TOWN CONSTRUCTION
At this point, I digress. I want to talk mostly about how the west side of town even came into being because when my family first arrived in town in 1979 there wasn’t anything on that side of the town at all!.
They started constructing trucks tops with gambling halls connected to them, a few brand name casino’s like, “The Gold Rush” where the quarter arcade was open whenever we were giving cash. This place soon after opening with its beautiful banquet style restaurant that featured this huge wagon wheel style chandelier that covered the entire center section of the center of the room spilling over onto the gold motif of the brass and gold painted and soft white light seemed to me to be a Mayan Mecca now that I look back on it but was soon taken over by The Peppermill Casino. A large corporation out of Reno Nevada who was all to willing to employ the immigrants from Zackatekas Mexico who seemed to band together, work for low wages and provide a high quality of work and who would stay away out of the clubs and casino’s because they sent all their money back to Mexico where down there they could live like Kings on the wages they were making in America and they were highly territorial.
They worked mostly behind the scenes. The customer service employees were usually white which is where my mother fit in. Forced to work for an expansion of the oldest club in town called, “The State Line Casino”. Left over from the days back when the greatest war on earth was underway the 509th fighter bomber group was set to train there at a large air base. The same fighter bomber squadron that dropped the atomic bombs over Japan.
Even the famous Enola Gay. So the chamber of commerce built a small park in the center of town and put up a memorial to Corinel Tibits which inevitably started to become the names of the streets that tourists in town would normally find. Like the one around the 18 hole golf course, “The Vista Butte” Golf Course which was surrounded by Tibits St. and so on. They would even have the 509th reunions at The State Line Casino there until most of the 509th had been and had now gone. They even had in a glass display the world land speed record model cars and their drivers with a few small sentiments about the car, driver, the class it was in and so on and so forth.
But mom ended up working for a brand new casino that was made in the area where the semitrucks would park their vehicles and frequent the shows, showers, and entertainment that went on in these joints. When they first opened the doors the people who were set to work there had already dubbed it, “The Brass Ass” because of all the brass that was used as railing on the cement staircases that lead into this particular place.
It’s real name was, “The Silver Smith” because the family that owned the Casino were The Smith family. They spared no amenity, but were scrutinized when they put in some very expensive carpet throughout the casino with the big logo, “SS” and some people didn’t like the implications of a Nazi Orientation but still, the carpet remained.
Donald actually started off working in the same place that I did. A little 52 space RV park that sat just across the parking terrace from the casino on the Utah side of the state line. One that had no pull through spaces avail able and the KOA on the other side of town was bigger and featured showers and pull through spaces for less money . They were only charging $8 with a, “Good Sam” member ship where if you wanted to discount at the RV parks that were affiliated with, “Good Sam” then you had to have The Good Sam sticker in your window of a little guy and a member card with a number on it. $12.90 without, and $11.70 for members. I even remember pointing out to the boss that the RV park directory didn’t even have us listed in its pages. That was soon changed with a new lower rate and a full page insert into the RV Park Directory. Donald worked there for a while.
I really don’t remember which, but that day on the lake was a real eye opener into what my brother had be come. We were raised together until our parents were divorced in 1986 when I was 12. When that happened and I found out that the man wasn’t even my real father and the many beatings I took at the hands of Frank Lee Burnum mostly for no apparent reason other that my sister liked to watch me get beat.
She would do things like gouge her nails into my arms until I make her stop. Then she’d wake up dad and tell him that I kicked her in the chest or something ridiculous like that and then he would come out of his cage and proceed to physically and mentally abuse me. Slapping me and knocking me down where he would continue to strike me explaining the whole time that,
“Kicking my sister in the chest could kill her.”
With little regard for my own safety or mental state of mind. All of this going on while mom was still at the club after working grave yard all night and gambling until mid afternoon. They both did except for Frank worked an 8 to 5 hourly shift repairing heavy equipment. A trade he had learned in the army, and which was the reason for moving to this dead end trailer park hidden on the other side of the tracks next to the over pass where the train would go through. I remember falling asleep to the clickity clack of the freight trains that would laboriously make their way through town slowly putting me to sleep at night.
It was so desolate at that time that people had to create things like slings that would rock back and forth across the tracks so when the train would come you could swing across before it hit you just to see how close you could get to it without being hit and killed.
For some strange reason there were a lot of suicides in the trailer park and it wasn’t even that big! It was a park named Jim’s Trailer Park. For what reason I have no Idea other than there used to be an old Casino named Jim’s Casino just up the hill across the tracks for the trailer court. I also remember my mother taking me there and ordering me French Toast. My favorite thing and only thing on the menu that I could remember. Other than that, I had no idea.