Just Like Old Times

We've visited many places on this trip where I've spent a lot of time in my life, but none as much as Las Vegas, where I lived for 14 years (apparently I broke two mirrors). Linda and I spent nearly a week there in 2004, doing most of the tourist things like casino-hopping, gawking at the Fremont Experience light show, and joining thousands of other tourists in wandering up and down The Strip, trying to take it all in. This time we spent 44 hours there, and except for one joyride up and down the length of The Strip and a bit of gambling, we avoided the touristo routine. We stayed at Sam's Town, where I worked for several years, did our minimal gambling there (we lost a combined $42—I finished 19^th out of 40 players in a hold’em tournament, and Linda fed some slot machines), ate a couple of meals in the casino, and enjoyed our room very much. On the tourist front, it was a satisfying two days of sanity.

Our dinner Friday night was our main reason for coming to Las Vegas at all this time around. Since we were in the middle of nowhere (Cameron, Arizona) for our anniversary last Saturday, I wanted to have a special, official anniversary dinner consisting of my favorite restaurant meal ever, with my two best Las Vegas friends and their wives. We rendezvoused around 6PM at the California Hotel downtown for dinner at the Redwood Bar & Grill, where I first had their lobster thermidor in the 1980s. It's the most scrumptious meal I've ever had, and it was as fantastic as ever last night. It included a huge amount of succulent lobster-tail meat (Linda estimated that it was a three-pound lobster) covered in a rich, mouth-watering cream sauce with sherry and mushrooms. I took my time savoring each bite of it, and when the lobster vanished I soaked up the remaining sauce with a piece of bread. I didn't want to miss a molecule of that taste.

We were joined by my old friends George and Stew, whom I've known for more than 30 years. I've known George since 1980, when we worked at the old Bingo Palace, my first poker job. I met his buddy Stew a year later. They had come to Las Vegas in 1975 from Pittsburgh and, except for a year or so that George spent in Hawaii in the mid-1980s, they've lived there ever since. George worked mainly in the poker industry, while Stew got out of poker early on and has been an investment broker ever since. For many years we played a table-top baseball game for which I created the cards. Four of us (the fourth, Tim, moved away in 2000, five years after I left LV) would gather on Friday evenings to play 36-game seasons (six or nine games a week) about which I could easily and might someday write a book. Most of the time our lives were chaotic and our relationships unstable, and some of those diceball nights were group therapy as much as anything else. The four of us have now tallied ten marriages, but we have all gotten it right this time around. This dinner was the first time Linda and I met George's wife Angela and Stew's wife Lori, so it was a happy occasion all the way around. For the record, Stew and I had the thermidor, Angela had a lobster tail, the others had steak, and everything was terrific. It was a meal we'll remember for a long time, a festive reunion (I hadn't seen Stew since the 2004 trip, or George since he visited us in Cooperstown in 2008) and a fine anniversary celebration.

We have other shared interests besides baseball, of course, and I was happy to join both Stew and George in their favorite extracurricular passions during this whirlwind stay. Later Friday night, I joined Stew at a bar not far from Sam's Town for some karaoke. Stew is the most fanatical Moody Blues devotee you can imagine, in fact the most fanatical devotee of any musical group I've ever known. He's seen them in concert a couple of dozen times, has met them on several occasions, and raised his son Alex to revere them as well. Stew is also a terrific singer who has performed dozens of Moody Blues songs in public (billed as Moody Stew), and was part of a professional karaoke troupe that performed regularly at the old Showboat Hotel. His rich baritone is especially suited to the songs written by Justin Hayward, and his rendition of "Nights in White Satin" is particularly moving. When Linda and I were here in 2004, Stew regaled us to a personal concert, singing about 20 Moody Blues songs to us, a cappella.

Last night Linda asked him to perform her favorite Moody Blues song, "Questions," but unfortunately felt too tired after dinner to stay out, so I took her back to the room at Sam's Town before joining Stew. Plan B worked: I filmed him singing "Questions" on our digital camera, so Linda got to watch his performance later. It was as wonderful as ever. After that, we waited more than an hour at the karaoke while other singers (most of them very good) performed, before I got to film Stew singing the song I requested, another early favorite, "The Actor." He said afterwards that he never sang it better, and I agree. Fantastic!

Next March, Stew is going to live out his greatest and longest-standing dream. The Moody Blues are staging a five-night Caribbean cruise for their fans, and Stew and Lori will be going. There will be special concerts, a private dinner with the band and their families, and other MB-related events. Stew was ecstatic when they purchased the tickets, but he was beside himself a few days later when he received an e-mail informing him that there will be a MB-only karaoke night on the cruise. "Brush up on your 'Nights in White Satin,’" the e-mail advised, and Stew just about fainted. His #2 daydream in life has been to sing "Nights" for Justin Hayward, and he will have his chance. He can hardly wait. He'll also have a chance to go for daydream #1. For two decades he has been an avid off-road camper, traveling primarily to remote areas of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. I joined him for one of those five-day trips in 1998 and will never forget the incredible panoramas, not to mention the adventure of camping in a place that few other people have ever visited. Stew is going to ask the Moodies to join him at the Grand Canyon. He knows they have an interest in the US Southwest, and he truly is the best person to take them out there. If they joined him for just one weekend, they'd find abundant inspiration to write enough songs to fill a CD. Good luck on that one, Stew! It was a joy to see him still pinching himself over the possibilities.

Linda and I had a tough night Friday night. You've read about the miscalculation in her dry weight at Thursday's dialysis, and Friday night she paid the price, being unable to breathe comfortably (from excess fluid that wasn't dialyzed on Thursday). She hardly slept at all, and I didn't do much better, partly from concern for her and partly from my own battle with acid reflux, triggered by the thermidor and the one drink I had before dinner. So we were both shaky when I took her to dialysis at 6:30 yesterday morning. Nevertheless, I was raring to go when George picked me up at 7am to dabble in a little golf.

I'm a lifelong duffer whose only discernible skill is putting. George is a legitimate golfer who has had a single-digit handicap on and off, has traveled to Scotland to play St. Andrew's and the other great courses there, has attended the Masters, and has notched a hole-in-one. I haven't played golf in a long time but I can still putt, and Las Vegas has long had one of the world's best putting-only courses. Located at the Angel Park golf club, the course used to be 18 holes but has been whittled down to 9. The holes are difficult, ranging from 50 feet in length to over 100, with many undulations, sweeping hooks, and even sand traps. It's a tough course, though two or three of the remaining 9 holes are fairly straight putts of 50-60 feet.

The sprinklers were still going on the 1st hole when George and I started playing, and we had to duck the water in order to move along. We played the 9-hole layout four times, and did better with each round, especially after I woke up and regained some kind of touch. I'd say par for 9 holes would be 20 or 21. George, a fierce competitor who doesn't give anything away, played solidly throughout, scoring 20-19-19-20. In his middle two rounds, he made 3 on the 1^st hole and all 2s after that. We joked that we’d keep playing until someone made a deuce at the 100-foot opener. (We both did in the fourth round.) I shot 24-21-23 in the first three rounds, but had my best stretch of putting ever during the final 9. I played every hole in two shots to score an 18 and gain my lone 9-hole victory. I put several of the long approach putts within two or three feet, and made a 12-footer to keep my streak of deuces going (I finished with 12 in a row). That felt good,  beating George but even more so for making so many good putts on a tough little course. Best of all, we got to spend a few hours together, reminiscing, philosophizing, and competing.

Linda had a good dialysis treatment during which they got her dry weight a little below its normal figure, setting her up for a comfortable weekend. We were both very tired from too-little sleep, however, so after we reached Williams, Arizona, late yesterday afternoon, we decided not to hurry up to the South Rim of the Canyon for another look. We rested instead before two long days of driving to get to Oklahoma City (900 miles distant) for Tuesday's dialysis.

This morning we had another treat.  We had breakfast in Flagstaff with Stew’s son Alex, who was only 12 the last time we were in the vicinity. He’s an impressive young man who has inherited the family’s musical skill and then some. Stew’s father was a classical pianist and composer, and young Alex anchors the bass register of every choir and singing group on the campus of Northern Arizona University. As Stew told me the night before, “I’m a good amateur, but Alex is a pro. He could be a pop singer, an opera singer, anything.” Alex confirmed that professors have told him as much, but he wants to teach at the high school level so he can help young people through music. You have to admire a 20-year-old with that combination of talent and purpose.

Breakfast with Alex was a great post-script to the Las Vegas visit, which was a tribute to my past, to 30 years ago when I first became good friends with Stew and George. Everybody is doing fine, and the reunion was as delicious as the thermidor. You can’t ask for much more than