Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
world to feed still more of them, yet more are being built all the time. The greed of man-
kind is practically insatiable, mine included.
I went into Caesar's Palace. It is set well back from the street, but I was conveyed in on a
moving sidewalk, which rather impressed me. Inside the air was thick with unreality. The
decor was supposed to be like a Roman temple or something. Statues of Roman gladiators
and statesmen were scattered around the place and all the cigarette girls and ladies who
gave change were dressed in skimpy togas, even if they were old and overweight, which
most of them were, so their thighs wobbled as they walked. It was like watching moving
Jell-O. I wandered through halls full of people intent on losing money-endlessly, single-
mindedly feeding coins into slot machines or watching the clattering dance of a steel ball
on a roulette wheel or playing games of blackjack that had no start or finish but were just
continuous, like time. It all had a monotonous, yet anxious rhythm. There was no sense of
pleasure or fun. I never saw anyone talking to anyone else, except to order a drink or cash
some money. The noise was intense-the crank of one-armed bandits, the spinning of thou-
sands of wheels, the din of clattering coins when a machine paid out.
A change lady Jell-O'd past and I got $i0 worth of quarters from her. I put one in a one-
armed bandit-I had never done this before; I'm from Iowa-pulled the handle and watched
the wheels spin and thunk into place one by one. There was a tiny pause and then the ma-
chine spat six quarters into the payout bucket. I was hooked. I fed in more quarters. Some-
timesIwouldloseandIwouldputinmorequarters.Sometimesthemachinewouldspitme
backsomequartersandIwouldputthoseinaswell.AfteraboutfiveminutesIhadnoquar-
ters left. I flagged down another ample-hipped vestal virgin and got $i0 more. This time
I won $12 worth of quarters straight off. It made a lot of noise. I looked around proudly,
but no one paid any attention to me. Then I won $5 more. Hey, this is all right, I thought.
I put all my quarters in a little plastic bucket that said CAESAR'S PALACE on it. There
seemed to be an awful lot of them, gleaming up at me, but in about twenty minutes the
bucket was empty. I went and got another $i0 worth of quarters, and started feeding them
in. I won some and lost some. I was beginning to realize that there was a certain pattern to
it:foreveryfourquartersIputin,Iwouldonaveragegetthreeback,sometimesinabunch,
sometimes in dribbles. My right arm began to ache a little. It was boring really, pulling the
handle over and over, watching the wheels spin and thunk, thunk, thunk, spin and thunk,
thunk,thunk.WithmylastquarterIwon$3worthofquarters,andwasmildlydisappointed
because I had been hoping to go for dinner and now here I had a mittful of quarters again.
SoIdutifullyfedthequartersintothemachineandwonsomemoremoney.Thisreallywas
gettingtiresome.Finally,afteraboutthirtyminutesIgotridofthelastquarterandwasable
to go and look for a restaurant.
