Wagner

"I was at a cotton gin one evening, and two gentlemen came walking in. They had lost a rod in a pickup down on the Four Sixes Ranch. We were down kind of in the middle of nowhere, where the Pitchfork and the Four Sixes and Wagner and the Matador all kind of comes together. … It was 30−35 miles to a village from there. They were afoot and I thought, I’ve got a flat tire in my trunk and I could be afoot too, so I took these guys back to Paducah, Texas, and stayed on the highway. During the time we were going back, they were talking about this new community antenna system they just put into their town. So I listened and thought a little bit about it. About a week later… I went down and looked them up and talked to them some more. The gentlemen were very kind to help me and show me everything they were doing, tell me where you buy these things, where you learn how to do this and so forth. So about thirty days later, we were stringing wire."

"In consultation with Sol, we determined that 2 000 visitors might show up on day one, and the catering facilities were equipped, stocked and staffed accordingly. As it transpired, 7 000 bodies were bussed up the hill from the car park on the day. We were overwhelmed. The restaurants could not cope, the bars were swamped and the toilets were a disgrace – but, thankfully, there were lines at every slot machine and table. Everything that could go wrong did. Bacon and I were run ragged fighting fires. The new man, Wagner, looked on in terror. At 2am after the first day, I practically ordered a hollow-faced Bacon to go to bed. The man was exhausted. I, too, was shattered, but the adrenalin kept surging. I finally sought the haven of my room at about 3am. At 7am, the phone rang. It was Sol, summoning me to meet him in the office behind the front desk. I was sure that I was going to be fired. After all, I had been assigned to cope with the deluge of the opening day, and I was fully expecting a repeat performance on day two. I dragged myself to the office. Sol, who had also had little sleep, was sitting at a desk with paper and pencil. Despite his fatigue, his countenance was breezy. He did not look as if he was about to fire his chief executive. “Sit down, Pete,” he instructed. “We’ve got work to do.” I sat down nervously. “Sol, I know there’s a hell of a lot of cleaning up to get on with and preparation for—” Sol interjected, “No, man, Peter Bacon can get on with that. What we’ve got to do is build another hotel – fast. We’ve cracked it, man. This place is going to be a success. We need more rooms!”"