John F. Cahlan - University of Nevada, Reno

10 John F. Cahlanblock from Virginia Street down towardsCenter Street. It was a real Chinese gamblingjoint, fan-tan, Chinese lottery, and all of thegames were running there.On the other side of the alley was awelding shop. Then, of course, on the cornerof First and Center was the city hall, a big redbrick building with the clock and the tower.The clock never did run after, oh, about 1920,I guess, because in this auto repair shop—aman by the name of John Oliveria ran theshop and he liked to nip every once in awhile. So he left his shop one night duringthe summer—August 1, 1920— and left thewelding oxygen running, not lit; it filled theshop with the gas. He came back about threeo’clock in the morning and walked in the doorand struck a match to find out where the lightswitch was. The whole shebang blew up. Itblew one of the rafters, or one of the piecesof wood, through the face of the clock on thecity hall, and that was the end of the clock.It blew him across the street and he landedon the steps of the YMCA building whichwas right across the street. Outside of beingslightly burned, it didn’t hurt him.*On the corner where the Mapes Hotel isnow was the post office building, the federalbuilding. And right in back of the federalbuilding was a long stretch of green grass,and then the YMCA, and on the southwestcorner of First and Center was the NixonOpera House. That’s now the Majestic Theater.And as I said earlier, the stage plays stoppedoff in Reno on their way from Salt Lake toSan Francisco, or the other way around, andwould put on a one-night stand there. I sawMaud Adams in “Peter Pan,” and Kolb andDill, a comic team, and several others that Ican’t recall. They used to have what we called“peanut heaven” way up top. The building wasa three-story building. “Peanut heaven” wason the third floor, and this was the generaladmission deal. You had to stay in the line tobe sure you got your tickets. So my brotherand I would ditch school; either one of uswould ditch school and go down and get ourplace in line. He’d go in the morning, and I’dgo in the afternoon, and we would always befirst in line so we got good seats. They had alarge chandelier in the center of the theaterwhich had a two-foot air vent in it so that theair could come down through this vent andinto the building. And if we couldn’t affordthe money to get a seat in “peanut heaven,”we would climb up on the roof, down in theinterior of this chandelier, and watch theplay from there. It was very thrilling andsometimes the chandelier would sway backand forth and scare the regular patrons, butit didn’t bother us too much.And then came high school. I went to theReno High School. Prior to that I was in theOrvis Ring school, which is still there, and Ican recall when we came back from CarsonCity, I entered the fifth grade, and my teacherwas Miss Laura B. Miller. In the sixth grade itwas Miss Frances Wright; in seventh grade itwas Miss Helen Hobbins; in the eighth gradeit was the famous and notorious Libby C.Booth. She was the principal and teacher ofthe eighth grade. And she had taught— whenI got there—she had taught people like PatMcCarran and that era, and she taught me,and then was teaching school at least ten yearsafter that—more than that. She was teachingwhile I was in high school and into college, soit must have been ten or fifteen years beforeshe retired.But to get back to school, then, I went tohigh school in the Reno High School buildingon West Street. It had just been completed acouple of years before I went to school there,*Cf. Reno Evening Gazette, August 2,1920, pp. 1-2.