Leaving Las Vegas (to steal a movie title)

To figure this post out, simply read the one below it that I posted yesterday.

We yanked the throttle out until the engine started screaming and then pushed it back in a quarter of an inch. She was running fairly hard but she wasn't screaming. Realizing we had been thrown out of Las Vegas the engine had a damned good sound to it. We had escaped without a trip to the cross bar hotel or a dunking in cement overshoes and were glad to have it behind us.

We watched the miles click by for a while and then saw a truck stop ahead and pulled in.

We had been living on that hippie crap for the past couple of days and our very souls were screaming for some serious man food. We were craving a huge slab of red meat.

The instant we entered the truck stop we sensed it was a happy oasis in the middle of nowhere. I want to say we were in a town called Alamo but I'm not sure about that at all.

Almost as soon as we were seated we instantly knew why the place seemed so happy. It was the waitress.

She was one of those rare women that men instinctively like and trust. She was rather tall, her hair was in sort of a beehive and her makeup was a molecule shy of being trashy. She also had a quick wit and above all we knew she was comfortable with men. She liked men the way they were and men liked her. Her connection with the guys really isn't of a sexual nature. It's a warm, human connection.

Women like that are a very rare national treasure.

She came to our table and Blaine told her we had been living on hippie for for the past three days. She laughed.

“Sounds like you two need a serious blood rare steak,” she said. “What do you want with it?”

“Just a salad,” said Blaine.

“Twice,” I said. “And burn the outside and leave the inside dripping.”

“I can do that,” she said and left.

She arrived with a pair of humongous steaks and a pretty good sized pair of salad and we chowed down. Fishermen are fast eaters and Blaine and I were no exception. We attacked the beef and salads.

“You two guys slow down,” said the waitress. “The sparks from your knives and forks are going to set this place on fire!”

We finished the meat and salads in short order, paid and left her one hell of a tip and left. Back into the beast.

You have to remember that the beast was a dead simple farm vehicle. There was only a heater, no radio. The suspension was hard, especially because I had resprung the rear end to haul a camper I had for a while. It was a far from comfortable ride. There was no air conditioning and everything on it was worn out. It had a manual transmission, a manual choke, no power brakes and armstrong steering.

The entire vehicle was long past being on it's last legs. It was held together by spit, baling wire, vise grips, good luck and uncommon sense. We ran it on bald tires, there were no seat belts, padded dash or anything along these lines. The entire truck was just plain crude.

It was a heavy piece of nothing more or less than Detroit Iron. By the time I got it it was an ideal vehicle for adventurers simply because a simple trip to a convenience store could turn into a world class adventure at any time.

In short, it was custom made for me at the time.

About a year ago I saw one that looked to have been somewhat refurbished in someone's front yard. I knocked on the door and asked the owner about it. He was delighted to give me a tour and commented that kids today couldn't even get it started much less drive it.

I asked him for the key and he handed it to me and watched. I pulled out the choke and when I stamped on the gas pedal three times he grinned. I turned the key and it almost caught so I pushed the choke in quickly and pulled it out as I cranked the engine and if fired right up. He was impressed.

He let me drive it around the block a couple of times and it was amazing how everything returned to me. It was like riding a bicycle.

He said he had bought it from a field somewhere in the dry part of Texas and had put new rubber on it, wired it together and driven it back to Pennsylvania where he partially refurbished it. He uses it to haul wood.

The miles clicked by as the little Slant Six hummed. Slant sixes like to be run but don't like to be beaten. I had found the ideal throttle setting and it was smooth by the standards of the time and place. This means we were not getting beaten up too bad.

There was a sign telling us Elko was a couple hours out so even though it was daylight, we found a place to park. As we pulled off we saw a pile of about four or five tires. I sarcastically commented that we could use them to burn and keep warm.

“Save it for Earth Day,” replied Blaine. I laughed.

We didn't want to enter Elko until business hours. The plan was find a laundromat and a shower. Most laundromats in Alaska have showers and a number of them in the western states did to service travelers. I figured we could find something there. Even a garden hose would suffice if push came to shove.

We set up camp quickly and lolled around. We could be seen from the road but expected no trouble. The chaos we had created in Las Vegas was really a local beef and they were unaware of the bogus whales collection.

Looking back on it, we had perpetrated the perfect crime. This isn't just because we got away with it. It is because nobody even knew a crime had been committed. It really was that slick in a way.

Because we were still full of steak and salad, dinned consisted of pretzels and a beer or two. It's interesting to note here that although we consumed incredible amounts of beer during the trip we were never really intoxicated to the point where it interfered with anything. My guess is that when a beer got too warm to enjoy we simply tossed it out. We went through a lot more than we actually consumed.

A lone state police car pulled up on the side of the road and the officer approached us. He asked us a few casual questions and we truthfully told him we wanted to enter Elko during business hours to get cleaned up and then we were off to Seattle and the boat. He helpfully told us where the laundromat was and said he thought there was a shower there and left.

We went to bed a little too early and as a result we woke up too early. The two-pound steaks had worked their way through us and we were famished. I looked in the cooler which was by now full of cold water and found a package of ground sausage and a pound of bacon. There was also a very waterlogged package of eggs which on discovery only had a couple of them broken. I removed the eggs one by one and then grabbed the waterlogged package and stuffed it into a the box with the empty 'Save the Whales' cans for later disposal.

In the took box I had a simple Primus stove and a skillet of sorts that had a little surface rust on it. It cleaned up quickly with a handful of sand and some elbow grease.

The Primus needed gas so I fired up the beast and let it warm up a bit. When it was running I simply opened the hood and slipped the rubber fuel line off of the carburetor and pumper gasoline into a dry beer can. I slipped the fuel line back on before the engine stalled. It only took a few seconds.

I lit it off and cooked the bacon and set it aside. I left a half-slice of uncooked bacon for later use. Then I cooked up the sausage. When it was done I poured off the grease and simply broke all of the eggs on top of the sausage and scrambled the entire mess up.

We ate the bacon with our fingers and with spoons fished out of the glove box we shared the sausage and egg mix right out of the skillet. I don't recall what we washed it down with, probably a soda from out of the cooler where there were a couple.

Sand and water from the melted ice of the cooler got the pan clean again and I took the unused piece of bacon and rubbed it in the pan to oil it a bit and keep it from rusting.

We had time to kill so we spruced things up a bit. We had been living rough and things needed a little help. The cab of the pickup got a good going-over and we were ready for our triumphant entry into Elko.

The State cop's directions were accurate and clear so we wound up going straight to the laundromat only to find there had been a fire a couple of days earlier and it was closed. I opined that there might be another one so we cruised around and found one that was totally dilapidated and had no shower.

We wandered through town making note of which places would be good to try for lunch. The breakfast had stuck with us but we were planning ahead. We also found ice and recharged the cooler, draining the water out and cramming it with ice in top of the remaining beer. We were out of food and pulled into a market of sorts and picked up a few things. It was a long haul to Boise and might not want to bother with hunting for a place to eat.

I looked at Blaine and said I had heard there was a whorehouse nearby and that it was probably a good bet that there was not only a shower there but a decent washing machine setup because of all the sheets they went through.

Blaine looked at me and thought. “Why not? All they can do is kick us out and I ain't never been kicked out of a whorehouse before. It'd look good on my resume!”

Nevada has never outlawed prostitution on a statewide basis. They leave it up to the counties. It is the only state in the union with legalized brothels. I went straight to the nearest phone booth but the phone book was missing. I then asked the first guy I met and he gave us directions. We fired up the beast and we were off and running.

This served a number of purposes. First we needed to get things cleaned up, our bodies and our clothes. Secondly we were both pretty curious and wanted to check it out. Besides I heard they served not only sex, but food and drink. We'd eat lunch there if it looked halfway decent.

We arrived. One of the first things we saw was a sign outside that said, “No women.”

We walked in carrying our duffel bags with out sleeping bags over our shoulders. Bad move. The bartender/bouncer saw us and jumped to General Quarters. He came charging up demanding to know what the hell was going on.

It took a little doing but we got him calmed down enough to explain to him we were looking for a shower and some laundry done and the laundromat was closed.

He laughed outright. “And you came HERE to get your laundry done?” he asked.

“Yeah. I figured with all the sheets, towels and stuff you probably go through you'd have an in house washing machine setup of some sort. We're really filthy and desperate to get cleaned up,” I explained. “we'll pay cash if it's reasonable.”

He smirked. “I'll see what I can do.”

A minute later a woman in her mid 30s came up and offered to do our wash for $20 apiece. The price was a little high but not too out of line. We could afford it. She also said we could shower in her room for free and threw in the towels if we dried the floor afterwards.

I told her to wait until after I showered because I had a clean set of clothes with me and I wanted the rags I had on washed. She agreed.

We walked into the bar and sat down. It was getting close to lunch time and we could use a light lunch. It had been hours since the slap-up breakfast.

I showered first and that's when I saw it. I looked down and saw my necklace and then stared at the half-dozen wedding rings. I instantly felt monumentally stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

We had been committed felony level fraud by deception, been forced to live like animals with a group of stoners and worst off all probably destroyed our karma because of my blatant stupidity. My face burned with shame and I hated myself for my stupidity.

To top it off, here I was in a damned whorehouse trying to get my underwear cleaned in case I had an accident and had to go to the hospital.

A quick trip to the pawn shop and the sale of just one ring would have netted enough green cash to return straight to Seattle. The sale of two would have permitted us to take the long route through Salt Lake City. I finished my shower, went into the bar and Blaine got up and showered. I stuffed my dirty clothes into the duffel bag and a minute later it was taken into the bowels of the house of ill repute.

I sat at the bar feeling both totally refreshed and quite retarded and sick to my stomach. I ordered a cup of coffee and perused the lunch menu. Although I had eaten bacon for breakfast, the BLTs looked good. I decided to wait until Blaine returned which he did in a few minutes.

When he returned he was in clean clothes that my expert eye determined were hand washed in Lake Mead. I didn't have the guts to tell him about the gold rings.

We both ordered sandwiches and ate slowly. We had time to kill. At intervals the girls casually wandered through in skimpy outfits and chatted with us. They made small talk, gave us their names and wandered off. They didn't pester us. They knew if we wanted them we could ask for them by name.

We noticed what appeared to be a regular lunch crowd came in. Probably locals that ate there because they liked the atmosphere which wasn't too bad.

I quietly told Blaine the girls were not really all that pretty. On the other hand they showed no signs of illegal drug use, either.

“Must be the day shift,” he replied.

I smirked and commented that the good looking ones probably went into porn.

Then serious insult was added to injury.

The woman that was doing our wash walked in. She asked which one of us was Blaine. He raised his hand. She put his missing wallet on the bar next to him. We were both shocked. She then handed me my wallet. I was l floored.

She explained that she had found Blaine's in the dryer after she dried his sleeping bag and mine in my pants pocket in the laundry bag. I had changed pants in the desert and forgotten to remove it like an idiot. There was a hole in the inside liner of Blaine's tattered sleeping bag and the wallet had fallen out of his pocket and worked its way into it.

We both felt stupid. I felt stupider yet. Oh, the irony of it!

We were both so pleasantly surprised we both tipped her $50, no small sum in 1981. She was quite pleased. She also told us she had washed our sleeping bags on gentle cycle because they looked pretty beat up. We were grateful.

I attribute the honesty partially to the fact that although legal, brothels can quickly become a nuisance. They exist on the fringe and as a result any problems that arise are dealt with fast and hard in order to keep up appearances.

I'd bet that they are constantly having the local gendarmes trying to set up sting operations to catch them operating outside of the law. This serves to keep them honest.

I noticed that the girls there looked healthy and showed no signs of drug use. That's probably because any illegal drugs found in the place was probably grounds for instantly being shut down.

When you consider that an awful lot of the townspeople don't like the idea of a brothel in their town they permit it simply because of the money they bring in. I suppose there's a lot of collateral business that they receive. Visitors to any town need things and the merchants gain by any attraction that brings visitors, even a whorehouse.

There are a lot of rules they have to obey, both legal and tacit. The under no circumstances can hire local talent and generally recruit from out of state. All it would take is one local to be caught working in a brothel to create the hue and cry that they are trying to turn our children into prostitutes.

La Mordida (The Bite) also holds true. They have to be an asset to the community and are likely constantly being hit up by the locals for charity events and things of that nature.

I once read that the state license is $100,000 annually. That's a lot of money. The girls are required to undergo health checks for STDs on a very frequent basis. It's not like in the movies. It's a hard scrabble business and the profits are probably not that high after all is said and done.

Prostitutes are often targets for sickies. Street hookers are often getting beaten up. Jack the Ripper targeted prostitutes for example. In a legal brothel I'm sure that a scream from one of the girls would draw an immediate charge into the room followed by a serious beatdown and immediate ejection. They can't afford violence and if someone gets too intoxicated they are ejected unceremoniously. People have to behave in a brothel.

Oddly enough I would not be surprised to find out that a legalized brothel is one of the safest places in Nevada but I might be wrong but I doubt it. On the other hand an illegal brothel is one of the most dangerous places on earth. It's illegal and therefore nobody running it cares. They have no license to lose and no real reason to forbid the use of drugs. There are also no health checks and the girls can be rampant with STDs.

A guy that gets beaten and jack-rolled really has no recourse without admitting he was visiting an illegal operation. When you think about it there are pretty good reasons for legalizing something that's going to happen anyway. At least there is some control over things.

There is also a visitor etiquette. The women that work there are never to be referred to as whores. Acceptable terms are girls, ladies and if you refer to one as a courtesan it will probably gain the visitor points as it implicates a skilled tradeswoman.

Of course when you consider that every preacher spews forth getting rid of the den of sin from his pulpit every Sunday and the religious people join in that means a large part of the local population to begin with wants them gone.

While I was surprised we got our wallets back, I was only surprised to find out where we had lost them. I was not surprised to find they were returned by a professional prostitute working in a legalized brothel. If she was dishonest to begin with, she feared a trap of some sort.

I learned a lot talking to the bartender. He was pretty honest and upright.

Still, it remains that when one thinks about it, legalization at least keeps the collateral damage down and creates a source of revenue for the state and local governments.

We considered leaving and picking up the wash later after a trio to the post office but decided against it. Yvonne could wait until we got to Boise.

Before we picked up our wash we made a couple of phone calls to Boise. We both knew a couple of women there and thought we'd like to pay a visit. Blaine went first and returned and said he was in luck.

I made a call and it looked like I was out of luck. She had plans. Then she said, “Don't hang up!” I didn't and she asked me if I was traveling with Blaine. I said I was.

She told me that Blaine had just called and that I was also welcome because she'd fix me up with Sandy.

I asked who Sandy was and she said she was a neighbor and said she was a lot of fun even though she was a few years older than I was.

I returned and told Blaine we had both called the same woman and he and the bartender laughed.

The wash was done and we took our leave. We had left with goodwill and an invite to return any time we wanted to.

Boise was about 250 miles away, about four and a half or five hours away. The Nevada state line and the end of the unlimited speed limit were about halfway there.

We lit out and cranked the beast up to the sweet spot and headed north at a fast but comfortable clip, with a cold beer between our legs.

It was just past the Nevada state line when the Slant Six started running a bit rough. I told Blaine it was either the number six spark plug or the points. We grabbed a spare and a plug wrench and changed the plug and started up again but it was still rough.

I got out a screwdriver and popped the distributor cap and turned the engine until the points were on top of the crest of the shaft and looked. They looked tight so I adjusted them using a matchbook for a feeler gauge and replace the distributor cap. I lit her up again, pulled out the throttle and knew we were back in business.

We had a hard time finding the place Blaine's date lived but managed. It was in a somewhat tumbledown apartment complex of sorts. When his date answered the door she greeted us warmly and introduced me to Sandy.

Surprise! We already knew each other, or sort of. We had seen each other in Kodiak. What was interesting to note is these two women were part of an informal contingent. They would wander on up to Kodiak and for about four or five months a year work all of the hours God ever created

in one of the canneries. There was always work there and a lot of people, myself included would wander in and out when they needed work. If someone wanted to they could grovel away for months at a time and live in a company provided bunkhouse on the cheap and salt away a pretty good chunk of change.

Both of these women did this, returning to spend the next seven months at home working at whatever jobs they could find.

There were several geographically based contingents. One was from Mankato, Minnesota and I knew several people from there that came up and either fished or worked in the canneries. Some eventually became full time residents.

Blaine and his date were right. Sandy and I did hit it off instantly and I will not say what went on.

Suffice to say we spent the evening, the following day and the following evening together and leave it at that.

The following day we all had various errands to run and Blaine and I got together and took the money to a nearby bank to convert it all to large bills. We threw in fifty bucks apiece to cover the expenses we incurred and had taken out of the pot.

We called a friend in Kodiak and he found Yvonne's PO box number and we wrote it down.

We had expected to spend hours at the bank dealing with counting change but were surprised to find out they had customers that ran vending machine businesses and had a coin sorting machine. If I recall it even rolled the coins up.

We were in and out a lot faster then we thought we would be. From there with thick was of Franklins it was of to the post office and we stuffed the entire wad into an envelope after sandwiching the cash between two pieces of cardboard, addressed it and sent it off.

We had bought our karma back as we knew Yvonne could use it.

Yvonne was a wisp of a woman that was the mother of four kids that had been widowed recently. She lived in a half-completed home that her husband had left her and was now scraping by at whatever she could find to do, including cannery work in the season. She could certainly use the money.

Fact is, the only thing keeping her afloat was that she had practically no debt. The land she lived on was paid for as was the house. Her husband was one of those guys that taking out a mortgage. They lived in shambles, always improving on things as the money came in. He was doing well when the boat went down.

Had he lasted another couple of years the house would have been completed but tragedy has a way of striking at inopportune times.

Still, complete or not, he had left his wife free and clear of any mortgage or other loans to pay off.

I heard a couple of years back that Yvonne managed to raise her four kids before she got sick and died. I don't know what of.

When we left the bank Blaine went straight to K-Mart and bought another sleeping bag. So did I but not as a replacement. I wanted it for my camper trailer. The one I had was serviceable. Blaine's was really shot and he was madder than hell over losing his wallet in it.

Over the next several days I came to realize that the woman who did my laundry was worth every dime I had paid her, not including the reward I gave her for returning my wallet.

Not only was the laundry washed and neatly folded it was folded in such a way I had not seen since I got out of the army. The pants and shirts opened up wrinkle-free. What was more important is that it was organized perfectly in layers. A pair of pants rested atop shorts, socks and a T-shirt which covered a shirt. I could pull out a complete change of clothes without having to dig.

After two nights and a day Blaine and I took off for Seattle which was about 8 hours away. We stopped for breakfast at the sandwich shop that sold the sandwiches we could heat on the exhaust manifold.

Washed down with cold beer they made a damned good lunch when we heated them up. We sat down and ate them in a rest area along the way. We were in no hurry.

While we were eating a thought came into my head. I turned to Blaine. "Did your mom ever tell you to wear clean underwear in case you got into an accident and had to go to the hospital? That way the doctor would see you came from a good family and would work harder to try and save you."

"Of course," replied Blaine. All moms tell their kids that. I think it's in a book, maybe Dr. Spock or something."

"I wonder if she ever thought that in getting clean underwear you would find yourself sitting on a bar stool in a Nevada whore house? 

Probably not at the time she told me that but these days she probably wouldn't be surprised. What would your mom think?

"She'd probably ask me if the whores were nice Catholic girls," I answered and he laughed.

I may be wrong but Washington had a 55 mph speed limit at the time and they were enforcing it. We took things slow and stopped off here and there to check things out here and there. The pickup ran fine.

The boat was no longer at Fisherman's Terminal. It was in the yard and we pulled in a little after ten. The gate was locked, of course, but the skipper had put our names on the crew list so after a little fumbling around the night guard let us in. We stumbled aboard and relaxed a while. I went to my locker and pulled out a bottle of Jameson's and Blaine and I had a nightcap and a smoke and hit the bunk.

It had been one hell of a trip.

my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/