Memory Monday

"We must all take adventures to know where we truly belong." -simplysunsigns.com

Reno, Nevada

As I warned you in my last Memory Monday blog, I have "Tales of the Old Rooming House" to share with you! Dick is stationed at Stead AFB and I am here to find a job before we go back home to be married in December.  I find a rooming house that I can afford..the guy who owns it falls in love with Dagmar which is great because not all places would take dogs, especially BIG ones!

I had a room that could hold three people... a twin bed and  double bed, but there was no one else there at the time.  It was, as I had described, on the second floor...as you got to the second floor, there was a large square hall with about six rooms off of it, all coming into the square hall which was kind of like a room itself. Along one wall was a row of windows and on the far side was the shared bath!  There was a five escape outside the windows so I had gotten Dagmar trained if she had to go potty in the middle of the night, I would just open the window, she would go down the fire escape..do her business and come right back up! Such a smart dog!!

There were several rooms downstairs, too.  And a shared kitchen for all to use.  I did discover that many times food left in there was not always there when you came back for it!  The owner had a room/apt. there, too, and there were a few other tenants who were permanent residents.  There was this one lady who was a waitress at a steakhouse just behind us; she also loved Dagmar and would bring her left over steak scraps! She ate better than I did!  Steak bones with a lot of meat on it; potato skins with a lot left!

I could leave Dagmar there with the owner as I said he loved her while I went job hunting.  The first thing I did was to find out if I was certified to teach in Nevada which I was not.  The University of Nevada at Reno was on the other side of town so I signed up for the two courses I needed which were offered at night.

Then I got a job at J.C. Penny's as a sales clerk.... a new experience for me!!!  Other than working at the swimming pool concession stand during high school, I had not worked at anything else but teaching so I really was getting a whole new outlook on life!

My first non-teaching job!

So I would leave Dagmar at "home" when I worked then took her with me when I went to my classes.  I could leave her in the car for a couple of hours...she was so good.

Some of the other residents of the rooming house were women who were there to get their six weeks' residency for divorce.  Back then most states took two to three years to get a divorce but if you lived for six weeks in Nevada, you could get a divorce in no time!  The people who lived there could go to the courthouse and come out with a divorce in a matter of hours.  Some who were there temporarily had children with them. And, of course, they all loved Dagmar, too...the kids, that is!  Most of the women would try to get some kind of temporary job while there and one of the easiest to get was to be a shill for a casino. What is a shill, you might ask?  Well, this naive gal didn't know but I found out!  Webster dictionary defines a shill as:

1. an accomplice of a hawker, gambler, or swindler who acts as an enthusiastic customer to entice or encourage others.

   
   

As awful as that sounds, these ladies were merely hired to dress up, sit at a blackjack table or any other gambling table that had no business and play for the house.  Apparently, no one will sit at an empty table so that was their job...to fill a seat!  The sad/bad thing was that they had to work at night so they would get their kids to sleep then go to work!  Once in awhile a kid would wake up crying...some of these kids were pretty young!  

There were also a couple of ladies who were "working gals" who had frequent night company....the owner did not know this, at least that is what he professed because "he would not tolerate illegal goings-on!"  I have to tell you though, I got to know these gals somewhat and they were both really nice people!  If one of the kids woke up and was scared one or the other of them would go in and help them get back to sleep!

More stories of the  "Old Rooming House" to come next blog!