What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but it's hard to forget the dead bodies.
I was born in Las Vegas, and despite the dead bodies,
mafia encounters, and dangerous lizards, I remember my childhood as remarkably
ordinary, almost boring.
I was raised in Henderson, just south of Las Vegas, and
although the two cities are now indistinguishable, this was not always the
case. When I was young, Vegas was the Rat Pack, mafia, and neon glitz.
Henderson was a blue-collar, gritty, working-class town populated largely by
Mormons who worked at the petrochemical plants in the desert between the two
cities. Las Vegas celebrated The Strip with gambling and showgirls. Henderson
celebrated Industrial Days — an actual holiday — with a carnival and parade.
The industrial complex is hidden now, the old desert
buffer filled with miles of identical houses. You’d have to know the factories
were there to see them. People still work there, but the cities try to hide the
blue collars. Henderson no longer celebrates Industrial Days; it celebrates
Heritage Days.
I grew up in a small house on the outskirts of town and
shared a bedroom with my two brothers. It was probably crowded with three boys
in one small room, but I don’t remember it that way. We had bunk beds, a couple
of dressers, and a well-used toy box. Despite the tight space, there always
seemed room enough to build baseball-card houses and Lego cities. The walls
were papered in red, white and blue stripes, and the carpet was a
Cookie-Monster blue. I’m sure it was horrendous, but I remember it fondly. It
was a kids’ room. It made no pretense of adulthood.
My older sister had her own room. It was green. Not just
any green, but a make-the-wizard-of-Oz-green-with-envy green. It had fantastic
green furniture that my parents bought from a Hilton Hotel fire sale. It was
from an actual fire — the furniture was slightly smoke damaged.
Every year my parents tried to grow grass in our front
and back yards, and every year they failed. In the battles between lawns and
the Mojave, the Mojave usually wins. We had two large trees in the front and
two in the back. At least they seemed large. I was small then, and the trees
have long since been removed, so nobody can disprove me. My brothers and I
spent so much time in those trees that our neighbors might have thought we were
monkeys. There was one difference, though — monkeys don’t fall out of trees,
and we frequently did.
My best friends lived behind me, in houses separated by
an obstacle called a fence. Luckily, my friends and I climbed fences better
than I climbed trees, and we spent countless hours building forts in our yards
and throwing pomegranates at each other that we picked from a large bush. If
you’ve never been hit in the head with a pomegranate, I don’t suggest you try
it.
We rode our bikes to school and to scout meetings and
into the desert to find and capture lizards. Some of the lizards, like Gila
monsters and chuckwallas, were poisonous or had nasty bites. Naturally we
wanted these the most. If you had a chuckwalla, you were the coolest kid on the
block. We were better at capturing them than keeping them, though. We’d bring
them home and put them in a glass aquarium on the back patio, and somehow
they’d always escape. Years later, my mom told me that she paid an older
neighbor boy to take the lizards back to the desert during the night. I guess
she didn’t care about our status.
Once, while looking for lizards, the desert provided an
unexpected surprise. My friend and I had ridden our bikes a
mile or two into the desert on an old dirt road and were looking for ringtail
lizards in a pile of concrete slabs that seemingly existed for no other reason
than to house lizards. We saw a ringtail dart under a large slab and figured if
we tossed the slab to the side the lizard would come out and we’d catch it.
We’d done this many times. What could go wrong? With my friend hefting one side
of the heavy slab and me on the other, we tossed it aside. There wasn’t a
lizard. There was a dead body in a tuxedo. It wasn’t bloated or
decomposing. It was fresh. I don’t think I slept for a week. There’s a
Vegas lesson: sometimes life is like a pile of concrete slabs — you never know
what you’re going to get.
A few years later my mother turned over her own dead
bodies when a drunken man came into our family restaurant and explained to her,
in great detail, how he’d spent his life killing for the mafia. He gave her an
odd, small golden mouse figurine and said he’d return for it at the same time
in one week. My mom immediately called a Mormon friend in the FBI and an
Italian friend in a connected “family,” who both said they’d be there when the
hit man returned. I begged my mom to let me go. I was sure it was going to be
just like The Godfather. She said no, which was just as well because only a few
disappointed FBI agents showed up. Later, my mom asked her “connected” friend
if the hit man had been telling the truth, and if she should worry for her
safety. He smiled and said, “It’s taken care of. Nobody will come after you.”
What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but I get to keep
the memories.
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