Chapter40 – Arriving in Las Vegas
Most of the other people on the bus stayed quiet, wrapped in
private thoughts I could not ascertain. Many were well-dressed, men in suits,
women in skirt and blouse. As I studied them, each person pretended not to
notice me, though some cringed a little, as if they wanted to remain anonymous.
From the numerous casino flyers advertising free meals and
other amenities, I could tell the bus had made the trip previously, without
stopping over at the terminal in L.A. for cleaning and maintenance.
While the bus had no hostess, as the one cross-country had,
the driver occasionally picked up the microphone to announce where were and
where we were headed next, his weary voice hinting of his lack of enthusiasm.
At Barstow, we had picked up a crew of passengers more
interesting to me than the batch with whom I had departed in L.A.: four men and
two women, all six looking strangely nervous, or perhaps just anxious, unable
to keep in their seats long without taking the hike to the rest room at the
rear of the bus. I couldn't keep my gaze off them once they had settled,
especially the two women, who seemed constantly concerned about the condition
of their makeup and checked frequently with handheld mirrors, applying and
reapplying lipstick and eye shadow, even when they needed no updating.
While both women could have stepped off the pages of any
glamour magazine, one seemed the perfect symbol of California glitz, blonde and
big breasted, with eyes blue, hard and icy. She noticed my stare and stared
back so coolly, I ceased my examination and attempted to sleep.
As with the initial trip west, sleep escaped me. The rumble
of the wheels over the dark road would not let me slip easily into a limbo of
dreams. Even when sleep gripped me, I was aware of the seat and the motion, and
could smell and hear the other people around me. The darkness offered no enticement.
After weeks living like a vampire in the East L.A. apartment, daylight seemed
more the right time of day for sleep than night, and I found my eyes popping
open, to stare out at the occasional light along the highway even as exhaustion
took hold of me.
I think I dreamed.
I kept thinking dawn was rising over us, when the time said
the sky should seeking deeper darkness. I remembered a description I had read
of atomic war from a book called "Fail Safe" when I was younger, how
the sky would glow red, even in the deepest dark. The book had scared me nearly
as much as the nuns had with their constant air-raid drill, forcing us to duck
our heads under our desks, as if the wood and metal would keep us safe from the
holocaust, as if we would not burn up if we did not see the flash.
I had heard about the testing grounds near Las Vegas, and
how people used to go out into the dessert as part of their social gatherings
to watch the bombs go off.
Were we that close?
A shiver of the old fear woke me, and once awakened, I
couldn't shade the sensation, nor the sudden sense of cold. The driver had
turned on the head, and I could feel the warm air rising from the duct along
the window, but the thin stream of air was too little to reach the deep cold
the fear had left in me. And the bus rolled on.
Although the sky suggested an amazing light show of its own,
a glowing sphere of stars that hung over the dessert like a bowl, I saw little
more than I might have sitting on the banks of the Hudson River on the West
Side of Manhattan back east, the bus' tinted windows and the dim lights above
various seats making it nearly impossible to see much outside the bus.
Whatever I saw came as the result of closer illumination,
billboard lights or the headlights of traffic or the bus, momentary flashes in
the night giving me clues as to where I was, what I was missing and what I
might expect. We passed -- on our right -- the Mojave a piece of the Mojave Desert
that the guide book I read later described as an arid region in southern
California, part of the Great Basin. It has an area of about 15,000 square
miles. Somewhere in the dark under the surface of a landscape I could not see,
borax and iron ore waited to be mined.
The guide book also talked about a trail blazer named
Jedediah Strong Smith, who had made his way here in 1826, traveling down the
path in the opposite direction the bus was taken from Salt Lake City, Utah. He
was looking for fur, and found the Mojave Desert, crossed it, discovered what
people call Los Angeles today, and got chased out, retreating along roughly the
same route back, crossing the same Sierra Nevada Mountains, we crossed, and
headed towards what is now the state of Nevada -- just as we were doing, 150
years later. Native American Indians later killed him, but not along this
route.
If Smith's ghost followed us, I was unaware of it at the
time -- though I did see strange shapes highlighted against the glow of
traffic, and caught the whiff of something that smelled like tar from the
gapped window along my side of the bus. I thought I saw people standing upright
at various points in the desert, arms uplifted, and yet others, who seemed
bowed over, as if praying or exhausted. Later, someone mumbled about these
being creosote bushes.
The sign names indicated towns, although I saw none in the
dark, only occasional rundown wooden shacks or gas stations or diners. Most of
the names described some practicality typical of the one-time frontier, such as
the town of Mountain Pass for that point at which we passed through the
mountain. While other town names seemed to preserve in mock celebration the
individuals who first settled there, such as Wheaton Springs. Still other signs
pointed the way to destinations we would not reach such as those pointed south
east to Nipton, Crescent and Moore. One sign indicated our passing from
California to Nevada, after which we came to towns with even more dubious names
such as Roach and Borax. We passed a place called Jean Air Port, although I saw
the lights to no approaching planes. But I did see signs for Good Springs and
Sandy Valley and signs claiming we were approaching the town of Sloan.
But this time, the glow I had seen many miles away had grown
into something even more terrible, as if we had encountered dawn many hours
early and in the north instead of the east, a powerful brightening of the
horizon that spelled out Las Vegas for us better than any highway sign.
The growing glow distracted me enough so that I missed most
of the rest of the signs for most of the towns clustered around the hub that
was Las Vegas -- though I did see the sign for Las Vegas Airport and saw planes
coming and going. Later, when I had an opportunity to return for a few weeks of
work in this city, I learned the pathetic truth of the airport and its oddly
shaped hub -- accommodating only a handful of airplanes as opposed to airports
in major cities such as L.A. international.
But as we rode into town for my first glimpse of the city in
the desert, I was not thinking of the airport or even the threat of mobsters --
some of whom might even have known my uncle Harry back east, I was staring at
the amazing phenomena of lights, and thinking of how lucky I was to have
arrived here for the first time at night.
We arrived in Las Vegas around midnight -- the bus driving
straight town the street that I learned later people called the Strip, the huge
dark shape of the Plaza grinning at us from the far end as walls of light
flowed in constant motion on either side: signs of light blinking
"Queens" and "The Golden Nugget" to the left and on the
right "the Horse Shoe" and "The Mint." Even the model signs
looked regal in that Las Vegas glittery way, each looking like the after glow
of some atomic attack. I stared out at it all, as did everyone in the bus, the
sudden illumination after so much darkness stirring everyone awake. I read the
names of the place as we passed: Bentley's Trading Post, the Hotel Apache, The
Boulder Club, The Coin Castle, the Las Vegas Club, the California Club.
Most of the people on the bus began to move in anticipation
of the buses pausing here. People rose even before the bus stopped, to draw
down luggage from the rack above. The four men and two women that had gotten on
at Barstow, the most recent previous stop, were the quickest up, their
nervousness now open agitation as they stared out with nearly hypnotic
fascination at the parade of lights outside. Even the woman who had previously
been unable to apply enough makeup to her face, seemed more attracted to what
she saw beyond the bus' window than to her own image in her compact mirror. As
the bus stopped, these six were already at the front, pressing the drive to
release them. Right behind them, a line of old men and women came, rattling
their change, unable to keep their free hands from yanking the imaginary slot
machine handles. Behind them, staggering slightly from the miles of riding and
the contents of several bottles of wine, greasy-headed punk-like characters
with leather jackets glistening in the bright flashing lights they way oil
might have. At the rear of the line, looking the least in a hurry to make their
way out, was the couple of lovers, still cooing at each other, although each
now glanced out towards the street -- as if some shadow had worked its way
between them and lingered in the multi-colored limbo along the sidewalk.
Las Vegas, I learned later, served as San Miguel County seat
and sat on the shore of the Gallinas River. Although not advertised much, Las
Vegas actually stood at a higher attitude above sea level than Denver did,
nestled in the middle of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. While original settled
by the Mexicans on their way along the Santa Fe Trail, it was General Stephen
Kearny -- a man later dubbed the one-armed general -- who laid claim to it for
the United States in 1846. The rail road arrived here 30 years later,
transforming it from a simple trading post to a city in the desert, although it
old and new parts had only just incorporated into one city months before my
arrival.
as Vegas was an native American term meaning
"Meadows," and oddly enough, it had other industries beside gambling.
It was the shipping point for livestock and lumber, dairy products and wool. It
served as a scenic resort for people heading to nearby sites such as the Grand
Canyon, Hoover Dam and the Santa Fe National Forest.
Gambling was first legalized in Las Vegas in 1879, then
banned again in 1910 when the good citizens there declared it immoral. Then,
about the same year prohibition ended, the ban on gambling ceased, providing a
convenient depository for the wages workers on Hoover Dam earned. In 1936 Benjamin Sigel, the New York mobster, moved
his family west to California, from which he eyed Las Vegas as a possible
revenue-generating center. In 1941, he made the trip north to start a race wire
business and ended up owning The Flamingo Hotel. During the 1940s, hotels and
casinos popped up out of the dessert like a proliferation of cactus: The Last
Frontier Hotel, The Golden Nugget, Binion's Horseshoe Casino
In 1947 Sigel was found dead in his girlfriend's Beverly
Hills apartment at the age of 41. Three years later, the feds began
investigating illegal activities in Las Vegas, and even tried to shut the city
down.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, atomic tests provided
guests with added entertainment as paying customers came out to the dessert to
witness the blasts.
Despite efforts by the feds, casinos continued to open: the
Sahara, The Sands, The Riviera, The Showboat and The Dunes. The Moulin Rouge
Hotel was first de segregated hotel in Las Vegas but closed six months after it
opened. The owners of the Riviera Hotel were found murdered in 1958. But even
that didn't stop the growth of casinos introducing The Aladdin, Circus and
Caesar's Palace in the 1960s. Then, Las Vegas got its most famous guest
when Howard Hughes moved into the
Desert Inn Hotel, then started buying up some of better-known casinos.
I did not know it when I sat there looking out at the lights
that I would not only pass through Las Vegas on my way back to Los Angeles with
Louise, but within a year become a guest of this city, working on its fringe,
becoming introduced, if not to Howard Hughes himself, then to his body guard. I
did not know how close to madness Hughes had become while I stood in the lobby
of his residence, or how he would later get swept off to the Bahamas to keep
control of his wealth. I did not know then that my return would allow me to
meet members of the Manson Family who also took an instant dislike to me. I did
not know of my close encounters with Elvis Presley, who married here in 1967,
but returned again and again to perform on the stages of the International
Hotel.
I just sat there, staring out at the madness of lights,
looking up finally to find myself alone with the driver on the bus.
"We have an hour rest stop here," the driver told
me. "You can stay in here if you like. But you might want to step out and
stretch your legs. The bus won't get this long a break again until it reaches
Salt Lake City."
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