8:59 amViva Lost Wages
Few things are more depressing than Las Vegas in the early morning. (Sorry if any of you are from Vegas.) We got the smaller-town version of this last week when we passed through Mesquite, Nevada, another casino town about an hour north of Vegas. Mesquite boasts all of the same lost hopes and dreams of Vegas, but with fewer naked girls on billboards. We decided to stay at this Junior-Vegas on the way to California. We pulled into town at about 10:30pm Thursday night to the welcoming flash of bright lights and the empty promises of the loosest slots in Nevada. We pulled into the casino/motel that advertised “rooms from $24.99 a night”.
If you’ve ever wondered what a $24.99 room looks like, I can now (sadly) tell you. It looks kind of like a room at the Bates Motel, only not as clean… and the stains on the carpet are a mystery; not necessarily blood, but possibly just as gross. As I sat in the small bathroom (after four hours in the car drinking Diet Coke and painfully listening to the rain hit the windshield), I studied the pummeled bathroom door, wondering about the sad souls who had stayed there before me. Why was the door broken from the inside? I imagined a sad, drunk girl, locked in the bathroom by some jerk whom she wasn’t all that well acquainted with. I imagined how hard she was wishing that she had made very different choices. Choices that would have led her anywhere else but a gross bathroom in Mesquite, Nevada.
The emergency sprinkler head was pulled from the ceiling and dangled by some cords. I turned on the faucet at the sink to wash my hands, and yellow-orange water sputtered from the tap. We brushed our teeth with toothpaste and apple juice we squeezed from juice boxes.
The kids were excited to be on vacation, to be sleeping in exciting, foreign beds that weren’t their own. “This hotel is awesome!” Zoe exclaimed. I did not get into the semantics of hotel/motel, but rather allowed her to be impressed with our horrid surroundings. “Look, we get our own heater!” She turned the knob on the independent heating unit by the window and the fan churned loudly. I can’t say for sure that the air pumping out was any warmer or cooler than the air already in the room. We climbed into bed, doing our best not to touch anything more than necessary.
In the morning we woke early and dressed. We opened the front door to dreary, rain drenched streets. Gone were the flashy, colorful lights of the night before. The town that touted excitement and riches looked bleak and empty. Trash littered the sides of the streets. A few people milled around in front of the gas pumps across the street.
“I wish we could stay here for our vacation,” Zoe said.
“Disneyland will be even better than this,” I promised, wholeheartedly.
At 7:45 AM we walked through the casino to the buffet. The slot machines stood in rows, with cracked, empty seats sitting in front of each one. The bartender slowly wiped glasses, and one lonely soul sat at the bar, drinking whiskey and filling out a Keno sheet. He still had a few dollars to gamble away before going to sleep in his car.
Sitting at a table in the restaurant, the kids glanced around at the gaudy decor. Jachin remarked that the huge ”gold” picture frame hanging above our table must be worth a fortune. No doubt it was purchased with money that spilled from the loosest slots in Nevada. Zoe looked around the restaurant at the other early morning patrons. She then scooted closer to me in the booth and whispered, “Mom, mostly everybody in here is really old except for us.” It was true. We were the only people at the breakfast buffet under 65 years of age. At 8 AM, all of the young people had gambled away their money and passed out in a $24.99 room. Only the old fogies were up for breakfast. They gambled away their saving during the day, like rational, mature people. I looked at their old, sad faces. This was where they thought they were supposed to be. This is where you came when you retired, to either ”have fun” with that retirement savings, or for those who didn’t plan ahead, to win that retirement money. They slowly ate their pancakes, bored and unspeaking, and tried to think big.
The kids were excited that the guy working at the long buffet table made their pancakes right in front of their eyes. Each pancake was uniform and fluffy. It was culinary magic.
We pulled away from Mesquite 20 minutes later, leaving behind the sadness that drained the soul. Behind us were the unlit casinos and drunk people and unlucky people. We set out through an hour of empty desert. We finally passed through Las Vegas, with the skies clearing and the sun peaking out of the clouds. Billboards advertised sales at the Adult Mega Store, and sultry young girls with pouty lips and heavy eyeliner promised the best show in town. Even poor Toni Braxton had to advertise all but the very sweetest of her parts to get you go come to her show; her long, bare legs beaconed: come hear me sing. Please. I can still sing.
It was still trashy, even in the sunshine; the bright, flashy lights that made it all seem exciting were missing, and now it just seemed sad. I turned on a movie for the kids to divert their attention from the “Thunder From Down Under” billboard, and we pressed on towards Disneyland. I reminded myself for next time why flying is better.
5 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL
Mmmm…pancakes.
Comment by braine — February 1, 2008 @ 10:35 am
This is funny and sad all at the same time. You are very brave for having stayed at that motel. I’m too much of a germ-a-phobe to stay at those places!!
Comment by Sam — February 1, 2008 @ 2:20 pm
But the gritty holes are the spice of life. It’s important to experience the bad I think. Like NYC, the boring part is clean, contrived, soulless Manhattan. The best places are the real places, even if they are sad, because if you look really hard, they are beautiful in a meaningful way. Of course, I love tacky retro decor, condemned buildings, obsessive behaviors and townies, so to me, this Mesquite sounds a ton more captivating than Disneyland. Oh and about that motel room…my mom used to manage a Best Western and recommends bringing your own sheets and to touch the bedspread only to get it away from your bed :(.
Comment by kerri — February 1, 2008 @ 4:27 pm
Okay Chica, I just gotta say, you’re an amazing writer. This was just brilliant. You really captured it.
Comment by Leslie — February 1, 2008 @ 7:36 pm
@braine- Ummm, I think you missed the point of the post… but man, pancakes do sound really good right now…
@Kerri- These types of “holes” are great when researching for a book or exploring, but not so great when vacationing with small children. Disneyland does leave little room for “exploration”, but it’s still the happiest place on earth.
Comment by admin — February 2, 2008 @ 8:03 pm