Searchlight -- Yes, I Gambled

Slot Machine Pays For My Trip To See Sarah and Todd Palin

When the Henderson check-in guy, unbidden, offered me a Sunday late check-out time at my hotel -- how'd he know? Holiday Inn corporate must keep a record of my usual requests -- I said sure, thanks, but knew I should get out of Vegas early on a Sunday. I've seen that weekend traffic heading back to California and I don't much like it.
Yet I dawdled.
Southwestward traffic on the I-15 was so bad Sunday afternoon that it was more its typical parking lot than a freeway. What's a Searchlight sojourner to do?
This is Nevada, so, asked and answered. I stopped at the first exit with a casino, parked in the shade, to take a nap or read or have some lunch out of my cooler. Let's be honest for once: I parked at a casino. I knew that I'd enter that smoky den of iniquity and: Gamble.
My high-roller friend JMax laughs at me when I sit at the penny slots. I bear her scorn like a frugal gamesman, confident, knowing my spot. My style is to bet like she does but in my own low-roller style. Who's got money to burn? Well, she may, but I don't.
I put in my twenty dollar bill and max-betted it up to two-hundred and fifty bucks. I was hitting, so I had to spin a few more times. I cashed out at $200.00. One-eighty for twenty. Not bad.
These slots may have loosened up since Obama cracked on Vegas, telling us not to go there. Is he an economic idiot, or what?
I can't remember the name of the casino where I hit, but it was an oldish one, one where the quarters still drop out of some of the slots -- love that sound -- and you put them in the plastic cups and take them to the cashier booth to change them for dollars. This casino was old enough that even on the newer machines you have to call an attendant for your payout.
I trusted the lady with her strollered baby and her mom -- three generations at the penny slots -- to watch my machine while I found an attendant.
Friendly, hard-working, weary, seen-it-all Rose said she'd meet me at my Wheel of Fortune and give up the two-hundred. When she handed me the two hundred dollar bills she looked up and said "Now take this, save it, don't spend it."
I said "I'm walking outta here right now."
Rose laughed, and said, with her cool (Cajun?) accent, "Good for you, dear, now go."
We both laughed.
Grateful, I was thinking that we all have sweet caring mothers everywhere, all around us, thank God, if we just listen for them.
Best to listen and obey.