Silvio Petricciani - University of Nevada, Reno

20 Silvio E. Petricciani
a matter of fact, some people in what we call
the respectable professions are snobs and so
on. So consequently, I just can’t have enough
praise for people in the gaming industry.
They were honorable people; if they incurred
debts, they paid them; and if they gave you
their word, that was it, period. You could
depend on them, just like you depend on
the sun coming up in the morning. It was a
way of life with them; you didn’t have to have
something in writing like you do today, and a
bunch of lawyers to put it down in legal form
because somebody’s going to do something to
somebody. In those days it you shook a man’s
hand and said this is the way it’s going to be
Monday morning, that’s the way it was. And
if it couldn’t be, if something happened in the
meantime that it couldn’t be, the man wasn’t
ashamed to go up and say, “Look, I can’t pay
you today because this, this and this happened
to me, but you’ll get your money in the next
couple of days when I can straighten this out.”
But today if somebody owes you something,
they shun you, they walk around the other
side of the street. They get away from you
because they don’t want to have to answer to
you. It wasn’t that way in those days. I’m very
adamant about the respect, the respectability
of the people in the gaming industry, really.
I’m very adamant about it because they were
good people, and they were honorable people.
Their word was good, period.
Now, the effects of the Depression. Reno
was a very fortunate town. We heard about the
soup kitchens and everything back East, but
Reno never really experienced the Depression
such as the United States knew it in those days.
And like I say, my dad was a good provider,
and all the time during the Depression and
stuff, we didn’t feel the Depression here like it
was felt all over the United States. Of course,
naturally it was tough, but it wasn’t that tough
that people couldn’t live—and without putting
food on their own tables. And strangely
enough, and you’ll find this happens in a
resort town or a gaming town such as Reno
or Las Vegas, that no matter what happens
around the rest of the country, whatever
the situation is insofar as the Depression or
whatever, the people always have money to go
out and entertain themselves. Be it that they
say, “Well, things are going bad here and so on
and so forth, we’ve got X number of dollars,
let’s go out and have a good time before it
turns completely bad,” you know.
And this is a way of life, and we always had
people coming into the town. We always had
money come into the town, and Reno never
felt the Depression like the rest of the United
States, it really didn’t. Because of the gaming
and so on, and being a resort town. Of course
we didn’t have the factories shutting down; we
didn’t have all the industry and so on; and we
didn’t have a bunch of families that didn’t have
work and so on because there weren’t that
many people to begin with. And everybody
made a dollar, you know. They were able to
continue to live.
And well, we always had the gaming at
the Bank Club and so on, and they all made
money during the Depression— they all made
money. So the Depression really didn’t affect
Reno like it affected the rest of the country. It
didn’t affect the gambling industry that much.
Oh sure, there were tough times sometimes,
but the expenses weren’t as great as they are
today and so on. Everybody was able to exist.
Then of course Roosevelt was elected,
and he started the WPA projects and the
CCC camps and all. And that spread a
little money around, and then in 1936, I
believe, they declared a bonus to the World
War I veterans—I think it was 1936—or it
was enacted in 1935 and it was distributed
in 1936. And that was a real boost to the
economy around here. There was enough for