My daddy used to say: Don’t Drive, Drink! I never took the first part of that advice, I’m well over two million miles now and as my older and wiser days evolve, I don’t combine the two. My dad, who is long time gone (died of substance abuse), was the first person to put me on his lap and let me take over the steering wheel.
At the time, I didn’t know he was my dad, I thought he was my mom’s cousin because that was the story presented to my brother and I when he showed up at our door in the rural Siera Nevada mountains demanding to see us. My first contact with this stranger is when we went for a drive. A few years later my brother spilled the beans to me that mom’s cousin was really our dad, the stepdad found out we knew, and it went downhill from there. Oh well, all of those parents are dead now, and I’m alive and well and traveling. Rock on…
Update: I’ve been hanging out at the pool/hot-tub for the last couple of hours with a retired millionaire named Gary who knows all of the owners on the Laughlin strip. Great stories and great camaraderie, us old guys do think alike, and he’s living here at the Pioneer for a while because he can. Kind of like Howard Hughes, but on the ground floor, with a few less zeros.
On Gary’s advice, I went across the street to the Tropicana for dinner. I had the southern style blackened catfish with a baked potato, hush puppies, and coleslaw. Hmmm, best meal I’ve eaten in a restaurant in a long time!
