Vegas is a guy’s town

Frank Sinatra at the Sands. Courtesy of InOldLasVegas.com.

The very fact that my dad took my mom to Vegas the time he won enough to buy her a German stereo always perplexed me. Because my dad never took my mom to Vegas. “Vegas is a guy’s town,” he’d say by way of explanation. When I was younger I always wondered what that meant. As I grew older, it became obvious.

Vegas was the place where he could do the opposite of what he was allowed to do at home. He could drink highballs at noon. He could stay up all night playing craps. He could flirt with pretty women.

Whenever my mom would propose that she go with him, he’d dismiss the idea out of hand. As if she’d just asked him if she could join his Thursday night bowling league team. “Vegas is not a place for broads,” he’d explain (yes, he used that word; his homage to his hero, Frank Sinatra, I suppose).

But Ol’ Blue Eyes is gone and so is my dad, and I have reached an age when it seems important to tie up some emotional loose ends. So I have made what I imagine might be my own last trip to Las Vegas. Not to see any of the seven Cirque du Soleil shows or the Blue Man Group but to see if there are any remnants left of the old Vegas. The one my father and Frank knew. The one that “wasn’t for broads.”

And to be honest with you, I also want to see if I can match the old man just one time: I want to win enough money to buy a new stereo. Perhaps a German one.