Thanks for the welcome, James! I am looking forward to receiving the next magazine. When I was a kid at Las Vegas High School in the early 1960s, I worked a couple of summers at the Frontier Hotel & Casino, on the Strip. It was the New Frontier, not the Last Frontier Village. Later, starting in late-1969, right after I got out of the Navy, I went to work for Jackie Gaughan (my dad's business partner for forty years) at the El Cortez. I didn't work in the gaming part of the operation, although I did do a stint as a casino cashier for a year or so. Jackie had me doing all sorts of things at the El Cortez (and the Western, when it was new). I worked in their maintenance department for a while; I designed and installed the Cortez's first "eye-in-the-sky" above the casino floor; I worked with the architect, general contractor and chief building inspector (Walt Siebert) on the construction of the Western Hotel & Casino; and for a long time ran the vending business that supplied all of the machines in various casinos on or near Fremont Street, including the Western, El Cortez, Golden Nugget, Club Bingo, Union Plaza, Nevada Hotel, California Hotel, and the El Dorado Club in Henderson. I did that for about the last five years I worked for Jackie. Those were great times . . . long before the "Vegas Experience" canopy was installed on upper Fremont Street.
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