{"id":7880,"date":"2023-08-02T10:47:28","date_gmt":"2023-08-02T10:47:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dartoidsworld.net\/2023\/08\/column-625-viva-las-vegas\/"},"modified":"2023-08-02T10:47:28","modified_gmt":"2023-08-02T10:47:28","slug":"column-625-viva-las-vegas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dartoidsworld.net\/2023\/08\/column-625-viva-las-vegas\/","title":{"rendered":"Column #625 VIVA LAS VEGAS!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wednesday, August 2, 2023
\nColumn 625
\nVIVA LAS VEGAS!<\/strong><\/p>\n

With planning for the January 19-20, 2024, Golden Era Dart Players Stacy Bromberg Senior Open well under way (much more to follow) my thoughts have already turned to yet another trip to Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

Blasphemous as it may be, if I am to be honest, each time I head to Vegas – for years to the North American Open and then the Desert Classic – my first thoughts are not of darts.\u00a0 I can\u2019t help it.\u00a0 Instead, my mind is inevitably drawn to faded memories of another time, a wonderful time, not so long ago as it seems, when I used to while away the most enjoyable of hours with my old best friends.\u00a0 Randy, Ross, Fred and John\u2026<\/p>\n

For so many years, as I\u2019ve wandered through the heat with the milling crowd along the neon Strip, and contemplated how my darts might fly in the morning, I\u2019ve always felt something was missing.\u00a0 Once it was my wallet, but that\u2019s another story.<\/p>\n

We all grew up in the same neighborhood on the east side of Flint, Michigan.\u00a0 Flint is a factory town, famous for a 44-day sit-down strike in 1936 against General Motors at one of the Fisher Body plants, in 1989 for Michael Moore\u2019s movie Roger and Me<\/em> – and then about ten years ago for a massive crisis caused by contaminated water.\u00a0 During my high school years in the late 1960s something like 70 percent of all family income in Flint was directly related to assembly line labor, primarily General Motors and AC Spark Plug.<\/p>\n

But our fathers didn\u2019t work in the shops.\u00a0 I guess that means we were middle-class kids.\u00a0 Fred\u2019s dad was a lawyer.\u00a0 Ross\u2019 mother was on the school board.\u00a0 John\u2019s dad was the golf coach at the community college.\u00a0 We did middle-class teenage boy things.\u00a0 Randy played soccer.\u00a0 Ross ran cross country.\u00a0 Fred pole vaulted.\u00a0 I was on the swimming team.\u00a0 We hung out at the Kewpee hamburger joint downtown, ate cheeseburgers (with olives), drank cherry cokes and talked big about the same girls.<\/p>\n

But best of all, for the better part of a decade, at least one night a weekend, and often both, we gathered in the sanctity Randy\u2019s basement.\u00a0 Through penny ante times in junior high to quarter ante games in high school to even larger stakes after we all graduated and got jobs, Randy\u2019s basement was where we could all be found.\u00a0 This was because Randy\u2019s mother – we called her Shirley – was cool.\u00a0 She let us play poker.\u00a0 And drink beer.\u00a0 Our conversation was about the cards and the odds.\u00a0 Our dream was to travel someday to Las Vegas together and play with the big dogs.<\/p>\n

To the sounds of Steppenwolf and Hendrix we\u2019d savor cans of Coors that somebody\u2019s brother brought back from Denver.\u00a0 In those days that was the only way to get a Coors.\u00a0 We chain-smoke Camels (athletes that we were) and played the usual games.\u00a0 Draw and Stud.\u00a0 Chicago.\u00a0 Hi-Low and In-Between.\u00a0 When it was his deal, Randy would usually call something called Buckets.\u00a0 I never did, and to this very day still don\u2019t understand the rules.<\/p>\n

Of course, winning at poker depends more on how well a player postures and bluffs over the course of a long evening than it does on the cards you\u2019re dealt.\u00a0 The thing is, for us, the mind games quickly became obsolete.\u00a0 We knew each other so intimately, we played together so long, that each of our nervous ticks and tells pretty much telegraphed the cards we were each holding. Ross would nonchalantly tug a cigarette out of his pack.\u00a0 John would smooth his moustache.\u00a0 Once, I drew four twos, screamed and fell out of my chair.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, like most poker groups ours wasn\u2019t about winning or losing.\u00a0 It was about friendship.\u00a0 The game was just an extension, albeit a very regular and dependable extension, of everything else we did.\u00a0 The game, like our friendship, was just something we could count on.\u00a0 It was part of the glue of our lives.<\/p>\n

We did everything together.\u00a0 We organized a hop-scotch marathon and tried to establish a Guinness World Record.\u00a0 Another time John and I packed five 55-gallon barrels with snow as part of a plan to package the liquid in little \u201cBlizzard\u201d bottles and sell them in the summer to the Southland Corporation (which owner the 7\/11 convenience store chain).\u00a0 I\u2019m pretty sure the barrels are still in John\u2019s garage.<\/p>\n

Still another time, Fred and I cut work for a month straight to play the board game Risk.\u00a0 We ended up inventing and making a prototype with Plexi-glass of a similar three-dimensional game, with airplanes and submarines to support the little armies.\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember what happened to that.<\/p>\n

Eventually we grew up, I guess.\u00a0 We met for poker less and less frequently.\u00a0 It\u2019s probably been thirty years, maybe more, since we\u2019ve anted up together. Randy was the Best Man at my wedding.\u00a0 Fred and I exchange occasional e-mails.\u00a0 In fact, just a few years ago a message appeared from him asking for advice on a set of darts for one of his kids.<\/p>\n

The last I heard, Randy, who had a small chain of jewelry stores, sold them, went back to school and became a high school mathematics teacher.\u00a0 Ross was a paramedic.\u00a0 Fred owned a nursery business.\u00a0 And John was refurbishing HUD houses and selling them for some pretty hefty change.<\/p>\n

These are just some of the memories are stirring in my mind as I plan another visit to Las Vagas.\u00a0 My poker group\u2026 my old friends.\u00a0 We were kids together.\u00a0 We played together.\u00a0 We got in trouble together.\u00a0 We became men together.\u00a0 Then we went our separate ways.<\/p>\n

The years passed.\u00a0 We married.\u00a0 We had families.\u00a0 Each in our own way, we achieved our dreams.\u00a0 All except one.<\/p>\n

We never made it to Vegas together.\u00a0 It\u2019s a shame.\u00a0 And it\u2019s something I\u2019ll be thinking about when I pull out my darts yet again at the Golden Era Dart Players Stacy Bromberg Senior Open.\u00a0 I wish they were here.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because Randy, Ross, Fred and John are the only four guys in the whole wide world who I am absolutely certain I can beat.<\/p>\n

From the Field,<\/p>\n

Dartoid<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With planning for the January 19-20, 2024, Golden Era Dart Players Stacy Bromberg Senior Open well under way (much more to follow) my thoughts have already turned to yet another trip to Las 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