Fair is Fair by Royal Hopper

Rock on Sin City
The More things change the more they stay the same

By Royal Hopper

I got my lunch box and Im all real well..photo by Royal Hopper

The City of Sin has changed a lot since the days the greatest generation visited Sin City. Just ask Sin Coty patron John Cary or the woman walking down the Boulevard with a blow up doll under her arm Sunday or the five foot tall Vader flirting with female and male tourists alike on a Vegas street corner.

A few days before July 4th before the blow up doll or the mini Darth took advantage of a rare cloudy day in the city I met a man who said his name was John Cary.
(He didn’t spell it for me and I didn’t ask) Cary was a teen in the age of the big band when world caught fire. At an age when most people are struggling to find their first real job, the 89-year-old John Cary said he was fighting his way across Okinawa with his Marine buddies. As he stood in the Sin City Casino he was visiting for his vacation late last week he proudly showed off a photo he had taken in his Marine Dress Blues with other John Kerry the famous one.

This member of the greatest generation talked about a lot of things His voice faltered as he leaned on a nearby counter for support and 70-year-old memories flowed from his memories to his voice.

Zero Credit by Royal Hopper

He said remembers a plane trying to strafe his fellow Marines that he and his fellow Leathernecks shot down. He smiled when he remembered meeting his brother in Korea and frowned when couldn’t remember which had come first.
What really gets John Cary down right angry is how tight the slot machines are in the City of Sin these days. They just don’t pay out like they used to said Cary a scared veteran of the City of Sin.
“Las Vegas,” he said, just isn’t what it used to be said the 89-year-old. It is harder to get money he said complaining he could only get $250 a day to gamble with. “Some kind of daily limit,” he groused.

“And the food is so much more expensive,”

In April of 1945 Carey and his fellow jarheads were part of a 183,000 man force of Marines and GI ‘s who took the Island of Okinawa from the Japanese defenders. In early July of this year he was bragging about the fine figure he cut in his uniform back in the day and wondering why he could not get the cocktail waitress to listen to his practiced pitch and shaking his head at the head full of dyed purple hair he saw bouncing across the casino floor.

That same week I talked to two young Brits lets call them Patty and Ian. They remarked with amazement that 16-year-olds can drive in the City of Sin but they can’t drink or even sit in the bar while their 22-year-old boyfriends guzzle $1 beer.

I have no idea what it means except I guess Vegas is Vegas.

That’s life in the City of Sin

Rock On Sinners