10-4 Magazine July 2024

10-4 Magazine / July 2024 75 like houses, gas stations, and other small buildings to make way for the freeway. In the beginning of their demo business, Shirley learned to drive a truck, and Art would drive the loader. They were a team, and neither of them were more important than the other. It stayed that way throughout their entire 64-year marriage before Shirley (also known as “Goldie”) died on October 11, 2015. In the beginning, Art was frustrated about not getting many bids. One of many connections and partnerships he would make over the years was with former high school classmate Fred Pinjuv. He worked for the city and taught Art how the bidding process worked – he loved learning and used that information and his own ingenuity to make their business more competitive. Many of the Las Vegas High School graduates would go on to form business partnerships and relationships and, with hard work and great ideas, become very successful, while also helping the city to grow. When Art got the idea to start recycling and sell what was salvageable from jobs, it gave him the ability to bid jobs at a much lower cost. Hauling all the debris from demolition to the dump was a costly part of his business. After everything was salvaged, he then ran over everything with the loader to make it more compact, so it took less truck loads to accomplish the clean-up. By doing these two simple things, he was able to save fuel, man hours, and the cost the dump charged per load, and cut his operating expenses in half. This all equaled more profit with a lower bid. Art and Shirley bought land and built a house on the southwest side of Las Vegas when land was cheap, and nothing had been developed yet. Part of this land is where their Nostalgia Street Rods Museum buildings are located today. Art was proud of the reputation he built over the years. His friend Joe Thomson talked with me and was a wealth of information for this story. He told me, “Art had a kind heart for the underdog and found value in helping these people.” They had such caring hearts, the Goldstoms began working with non-profit organizations in 2001 when they held their first car show to benefit Parkinson’s Disease. Rollie Gibbs, another former Las Vegas High School classmate, developed a close working relationship with Art over the years. Rollie was a large crane operator, so they worked on many of the same construction sites. Rollie’s dad Burt had a junk yard in the early days, and Art would get parts there when the high school kids started working on cars. Burt got some of the scrap from demo sites, and this is probably whenArt began to understand the value in what was left after tearing things down. There was some controversy when it was time to tear down the Las Vegas Ice House, because it was a historic building, and the largest early structure in town. It had been abandoned in 1983, and in 1988, the city issued a permit to Union Pacific Railroad, allowing it to be leveled for safety reasons. Art got the bid for the job to demolish the structure and remove what was left of a building that had once been an important part of Las Vegas history. Joe told me that Art