Travel Essay
Gridlocked in
Vegas
I flew to Los
Angeles, California last Wednesday to visit my daughter and
her family… the grandchildren are so beautiful and my
daughter and her husband are such lovely and amazing people
and such loving and knowledgeable parents… the new baby is
beautiful and very lucky to be born into such a strong
loving family… I have been very very lucky with my children
and grandchildren… and every day is, for me, a day of
thanksgiving for that…
On Saturday, we rented a car at Ontario airport which is
only about 20 minutes from where my daughter lives in
Riverside and drove to Las Vegas… I found a rental car for 2
days with no drop fee for the one way rental for $53 and a
hotel in Vegas for 2 nights was another $53, so a pretty
cheap weekend in Vegas…
I love the drive from LA to Vegas… once you get past
Barstow, the desert is so tan and beautiful with brown
mountains all around, turning to blue at the distant
horizon… it was 97 degrees Fahrenheit when we passed Baker,
a tiny town of fast food, gas station and trailers out in
the middle of the desert… at about 6 p.m… and still near 90
degrees when we got to Vegas…
Back when Mary first opened the travel agency (1983) and we
started going to Vegas, it was a small city in the middle of
a big empty valley… today, driving into Vegas is like
driving into any other Western metropolis in that along the
I-15 you see rows of huge glass skyscrapers, an endless
traffic jam and a haze of yellow smog hanging over the
valley… the severe clear air of the past is gone as is the
funny little city with a strip of casinos sticking out into
the desert… the casinos along Las Vegas Blvd are huge
Disneyland type mock ups and Las Vegas Blvd. is an 8 lane
nightmare of grid locked traffic…
But downtown is still much the same as it was 20 years ago…
there is a sunshade over Freemont street which makes the
open arcade pretty comfortable even at 104 degrees
Fahrenheit which it was on Sunday… it is a great place to
people watch, although the young and hot mostly stay on the
strip… but, I am okay with that… I spent most of Sunday
sitting by the pool at the Plaza Hotel finishing up the
above drawing, sipping a diet soda and getting slightly
sunburned by reflection, even though I was sitting in deep
shade… when it got warm, a quick dip in the pool felt
wonderful… in Minnesota, it never really gets warm enough to
swim… I thought I did not like going into the water, until I
was in places like Vegas where it is over 100 degrees and
the cool water feels good… in Minnesota, swimming is an
endurance sport and often a close encounter with
hypothermia…
I gambled for about three hours and managed to lose almost
$100 at two crap tables and a blackjack game where I kept
getting the worst hands in the Western Hemisphere… I would
get 15 and the dealer would draw her 15 to 21 time after
time… it was brutal… at the crap tables, I again learned
that 7s will come up pretty much any time except the come
out roll!!! well, there are good reasons to stay away from
the crap table and the blackjack table… but I did roll the
dice myself, so cannot even blame the shooter…
We found that our favorite cheap downtown restaurant had
changed and no longer had the $199 bacon and eggs breakfast,
so, since we had a car, we drove out to one of the Station
casinos where we both had a huge breakfast and the total
bill for both came to $8… on Monday morning, we went to the
Main Street Station buffet… which is a gorgeous room, an old
railway waiting room with beautiful wrought iron roof
supports and stained glass windows all genuine antiques
imported by the people who built the place… the same people
who built the similar Church Street Station in Orlando which
I have heard about but have not visited…
Anyway… we flew home Monday night… and I spent all day
yesterday trimming the grass and dealing with lawn issues
that had come up while I was gone… one of my two crabapple
trees… the one in front of the house has been dying for
about the last five years, one branch at a time and finally
this year succumbed altogether… so I had to cut it down and
make it into firewood… I have a very nice chain saw… I am
scared to death of it, but as a kid on the farm, I watched
my dad and his cousin drop trees and cut them up for
firewood every summer, so am pretty comfortable using the
thing… it took about half an hour to cut down the crabapple
tree and buck it into firewood… a job that would have taken
at least ten hours with a hand saw… but, that poor old tree
was a thing of beauty every spring that we lived here…
(since 1996) until this spring when for the first time, it
did not bloom at all and only had a few leaves… yesterday
when I noticed that the last few leaves had died, I realized
that the crabapple tree was done for and took it down…
Well, I had not intended to ramble on so long here… later
today I am going with my brother and two of my sisters to
take my mom to the Fort Snelling National Cemetery where my
older brother (Al who was shot to death in 1968, at age 21,
in Vietnam) and my father (who died of heart disease
exacerbated by smoking in 1984, at age 65, are buried)… I
was very close to my brother as a child and teen… and for
many years after he was killed, I used to bring lilacs
(which are usually just finishing up around memorial day) to
his grave site every year… in recent years, my mother has
wanted to go to visit the graves and so my brother and
youngest sister, who take care of her mostly, arrange it and
I go along… it is still sad for me and every time I go out
there, it renews my detestation of war and of all the
military idiocy that tries to make something noble out of
the slaughter of human beings… at the behest of some asshole
presidents and generals… apparently, we are incapable of
learning from the past… dulci et decorum est… is still an
“old lie”…
Below is a new
drawing finished over last weekend in Las Vegas…
all peace and love to all: norman j. olson
