Notes from Quarantine

Like much of the country, Pam, Brian and I are under a stay at home order issued by our state’s governor. As I write this, Ohio’s current order is scheduled to expire on May 1 and Governor Mike DeWine will be announcing new regulations early next week. I have been home for about six weeks since my truncated winter sabbatical in Henderson, NV, and I have been pretty much housebound since then.

I have experience with a health-related quarantine. During the summer of 1952 when I was four years old, our family was quarantined for about a month when I contracted Pertussis, a.k.a., Whooping Cough. I had been vaccinated for this disease, but it was only about 60-70 percent effective back then and I was one of those for whom the vaccine did not work.

In June, my family was spending the day at the swimming pool at the Officers Club at the Army’s Defense Supply Center in Columbus, Ohio. My dad served in the Army during World War II and continued in the reserves after that. So, we could use the facilities at the base that included the club, a golf course and the swimming pool.

I was playing in the pool that day when a kid next to me vomited on me. My mom ordered me out of the pool and my dad took me into the locker room to take a hot, soapy shower.

A few days later, I developed a fever and a horrible cough. The diagnosis of our family doctor was Whooping Cough and my family and I spent the next month in quarantine. I still remember the red notice from the city health department taped to our front door and having to spend the summer inside our non-air conditioned house on the east side of Columbus.

More than 30 years later when Pam and I adopted our son Brian in Honduras, he got sick a couple of days before we were scheduled to bring him home with us. He spent four days in the La Policlinica Hospital in Tegucigalpa before he was well enough to travel home. We had him examined by an infectious disease specialist at Akron Children’s Hospital. Ironically, his diagnosis was Whooping Cough.

This particular stay at home order doesn’t bother me too much. I only leave the house for an occasional drive through the nearby Cuyahoga Valley National Park or a walk on the bike-hike trail that runs behind our house. Because I am at high risk due to my age and chronic asthma, we are lucky that Brian can run errands for us.

This morning, I attended a wedding. Not in person, of course, but I watched a former co-worker of mine get married in a service that was streamed online. The current quarantine regulations limit to 10 the number of people at an event, so the church was pretty empty. I was able to see the wedding online from my favorite living room chair dressed in a t-shirt and sweatpants and sipping a cup of coffee. I must admit it was much more comfortable than dressing up and going to a church and then a reception. Although, it could have been more fun if there was an open bar at the reception!

Another unusual event occurred about two weeks ago on the Saturday before Easter. I heard a siren coming down our street and I looked out the window to see a police cruiser followed by a fire chief’s SUV with a person wearing an Easter Bunny costume sticking out of the sunroof and waving. Then came a Jeep with the Bulldog Mascot of Stow High School in the back waving and another city vehicle with lights flashing at the end of this makeshift parade. It wasn’t the Tournament of Roses parade, but it added a light moment to the day.

My final observation about the coronavirus quarantine is about groceries. When the stay-at-home order first took effect, we sent Brian to the store with a detailed list and he came home with most of what we wanted. Since then, Pam has ordered groceries online for curbside pickup.

The first time a local grocery chain botched our order big time and when Pam and Brian got home from picking up the groceries, she discovered that about half the items were totally wrong. She called the store and they told her to keep the wrong items and she and Brian went back and picked up most of the items that were missing.

The next time, she ordered a long list of items from a larger regional grocery chain and we ended up getting most of what we ordered. Last night, we ordered carryout from a local restaurant and they got the order right and the food was very good.

Meanwhile, my package of six reusable face masks arrived and I am hoping to be able to use them to go a few places when the governor’s revised coronavirus orders take effect next week. I miss spending a couple of hours in a coffee shop with my computer and researching and writing about whatever I want. I’m also look forward to meeting friends for coffee at a restaurant with outside seating or at a park and keeping acceptable social distance while we talk.

Pam and I have agreed that a trip to a vacation spot is probably out of the question this summer, but I hope we can take some interesting day trips where it isn’t too crowded. However, I won’t feel really safe until the scientists develop a vaccine and a treatment to effectively mitigate COVID-19. In the meantime, we’ll have to wait for the next set of directives and see whether officials think the coronavirus numbers are trending downward enough to ease the lockdown.

Even with the inconvenience of the quarantine, we are doing much better than people who who are battling this dreaded disease or have lost their jobs. I think about them and pray for them every day.

I wish all of you good health and hope you can keep your spirits up during these trying times.

We’ll see you next time.

The Lost Summer

As I write this, there are still almost two weeks left in April, but it looks like the summer of 2020 could very well be a lost summer because of the coronavirus pandemic. In 2016, I wrote about nostalgia because I attended the 50-year reunion of my high school graduation class that summer and I experienced a couple of other events that evoked strong memories of my earlier days: https://ccollin48.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-nostalgic-summer.html

My wife Pam and I are conscientiously observing the stay at home directive issued by Ohio Governor Mike DeWine because of our age and my susceptibility to COVID-19 because I have moderate to severe asthma. So, it looks like our special summer could be much less than I expected.

Governor DeWine says some things may open up around May 1, but other things may not open up until later this year or early 2021. As for now, many stores and restaurants are closed with only what the state deems as essential businesses allowed to remain open. And, as the economy reopens, nearly every expert agrees that the last things to reopen will be events that draw large crowds like sporting events and concerts.

For me, this means that it it unlikely that our local baseball team the Akron Rubberducks will play this season. For the last several seasons, a group of friends and I have purchased ticket vouchers for the Double-A affiliate of the Cleveland Indians. Our group attended about a half dozen games each year at Canal Park in downtown Akron.

We had a lot of fun on these warm summer nights enjoying baseball and each others company. We usually meet for dinner beforehand and then go to the game. The team has a promotion called “Thirsty Thursdays” and 20-ounce draft beers go for $2, so that’s a favorite night for us.

This is the same group of guys that I’ve played poker with once a month for the last 15 years or so and we’ve shelved that too. Most of us are around 70 years old and a couple of the guys also have some health issues, so we are all currently staying home and not gathering together.

The other thing that I will miss is the concerts at Blossom Music Center, the summer home of the world-famous Cleveland Orchestra. For the last 20 years of so, Pam and I have bought season tickets and been to some amazing concerts. Blossom is only about 15 minutes from our house and we enjoy getting carryout food and enjoying it on the lawn before the concerts.

Last summer we enjoyed a concert version of the rock opera “Tommy” featuring the Who’s Roger Daltrey. The season closed with the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus performing “Carmina Burana” and I will never forget the prolonged standing ovation at the end of that performance by the crowd of 15,000 spectators.

This summer also was supposed to be full of nostalgia as Pam and I celebrated two milestone events.

This summer is our 50^th wedding anniversary as we were married on August 8, 1970, in North Canton, Ohio. Late last fall and early this year we talked about taking a trip this summer to celebrate to either Europe or the Far East including Japan, China and Thailand. Then, in late February, the emergence of the coronavirus made us temper out plans. Now, the possibility of a major trip this year is extremely remote.

Pam pointed out that if we take this trip in the spring of 2021, that will still be in the 50^th year of our marriage and I hope the coronavirus will be under control by then.

The other major event we looked forward to was Alumni Weekend at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Each year in mid-June Miami invites alumni to return to campus for a weekend of fun events. As graduates of the class of 1970, Pam and I would have been part the 50-year reunion class that is specially honored each year. We were looking forward to seeing some long-time friends from our college days. Miami is a special place for Pam and I because we met there at the end of sophomore year and became what the school calls a “Miami Merger.”

However, we received an email several weeks ago saying that Alumni Weekend has been cancelled this year because of the pandemic.

So, it seems like everything is on hold. Because of our age and my health condition, we don’t want to take any chances. So, we will likely stay very close to home this summer, unless there is a radical change in the threat of the coronavirus pandemic. As the weather improves, I hope we can take some short trips to enjoy the summer weather, but that will depend on the perceived threat of COVID-19.

In the meantime, I hope you stay healthy and stay tuned for more…

The COVID-19 Conundrum

The last few weeks have been among the strangest of my life and I’m sure I’m not alone. As the Coronavirus ravages the health of the world and gazillions of words have been written about it, I thought it might be therapeutic to write about my experiences of the last few weeks. So, to paraphrase the Grateful Dead song, “What a long, strange trip it’s been.”

When I last wrote, I had just returned home from my winter sabbatical in Henderson, NV, a suburb of Las Vegas. The first few weeks of my visit were pretty good as I checked out some spectacular sites like Hoover Dam, Red Rock Canyon and Death Valley. I started taking some non-credit classes at UNLV and getting to know the city.

By late February, I began to get more concerned about the news reports concerning the spread of the Coronavirus throughout the US and the world. After all, Las Vegas is a major tourist destination and an estimated 40 million people from all over the US and many from other countries visit each year. Vegas also hosts hundreds of conventions and trade shows every year.

I was concerned about going out to places that were crowded and getting ill while I was away from home. I decided to leave 17 days early and drive home, even though I had a return flight reservation on Southwest. I figured that between the $450 extra it cost to change my car rental so I could drive it to Ohio and three nights in motels, meals and gas the total would be close to $1,000 and it was. But, I would be alone during the trip avoiding a crowded airplane, airports and restaurants.

The week I got home, Ohio was one of the first states go on virtual lockdown as Governor Mike DeWine ordered schools, restaurants, bars and sporting events to shut down as well as nearly any other activity that would draw more than 10 people at one time.

Because I am over 70 and have a history of asthma and respiratory issues, I am considered to be in the high-risk category for contracting the disease. So, I am spending nearly all of my time at home and missing out on my weekly workouts at my fitness center, coffee or lunches with friends and my monthly poker sessions. I also miss friends I see each week at church.

What’s my daily schedule like now? When I first get up, I make sure to get the coffee pot going or heat up coffee from the previous day. Since neither Pam nor Brian drink it, a pot lasts me two days. Then I go out to the mailbox to get the Akron Beacon Journal. A confession here, first, I still read an old-fashioned newspaper and, second, I usually go out to the mailbox out at the curb in pajama bottoms and a coat.

After my first cup of java (I wonder why that’s a nickname for coffee), I make some breakfast and a second cup of coffee and look at the web and messages on my phone. Then, I try to think about the rest of my day. I might go down to the basement and use my exercycle or do some work with a set of weight bands I own.

In normal times, I would head over to Akron General Lifestyles to work out a couple of days a week, but that facility is closed for who knows how long. On days I don’t exercise, I surf the web on my laptop to get more news or checkup on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. or do some reading.

Right now I am reading “Douglas MacArthur, American Warrior” by Arthur Herman published in 2016. I like historical biographies and this one is an interesting profile that mixes personal details about his life and great details about his wartime actions.

If the weather is nice, I may go for a short walk after lunch or take a drive. My two favorite routes are through the Cuyahoga National Recreation Area or travel east from my house through the farmland in Portage County. Then, it’s time for my afternoon nap of 15-30 minutes—one of the perks of being retired.

A lot of people are binge-watching on Netflix or one of the other streaming services. While I was in Vegas I started watching “Peaky Blinders” on Netflix, the story of gang warfare in Birmingham, England after World War I and into the 1920s. “Peaky Blinders” is extremely violent and contains a lot of references to the Irish and Gypsy origins of the gang in the title. The story follows their battles with other gangs of various ethnic origins and the rise of the Communists in 1920s England.

As a counter point, I started to watch “Cheers” the hit sitcom of the early 1990s and the antithesis of “Peaky.” After I got home, I watched the third season of “Ozark” on Netflix and continued to watch “Cheers.”

When late afternoon approaches, it’s Happy Hour and my current drink of choice is Evan Williams Kentucky bourbon. Occasionally, I’ll have rum and Coke, but “Evan” has become my real Coronavirus friend. In March, according to the Ohio Department of Liquor Control, sales of hard liquor in the state were 50-percent more than for March, 2019. So, a lot of other Ohioans have new “friends” too.

After dinner, Pam and I search for a movie to watch on Netflix or Amazon Prime. She is continuing to teach a beginning accounting course online at the University of Akron, so she sometimes has to work on her class. Like most colleges and universities, UA has gone almost completely online and that has been an adjustment for her.

Fortunately, the textbook she is using is online and it has a lot of tools for assignments and tests. Also, to keep her connected, she went to training with the people I used to work with at UA and learned how to record lectures online that include her voice and her PowerPoint slides.

Meanwhile, I have cleaned up my home office a bit and am contemplating other tasks to use time at home. I want to take another Improvisational acting class, but that will have to wait awhile like a lot of other things. Mostly, I am looking forward to better weather so I can spend more time outside on our deck.

Here’s hoping you stay healthy and safe until we meet again.

Las Vegas Adventure—The Final Chapter

After discussing my concern about my return trip home by air with my physician cousin Kevin, I decided to drive home because of my age, medical history and the enhanced threat of being exposed to Covid-19 in a crowded airplane. I booked a car on Priceline.com for a one-way rental from Las Vegas for about $670.

I was already renting a car from Budget for the duration of my Las Vegas stay, and I checked to see what their deal was. It turned out they would charge me an additional $450 to convert my rental from a same location return to a one-way. But, because I planned to return the car two weeks early, I would recoup much of that fee. So, I decided to take Budget’s deal.

My last week in Vegas, I went to two of my three OLLI classes and began to strategize my trip home. I still wanted to see the Grand Canyon, but that the would take more than half a day and make my other travelling days longer. I had driven across the country last year from El Paso to Ohio and found that the fourth day driving was when the fatigue really set in. I wanted to avoid any extremely long days on the road.

Also, I planned to visit my brother Tim in western Illinois and calculated a route that wouldn’t affect the total time and distance of my route.

Another factor was the weather. While Las Vegas had high temperatures in the 70s for the first week in March, it turned cooler and cloudier the last week I was there. It even rained pretty steadily two of the evenings and early mornings. Also, the national news about the coronavirus was not good and it was causing many cancellations and business closings. I began to get concerned about the availability of food, fuel and lodging on my trip home.

So, I decided to leave on Friday, March 13. I texted my Airbnb hosts Lori and Ernie about my plans to check out early and I said good bye to Ernie and hit the road. The weather was cloudy and cool with an occasional sprinkle of rain. I headed southeast out of Henderson and took US 93 towards Kingman, AZ, and then picked up I-40 heading east.

I still had the Grand Canyon visit in the back of my mind, but the weather convinced me otherwise. As I passed Williams, AZ, the exit for the primary approach road to the Grand Canyon from the south, it was snowing and the cloud ceiling was hiding the tops of nearby mountains. It was only in the upper 30s, so it was not good weather for sightseeing.

So, I pressed on with my original plan and continued on to Santa Rosa, NM. As I passed through Flagstaff, AZ, with an altitude of 7.325 feet the temperature was only 33 degrees and it was snowing. Fortunately, it wasn’t sticking to the road surface and I continued across northern Arizona and New Mexico. I crossed the Continental Divide, altitude 7,800 feet and then got stuck an hour-long traffic jam near Joseph, NM.

As it got dark, there was a 20-mile stretch of highway where it was pretty foggy. I finally reached Santa Rosa at about 9:30PM and the only restaurant nearby that was still open was a McDonald’s. So, I feasted on a Chicken sandwich combo including diet Coke laced with bourbon once I got back to the motel. The Best Western motel was full, so I was glad I booked a room beforehand.

The next morning was sunny and cool, and it was back on i-40 heading for Oklahoma City. The weather was much better, partly sunny with temperatures in the 40s and 50s. As I approached Oklahoma City, it turned cloudy but it was still dry. After 11.5 hours on the road, I arrived in Joplin, MO, my second night’s stop.

I was ready for a more substantial meal, so I had dinner at a nearby Cracker Barrel. Fortunately, it wasn’t very crowded and I was able to avoid close contact with a lot of people. When I got back to the room I went online and found out that my niece Angela and her husband in Washington state might have Covid-19.

Her husband Kevin works in IT for Boeing but he also officiates high school basketball and football games. The previous weekend he attended the Washington high school boys’ basketball state championships in Tacoma. He didn’t officiate any of the games, but helped coordinate the activities at the scorer’s table and worked closely with another good friend and longtime official named Steve.

After the tournament ended Saturday night, Kevin went back home to Chelan, WA, and his friend Steve left for Palm Springs, CA, to visit his son. On Monday, Steve became ill and was hospitalized in intensive care with Covid-19. Steve Colby fought the disease for nearly a week, but passed away on March 16. He was 72 and had a history of heart problems.

My niece Angela and Kevin have quarantined themselves at home in Chelan, WA, and were tested for Covid-19 over the weekend, but the test results still hadn’t come back as I write this.

On day three of the trip, I went to get breakfast at the hotel at about 7:45AM and there was no one else there. The hotel parking lot was not that crowded and only three other people eventually showed up while I was eating. I was on the road by about 8:15AM.

Central Missouri is not unlike Ohio, rolling farm land that was beginning to turn green as spring was arriving. It looks like the number one farm product there is beef cattle, as I saw thousands of them in fields in both Oklahoma and Missouri. I proceeded northeast across Missouri and crossed the Mississippi River at Hannibal, MO, the birthplace and boyhood home of Mark Twain.

After a couple of more hours, I arrived in Macomb, IL. My brother Tim, his wife Shannon and I went to a bar restaurant on the central square in Macomb. We had a nice dinner and discussed how the Covid-19 situation was affecting the country and our families. It bothered me a little bit that the restaurant was very crowded, but it appeared to be the only business still open in central Macomb. After dinner, we went back to my motel and talked some more before they left. The only person I saw at this motel while I was there was the front desk clerk who checked me in and the one who checked me out. There were only four cars in the parking lot when we went back there after dinner.

Macomb is the site of Western Illinois University, and it had closed earlier that week. There was a surreal aspect to my evening and next morning there as I saw very few people out and about. After getting breakfast in a bag at the hotel, I hit the road at about 8:15AM. It rained steadily at times for the first two hours of the trip, but the rain eventually stopped by the time I crossed into Indiana. As I drove through Indianapolis, the traffic seemed very light for a Monday. After another five hours on the road, I arrived home in Stow, Ohio.

It was a long four days that had a bizarre feeling because of the impending health crisis and the way it seemed to be affecting travelers. For the most part, traffic seemed lighter than I would have expected and the motels I stayed in were virtually deserted, except for Friday night in Santa Rosa, NM.

These are indeed strange times and, although it was tiring and costly to drive home, I’m glad I cut my Las Vegas vacation short. In times of trouble, it’s much better to be home.

Las Vegas Adventure—Week Seven or “Coronavirus Interruptus”

As the week began, I was becoming more concerned about the coronavirus or Covid-19, but I’ll talk about that in a moment. First, I want to tell you about Las Vegas as a booming market for major league sports.

Right now, the local sports coverage is dominated by stories about the Las Vegas Knights hockey team and its quest for the playoffs in the National Hockey League. This is only the third season for the franchise and the team has garnered rabid support here. There are people wearing team jerseys and other clothes with logos all over the place. And it seems like about a quarter of the cars I see have either a Golden Knights decal or license plate frame.

A lot of that support is the result of the Cinderella first season for the team. The Golden Knights won their division and made in all the way to the Stanley Cup finals before losing 4 games to one. Not bad for an expansion team!

The other major sports story is the arrival of the former Oakland Raiders to play in a brand new 65,000-seat stadium in downtown Las Vegas this fall. The outside of the stadium is clad in dark glass with a giant video board on the side that faces the Las Vegas strip. The official opening of the stadium in August will feature a concert by country music superstar Garth Brooks.

Henderson, the Vegas suburb where I am staying, is building a 6,500-seat arena in the center of town and it will host a minor-league hockey team that will be affiliated with the Golden Knights.

The other big story for me here is the threat of the coronavirus. Because I am over 70 and was a smoker for about 30 years (more if you count secondhand smoke while growing up because both my parents were heavy smokers) I am very concerned about this disease.

At the end of the week, I drove across the desert to Palm Springs, CA to meet with one my cousins. Kevin Patrick is a physician who taught at the medical school at the University of California in San Diego. His specialty was and is public health and we talked over lunch at a Mexican restaurant about coronavirus.

He advised me find a different way to get back to Ohio than flying. He said my age and asthma condition made it dangerous for me to be exposed to this disease. And spending several hours in a sealed environment with people very close make the situation favorable for spreading illnesses. We talked about how both of us had become sick after flying in the past and now it could be dangerous.

After I returned to Henderson, I contacted Budget and changed my rental car to a one-way rental and I will return it in Ohio when I get home.

Kevin and I had a very nice lunch and discussed our families and the pleasant things about being retired.

Later that afternoon, he returned home to the San Diego area and I checked into my motel. With temperatures in the mid-80s, I headed to the swimming pool and had a nice dip and rest after what had been a tiring 4 and-a-half-hour drive earlier. Later that evening, I cruised down the city’s main street on my way to dinner.

Palm Canyon Drive was lined with stately, lighted palm trees and sidewalks were packed as people made their way to the many restaurants, bars and shops. This Friday night it was pretty warm and that added to the festive mood.

The next morning, I drove around Palm Springs and nearby Indio to check out the area. The desert climate makes this area a candidate for a future winter sabbatical. Palm Springs has nicely laid out neighborhoods and lots of amenities for a resort community of 45,000. Nearby Indio is different, with lower-priced housing and more Mexican shops and businesses. North and west of the city, I saw several large farm areas.

While driving around Indio, I also saw a large fenced-in, flat area west of the center of the city that is the site of the Coachella Music Festival that attracts a couple of hundred thousand people to this relatively small city. When I returned to Henderson on Saturday night, I heard on a newscast that this year’s festival was being cancelled because of the threat of the coronavirus.

So, I have decided to head home early after taking a couple of more classes at OLLI at UNLV. On the way home, I plan to stop and see the Grand Canyon and then visit my brother in western Illinois. I’m not looking forward to four days on the road to cover the 2,100 miles between Las Vegas and Stow. But, I think the health risk to me of air travel makes the decision to drive home a wise one.

Tune in next time for my account of the journey home.

Las Vegas Adventure-Week 6

This particular week was dominated by two news events that overshadowed things that I did. First, the Democratic Presidential Nominating Caucus for Nevada took place on Feb. 22 and it dominated the airwaves here for a least a couple of weeks beforehand. Local newscasts were full of coverage of visits by the candidates and a plethora of political commercials. Some station breaks between programs consisted entirely of ads for one of the several candidates still in the race. Once, the caucus was over, the regular mix of commercials returned. Thank goodness for Netflix, that allowed me to escape the political ads on TV.

The other event is the Coronavirus illness that is getting worldwide attention. As I write this, there haven’t been any reported cases in Nevada or the Las Vegas area. However, local news media report that several conventions have been cancelled and this is sure to hurt the local economy dependent on tourism and conventions.

Because of my age and my history of asthma and pneumonia, I am becoming increasingly concerned about this. My biggest concern is about flying home and spending several hours sitting with 150 or more people in a pressurized, sealed tube breathing recirculated air. I am continuing to monitor local news reports and considering going home early. If I do get sick, I would rather be quarantined at home or in an Akron hospital than here for obvious reasons.

Getting back to the election, the day of the caucus, it rained heavily at times in the morning and let up by afternoon. I worked out in the morning at the Black Mountain Rec Center and then came home to watch some basketball.  Because Las Vegas is in the Pacific Time Zone, the games are on TV earlier in the day and that’s still an adjustment for me. By mid-afternoon I was able to see Kansas beat Baylor and my Kentucky Wildcats beat Florida.

After dinner, the Nevada Caucus results were coming in so I spent the rest of the evening watching coverage of that event.

Sunday the sun returned and I tried out another new church, an ELCA Lutheran church in the Green Valley area. The pastor greeted me wearing a shirt decorated with guitars and he was also wearing sandals. He played guitar and sang as part of a five-piece band that provided music during the service. His wife is co-pastor of the church and the service was really enjoyable.

That afternoon, I went hiking on a trail near the entrance to the Lake Mead National Recreation area. Then it was back home for dinner and some TV free of candidate ads.

One problem I am having here is I keep getting up earlier than I want. The sunrise here is pretty early, a little after 6AM because we are on the very eastern edge of the time zone. So, I tend to wake up by seven, something that hardly ever happens at home. Also, the house across the street has two large dogs that stay outside and bark at anything all hours of the day and night.

In fact, I saw two police officers visit another house nearby one afternoon and I’m pretty sure it was about the dogs. That’s because, the amount of time they are outside now has decreased considerably.

My “big” excursion this week was to drive about 45 minutes on I-15 towards LA and get off at the town of Primm, NV. This enclave is located on the border between Nevada and California and is surrounded by miles and miles of desert on all sides. It consists of three large casinos, a truck stop, an outlet mall and several restaurants. The three casinos are the first that travelers from California see as they cross the border.

I went to see a display at Whiskey Pete’s Casino that is reputed to be the car that legendary robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were using when they were ambushed by police and both killed in 1934 in Louisiana. For more than two years they had terrorized the Midwest and South with a string of robberies and murders that gave the duo national notoriety at the time.

Director Arthur Penn’s 1967 film “Bonnie and Clyde” starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway ends with a very violent and graphic scene of the death of these fugitives in a hail of machine gun and rifle fire. Here’s the clip and viewer discretion is advised because it is very gory:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwPrX8e5xd4

Anyway, the display seems authentic and has loads of documentation. There were copies of news articles, police reports and the like on display. The local coroner reported that each of them had more than 50 bullet wounds, so many he couldn’t get an accurate count. The car itself is riddled with bullet holes. Here’s the car.

Also on display is the car driven by gangster Dutch Schultz that features bullet-proof glass and armor plating. After Schultz was jailed for a variety of offenses, gangster Al Capone allegedly used the car until he too was imprisoned.

I walked around the casino for a bit, but there was a heavy odor of cigarettes in the air so I decided to leave. I had a delightful gyro at a restaurant called the Mad Greek, drove by the other casinos and went back to Vegas.

That evening I went grocery shopping at Smith’s, which has several stores in the Las Vegas area, and discovered that it has Kroger store brand products. A reminder of Ohio out here in the West.

I spent the rest of the weekend enjoying sunny weather on the patio and watching some basketball on TV. Sunday was March 1 and that means March Madness, my favorite sporting event of the year, is just around the corner.

So, until next time…

Las Vegas Adventure-Week Five

Time seems to fly by when you are experiencing interesting and unique things and I realize that I am approaching the halfway mark of my winter sabbatical in Las Vegas. I had hoped to have a creative firestorm like I experienced last winter in El Paso, but that hasn’t happened here. Last year, I had a definite book project that I was working on and that provided a lot of focus and direction.

This year, while I have enjoyed my visit to Las Vegas so far, my overall experience don’t seem as exciting and stimulating as last year. So, I decided to sit down with a notepad and try to sketch out the good and bad points of Las Vegas and how I am reacting to them. Implicit in all this is that I will be comparing my experiences last year to this year. Ah yes, we’re back to the old “compare and contrast” assignments like in high school English class. But, it can still be a worthwhile exercise.

At the top, the overriding premise for Las Vegas is gambling and how much fun it is. I have to confess, I can be a little tight with my money and gambling doesn’t appeal much to me. Once a month when I am home, I do play poker with a group of seven other friends, but we play “poor man’s poker” so the most you lose is five bucks. I usually come out ahead only about 20 percent of the time, but I enjoy the time with my friends so I don’t fret over losing a couple of dollars.

I have bet on horse racing about a half dozen times, including the Kentucky Derby once, and enjoyed placing an occasional two-dollar bet. But, I wouldn’t do that on a regular basis. I used to buy Super Lotto tickets on occasion, but my favorite “package” store closed a few years ago and now I buy my Bourbon at Giant Eagle, but I don’t buy lottery tickets. So, gambling just doesn’t hold a cachet for me and that’s an issue living in an area where it is so pervasive.

Another reason I looked forward to coming to Las Vegas was that UNLV (The University of Nevada Las Vegas) offered classes in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI), the same program I enjoyed immensely last year in El Paso at UTEP. I signed up for three courses this year, one about the American West, another on Nevada History and the third on comedy in films. So far, the comedy in films course has been the best and the other two courses have been so-so. The comedy in films instructor has a degree in film studies from the University of Southern Cal, but the other two instructors are “self-taught” in history because they had careers in unrelated fields.

Last year in El Paso, two of the three courses I took were from retired UTEP faculty who continued to teach in their field of expertise—the history and culture of the El Paso area and music conducting. The other course on law enforcement was taught by a retired DEA agent, so he really knew his topic too.

Also, the classes at UNLV I am taking are larger and last for an hour and 45 minutes. The large class size inhibits discussion and the longer class time doesn’t work except for the film class.

Now, some good news about my current situation. The casita I am renting is relatively spacious, more like a one-bedroom apartment. It has a washer-dryer combo, a nice bathroom and a courtyard outside the front door that I can use. While I am staying on a cul-de-sac in a quiet suburban neighborhood, a lot of amenities are not more that a five-minute drive away.

The best of these is a city recreation center that accepts Silver Sneakers so I can go there and do weight training a couple of days a week.

The good news is my breathing issues from asthma are a lot better here in the lower elevation of the Las Vegas area compared with El Paso. And the temperatures are about the same and the low humidity have made me feel better here.

I am about a 15-minute drive from the center of Las Vegas, so I haven’t explored other areas of the city that much so far. Part of the reason is that the drivers here are kind of wacko. There are a lot of younger drivers and a lot of large pickup trucks. I am driving a compact Kia Rio that is a rental and I get nervous when see nothing but a huge grill in the rearview mirror when I am going 70 mph on the freeway. A lot of these truck drivers pull up very close behind you before pulling around to pass.

Also, because Las Vegas is at the eastern edge of the Pacific Time Zone, sunset here is relatively early, at 5:30PM, but the sun disappears from my casita about 45 minutes earlier because of Black Mountain immediately to the west. And, when the sun goes down the temperature drops quickly in this dry, desert climate. So far, it has been too cool to sit on the patio in the evening after dinner.

My final observation about Las Vegas concerns littering. As I drive out north of the city on Interstate 15, I am appalled by the amount of trash I see by the side of the highway, bottles, plastic bags and other articles strewn along that highway for miles and miles. And, the strong winds carry the trash hundreds of yard into the desert. I’ve also observed this on several streets in the city

The only other city I recall seeing this much littering was when I visited New Orleans 20 years ago. I also noticed a lot of trash strewn by the side of major highways there. Maybe the reputation of both cities for entertainment and partying gives people license to toss trash out of their cars, something I don’t see nearly as much in the Akron area.

So, my stay here has been very much a “good news, bad news” situation. But, I am looking forward to the remaining five weeks of my stay and the new experiences I will have.

See you next time.