One of My Sea Stories

Well the seas were not actually involved.

I was 34 and looking pretty much like the pic on the upper right.

First time in Vegas.  

The Comptroller and I were working for a Phoenix company that, among other things, sold Turf Equipment to places such as Golf Courses and City Parks that have large grassy areas to mow.

The Comptroller, (who got his accounting credentials off a matchbox accredited school), and I had just delivered a piece of turf equipment  to a casino in Laughlin, Nevada.  They paid for it in cash and gave the money to him.  I think it was around 6 grand.  This was an outlier event - usually a Comptroller and a Parts Dept manager don't deliver equipment.  It is usually sales persons or service department folks that do the deliveries and it was probably the first time the company delivered a piece of equipment this far from Phoenix as well.    Well, the universe had plans for us apparently.

It was Friday and after we delivered the equipment to one of the Laughlin casinos, we decided we were so close to Vegas we'd run up there for the Saturday and drive back to Phoenix on Sunday.  It's a 6 hour drive between Vegas and Phoenix and just an hour and a half from Laughlin to Vegas.

It was early AM when we delivered in Laughlin and so it was late morning when we arrived in Las Vegas, decided on a place to park the truck and trailer and hit the strip on foot.

We are walking up the strip and I need to relieve myself like a Russian Racehorse.  Just then an absolutely Gorgeous red headed hooker runs her red convertible up to the curb alongside me and asks if I want a date.  Well, honestly I might have if I didn't need to find a rest room within seconds and I actually had enough money in my pocket to pay for that adventure.  I didn't.  So I said "Thanks but no".  She sped off.

Shortly afterwards, personal needs are attended to and the Comptroller and I find ourselves in a sea of casino's.  We enter a casino with the name of Knob Hill.  This is a casino several notches down from say a Caesar's Palace.

We enter and find ourselves interested in a game of Roulette.   As stated I didn't have a lot of money, and so in this game, you can get an amount of chips to play with and assign any dollar value to them.  The chips have a unique color per player and your chips can be identified from other players but only you know the value of each chip.

Each of my chips are worth 10 cents.  Other players chips could be worth $100.  Who knows.

So, we begin play and I am placing 5 to 10 chips on a board of 36 numbers that has two more - a zero and double zero bet.  *See Roulette for more info.

I am winning. Big. When your number hits on the roulette wheel, the odds are 35 to 1.  So each time I place 5 to 10 chips on the numbers on the board, I am winning 35 chips for each single chip placed on a number.  It happens that each time I bet I win, so chips are piling up in front of me.  After a half hour or so of this, people begin noticing my growing chip pile.  I continue to win and with each win, the crowd is now cheering and jumping up and down as if I'm wining thousands of dollars when actually I'm only winning tens of dollars or many dimes :).

I feel like James Bond in Casino Royale.   I smile to the crowd and place another bet. I win. I win again. I win again and again. People are seriously going nuts.  I actually get tired of winning and take my winnings, tip the dealer, and the Comptroller and I head off to a seedy motel to spend the night.  We get two rooms.  As I sleep, he heads back to one of the casinos and proceeds to lose 90% of the money that the Laughlin casino paid for the equipment we delivered.

He is distraught the next morning and asks if we can stay a few more hours so he can try to win some back.  We stay, he plays poker and actually wins about 75% of it back while I fool around on 25 cent slot machines and take in the spectacle that is Las Vegas.  We head back to Phoenix.

It would not be my last trip to Vegas and at this point, I can honestly say I am about even with Las Vegas.  Slots, Blackjack and Roulette.

My advice for Blackjack is find a table where everyone is laughing :-)

Las Vegas is worth seeing at least once whether you gamble or not.

 

One last Vegas story....

 

Years later I'm up there with an old friend and we are in the process of leaving and my bag is still in the room.  He is in the casino and I give him 5 dollars and ask him to put it on # 21 on the roulette table while I collect my bag.  He does so and while I'm gone for 20 minutes(?) he has won the bet, collecting $175 and takes $5 from the winnings and bets it on 21 again.  # 21 comes up repeatedly from the time I left to the time I get back and my friend bets $5 after each win.  If I remember I think # 21 hit 8 times in a row.  No Shit. I split with him and tipped the dealer and off we go.  What a hoot.