“Grandma Goes To Vegas”

Above The Timberline

by Wayne Mergler

ANCHORAGE, AK—(Weekly Hubris)—8/16/10—She has evolved amusingly and interestingly from the 21-year-old Cher-tressed, mini-skirted, free-living babe that I married in 1965 to, now in her 60’s, one of those little, old, bun-headed ladies who thrive on Bingo and the penny slot machines in Las Vegas.

She doesn’t have a gambling problem. Quite the contrary: she is the most prudent and responsible gambler you will ever find. She budgets her gaming, sets aside certain amounts with which to play, and is content to quit when that is gone.

Yet she can sit, enthralled, at a slot machine or a roulette wheel for hours on end. If she is up $20., she is delighted; if she is down $20., she is OK with that, too. Either way, she has fun. She is a much simpler, steadier, and solid soul than I am.

I am restless, impulsive, often imprudent. I can only sit at a slot machine for brief periods. Then I begin to go a little nuts. For me, the slot machines and gaming tables of Las Vegas are for one thing only—winning money. If I don’t win, I feel that I have wasted my money and my time, and I am unhappy and grumpy about it all. (“Why didn’t I just write them a check and then move on?” I always famously lament.)

Maureen, my wife, has no understanding of or sympathy for my attitude. To her, it’s all about having fun. It never occurs to her to expect to win. If she does win, then that’s just a cherry on top of her well-stacked ice-cream sundae.

I envy her.

She loves games—almost any kind of game. She works crossword puzzles and Sudoku diligently for hours on end. (My mind wanders off halfway through the first puzzle.) She can sit forever over a jigsaw puzzle. She can play Monopoly with endless vigor. (I hate Monopoly and have never completed a game in my life, but she can work that board enthusiastically until the wee hours, accumulating her hotels all over the world with Trump-like satisfaction.)

She knits and crochets amazingly, not so much to make the garments, but because crocheting is like a game to her, all that intricate stitching and working of the pattern. She once designed an afghan after a Mondrian print, loving the beauty of its common-sense symmetries. She loves being trapped in a maze and having to find her way out, which she always does faster than anyone else can. I have even known her to work math problems, just for the fun of it. They are games! (I, on the other hand, would rather be dragged naked over barbed wire fencing than spend any time at all laboring over a math problem.)

She plays Bingo almost every Friday night, not because, like many of her friends, she has a particular affection for Bingo, but because it is the closest thing to gaming that she can find in Anchorage, Alaska. The closest thing that’s legal anyway. And she always wants to stay on the right side of the law. She is, after all, a grandmother.

When we were young newlyweds (who, happily, didn’t own a TV, before our well-meaning but wrong-headed parents missed the point and bought us a TV out of pity, which led to our immediate loss of innocence as a tightly-bound couple), we used to play all kinds of games—Monopoly, chess, checkers, Clue, Parcheesi, Yahtzee, Hearts, and Canasta. She always won, largely because my patience and attention span for games has always been severely limited, and because I would just as soon let my opponent win than sit still another minute. But the introduction of TV into our young marriage ended our competitions. She began watching a routine of shows; I retreated to a quiet corner with a book.

And so it still is, 45 years later.

Except, briefly, when we go to Vegas.

We have been going to Las Vegas for a week or so at a time every year for many years now. We didn’t start out as people with a desire for the Vegas experience. It kind of just evolved. During the years when I was teaching, when our kids were growing up, we would always drive out of Alaska in the summer, heading down the always adventurous Alcan Highway, like Dorothy traversing the Yellow Brick Road.

We never quite knew where our adventures would take us. Often, we ended up on the Pacific coast, driving down to California, to Disney Land and Knotts Berry Farm, and then we’d head east, across the southwestern desert, toward our relatives in Georgia and Virginia. Usually we passed through Las Vegas and stopped for a night or two to sample the fruits of “Sin City.” The kids loved the swimming pools and water parks; I loved the dry desert climate and the stunning red landscapes. We all marveled at the food.

And Maureen discovered the casinos. After that, most of our trips east had to include an obligatory layover in Las Vegas.

Over the years, we have seen Las Vegas grow from a small desert resort to a bustling city, the fastest growing metropolis in the US, or so I’ve heard. I remember stopping in Vegas with my parents once when I was a kid, around 1954. It was just a little place then, with a few hotels scattered along a desert highway. I remember spending most of my time in the hotel pool or up in the room watching TV, while my parents played in the casinos.

By the time Maureen and I (and our own kids) discovered Vegas, years later, it had grown considerably. We have seen it go from seedy little Sin City, to family-friendly, wholesome Vegas, with its circus-and-pirates-and-movie-themed hotels: the elegant city that it is today.

But our friends are often appalled, even shocked, that we like to go to there. To attempt a bad parody of Robert Frost: Something there is that does not love Las Vegas.

They cannot imagine us there, they say. They have some notion of us as artsy, intellectual types who should want to vacation in San Francisco or Paris or New York, but never—never—in a place as crass and tacky as Las Vegas. I have had to accept the fact for some time now that some of my friends, despite their many admirable attributes, are undeniable snobs. And nothing seems to bring out their snobbish disdain more completely than our yearly trips to Las Vegas. There is something about Sin City that really galls the true snob, though they certainly wouldn’t turn away from the titillating decadence of New Orleans or Paris or Amsterdam or Bangkok. To them, Las Vegas represents tackiness: glittering lights; signs that read “Girlsgirlsgirls”; fake boobs, fake tans, and fake blondes; street hustlers forcing pamphlets designed to help you get laid onto bewildered, middle-aged tourists from Iowa; noisy, smoke-filled casinos; and intricate schemes devised to part you from your money.

That is Las Vegas to them. And, I must agree, that that is all there in Vegas in spades, if that is what you are looking for.

But there is another world in Las Vegas that exists alongside all that. Today, Las Vegas has the best restaurants and some of the finest hotels in the world. There are first-rate art galleries, such as the one in the Venetian hotel, with its original Picassos and Modiglianis, among others. There are gorgeous displays of art and technology, the fabulous dancing fountains of the Bellagio, as well as the Bellagio’s seasonally diverse gardens. And the Bellagio’s spectacular ceiling art installation by Dale Chihuly. Some of the world’s top entertainers now perform there, including the Cirque du Soleil and Blue Man Group. Over the years, Maureen and I have attended concerts by Bette Midler, Celine Dion, Cher, Ann-Margret, and Elton John, to name just a few. This is no longer just your Daddy’s (or wicked uncle’s)Las Vegas.

Every year now, when summer fades and the Alaska autumn quickly turns into winter, when the days grow shorter, when the skies grow grayer, and the wind has stripped all the leaves off the birches, when the last of the intrepid Canada geese are squawking loudly overhead, on their way south, when the air begins to smell like snow and like the wood smoke from countless wood stoves and bonfires—Maureen begins to plan our trip to Las Vegas.

She pores over schedules and brochures. She is a VIP member of so many hotels on the Strip that she now gets us unbelievably good deals. They all know her, call her by her first name, try their hardest to get her the best of everything. Last year, for example, we stayed for ten days in three different hotels and never paid a nickel for our rooms. Don’t ask me how she does it. It’s magic. They are happy to give her such perks. They want her back. They want her pulling those slots, which she is more than delighted to do.

I, on the other hand, may usually be found sitting by the pool with a book in the daytime and walking the Strip at night, still dazzled by the incredible light show that is this city. And by the people—the people are the best thing of all!

Almost always, there is a convention going on at one of the hotels we are staying in.

One year there was a convention of identical twins. Everywhere you looked, there were two of everyone—all ages, all sizes, all genders, all races, all doubles. I remember going into the mens’ room and standing at a urinal between identical twins who had chosen to stand with a urinal between them as they tended to business. It was like peeing with bookends. Very odd.

Another year we were among a convention of Little People. Tiny men and women as far as the eye could see—in the casino and in the buffets and dancing in the ballroom, having a wonderful time. Maureen looked like Glinda in Munchkinland, towering over the masses in the room, giggling her happy giggle and smiling her infectious smile.

We have also seen an Elvis convention—hundreds of Elvises: fat Elvises, thin Elvises, young Elvises, old Elvises, male Elvises, female Elvises, Black and Asian Elvises, all unmistakably the King of Rock’n’Roll.

I notice that I have made a couple of references to the Wizard of Oz in this column. That seems completely appropriate. If Las Vegas can be compared to any other city, it would be Oz. It is Oz for adults. There are times, at night, with the lights just so and the desert sky dark overhead, that it even seems to cast a greenish glow.

My wife is so laid back that when I finished the writing of this column just now, I asked her if she wanted final approval before I zapped it via computer to my editor, she said, without looking up from her brochures and notes: “Naw, say whatever you want about me!” And then she added: “I can get us three free nights at the Venetian in October and comp tickets to see Blue Man Group. How does that sound?”

I had to admit it sounded pretty darn good to me.