Warren Nelson - University of Nevada, Reno

name which was Pete Seaman. I asked how
long he had been working there and what
did he do.
He replied, “Today I’m check-racking,
but yesterday I was a dealer, but they got this
good dealer from Reno and they demoted me
to check-racker.”
I said, “Partner, I’ve got some news for
you; I’m not a good dealer, I’ve never dealt
this game in my life.”
He couldn’t believe that because he said
I rolled the ball good, and I said that was all
I could do, not anything else. I asked if he
would help me, and he said yes. He was trying
to learn, and I was trying to learn so we spent
all the time dealing to each other, and we did
learn fast. It wasn’t real easy but the night
shift manager didn’t know any more than we
did. If Joe Lyden had been working the night
shift he would have caught on in a minute
that we didn’t know what we were doing. We
innovated; if we got seventeen checks straightup
for thirty-fi ve times seventeen, we would
go into a huddle to fi nd out what thirty-fi ve
times seventeen was.
I’d say, “Well ten is three fi ft y.”
He’d say, “Seven is two hundred and
forty-fi ve, so that’s fi ve hundred ninety-fi ve.”
So we would pay the player fi ve hundred and
ninety-fi ve. We got by that way, and both of
us became good wheel dealers and very good
friends.
To show what kind of a friend Pete
Seaman was, at the time I left Reno my wife
had gotten a divorce right aft er I left and
remarried and left her new husband. She
called me and wanted me to come back to
Reno. We called back and forth, and I was
left with a big phone bill that I couldn’t pay.
I went to Pete Seaman and told him I had a
diamond ring I’d like to hock and needed two
hundred dollars. I asked him where I could go.
He said I didn’t have to hock the ring, that he
Palace Club, 1936-1942
11
would loan me the two hundred dollars. We
went up to his little room in a little hotel there,
and he took a trunk out from underneath his
bed—a locker—and picked up the top drawer
and reached down to the bottom and brought
out a sock full of fi ve dollar bills. He was
getting fi ve dollars a day, and every other day
he would put fi ve dollars away. He loaned me
the two hundred dollars. He’s still my friend
and still in the gambling business. He is one
of the many kinds of people I’ve dealt with in
my life that makes me think that my business
is a good business.
I worked there for the rest of that winter.
My ex-wife came to Butte. In the spring, Joe
Lyden called me over and told me it was real
tough then and would have to cut me down
to two days a week. I said I couldn’t get along
on two days a week. He said it was all he
could do, so I had to quit then and try to fi nd
another job. I had no idea where to fi nd a job
in Montana because it was pretty tough; even
in ’39 the Depression was still on.
When I got home that aft ernoon I got a
call from John Petricciani saying he really
needed me in Reno and would I come
back and become a pit boss. This was an
opportunity I’d thought about for a long time.
I was very happy to do it and went back to
Reno as a pit boss in the Palace Club.
It was a tough job.I had two brothers-inlaw
to work with and we did a pretty good
job of running the place, I guess, because
it made some money. In the wintertime it
would fall down and get real tough, but in
the summertime we’d work like the devil and
get the bankroll back. It was going pretty well.
Th ere was a man named Bill Panelli who
was one of the pit bosses there; well thought
of, well respected guy. He probably had as
much to do with my knowledge of the gaming
business as anybody. Bill had an insatiable
curiosity about the best way to do things. He