That Second Long Trip to Vegas
Or
Where have you been?
There are extended moments in your life that appear almost magical when seen through the eyes of history. The events over hours and days fall into place like a plot for a well written book. I’ve had a few of those over the course of my life, but I think the most memorable was my second visit to Las Vegas when I was 23. The year was 1990.
At the time my friends were scattered across the Western US. I had flown to Vegas the year before, but this time I drove down in my parents 1976 Ford Granada. Kwang was living in Edmonds, flew down and I met him at the airport. My friend Curt was still in college and drove up from Socorro New Mexico with a couple of classmates.
The sixth person was our friend Mike who was living in Salt Lake City (SCL). We had lost touch with Mike for about a year and only recently had reached him by phone. After a lot of begging he agreed to take the bus down from SLC to join us. If my memory is right, all six of us stayed in one hotel room at the Star Dust Hotel and Casino. Mike showed up with $2.00 is his pocket, but not long after his arrival he put them into a dollar slot machine, Curt supplied the third dollar for the single bet pull and they won a hundred. That gave Mike some walking around money for the next few days.
Kwang wanted to go hiking in the Grand Canyon, so he took my dad’s car and was going to be gone for two days; most of the Vegas visit. During that time we walked the strip, gambled with what little money any of us had, and saw the sights. I think this was the trip we all went to see the “Crazy Girls” show at the Rivera. It was cheap in many ways.
I don’t remember events by the days of the week on this trip. So I’ll just say that after a couple of days, Curt and friends headed back to school. That same day, Mike was to catch the bus back to SLC in the morning, I would stay one more night and Kwang would show up the next day; back from his hiking at the Grand Canyon. Kwang and I would then drive back to the Seattle area in the Granada. Mike left the room early and the plan was for him to catch the Strip Bus that for a dollar took you downtown to the Greyhound Station. I said a sleepy goodbye to Mike, Curt and his friends and stayed in the room; enjoying a solo nap for the first time on the trip.
Sometime later Mike was back knocking at the hotel room door. He had waited for the Strip Bus and it never came. I’m not sure I remember if it didn’t run that early or what happened, but he missed the morning SLC run; there was another that evening. We left the hotel before the heat of the day started and wandered the strip, neither of us with any money. I remember walking from the Peppermill Casino to the Desert Inn which felt like a mile of vacant land and bright sun. There are 20 casinos that cover that distance today, but at the time it was a really long march across dry ground. We sat at the Desert Inn and played quarter Slot Blackjack at something like 8am and a security guard walked up and asked Mike for his ID. Mike was about 6 months older than I and he expressed his displeasure to the guard on that point.
At some point we hopped the Strip Bus for downtown in order to put Mike on the evening Bus to SLC. We got his boarding pass, and I left him as he was in line to step on the bus. I wandered back to the Strip Bus stop a few blocks away and when I got there, Mike was waiting for me. Greyhound had oversold and Mike had gotten bounced. It was back to the hotel for both of us. At this point I concocted a plan where Mike would hang with me till Kwang came back the next day and then the three of us would drive Mike back to SLC. It was on the way to Seattle and Mike was already a day late getting back to work so the extra delay didn’t feel out of scope.
That night was the changing point in the trip. Up till now it was nothing but prologue. When we got back to the room, Mike started to open up about where he had been for the previous year. It turns out he had done a 3-month sentence in a California jail for embezzling and had not wanted anyone to know. (Our friend John back in Seattle had known, but had kept it a secret as friends should.) We sat up all night talking. I asked him to go over the story in great detail; how it happened that he came to commit the crime, what happened when he got caught, his parent’s involvement, trial and sentencing, jai time, out a month early for good behavior, looking for work with a felony on your record and following a job to SLC that included check-ins with your parole officer. I should mention there was a girl in the story as there always is.
You have to understand that Mike was the rock star in my circle of friends in High School. I met Mike in 8th Grade when his family moved to Federal Way. He hated leaving California and from day-one talked about getting back there as soon as the choice was his. He ran for 9th Grade Class President after being in our school for less than a year and won. In High School, he held most every Student Body office and ended school as ASB President. He did Debate, FBLA Regional Officer, Knowledge Bowl Team and made was pretty good friend that most of us looked up to. Our circle of friends were not the popular click, we fell more into the brainy section with some people in Band and others in Drama. With all that, Mike straddled the line between our clique and the top tier kids with money, looks and status. Part of Mike’s opening up that weekend was to share the truth of really how miserable he was at times in high school and how much he was drinking. A line could be drawn from that hidden life to the event which cost him 2 months of his freedom.
When Mike graduated from Decatur High he kept his word. He had a scholarship to Pepperdine and he would write when he got there. A year later he had dropped out and was going to UC Santa Cruz and a year after that he was working Fast Food and then at record shops.
My picture of Mike really changed that night and we continued talking about it the next day while we waited for Kwang to arrive. From my friend the Rock Star he became just my friend and in many ways my friendship with Mike started that night. I must have been exhausted having been up all night, but I don’t remember that at all. Kwang had called that morning before we checked out of the room at the Star Dust. He said it would take four hours to drive to Vegas. Since we were going to be without a phone once we left our room and this was before cell technology, we decided to meet at McDonalds at the Top of the Hour starting at 2pm. That way we could wander around the strip between 2pm and 3pm and between 3pm and 4pm if it took him that long.
When 2pm struck we found Kwang at the McDonalds and he claimed to have been there for almost an hour. I thought that was odd we had been so off on our calculations, but no big deal. We figured ten hours of driving to SLC and we took off heading north on I-15. Mike quickly spilled the beans about life and jail to Kwang and I delighted in hearing the whole story again and was able to get more details out of him about chess for smokes and the guy who told him he could do 3 months standing on this head. It was such a different world to describe being in, if Mike had claimed to have spent 2 months in Madagascar, I would not have been as interested as 2 months in the California State Pen. I used the word “delighted” and that sounds selfish of me, but to find this rich story of fall and redemption in someone you are close to, to have it unfold and cause you to re-interrupt events of your own life spanning almost 10 years, it was revelatory.
So there we are, three friends who have redefined what we know of each other, bonded over a day and a night and now a good story would challenge our new dynamic. It was after Midnight when we entered SLC on the freeway. We had been driving pretty steady for the last few hundred miles and I had been behind the wheel the whole trip. I let up on the gas as we got close to our exit and the car made a terrible groaning noise. I quickly put the pedal back down and it stopped. A look of real fear came over all three of us. The exit we needed was coming up and I let up again and again the car made a terrible noise. We took the exit anyway. We did not quite make the stop sign when the car lurched like I had dropped the automatic into Park and came to a rocking stop; engine stopped.
The next few hours are mostly a blur; a combination of adrenaline and lack of sleep and the fear that my father’s car was busted down 800 miles from home. I think we walked to Mike’s apartment, which he shared with a girl named Amy and her young daughter Camille. We arranged to have the car towed to Sears which opened at 6am. We were driving now in Amy’s car and sat in a donut shop waiting for Sears to open; Kwang was asleep back at the apartment on the floor. After checking in the car to get it looked at, I also headed back to the Apartment and off to sleep. I had been up 48 hours; more or less, and Mike went off to work I think. It must have been a Monday; which explains Sears opening at 6am and Mike going to work the morning of our arrival.
The phone woke me up around 10am to say they could fix the differential for about $500 which meant replacing the entire insides and rebuilding it. $500.00 was a huge amount of money and frankly was more than my dad had paid for the car. I remember taking a minute to think and Kwang gave me a hard look and said “School (Fall Quarter) starts in a few days and I need to be there.” By School he meant the University of Washington where he was taking post-graduate classes. I said “go ahead” and it would be ready by 5pm.
Mike picked us up at his apartment after work and took us to get the car. I had decided to argue the price down if I could because while in Vegas I had dropped by the Sears for an Oil Change and Checkup and wanted to know how this could happen after their shop in Vegas gave the car a clean bill of health. I was young and didn’t understand that old cars broke without warning. I started in on the Manager about the $500.00 bill and it appeared to work. At one point he said, “Let me check with the mechanic on what was done” and left the room. A few minute later he was back with a bill that was cut in half. He told us that the rebuild had not required replacement parts, so the bill was just for the labor. I paid up using my rarely used credit card and walked out feeling happy until Mike said “He was going to charge you for $250.00 in parts that he never used.” Yeah. That’s right. What a dick. It was not long after that incident when Sears was caught in a nationwide car repair scandal that made all the papers.
Around 8pm we left town heading back to Seattle. I was determined to drive the 14 hours straight through. We said goodbye to Mike for now, but my plan was to bring Mike back into our circle of friends. From the moment Mike left Federal Way after Graduation to return to this life in California, I had the feeling that he didn’t have a support system. He didn’t have a set of friends that would back him up, be honest, inspire him and let him inspire them. I’ve never asked Mike if this was true or not, it was my belief and I acted on it. Mike’s high school friends mostly lived in the Puget Sound area and twice a year I made the trip down to SLC for a visit; sometimes taking one along and sometimes by myself. In time, Mike got back on his feet and started making trips up to Seattle; to John’s wedding and to camping trips and to Curt’s wedding. Mike did all the work to get his life back together, but I hope that putting him in touch with people who cared made it just a little bit easier. I still at times thought of Mike as the Rock Star in our midst, but more often he was just a person making his way through the world the best he can.
And during that 14 hour drive back from SLC to Seattle, Kwang admitted under questioning that his drive from the Grand Canyon was shortened by the high rate of speed he drove. I’m not sure Kwang had any experience driving an older car at that point in his life, but he assumed 100 was no problem for the 15 year old car with 200,000 miles on it. He paid me for the work that Sears did on the car, but I would not share the driving at all that night or the next morning as we entered Seattle area.
Less than year later my father decided to sell that car. He got $900 for it from a kid just out of High School. He paid my dad half the price with a promise to come back a week later with the second half. He and a friend were driving down the freeway during that first week and the driveshaft pulled out of the differential and left them stranded on the side of the road. The kid had it towed to his place and called my father. He was polite, but his friend yelled at my dad about him cheating them. That night I drove over to their house with my father, we wired up the driveshaft so it would not drag on the ground, had a tow truck take it back to my Parent’s house and my father refunded him his money.
My father then spend the next few weeks rebuilding the differential that Sears had rebuild a year earlier. My father is sure Sears did it badly which resulted in the failure. My dad did it right and sold the car a second time for $700 dollars. I told him the car was now worth more than the $900 he had sold it for the first time, but the claim of having cheated someone had really stung him and he sold it for what it was worth, not what he could get for it.
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