Keeping the Customer Happy. Very Happy.

My dad promised when my brother Bunce, younger than me by sixteen months, turned 21, he would take us to Las Vegas. I had never been there before, and actually had no interest to go. I didn't know the first thing about gambling, and I had no desire to add to the coffers of the Mob. But I was always up for a new adventure.

We got to O'Hare Airport, checked our bags, and walked to our departure gate. My dad said we should hit the john before boarding the plane. We headed into the public washroom, and my dad was saying, "The one thing you have to watch out for in these public bathrooms is the dirty, old perverts." Then he pointed to some poor schlub standing by himself at the row of urinals, and shouts out, "Like that guy!"

I thought, "Oh my God! We're gonna get in a fight before we even leave the ground."

The guy whipped his head around, and my dad started to laugh like a hyena. It was our good friend Harold Lieberman, the father of classmates of ours from Congregation Beth Jacob. Hal started calling my dad names, but I was trying to figure out how my dad had recognized him.

A few hours later, we arrived in Las Vegas, took a cab to the Stardust hotel, and left our bags at the front desk. Even before checking in, my dad needed to try his luck at the craps tables. He staked me and Bunce with twenty bucks and we started to go with him, but he said, "No!" We couldn't watch him play, like we would jinx him or something. So Bunce and I got some chips and some tokens for the slots and headed off on our own.

We were just getting settled down at a blackjack table, and Bunce was explaining the basics of the game, when my dad came up and said, "Let's go." Bunce and I shrugged. We retrieved our bags, and a bellhop led us out of the main casino and hotel complex to a row of rundown, shabby units behind the building, lovingly referred to as "the barracks," although any soldier placed in such quarters would have immediately shot his superior officer.

My dad said we had to meet his friend Tony. We went out to dinner with Tony, a nice enough fellow, but after dinner, instead of heading back to the Strip for some more gambling, we headed into a dingy area called North Las Vegas. We pulled up in front of this sleazy dive named the Palomino Club.

The inside was raunchy, smoky, and crowded. A hostess seated the four of us around a tiny, sticky table. A few minutes later, a waitress came up and informed us that there was a three drink minimum. We ordered our drinks, I asked for a 7 & 7 - a Seagram's Seven and 7-Up. A short time later, the waitress came back and placed our entire order in front of us. So now there were twelve glasses on this wobbly, little, round table. I took a sip of my drink. The pop was flat, the whiskey was watered, and the drink was warm because there was no ice.

A bargain-basement, Don Rickles wannabe took the stage. A cheap hairpiece had slid to one side of his head, and he wore a tux that looked like it had come off a corpse that had been underground for a while. He started banging on the microphone and said, "Good evening ladies and gentiles, I'm Artie King."

Now, I had been joking with Bunce the whole time out there that I wanted to see the worst comic in Vegas. The old phrase, be careful what you wish for, proved prophetic that night. I can't remember a single joke he told, but the act quickly deteriorated into heckling back and forth with the crowd, and insulting people who got up to leave. Needless to say, my dad laughed like a jackass at every bon mot.

Finally the estimable Mr. King left the stage, punctuating his class act by flipping off the audience. Next, a series of bare breasted women, accompanied by hoots, whistles, banging feet, and catcalls, swayed desultorily across the stage, their faces displaying a range of emotions from boredom to outright hostility. I looked at my dad, I looked at the glassy-eyed faces around the room, I looked at the dozen untouched glasses on the table, I looked at Bunce, and said, "I'm outta here."

My dad wanted me to stay, but I was 23, not 13, and I'd seen enough. I went outside and got in a waiting cab. I told the driver “the Stardust,” and he started to pull away, but he said, "Do you know this guy?" I glanced out the window, and there was Bunce running for the cab.

Back at the hotel, Bunce walked me through the various games, and a couple of hours later, my dad came into the casino, and suggested we get a few hours sleep. Saturday morning we hopped a cab farther down the Strip to the famous Caesar's Palace - far too pricey to stay at, but worth splurging on for a breakfast. We finished up, after being served by some spectacular looking women in Romanesque costumes that would make a centurion fall on his sword. I happened to sport a mustache at the time, and in the hallway, an artist was displaying some black velvet paintings, several of which portrayed Wayne Newton.

Sure enough, my dad called out, "Hey, those pictures look like Steve. Steve looks like Wayne Newton. Hey, Wayne Newton's over here. It's Wayne Newton!"

In a matter of moments, a large crowd formed, jostling for a chance to see Mr. Las Vegas in person. The elation and excitement quickly turned to disappointment. "That ain't Wayne Newton," the crowd grumbled, shooting me dirty looks. An old lady approached me and said, "You should be ashamed of yourself young man," and whacked me on the arm with an autograph book.

I was going, "Hummida, hummida, hummida," and again my dad was off in the corner laughing himself silly.

Our vacation was a Mr. Travel, no-frills, weekend junket - fly in on Friday afternoon and fly out Sunday morning. Bunce and I were ready to get down to some serious gambling, but my dad suggested we go "casino hopping." The thing is, the Strip is miles long. The hotel/casinos are gigantic properties. It takes more than half an hour to walk from one to another, and it's too expensive to keep getting in and out of cabs. So off we went, only spending a short amount of time at each casino. We noticed my dad was not gambling.

As the afternoon passed, my dad said we needed to meet Tony again. But Bunce and I put our feet down. The amazing time Bunce and I had gambling downtown, and then at Circus Circus, where I parlayed my twenty dollar stake into a five-hundred dollar poke playing craps all night was the stuff of legend, but best saved for another story.

Sunday morning, we stumbled back to the barracks at the Stardust to get ready to catch our flight. We figured my dad would be sleeping, but the room was empty. My dad had made arrangements for Tony to drive us to the airport. We packed our bags, including our dad's stuff because of the early check-out time. We left our suitcases at the desk. The room was already paid for, so we grabbed something to eat, I spent some of my winnings on souvenirs, and we played around at the tables. But pretty soon we retrieved our luggage and met Tony out front. There was still no sign of our dad.

It was well past the time we needed to leave, and we were getting desperate. Tony, Bunce, and I resigned ourselves to making the flight without him, and just as the valet pulled up with Tony's car, here came our dad running down the Strip with this devilish grin on his face.

(I later learned from Bunce that my dad's strange behavior in Vegas was due to the fact he had lost all his money in the first fifteen minutes of arriving at the hotel. He had a small reserve he dipped into Sunday morning and got on a hot streak he didn't want to break.)

We made the plane with seconds to spare. I plopped down in the window seat with my dad next to me on the aisle. Bunce was a couple of rows ahead. All I wanted to do was sleep. The stewardess (they were not flight-attendants yet) was coming down the aisle doing a pre-takeoff head count. As she got closer, counting off forty-one, forty-two, forty-three to herself, my dad spouted out fifty-four, thirty-seven, sixty-six. All at once she got this startled expression, then stared directly at my dad, and if there was ever an embodiment of "looks could kill," that was it.

Nowadays, he would have been escorted off the plane in handcuffs, arrested for interfering with a flight crew in the performance of their duties, and held indefinitely as a domestic terrorist. Instead, she turned sharply around and stormed back to the front of the cabin to restart her head count. As tired as I was, I got up and moved to an empty seat as far away as I could get. If I ordered a drink, I wanted to make reasonably sure it wasn't poisoned.

We finally lifted off and meals were served. My dad had made prior arrangements for him, me, and Bunce to have kosher dinners. I don't know what Bunce did, but I ordered off the menu. I had no sooner taken a bite, when I heard my dad blabber so the whole plane could hear, "Wow, this kosher food is fantastic. It's way better than what the rest of you are eating. You should all order kosher meals next time!"

Suffice it to say that when my dad deplaned, the stewardesses did not say thank you for flying with us and please fly with us again.

There are schmucks in the world. There are biggie schmucks. But my dad is the biggiest schmuck of all.

By the way, just for kicks, I googled the Palomino Club, and it's still there and going strong. Artie King is still performing nightly, and I think I recognized some of the same dancers.

Keeping the Customer Happy. Very Happy.