It wiped out some of my original gardens, wiped out all my trail system. Wiped out everything clean. It actually wiped out a fair portion of a toe of the mountain that it literally ate into the toe of the mountain. And we had big horn sheep on that mountain… Read More
And when that storm hit and destroyed a lot of the town and a lot of the houses they destroyed were extremely wealthy houses, this wasn’t some flood in some backwoods farmland somewhere, the water district knew it had to do something to not allow that to happen again, so… Read More
That still protects it today?… Read More
Ah, a flood plain floods, right?… Read More
The general manager of the water district was born and raised in the Colorado Desert down, and so he actually loved the desert and he was interested in it. And so, he stayed, the part of the reason he leased the land to us initially was because he thought that… Read More
And I said, “Where can we put them that they won’t float away in a big storm?” And I said, “Where is the water gonna go?” And he looked at me and he said, “Young lady, I’m an engineer of water. It’s been my career.” And he said, “And I… Read More
Oh, I think that it was often tiring of just worrying about where the next dollar was coming from. I mean, that was always there, because initially most of the people in the area didn’t have any real interest in what we were doing because it was just the desert… Read More
And that’s what was Palm Springs, and so to have a shopping center, and where does he put the shopping center?… Read More
Two miles from my park. And I mean, I could, I mean, at one point it was a big, it took our attendance dropped because everybody went to the shopping center. That was the new entertainment, but I could not have paid anybody to do that for us. But suddenly… Read More
One was an act of nature. In 1976, the water district owned the land. The reason they own the land was that it was a flood plain. Read More
So, you were the only full-time employee?… Read More
For two years, yeah. Was it easy going from a small salary ’cause you obviously built the facility where you were dealing with six figures or more. Was it hard to do that or it just- It just evolves. It’s evolved. This is like growing up. I mean, every day… Read More
What kind of disappointments were there in these beginning times?… Read More
So, your income was coming from a couple of sources through your four?… Read More
For operations, yeah. Memberships, gift shop, admissions, classes. Read More
How were memberships received?… Read More
Pretty well. I mean, it was slow slogging. I mean, we started the first year we had 70 members or something like that and every year it would grow a little bit, but it was tight. It was really tight, which is why for our first couple of years, there… Read More
And this is before, I mean, there was nobody out there at night. And I thought to myself, every IMAX I knew at that point was a money losing operation for somebody. So, I had those kinds of things, but ’cause I moved very slowly, and I tried not to… Read More
What kind of budget did you start with?… Read More
My first budget was 10 grand, and please don’t spend it less than, in 12 months, ’cause you were gonna run out of money in 12 months and that included my salary. And when I think by the time when I first sat down and had my first lunch with… Read More