Page 17 - 2002 DT 12 issues_Neat

What’ s I n s i d e!

Featured Articles
All in the Family..................................1
Trivial Pursuits....................................6

Special
Quiz....................................................7
Departments
March 2002 News & Notes......................................2
Programs & Hikes...............................4
Desk Schedule......................................6
Bulletin Board.....................................8

All in the Family, circa 1900 ○ ○ ○ range she had brought from California.
Sickly Mrs. Lake cooked on an iron
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by Jack Ryan ○ Food in the sweltering desert was pre-
○ served in a desert cooler, a wooden
○ ○
○
○ cupboard wrapped in burlap under a
○ ○
he Lake family— all 11 of them, ○ the other for cooking. The tents had low ○ dripping tank of water. Las Vegas was
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with an addition soon to come— ○ wooden walls with a canvas roof. “You ○
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Tarrived in the Las Vegas valley ○ had dust like you don’t have today,” re- ○ ○ so miserable that Mary Ellen refused
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by wagon in November, 1904. Their first ○ called Olive, one of the Lake daughters ○ ○ to let Robert bid when housing lots
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sight was a drunk tied up to a mesquite ○ in an 1983 recollection in the Review- ○ ○ were sold by the railroad. We’re going
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tree. “That was because they didn’t have ○ Journal. “There were ruts about six ○ ○ back to California as soon as my lungs
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a jail,” one of the children later recalled. ○ inches deep out on the road, and when a ○ ○ get better, she said.
○ ○ So Robert got himself a beer bar-
And that was because there was no ○ wagon rolled by the dust would just fog ○
town. Las Vegas would come a year ○ ○ into the door of the tent.” ○ rel, cut one side off, put a seat in it, and
later. ○ ○ set up his barber business
Robert Lake brought his brood from ○ ○ ○ ○ in a corner of a saloon near
Ontario, Calif., because his wife, Mary ○ ○ ○ ○ present day Woodlawn
Ellen, had a lung ailment and doctors ○ ○ ○ ○ cemetery. When that
prescribed a year or two of desert air. ○ ○ ○ ○ prospector’s itch got bad his
He chose Las Vegas because he knew a ○ ○ ○ ○ son, Claude, took over and
railroad would build a town there soon ○ ○ ○ ○ dad went gold hunting.
and the whistle stop would need a bar- ○ ○ ○ ○ Heat and dust were only
ber, which he was. He also knew gold ○ ○ ○ ○ part of Mrs. Lake’s prob-
or silver might be lurking in the sur- ○ ○ ○ ○ lems. There were those in-
rounding mountains, and he had a bad ○ ○ ○ scrutable Paiutes living
case of prospector’s itch. ○ ○ ○ ○ near the present day inter-
○ ○ section of Main and Wash-
The Lakes took a train to the termi- ○ ○
○ ○ ington. “They were curious
nal at Ivanpah where they slept under a ○ Union Pacific RR, Las Vegas - 1905 ○ ○
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wagon. The more frail children were put ○ ○ people,” Alice remembered. “Mother
○ would look up from her work in the tent
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up in a roughhewn inn. The knarled inn- ○ ○ Alice, another Lake child, recalled ○ and see one standing in the doorway,
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keeper showed the children to their ○ ○ “I remember mother used to take a sheet ○ just looking and not saying anything,
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rooms by the light of a candle stuck in a ○ ○ and wet it and hang it in the door for us ○ and it would scare the dickens out of
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beer bottle. Years later they would re- ○ ○ to cool off.” Ada, still another sister, said: ○
member his face flickering in a dark ○ ○ “It was too hot to sleep at night, and chil- ○ ○ her. I think about how that poor woman
shadows and be frightened by the ○ dren would stay out and play until about ○ ○ must have felt on Saturday night be-
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memory. ○ 11 o’clock. Games like Run, Sheep, Run. ○ cause some of the Indians would get
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In the first months the family lived It was a wonder that nobody got snake
in 9-by-12 foot tents, two for sleeping, bite, running around in the dark.” All in the Family, continued on p. 7