Silvio Petricciani - University of Nevada, Reno

22 Silvio E. Petricciani
and get him to go in one hole or another. It was
comical. It was a strange thing. At that time
everybody that was anybody in the gambling
business when Pappy Smith came to town (and
this includes myself) laughed at him with his
Penny Roulette and his mice running around
in this little circular affair. It had holes around
it, you know, and you could bet on which
hole the mouse would run into. And as I say,
everybody laughed at him. They thought he
was crazy. Of course, when Pappy Smith came
here, he was an old carnival man, and he knew
how to advertise. But anyway as time went on,
why he grew and grew and grew. And nobody
thought he would get as big as he did. But
everybody watched him, and everybody said
that there’s no chance for him. And this was
the concensus of opinion all over town.
So, as he grew one day—strange thing,
Jack Sullivan came in to talk to my dad about
something. It was during the Fourth of July
celebration, and they were in the office. Of
course, as you grow up in a town, you know,
the kid grows up and the kid is going to
learn. So Jack and my dad were talking about
business and a few other things—they were
always sort of arguing back and forth on wage
scales and this and that and the other thing.
I told them, I said, “You know, you people
sit here on Center Street bickering back and
forth and arguing amongst each other, and
you can’t see the forest for the trees. You’re
watching somebody grow strong on Virginia
Street, and it’s going to break you both.”
And I’ll never forget Sullivan’s reaction to
that. My dad didn’t say anything, and Sullivan
said—patted me on the face, you know, which
I just loved [sarcastically], “It’s all right my
boy; there’s plenty of business for everybody.”
“Oh, okay, fine, you guys go ahead and
bicker then.”
So strangely enough my prediction came
true in effect that the bulk of the business was
brought over onto Virginia Street, as opposed
to Center Street. My expression of breaking
them was not really correct, but I did say that.
But it did put a dent in both places at that time.
And, of course, it’s hard for a young person
to go and tell older so-called experienced
people that somebody’s going to give them
untold competition. But it came to pass, and
I kind of pride myself on being able to predict
the success of Virginia Street in the gambling
business.
And Smiths grew with the town, and
yet they became part of the town. Of all the
people in my estimation that I’ve seen (other
than Harrah) that have come into the town
and been in the business in town, all of a
sudden they become indoctrinated into the
philosophy of Reno, that Reno should be kept
small and so on. And they did a darn good
job of doing it, until the advent of Bill Harrah,
because no doubt with the money that was
made by the Smith family and Fitzgerald—
in effect, they didn’t plow it back into their
establishments which is very evident by what’s
happened in the town. They sort of sat back
on their laurels and watched Bill Harrah just
get stronger and stronger and stronger. It’s
the old history repeating itself all over again,
which as long as I wasn’t a part of it, I used
to be able to sit back and objectively see what
was going on.
And of course, as you can see, the Smith
family eventually sold out to the Hughes
organization which is another do-nothing
organization, in my estimation. They came
into the state of Nevada. They bought up all
going businesses and kept them going. Their
remodeling and processes in their business—
that just started in the past year—they started
to remodel the Desert Inn in 1977, and they
started to remodel—oh, they’ve torn the
buildings down here in 1978. So actually in
coming into the state of Nevada, everybody