My Father's Son: A Gaming Memoir
The Sands Regency Hotel Casino is one of Reno’s largest and most successful. In its location on the margin of the casino core, and in its history of unorthodox but aggressive operation, it is a reflection of the personalities of the two Petes who built and ran it, Cladianos Sr. and Jr. My Father’s Son is Pete Jr.’s candid, bluntly worded memoir of the father he adored, the enterprise they built together, and the social, economic, and governmental environments in which they operated.
    Casino gambling (or “gaming”) became legal in Nevada in 1931. Initially, most operators came from other states, but there were some early homegrown entrepreneurs. Among them was Greek immigrant Pete Cladianos Sr., who started a slot machine route at the beginning of the Great Depression. Over the next thirty years, he and his family built a business empire that included bars, motels, hotels, and even a mercantile business. They all had one lucrative feature in common—slot machines. But what Pete Sr. really wanted was a full-blown casino of his own.
    Pete Jr. had a turbulent youth, defined by bad grades, fast cars, faster women, some crime, and exile to a military school. Drafted into the army, he had to do time in the stockade. Eventually he straightened out, became his father’s closest collaborator, and, in the 1960s, took on responsibility for the day-to-day operations of the family enterprises. Through clever (but legal) manipulation of a city ordinance, they were finally able to establish a casino, the Sands, outside Reno’s restrictive “red line.”
     Under Pete Jr.’s somewhat idiosyncratic leadership, the Sands enjoyed great success. However, in the mid-1990s, it took a near-crippling plunge into the murky backwaters of Mississippi dockside gaming, eventually emerging shaken but in good health.

Pete Cladianos Jr., My Father's Son: A Gaming Memoir. Reno: UNOHP, 2002. (357 pages, 32 illustrations, $21.95).