HurricaneMikey
A-List Buffoon
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2002
- Messages
- 5,923
- Trips to Las Vegas
- 25
Here's a few more trip reports that need to be written--
I don't know who came up with idea for an all-night poker game that night before classes started for the final semester of our senior year, but it was a turning point no less significant than Chief Brody removing his NYPD badge for the last time and moving to Amity Island...
*******
After driving through the desert for four seemingly endless hours, the security checkpoint at the dam was a welcome sight. I slowed down and pulled over, exhibiting as calm a demeanor on the outside as I could muster, while on the inside I was sweating bullets and pacing back and forth with an unlit cigarette in my hand. I had to remind myself that as long as they didn't ask to look in the trunk, everything would be ok...
*******
Just 24 hours earlier, I had been sitting at my normal spot by the outdoor fireplace at Aunt C's, buying drinks, smoking cigars, and telling lies to anyone who would listen. How I ended up here, three hundred miles away at the Graceland Chapel with a former Playboy Bunny and sporting a new tattoo is a story I'm not sure I really want to tell my grandkids, so I'm gonna tell you first...
*******
I didn't really feel like going to Oakland that day, but business is business, and again I found myself in seat 27-C, going over more paperwork and contracts, trying to focus on numbers that no longer held any interest for me. Though one couldn't tell by looking, I'm sure I wasn't the only passenger who breathed a sigh of relief and cracked a thin smile when the captain announced we'd have to divert to Las Vegas due to a mechanical issue. It was as if the Gods smote me from the sky and placed me here at their pleasure, so I was obligated to make the most of this Odyssey. Homer had never heard the Siren Song of the Casino, but Fate was waiting there for me...
*******
I don't know why the bosses insisted that I leave Chicago and head out to that dusty wide spot in the middle of God-forsaken nowhere. Who ever heard of Las Vegas? Nobody but a few old cowboys and some old gangsters with nowhere else to go. It was exile, that's all. Bugsy was a fool--a fool on a very short leash. He'd always had grand plans and great ideas about how to spend other peoples' money, but this time he really bit off more than he could chew. At least it got me out of the cold weather for a couple of months. Maybe I could wrap up business quickly and go home again in the spring...
*******
Andy had told me on that fateful day over a year ago that he wanted to go to Mexico. But as I sat at the base of that rock wall under the tall oak tree in that Buxton hayfield, the instructions were clear--plans had changed. He still needed a hand to get his project off the ground, and bagging groceries wasn't the life I had envisioned on the outside.
Today I find myself on a westbound bus, and for the second time in my life, I'm guilty of breaking the law--parole violation. But I doubt they'll throw up any roadblocks for an old crook like me. I find I am so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it is the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain...
******
Clearly I have too much time on my hands this weekend.
Mikey
[ March 12, 2005, 04:46 PM: Message edited by: HurricaneMikey ]
I don't know who came up with idea for an all-night poker game that night before classes started for the final semester of our senior year, but it was a turning point no less significant than Chief Brody removing his NYPD badge for the last time and moving to Amity Island...
*******
After driving through the desert for four seemingly endless hours, the security checkpoint at the dam was a welcome sight. I slowed down and pulled over, exhibiting as calm a demeanor on the outside as I could muster, while on the inside I was sweating bullets and pacing back and forth with an unlit cigarette in my hand. I had to remind myself that as long as they didn't ask to look in the trunk, everything would be ok...
*******
Just 24 hours earlier, I had been sitting at my normal spot by the outdoor fireplace at Aunt C's, buying drinks, smoking cigars, and telling lies to anyone who would listen. How I ended up here, three hundred miles away at the Graceland Chapel with a former Playboy Bunny and sporting a new tattoo is a story I'm not sure I really want to tell my grandkids, so I'm gonna tell you first...
*******
I didn't really feel like going to Oakland that day, but business is business, and again I found myself in seat 27-C, going over more paperwork and contracts, trying to focus on numbers that no longer held any interest for me. Though one couldn't tell by looking, I'm sure I wasn't the only passenger who breathed a sigh of relief and cracked a thin smile when the captain announced we'd have to divert to Las Vegas due to a mechanical issue. It was as if the Gods smote me from the sky and placed me here at their pleasure, so I was obligated to make the most of this Odyssey. Homer had never heard the Siren Song of the Casino, but Fate was waiting there for me...
*******
I don't know why the bosses insisted that I leave Chicago and head out to that dusty wide spot in the middle of God-forsaken nowhere. Who ever heard of Las Vegas? Nobody but a few old cowboys and some old gangsters with nowhere else to go. It was exile, that's all. Bugsy was a fool--a fool on a very short leash. He'd always had grand plans and great ideas about how to spend other peoples' money, but this time he really bit off more than he could chew. At least it got me out of the cold weather for a couple of months. Maybe I could wrap up business quickly and go home again in the spring...
*******
Andy had told me on that fateful day over a year ago that he wanted to go to Mexico. But as I sat at the base of that rock wall under the tall oak tree in that Buxton hayfield, the instructions were clear--plans had changed. He still needed a hand to get his project off the ground, and bagging groceries wasn't the life I had envisioned on the outside.
Today I find myself on a westbound bus, and for the second time in my life, I'm guilty of breaking the law--parole violation. But I doubt they'll throw up any roadblocks for an old crook like me. I find I am so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it is the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain...
******
Clearly I have too much time on my hands this weekend.
Mikey
[ March 12, 2005, 04:46 PM: Message edited by: HurricaneMikey ]
