Marty and Ricky were right about one thing, though. Every time we stopped, I'd buy a postcard and mail it to Marilyn. I'd always be looking for something a little offbeat. In Golden I had sent her one of a fellow falling off Pike's Peak. Boise just had postcards with either stunning vistas or cowboys. I found one with a girl on a mechanical bull, and wrote that I was behaving myself, despite the temptations. It was too bad we were going to miss Donner Pass, since there just had to be some good ones for that!
From Boise it was off to Portland (Portland State) where we spent a couple of nights. The chapter house was a gigantic Victorian three story house, and something about it just didn't seem right. In fact, it was sort of creepy. We went inside, following a brother named Biff and wandered around the first floor. It had about ten small rooms, all open to each other. "Man, what's with this architecture?", wondered Marty.
I nodded in agreement. It was kind of strange. Ricky simply said, "I don't know, but for some reason it's kind of familiar."
Biff had a big smile on his face. "It used to be a funeral home."
Ricky's eyes lit up. "That's it! My grandmother died last winter and the funeral home looked exactly like this! Lots of little rooms all connected one to the other!"
"Yeah, that way they can run partitions between the rooms and have more than one body in residence."
Ricky nodded vigorously. "And a lot of these old funeral homes were family owned and run, and the family would live upstairs!"
"Exactly. Come on, let me show you around.", said Biff. We got the real nickel tour, too. Out back was a four car garage, now devoted to junk and lawn care gear, that originally could hold four hearses and limos. Then he took us down into the basement, which had a number of curious features. For one thing, there was a driveway that went from the back to the front, down through the basement and back out to the front driveway. Midway through the basement was a room with a big stone table and drains and the most ghastly colored stone flooring. This was where the hearses would roll through and drop off the customers, who would get drained and prepped in the basement before being sent upstairs for viewing.
"Holy shit!", I said. "This is just, like, ghoulish! How can you sleep here?!"
Biff just laughed. "Piece of cake! Man, it's too bad you're not coming through this fall ... All month long we run a haunted house for the neighborhood kids, and we have one hell of a Halloween Party."
"BYOB - Bring Your Own Body!" I shivered. I'm not all that religious or superstitious, but it was more than a bit creepy.
A couple of days later, we headed out, and I think we all felt better leaving the place. Don't get me wrong, they were great guys, but really, a funeral home? There are some jobs I just don't want to have!
"I'm finally feeling safe again.", announced Ricky as we drove south. "I had to sleep with one eye open, just in case Buckman woke up at midnight and felt the need to gnaw my flesh like a zombie!"
I smiled at that. Ricky was actually kind of scrawny and tough, small, and wiry. Marty, on the other hand, was taller and a bit stocky. "Not to worry, Ricky. You're kind of tough and stringy. Marty's probably tastier. He's well marbled."
"Fuck you, Buckman. You feel like walking home?", asked Marty.
"Actually, Ricky, you're suddenly looking tastier.", I answered.
We drove down to California on I-5. You don't hit anything interesting until you get as far south as Sacramento and San Francisco. Mark Twain once said, 'The coldest winter I ever saw was the summer I spent in San Francisco.' No shit! It was the end of June and fog was present as we drove in!
It was in San Francisco that we finally got to see the Pacific, even if icebergs were off shore. Very scenic city, very pretty. I kept waiting for Steve McQueen to come roaring over a hill, all four tires in the air, in his Mustang. We spent two days at San Francisco State before driving further south, in search of warmth. Cal State Long Beach is only three miles from the beach! The three of us even debated over staying there and not going home, and only Ricky's insistence that the Army would chase him and me down made us leave. The only argument otherwise was which was more important, a better body or a smaller bikini.
From Los Angeles it's not quite a day's drive to Las Vegas. It can be maybe four hours if the roads are clear and you're leaving from the eastern side of the city, or five hours from the beach. It's a lot longer if the California Highway Patrol is running convoys at 55 out to the Nevada line. It was late in the day when we pulled up in front of the chapter house at UNLV. As soon as we got out of the car a gorgeous blonde coed came down the front steps, greeted us, and led us inside. We barely had time to say who we were before somebody handed us a beer. Now that's what I call hospitality!
If Vegas didn't exist, somebody would have to invent it! The entire city is dedicated to the moral dissipation of anybody silly enough to step inside the city limits. That parents would send their children here to college is beyond astonishing. While Ricky and Marty knew all this intellectually, I was the only one who had ever actually been there before, and that was in my previous life. We went down to the bar with a couple of the brothers, and there was a slot machine next to the bar. Ricky and Marty just stared, and then Marty asked, "Is that legal?"
"Yeah, pretty much.", was the answer, which made me wonder just precisely how legal it was, but nobody seemed to care.
"We need one of these back home!", Marty exclaimed. A minute later he had fished some change out of his pocket. It was a quarter slot, and he dropped all his quarters that he could find in, earning back nothing. "Shit!"
"It helps pay the dues!", commented one of the guys. He looked at Ricky and me invitingly. Ricky laughed and tried some change of his own, as did I. Everybody seemed happy that we had contributed to the fiscal operation of the frat.
We stayed several days at UNLV, and had a very nice time. One day we went over to Lake Mead and toured Hoover Dam, which is pretty cool for nerds. Still, I wanted to try something, so one day we drove into the city and looked around. Thank you, sweet Jesus, that the air conditioning on the Buick was working! It must get to be about a million degrees there in the summer! We parked at the Golden Nugget and went inside. This was in the days before the big expansion on the west side of the Strip had really taken off, and the Golden Nugget was one of the old casinos downtown. We looked around for a bit, but then I told the guys, "Listen, I can't explain this, but I'm breaking away for a bit. Don't leave without me, but I can't have you with me for a while."
"What are you up to, Buckman?", asked Ricky.
"Just trust me. I want to try something." I walked away and headed over towards the table game section, and found where the blackjack tables were.
It was time to try something silly. I watched the action at several different tables, and then went into a higher stakes area and watched some more, and then I sat down at a table where the bets started at $50. I handed an even $1,000 to the dealer, who simply announced, probably to a microphone and the pit boss, "Changing $1,000 for chips!", stuck the cash into a slot in the table, and pushed a small stack of $50 chips across to me.
That was what the stake I had decided to risk gambling. No way was I signing any markers. If I lost it, it was gone. Blackjack is one of the few games at a casino which isn't pure random chance. There is actual skill involved, and you can beat the house. The casinos know this, and they don't actually like it, but blackjack is a popular game and they can't afford to stop it. The skills needed to beat the game involve discipline and card counting.