Las Vegas History According to Mary

By Mary Roberts

After living in Las Vegas for 43 years I've come to realize that local people are unique, like no one else. They live in a 24 hour city with every temptation known to man at their fingertips. They try to lead a normal life, but it's possible. They have to cope with it as well as they can. I should know. I have been swept up into the bright lights many times. Unlike many of the characters in this book, I am a survivor.

People outside Las Vegas are intrigued with this outlook on life, pouring into the city to have a little "wallow in the mud", as the French call it. The French recognize that there is something inside us that makes us want to do something naughty. We just can't help it. Las Vegasns live very close to mud.

Put it all together and you have Little Sins in Sin City. This book is full of little stories about little sins. Some of them begin in other parts of the world, yet end up in our world famous Las Vegas. The sins don't need to be pointed out. You will recognize them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9781469168685

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 by Mary Roberts.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2012902885

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4691-6867-8

                Softcover         978-1-4691-6866-1

                Ebook            978-1-4691-6868-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 07/05/2013

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Contents

The Celebrity And The School Teacher

Jennifer, Joe And Me

Long Live The King, I Hope

The Fake Fortune Teller

Music Is My Life, My Mistress And My Wife

Crossword Puzzle People I Have Known

The Loss

When We Were A Couple

Déjà Vu With The Sax Man

The Commercials

Little Sins In Sin City

The Celebrity and

the School Teacher

We walked down a long corridor in the very bowels of the giant Hilton. Jennifer knocked on the dressing room door and we waited a moment. She tapped a pretty little foot impatiently and then the door opened. There stood a handsome man with an Afro. It was 1970 and he was the headliner that night.

He smiled saying affably, Hello Jennifer. Come on in. He kissed her lightly on the cheek. I looked around at his dressing room that was cluttered with papers. There were tons of books which had that dry look of reference books. This room rather had the laid-back charm of a study or a den, not like I had imagined dressing rooms. I could hear Stevie Wonder singing faintly from the piped-in music, I just called to say I love you…

How’s Tanya? Jennifer asked pleasantly. Did she come with you this time?

Yep. She’s up in the room.

Bill, Jennifer smiled her radiant smile, saying as she turned my way. This is Mary. She’s a teacher.

Oh, he replied as he lifted his eyebrows. Where do you teach?

Here in Las Vegas. But not long ago I taught in Houston, I added.

What grade level? He was obviously interested, and I knew why. Jennifer told me he had five kids and he was really interested in what was going on in the schools that year.

Second grade in ’65 and ’66, then a Special Ed class for a year, before I came to Las Vegas.

When Jennifer had asked me if I wanted to meet a celebrity, of course I said yes. Well, actually I said definitely. Most people want to meet celebrities, especially rich ones. I hadn’t a clue what to expect, but here he was having a conversation with me. I was a bit flustered.

Jennifer, social butterfly that she was, knew everyone in town it seemed. She and I met through a mutual friend, and then we became friends. At first I didn’t really understand why. She invited me to a lot of shows on the Strip. She knew important people around town, the kind that could give out comps at the blink of a pretty blue eye. And she seemed to believe it gave her a peculiar credibility to pal around with a school teacher, but why me? I did enjoy her dry Tennessee wit, and she had a heck of a life style. It was an enormous change of pace for me after being with second graders all week. Of course I wanted to meet this man.

He interrupted my thoughts with, Was Houston integrated in ’65?

Barely. My school, the first desegregated elementary school in Houston, was called Southland Elementary on Dixie Drive. Are you familiar with Houston? It’s ghetto in that area. A very raunchy nightclub and a very scary neighborhood are next door to Southland.

I had him then. He wanted to know how it was possible to teach under those circumstances and keep your senses about you.

Were you afraid? he asked.

Nope. Probably should have been though. We got bomb threats weekly. We would hear the bells ringing off the walls, so there we went, lining up the kids and marching them outside like brave soldiers. Then we would stop and wait on the sidewalks.

For what? asked Jennifer.

For the fire department, or sometimes the police. They went inside and poked around while we stood out in the drizzling rain. We must have looked pretty pitiful. But scared? Never. We just didn’t get it. We didn’t realize at the time how dangerous the situation was. I found out later that at another school a bomb exploded on the playground, killing several people, some of them kids. I had a doctor friend who was called to the scene and he said it absolutely looked like a war zone.

He mulled this information over then asked me with a grim look, "Did you have any special training for this giant task?

"Oh yes. I went to lots of government sponsored desegregation classes. They were held at a different college each month; the ritzy places, like Rice University, University of Houston, and Texas Southern, and Uncle Sam paid. The Kennedy brothers took care of those things, especially Bobby.

Abruptly he turned to Jennifer and said, I don’t like what you’re wearing. Go home and change.

I almost gasped, and then I thought maybe he was kidding, but I realized he was serious. Who did he think he was? Dior? There sat Jennifer looking splendid, I thought, in a burgundy sweater and skirt, with every platinum hair in place, makeup flawless, nails perfect. I expected her to lose her cool, as I certainly would have; but no, she was calm and said, What about Mary? Jennifer was a smooth cookie.

I turned to him with a questioning look, thinking yes, what about Mary?

She can stay here and we’ll talk, he said blandly.

Whoa. What was going on here? Exactly what did he expect? Conversation or what?

As Jennifer closed the door, he turned around, ambled over to the liquor cabinet and said, Tell me more about your classes. He poured himself a drink. I think I said I didn’t care for one. I was a little edgy by now, but I took a deep breath and began my tale.

In Houston I found myself smack in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement. In one of those Uncle Sam classes the professor announced one spring day, We are going to integrate the Warwick Hotel. For those of you who never heard of the Warwick, it’s near Rice University in the rich part of town: the old money district. We have