Silvio Petricciani - University of Nevada, Reno

36 Silvio E. Petricciani
passed a regulation that they couldn’t have
a horsebook in a gambling house. And they
just reversed their decision on that not too
long ago; I think it was last year. So at that
time all the horsebooks went out [of] the
gaming establishments, and there was some
controversy as to people being able to call
bets out on the telephone and so on and
so forth. So they had horsebooks without
any telephones in them or anything; just
telephones for the business itself, no pay
phones, nothing. And they just reversed
themselves now, and they allow horsebooks
again in gaming establishments. But that’s
about the way it went until I left in ’43.
And as far as arrangements with Graham-
McKay concerning the Bank Club, there
were no arrangements per se about the Bank
Club, but the arrangements were when they
dissolved partnership. They didn’t really
dissolve partnership; my dad still had the slot
machines, you know, on a fifty-fifty basis with
these people, Cal-Neva and here. And I think
we discussed that in a previous interview. They
paid him, I think, at that time, two hundred
and fifty dollars a month not to lease out the
upstairs for any gaming; then there was no
competition. And that was the arrangement
that they had, and of course in those days two
hundred and fifty dollars a month was a good
rental. Of course when he put the gaming in
the Palace Club downstairs and built the hotel
upstairs, of course that arrangement went out
the window. And that’s when he lost the fifty
percent of the slot machines with the Bank
Club. But, you know, as we talked before, it
would have happened anyway because the
minute gaming became legal, why, the slot
machine operator had nothing to offer insofar
as protection or anything else. So everybody
started buying their own slot machines. We
have operators now with routes and stuff, but
these routes again are—the operator that helps
the guy get started and so on and so forth;
then he has a contract for a certain length
of time to keep his slot machines in there
until the debt is paid off and so on, you see.
So, but you can’t blame people. I mean why
give somebody fifty percent of something for
nothing, you know, which is in effect what it
is. Of course a lot of people can’t afford to buy
the slot machines and so on, pay the taxes, the
original taxes to start with, so they give them
a year operating in their establishment and
then they eventually buy their own anyway.
That was the situation there.
Then the Palace Club went along and did
its little thing just like it always has. It’s not
been a big money maker, and yet it affords a
real good living for anybody, you know, that
operates it. And it’s tied in now to where it
can’t expand. The only way it can go is up,
and in order for it to go up, why it would
take a lot of structural work. As a matter of
fact, if somebody were going to build a motel
here on this side [south] right now, it might
be better just to tear the whole darn thing
down and start from scratch. It might be a lot
cheaper than trying to bolster the thing and
start putting steel in. I’ve had mixed emotions
about that. Then of course you tear it down,
you close down, then you have to start all over
again. So, when you have a going business,
you know, you have mixed emotions about
which way to go.
The political [aspect of life in this period],
of course, was—in the gaining business you
didn’t, and I still hold to that, a politician
can’t do an awful lot for you or to you in this
business. I would never consider asking one
for a favor of any kind, nor would I imagine
they would come and ask me for any favors of
any kind because, as you’ve seen by the papers
lately, they get their nose stuck into everything
and every aspect of any person’s life and every
facet of your life, so really the gaming law’s a