This is the first of my planned weekly blogs about my second
winter sabbatical taking place in Henderson, NV, a suburb of Las
Vegas. I am staying at a casita that I booked through Airbnb in this suburban
community of about 200,000 that is located about a dozen miles from the center
of Las Vegas. I researched a couple of other locations in the Southwest,
specifically the Phoenix and Tucson areas, but I decided on the Las Vegas area
because of the availability of reasonably priced rentals through Airbnb.
My home for the next nine weeks is located on a cul-de-sac
in a quiet neighborhood of primarily single story ranch houses with Adobe
architecture. Nearly all of the houses have red clay tile roofs and beige
stucco exteriors. There are several major shopping areas within a 5-10- minute
drive of my home.
Another reason I picked this area is the availability of
non-credit courses for seniors at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV)
through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. This is the same program that provided
the classes I took last winter at The University of Texas El Paso. I will be
starting my classes at UNLV the week of Feb. 3 and I am really looking forward
to going back to college again.
Once I decided on the Las Vegas area and located this
casita, I had to make some decisions about how to get here. My initial plan was
to drive out west, just like I did last year when visiting El Paso. However,
Las Vegas is nearly 2,200 miles from Stow, Ohio, and that would mean about four
days on the road.
My son Brian agreed to drive out west with me and that was
my intention until about three weeks before the journey. We planned to leave on
Monday, January 20 and arrive in Las Vegas on the 23rd. The following
day, I would take Brian to the airport so he could fly back home to Ohio.
However, about a week before Christmas, I received a phone
call from a former associate who had worked at Kent State University’s TV Center.
Sandy Halem and I had worked on numerous video productions and membership
drives together for WNEO/WEAO channels 45/49 in the late 1970s. She had been contacted by a
producer from Rubicon Productions in Baltimore who was hired by 45/49 to produce
a history of the public television stations.
Sandy was a producer at KSU while I was a producer at The
University of Akron and we developed an instant rapport. She gave my phone
number to Drew Perkins the producer of the program. His crew planned to be in
northeast Ohio on January 20, and we agreed to tape an interview on the morning
of January 20 and Brian and I would leave for Las Vegas immediately afterward.
However, the station offices were closed on Martin Luther
King Junior’s birthday holiday. So, the interview was postponed until the
morning of January 21. Meanwhile, Pam and I started to discuss whether it might
be better for me to fly out to Las Vegas and rent a car for the duration of the
sabbatical. I had lunch with my public TV colleague Sandy and she told me she
and her husband had been going to Tucson, Arizona, during February and March
for several years and after driving once, decided it was better to fly and rent
a car.
After talking with her, I began to crunch the numbers and
decided the cost of three nights of hotels, gas, meals and wear and tear on my
car each way would nearly be equal to renting a car once here and buying a
round-trip airline ticket.
Also, since the interview had been pushed back by the MLK
holiday, I would still have a couple of days to prepare for the journey after
the interview.
The morning of the interview, I met Trina Cutter, 45/49's general manager in the green room for about 10 minutes and we discussed the
history of the stations. We discussed how the universities were involved in
local programming back then and we reminisced about a few former station
managers and program directors.
Then Drew Perkins came in and led me the studio for the
interview. There was a single camera and several lights positioned on me and a
station logo in the background. We talked on camera for about 45 minutes about
the origins of the stations, my early recollections of shows I produced and
interesting experiences. He asked if I remembered any programs from National
Educational Television, the predecessor to PBS and I told him I didn’t remember
much about those programs.
I don’t know whether the program’s focus is solely on
Channels 45/49, but it was an interesting experience. I recounted for him how I saw the first broadcast of “Sesame Street.” I was a senior in college
at Miami University and I watched the program in the control room at WMUB-TV
with several of my Radio-TV major classmates. We were blown away by what we
saw. The hit show “Laugh In” had mesmerized us the previous year and watching
this program for pre-school kids had the same effect.
The week before I was scheduled to leave, I had another
potential complication. Last summer, Pam noticed a red blotch about the size of
a dime on my back between my shoulder blades. About a week before Christmas,
she commented again about it and I went to see my doctor right after the New
Year holiday. He referred me to a dermatologist who took a biopsy sample of the
that lesion and another under my right arm.
The day of the interview, I received a phone call from my
doctor’s office stating that both lesions were basal cell carcinoma, or skin
cancer. The good news is this form of cancer is very slow growing and doesn’t
spread to other parts of the body. The dermatologist said I could wait until I
return in April to have them removed. It was a tense couple of days before I
got the diagnosis because I would have postponed my trip if more immediate
treatment was necessary.
The day of the journey was hectic and my flights from Cleveland
to Denver and then Denver to Las Vegas were both packed. When I arrived at
McCarran International Airport in Vegas, I only had an hour and a half to get
to the Budget car rental location on the Strip to pick up my rental car before
it closed. Fortunately, my luggage got on the carousal quickly and I took a
taxi cab to the rental car. I have a Kia Rio sedan that is pretty good and I
saved about $600 by picking it up there instead of at the airport.
My first full day in Vegas, I drove about a half hour to see
Hoover Dam and Lake Mead. Seeing it in person, you realize just how significant
an engineering accomplishment it is. Also, Las Vegas and the major cities in
Southern California most likely wouldn’t have developed into a significant size
without the electrical power and consistent source of water provided by the
dam.
Another striking thing I saw is the light band of soil and
rock on islands in Lake Mead above the current waterline. The lake’s water
level has dropped significantly in recent years due to drought conditions
upstream.
On the way home I stopped for lunch at the CoffeeCup Café in
Boulder City and had a delicious breakfast burger with egg, cheese, lettuce,
tomato and thousand island dressing in a large bagel. It was delicious. Boulder
City is the tourist center for the dam and Lake Mead region and was full of
hotels, motels, restaurants and shops.
On Saturday, I decided to check out Henderson and spent
about an hour driving around the area. I drove northeast out of town to the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. I took a short walk on a trail
out into the desert. At the trailhead there was a sign warning not to hike the
trail in June though August because of the dangerous heat, but in January it
was very comfortable.
I returned by mid-afternoon to watch my Kentucky Wildcats
beat Texas Tech in overtime and spent a quiet evening watching TV in my casita.
I will have more about my travels in my next blog. See you
then.
