Las Vegas Sun

March 18, 2024

Back at the Shack

People in this town just don't have any regard for history.

At least that's what the owners of The Green Shack, Jim McCormick and his wife Barbara, think.

Their tiny, pale-green stucco "supper club" with the hitching post out front still sits in same place on Fremont Street as it did when Jim's aunt, the legendary "Jimmie" Jones, opened it back in the early 1930s. The place is almost unchanged, except for a few things, like the addition of a small section of seating in the dining room, the lace curtains that hang in the windows and the pink-and-green neon "cocktail" sign over the door.

Rusty wheelbarrows, horseshoes and sickles still hang on the wall outside. The Rock-ola jukebox still plays old Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday and Tommy Dorsey vinyls. The cook still makes the fried chicken -- the house specialty since the days of the Boulder Dam construction -- in the original cast iron skillets. The butter bacon biscuit dough is still mixed in the same huge tin bowl.

On a shelf in the kitchen sits the old cash register, which looks like it belongs on the set of "The Andy Griffith Show." "I can hardly even buy register tape for it anymore," Jim says as he passes the register on the way to the dining room. The floor slopes up, then down, curving in unpredictable ways that cause the kitchen cabinets to hang lopsided. "When it used to flood here, Jimmie would open this door," he points to the front door, "and the kitchen door and just let the water run through."

Beyond the lace curtains, the sky is fading from twilight to darkness. In an hour, the supper club will open for business. The strings of white lights wrapped around the evergreen swags in the dining room are giving the room a warm, festive glow, and the sound of Guy Mitchell "Singing the Blues" wafts over the clatter of pans in the kitchen.

But only a small fraction of the customers who used to crowd into the bar and wait patiently for a table will come to The Green Shack tonight.

Despite meriting a listing on the National Register of Historic Places, a segment on The Food Network and mention in "Gourmet" magazine's article on restaurants in Las Vegas, the McCormicks haven't had an easy time competing with all the slick new casinos in town and businesses that have opened all around them. "It's getting damn near impossible," Jim says.

One reason is that people no longer seem to appreciate the ambiance of a family-run restaurant and the luxury of spending several hours lingering over dinner. Nowadays, everyone's in such a rush, Barbara says.

"People have forgotten how sit down and dine," says Betty Hobbs, who worked as a cocktail waitress there during the '50s and '60s. (Hobbs also helped Barbara sew the curtains.) "There are so many people who don't understand the difference between going to eat and going to dine. At the Green Shack, you dine."

Mostly people dine on fried chicken or gizzards, though the menu also includes batter-fried shrimp and a selection of steaks. For dessert there's ice cream, strawberry shortcake and bread pudding -- made with Barb's grandma's recipe. It's not exactly weight-watchers' fare. "There's so much about health food these days," Jim says, a trace of scorn in his voice. "Chances are your grandmother didn't die of too much cholesterol."

Back when Jim's aunt ran the place -- before all the buildings that now overshadow it were built -- The Green Shack was far more than just a restaurant.

"It was literally the center of public life," says Frank Wright, historian at the Nevada State Museum and Historical Society.

"It was where families went, where organizations held their meetings, where high school proms had their parties ... a lot of the legal establishment used to hang out and settle disputes (there)."

Politicians campaigning for re-election used to hang their posters in the bar, then sit below them and buy drinks for everyone that came in. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and other stars would drop by for dinner, as would prominent Mob figures. Bugsy Siegel practically lived there while the Flamingo Hotel was being built. (Those were the good old days, when the Mob ran things, Jim says. "We didn't have gangs, we didn't have to lock our doors, if you got robbed, you knew who the hell did it. There were no questions.")

Prostitutes also used to sell tokens, redeemable for their services here and at other clubs. The day Jim was baptized, his parents threw a big party at The Green Shack. Jim's mother put his bassinet in the dining room, while the grown-ups sipped cocktails in the bar. Later, when she went to retrieve him, she was surprised to find the infant covered in tokens from the working gals in town.

Jim laughs as he tells the story. "Just about everyone has come through that door at one time or another," he says, seating himself at the corner table Liberace used to like. "It was the hub of the whole town. If it was going to happen, it happened here."

Jimmie Jones kept two cigar boxes stuffed full of bad checks that had been passed by patrons. "We could've wallpapered the mens and the ladies room with them," Jim says, with a grin. "And they were from everyone from the governor on down."

"It was about the only place to go, really," says Besse Hanson, who began frequenting The Green Shack back in 1932 when she was still in high school. "Everyone would say 'do you know where so and so is?' 'Oh, out at The Green Shack!' We really did kick up our heels out there."

Jimmie Jones, whom Jim used to call "Mamie" -- "I guess I had trouble getting 'Jimmie' out -- first came to the Las Vegas Valley from California in the late '20s, after her husband died from a hunting injury.

Construction on the Boulder Dam was heating up and Jimmie, a keen businesswoman, knew that would bring lots of hungry men. Along with her mother, she set up shop along the road to the dam, and sold fried chicken, biscuits and bootleg booze to go.

A few years later, she bought a barracks from the railroad, which looked, in her opinion: "Like a ... damned old green shack." The barracks now form the bulk of the dining room.

By 1933, Prohibition had ended, and Jimmie -- who always offered customers drinks with their dinner -- now could do so openly. She built the bar, which turned out to be the center of action. "There was a fight or two almost every night," Jim says.

Sometimes they were just mock fights, such as the time an actor named Rod came into the bar with the wife of a constable named Woody. "They were kissy-face and carrying on," Jim says. Then all of a sudden, Woody showed up. He pulled his pistol and started shooting blanks at Rod, who slapped ketchup on his chest and fell over. It was all supposed to be a joke on the bartender, who ran into the parking lot wailing " 'Why'd you have to kill him on my shift!' "

Another bartender, nicknamed Honest Brown -- had much stronger nerves, Jim says. Honest was tending bar the night husband and wife Joe and Cisco Williams came in, arguing bitterly. "Joe and Cisco were fighting like crazy and finally Cisco got up and said 'Joe, you (expletive), I'm gonna kill you.' " Honest, or Brownie, as Jim calls him, had the good fortune to be down at one end of the bar answering the pay phone when Cisco drove the car through the wall, trying to hit her husband on his barstool. Without missing a beat, Brownie turned around and said " 'Cisco, you can't park there.' "

After Jimmie died in 1967, her nephew Frank McCormick (Jim's father) took over running The Green Shack -- but not for long. He died three months later, leaving the business to his wife, Elaine.

In the early '80s, Elaine leased the place to a couple, who apparently didn't have much experience in the restaurant business. Before long they quit paying on their lease, and the family had to take The Green Shack back. After that, they sold it to another couple, who also defaulted on their payments. Then Jim and Barbara decided it was time they take over the family business. In part, they felt a duty to preserve what had become a rare Las Vegas institution.

By then, however, many of the old-timers were gone. And some of the other loyal customers had been run off during the time The Green Shack was under other management.

Still some familiar faces appeared in the dining room when they re-opened in 1985, cheerfully calling back and forth to one another: "I thought you had died!" and "Oh, if these walls could talk."

To which one woman reportedly replied: "I'm glad they can't."

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