Warren Nelson - University of Nevada, Reno

springs on them. Th e cards are put in these
boxes and come out one at a time. Th e spring
had to have tension on it to bring the cards
out. I felt the springs and found one that was
better than the others and took it out and
gave it to Larry. I set it down; he shuffl ed the
cards and started to put them in the box. He
stopped, put the cards down and got up. I was
standing there and asked what was the matter.
Larry said, “I quit.”
I said, “What?”
He said, “I just quit.” I told him he couldn’t
do that; he said that he could. I asked what
was wrong.
He said, “I’ve never done anything wrong
in my life, and I’m not going to start now.
Th at’s a deuce box; you can deal the second
card out of that box.”
I had no idea having never seen one and
didn’t know what it was. I had to tell him that
I certainly didn’t know that it was a jimmiedup
box and that I was sorry and would get
another one. He sat back down and started to
deal again. Th is shows how naive I was and
the caliber of people we had mostly in the
business at that time.
In Reno at that time, the “line” was wide
open. The girls would come up from the
“cribs;” the police would let them come up
aft er two o’clock in the morning to play.Th e
pimps would come with them. It was part of
our business. At ten o’clock they would have
to be off the street.
It was a very strange thing. Th ere was such
a conglomeration of people in Reno at that
time. Th e drug problems of today with young
people were there then, but in a diff erent way,
with the older people. Th ere was a certain
class of people that went down to the diff erent
houses and smoked opium on Saturday night.
It was like going out and having a drink. A
dozen or two dozen men and women would
go down and smoke the pipe and lay on the
Palace Club, 1936-1942
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hip on weekends. Everybody knew it. Th ey
weren’t thought of any more or less, I guess.
They were people who were around the
business.
The people that came in and out of
Reno at the time— “Pretty-boy” Floyd was
supposed to be here; Dillinger came in here—
these people were protected or were supposed
to be protected by Graham and McKay. Th is
was all common knowledge. Everyday you
would hear something, somebody would get
killed every once in a while or other things
were happening. It all seemed the common
course of events. Never thought much of it.
Th e papers didn’t play it up very much. Reno
didn’t sound like and I never thought of it
as a real great crime center. I didn’t think
it was because there really wasn’t too much
going on.
Th e colorful characters of that time are
absolutely unbelievable to the people today.
The nicknames they had were thought
nothing of then. Th ere was “Cheese-ass Sam,”
“Popcorn Jimmy,” “Alabam,” “Ragged-ass
Johnny,” “Gold-tooth Camel,” the “Dago Kid,”
the “Oregon Apple,” “Titanic Thompson.”
Th ese people came and went through Reno all
the time; you knew them, you heard of them.
Th ere was a story about a rooming house
that a lady had. A guy came to town looking
for a friend of his in the gambling business
named “Gold-tooth Camel.” Th e man went to
the boarding house and asked the lady if there
was anybody living there named “Gold-tooth
Camel.” She said no. Th e man said that he was
supposed to have stayed there.
Th e lady said, “Maybe he was supposed
to, but he didn’t.”
“But, do you think he’s ever been here?”
the man asked.
She says, “Well, I don’t know. I’ve got
‘Cheese-ass Sam,’ ‘Popcorn Jimmy’ and
‘Alabam, but I ain’t got no ‘Gold-tooth Camel’.”