He didn't complain about me not exercising after that.

I was still living with them when the annual Jerry Lewis–Muscular Dystrophy Association Labor Day Telethon was being broadcast.  Zadie (my grandfather) asked if I wanted to see the telethon in person, which I thought sounded fun, so we went to the Sahara Casino, where it was held, and watched for a couple of hours.  Then they shifted another audience group in.  The main thing I remember from that year's telethon is that Charo was a guest and was dancing with a just-barely-large-enough-to-completely-cover-everything tube top that then started sliding down bit by bit.  The cameras cut back and forth between Charo dancing and Jerry sitting off to the side sweating while he worried if the dancing would end before the top fell.  (It did.)

Before the fall semester started, my grandparents loaded me, my clothes, and a bicycle Zadie had found for me into the car and drove to Los Angeles.  They helped me get set up in my dorm room and headed back to Vegas.  And I've always found my own place to live since then.

Wordless Wednesday

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: What Is Your Earliest Memory?

This is really cool.  Randy Seaver decided he liked one of my suggestions for a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun topic:

Here is your assignment, if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music, please!):

(1) What is your earliest memory?  How old were you, where did you live, who are the characters in your memory?

(2) Tell us in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or on Facebook or Google+.  Please leave a comment on this post with a link to your post.

Thank you to Janice Sellers for suggesting this topic.  If you have an idea for an SNGF topic, please let me know.

Part of the reason I suggested this topic is because of the very clear early memory I have.

As a child, for many years I had remembered taking a train trip from Los Angeles (really east Los Angeles County) to Las Vegas to visit my grandparents.  I remembered my mother and her sister being on the train, and clearly remembered throwing up and my mother being upset about the mess.  I didn't remember leaving Los Angeles or arriving in Las Vegas, just the part when I threw up, who was there, and where we were going.

I finally asked my mother about me throwing up on the train and whether she remembered it, and if so when it had happened.  She looked stunned and said I couldn't possibly remember that.  I added the details about us traveling to Vegas and Aunt Sam being with us.  My mother looked utterly flabbergasted.  She told me I was remembering it correctly, and that it had happened when I was only two and half years old.  She could not fathom that I remembered that trip.  I guess, in my mind, it was such a traumatic event to throw up on the train that the memory imprinted itself permanently in my brain.

At the time we were living in eastern Los Angeles County.  If I was 2 1/2, and my sister was already born, we were probably living in La Puente.  I can kind of picture the house in my mind, but I don't think we have any photographs of it.  It's the house where I remember seeing a swarm of bees when I was a little older.  Before La Puente we lived in Montebello, and after La Puente I think is when we moved to Pomona.

What I found interesting was what I didn't remember about the trip.  Apparently my brother (one year younger than I) and sister (two years younger) were also on the train with us, but I have no recollection of them being there.  In fact, now that I think about it, we were probably going to visit my grandparents so they could see the new baby.

Remembering the Triangle Fire and Frieda Welikowsky

One hundred years ago today, the industrial fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company caused the deaths of 146 people and changed labor laws and New York City forever.  One of the employees who died because of the fire was a young Russian immigrant named Frieda Welikowsky.  She had been in the United States for less than two years.

Frieda was born in Liady, Mogilev gubernia, Russia (now Lyady, Belarus) about 1890.  She had three siblings -- Alter, Lea, and Fannie (we don't know Fannie's Yiddish name, only her American name).  All four siblings came to the United States in search of a better life.  Fannie, who was already married and had a daughter, came first with her husband.  Next was Frieda, who arrived at Ellis Island on July 19, 1909.  Her occupation listed on the ship manifest is "tailoress."  Because she was a young woman of child-bearing age traveling by herself, and therefore a "likely public charge" if she did not have someone here to support her, she was detained until someone came to pick her up.  She waited less than a day before her sister Fannie collected her.

Frieda apparently found a job in the garment industry fairly quickly.  In the 1910 census, she was enumerated on April 22 while living with her sister Fannie and her sister's family, and her occupation was "waist operator."  This meant she used a sewing machine and actually constructed garments.  Waists, or shirtwaists, were essentially what we would now call a blouse.  They were a relatively new fashion item (previously women wore one-piece dresses or bodices that matched their skirts) and were extremely popular.

Frieda was working on Saturday, March 25, 1911.  Being Jewish, she would probably have preferred not to work on the Sabbath, but if she didn't work she might have lost her job.  So she was in the factory when the fire broke out.  She was one of the employees who braved jumping out of the building rather than burning to death inside.  The fall did not immediately kill her and she was taken to New York Hospital.  In a New York Times article of March 28, 1911, however, a short note near the end mentioned Frieda and that "little hope was held for her recovery."

On March 29, a Manhattan coroner filled out the death certificate for Frieda, who had died on March 28, the day the Times article was published.  The cause of death was "shock & multiple fractures; jumped from burning building."  Later on March 29, Frieda was buried at Mount Zion Cemetery in Queens.

Lea and Alter, Frieda and Fannie's other siblings, never saw Frieda again after she left Russia.  Lea arrived at Ellis Island on September 23, 1911.  Alter arrived in Boston on August 28, 1912.

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Last year, I spoke several times with Michael Hirsch, the amateur historian who worked obsessively to determine the names of the six victims who had remained unidentified after the fire.  He has done an immense amount of research on the Triangle Fire and its aftermath.  He told me that Frieda had given important testimony to investigators before she died.  He at first questioned whether her name was actually Welikowsky, because he said the Workmen's Circle, in whose plot Frieda is buried at Mount Zion, worked closely with the family members of the victims buried there, and her name on the gravestone is spelled Palakofsky.  He could not give me an explanation for the significant difference in spelling, but my research and documentation apparently convinced him that Palakofsky was not correct, because Frieda is in the official list of victims under Velakofsky, a linguistic variation of Welikowsky.

HBO and PBS produced documentaries to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Fire.  Michael Hirsch was a coproducer and one of the writers for the HBO program, Triangle:  Remembering the Fire.  The PBS program, Triangle Fire, said that only one person survived jumping out of the building, which is misleading.  A few people in addition to Frieda survived for at least a couple of days after they jumped.

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I am not related to Frieda.  I researched her and her family as a mitzvah (good deed) for a friend of mine last year.  My friend's brother wanted to do a big family tree project for their mother's 85th birthday, and I agreed to help.  I became particularly interested in Frieda not only because of the tragedy of her short life but also because the story of the fire made me think of my own family.

Joe Gordon

My great-grandfather Joe (originally Joine, pronounced YOY-ne) lived in Manhattan in 1911 and also worked in the garment industry.  He didn't work for the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, but the fire could have happened at almost any of the businesses.  He probably knew some of the people who worked at Triangle.  He may have marched in some of the labor protests before and after the fire.

Fast forward to 1980.  My grandmother, Joe's daughter, was working at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.  A fire in the building claimed 87 lives.  My grandmother got out, but she always talked about one coworker who had come out with her but then went back inside because she had left her brand-new coat.  The young woman didn't make it back out the second time.  I remembered that story while I was watching the HBO special, which mentioned Joe Wilson, one of the fire victims.  He also had made it out safely, but he went back because he had left his grandfather's pocket watch, a family heirloom from the old country.  Joe didn't make it back out either.  His fiancee identified him after the fire by the pocket watch.

It isn't uncommon for me to learn something that puts my own family history into perspective while researching someone else.  History can tie people together even though they are not related.