Silvio Petricciani - University of Nevada, Reno

106 Silvio E. Petricciani
might have been before I met him. There are
a lot of stories about him, that he belonged to
the Mob back East and all that kind of stuff,
but all I know about Moe is that he was a
perfect gentleman at all times. I saw the man
lose his temper one time, and that was with
a Gaming Control Board man. Actually, we
were being harassed by the Gaming Control
Board at the time because of some unsavory,
supposedly unsavory, characters that were
seen in the Stardust, and of course it was a
public place, and they didn’t have the “Black
Book” at that time; so the harassment part
came one night right in the middle of all the
big play—here comes a horde of Gaming
Control people, and they wanted all the cards
off of all the games and all the dice off of all
the games, and it was just general harassment
you know. So that time Moe came over from
the Desert Inn, and he told the head of the
Gaming Control Board, “Well,” he says, “I
don’t know why you’re here,” but you could
see that he was angry; he says, “I don’t know
why you’re here or why you’re harassing me,
but,” he says, “if you want to close this place
up, go right ahead and close it up.” He said,
“Of course you’re going to have the biggest
lawsuit you ever had on your hands tomorrow
morning.” But he says, “If you want to close
this place up, just go right ahead and close it
up right now. But,” he says, “I’m getting tired
of this harassment.” He says, “We haven’t done
anything here; we’re not about to do anything
here that’s contrary to the laws of the state of
Nevada, and that’s it. But,” he says, “if you
want to continue this, either get out or close
the place up. Now you have your alternatives.”
Right there and then, so they all left. And we
weren’t bothered any more.
But it was just, you know, kind of Gestapo
tactics which was entirely uncalled for. And
I knew everyone of these guys, every one of
these agents—I mean it was comical to me. I
said, “What is it with you people?” But why
they did it I don’t know, but they did.
But other than that Moe was a very astute
businessman and well, like I say, he was just
one hell of a nice guy. And any time you’d see
him or if he came into the place or anything,
he’d be the first one to come over to you and
say hello. You didn’t have to go seek him out
and say, “Hello, I’m here” or something. He’d
come over, and if anything happened in the
place that called for a decision, a high level
decision or something, he would say, “That’s
your department, you make the decision;
right or wrong, you make the decision; I’m
behind you all the way.” And that’s the way it
was, and that was the beauty of being able to
work under a situation like that. And luckily
enough and thankfully I don’t think I made
any bad decisions ever along the line.
And, as a matter of fact when I left to come
up here, Mr. Dalitz called me into private
conference. He said, “You know,” he said,
“you’re one of our best men, and we don’t
want you to go.
And I started out with Moe, and my
motives for leaving had nothing to do with
the Stardust, as I said before. If it hadn’t been
that I had this place to come to—and it was
a mess as I probably told you earlier. When
I got back here it was just terrible, and the
lease was up on it, so we decided to come
up here and take it over, remodel it and see
what we could do with it. And that’s the
reason that I left the Stardust. Otherwise, as
I said before, I would probably still be in Las
Vegas, because the way I was treated down
there not only in the Stardust, but anyplace
that I went, I more or less felt like it was my
town. Anyplace I called for a reservation or
whatever, I was always treated just beautifully,
and of course there was reciprocity there
between the executives of all the gaming
establishments that if you want to go to a show