Vegas was...complicated

but my mother helped me along.

I’d sooner find my way out of cones of desert sands than I could make my way through a labyrinth called the Vegas Strip. But at least, my mother would help me find my way.

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In decades of travel to the West, I managed to avoid Las Vegas. While I’m a competitive card player, I’ve been luckier in love than at any gambling table. With no interest in cocktailing my way down Las Vegas Boulevard, the number of reasons for any visit were minimal at best.

Mark doesn’t recall my profound statement, that I would only travel there if some performer that I’d love to see was in residency. But this past fall, U2 opened at the magical Sphere, a multimedia sensation of an arena newly built in Las Vegas. Bono and Edge, plus good friends living in nearby Palm Springs and hikes in Joshua Tree, spurred me on.

The desert changes you in the way water does, perhaps in seeing a pixelated vision of yourself, sometimes blurred by sand. Imagining the last gasps of a water-barren life, having to zero in on details to discover life, instead of them immediately washing over you like an Oregon King Tide. Even the Joshua Tree was an enigma. For years, I’d seen the trees in photos. Up close, their pricker-pocked bark blankets their trunks. Orchards of Joshua Trees span many sections of the park. On occasion, they operate solo too.

This cactus, nicknamed the “tree of life,” uses up every last prickly bit of themselves to give back to the earth.

Was that Joshua Tree mantra, about giving back their all, something we should strive for?

After three days in Vegas, I concluded, “Yes.”

Once we wound our way through Vegas’ Venetian Hotel, where we had booked rooms on credit card points, I said to Mark, “We’ve traveled all over the world. Why does this feel like a foreign country?” What was I doing here, really?

Some weeks before our trip commenced, I remembered something extraordinary.

In 1957, my mother and two other single girlfriends of the same age embarked on an approximately 4500-mile round trip road excursion, starting in Lorain, Ohio. They rambled across Route 66 to California, paused in Vegas, saw fragments of the Grand Canyon, and returned home. My mother was about to turn 30. This was her single woman swan song, almost year before she met my dad.

My mother was an ever-prodigious chronicler, an early blogger for sure. Journal entries from her trip were buried in a trunk belonging to my grandmother when she immigrated. Also buried? Photographs of Mom. Miniatures of that time captured in pinkish tint tucked into Polaroid-size frames.

Mom and friends poolside, Pyramids Motel, 1957. She’s on the left, in green.

If I needed backup for our original plan for Vegas (other than the concert), her journal would suffice.

Arriving at the Pyramids Motel, my mother and friends dressed for a night “on the town.” They were greeted by “a chuckwagon and drinks” at the casinos. A chuckwagon was an all-you-can eat buffet, usually priced around $1 or so. Her Pyramids Motel is not to be confused with the current Luxor Hotel with its sphinx, large pyramid (with rooms) and sky beam. Her motel, like many others, was demolished with no trace other than the occasional internet trails of “its ruins beneath the site of.” In this case, it was Harrah’s.

Her notes include performances by Victor Borge at the Sahara (and getting out of his car), Louis Prima and his orchestra. Live entertainment at the Silver Slipper, Dunes, and Tropicana. The next day, after coffee and pool, they lunched at the Fremont Hotel. My mother, who consistently won the booby prize at pinochle in later years, won silver dollars at the slots, and won at Keno and Roulette. She and her friends heard Nat King Cole at the Sands and watched Joey Bishop and a girl revue. At the Silver Slipper and then the Flamingo, they saw Tony Martin and Bertha Kraft and the Arabian Dancers. At the Sands again, they saw Ed Sullivan and his wife. And lucky for them, they got Nat King Cole’s autograph.

At one point in our first night, my husband tried to shame me. I wanted to turn in early (ten p.m., or 1 a.m. EST). “Think about how your mom did it,” he said, as we read down the list of my mother’s nonstop activities. My mom was 30. The pool at their motel was open—and Vegas didn’t look like this.

By this, I meant, a miasma of flashing lights that turned car driver’s attention away from pedestrians. Of escalators and crossing bridges for those on foot the extent of which might cause one to walk a few extra miles throughout the day.

By this, I meant, the visages of the original hotels and the intents and designs of the architects, were not hidden behind advertising or stuffed in the back of a building like leftovers in a refrigerator. They were not competing with mazes of slot machines to reach a lobby or obscured by restaurant windows embellished by Gordon Ramsey’s countenance (I do love a good furrowed brow).

Yet, there I was.

To get around Vegas, to move with purpose, we visited each of the hotels/clubs where my mother stayed or attended a performance.

One by one, we paid homage to them—or their demise. To my delight and distress, the Sands was located somewhere in the foundations of our hotel. Pyramids Motel, beneath Harrah’s, nearby. The Silver Slipper is now a vintage sign. The Dunes buried beneath the Bellagio. The Tropicana, which opened the year my mother stepped foot inside, is set to become a baseball stadium for the Oakland, er, Vegas A’s. My mother’s journal took us to Fremont Hotel. Fremont Street is now turned into another dimly lit grouping of casino entrances. Thankfully, the plumage from the Flamingo Hotel lit up most of our nights.

According to our cab driver, prices on everything had risen 300 percent since before Covid. The chuckwagon days were over. Vegas dazzled me with a Cirque de Soleil “O” performance and its stunning prices of chicken and waffles for $42.00. My thrifty mother would have approved of our dining experience one evening at In-n-Out Burgers.

While snubbing my nose at the Disneyland of capitalism, I felt most at home following my mother’s footsteps. Her enthusiasm for a road trip had given me an emotional framework. A journal kept her mind focused too.

The hotels, casinos, food celebs and performers started to look the same, offering a romanticized, nostalgic perspective of the desert in my rearview mirror. I preferred to be surrounded by a wind splitting itself into slivers, whispering through the zippers of rock formations. One that says, “C’mon Net, have a little fun.”

I’d turn around in the canyons of dusty brick sands in the Valley of Fire, sip on some water, and say, “I am, Mom.”

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Pauletta Hansel and I felt such a outpouring of joy and love at our first IN-PERSON Caring for the Caregiver in over four years. WOW. We know this is important to many of our participants, so we are happy to continue this in partnership with Giving Voice Foundation and Jewish Family Services.

Our next in-person is August 9th, 10-noon. Watch this space, email bwilliams@muchmorethanameal.com, or visit givingvoicefdn.org register.

Our FREE, VIRTUAL writing experiences for caregivers will continue Tentative dates of May 7th and November 14th, 10-noon. Registrations details above.

Voyage Ohio

Voyage Ohio gives exposure to artists, creatives and businesspersons who want their audience to know their wider story. Here’s a read on mine.

This Spring

New writings in Edible Ohio Valley about Mean Mr. Mustard and some goats. Also, new work appearing in Italian American. Italian Americans wax poetically about Sunday Dinner. In our house, we savored Sunday Brunch. You will too.

And for summer’s Edible Ohio Valley, I landed an interview with one of the greatest writers in our region to talk about her new cookbook. Stay tuned…

Upcoming Fall Workshops

Lloyd Library – It’s all Backstory: a presentation on memoir and writing, in partnership with Fotofocus 2024, October 9^th. Sign up for the Lloyd Library newsletter for information when it’s released. www.lloydlibrary.org.