Fear and Roving in Las Vegas, baby!

It’s a bit past 4AM here near Las Vegas, baby! Cousin Fred and I only just now pulled into a motel outside the city limits. We should have been here late evening yesterday, but as is usually the case I made the mistake of actually listening to my idiot cousin.

After the Wife figured out that I was serious about making this trip to Vegas, baby!, she swiftly removed all of the credit cards from my wallet and hid all our available cash. She even went so far as to bury jars of coins somewhere outside of the compound and changed all of the password accesses for our banking and 401K accounts. She also flattened the tires on my SUV. As her final act, she etched into the brass of a bullet “Vegas or Dust!” and set it in front of my coffeemaker.

I’m getting the message the Wife doesn’t want me going to Vegas, baby!

But what’s a guy to do? Opportunity is knocking in the form of Chick Farris and his able assistant. This could be our big break!

Cousin Fred, never one to be deterred by anything, told me not to worry. He still had one credit card with $600 left on the limit. Then he asked if I still had any packages of Buffalo Chips - the jalapeno flavored, caramel covered, hedge apple slices we tried to sell at the most recent home show – left over.

I told him there were still three full boxes out in the garage. I was considering putting them up for sale on Facebook. I told him there was also two gross of the Indonesian mini-skirts that nutcase from Oklahoma City was trying to sell at the same home show.

Once the SWAT team grabbed him and dragged him off for an all-expenses paid vacation in the county jail, we noticed that they left a couple of boxes of his mini-skirts behind (the rest were seized as evidence).  

Cousin Fred, upon hearing this news, clapped his hands together and assured me that we “were in high cotton.” I’m not sure exactly what he meant by that, but as is often the case, Cousin Fred’s enthusiasm trumps most measures of common sense.
We decided to make the journey in Cousin Fred’s desert assault vehicle aptly named the Brutus, a vintage Ford Bronco with the entire top cut off. Fortunately, he left the windshield, passenger and driver doors in place so we were able to keep the windows up. That reduced some of the arctic chill created at road speed and allowed some of the heat coming from the vents to momentarily reach us before dissipating in the face of extreme cold.

So, we strapped the boxes of Buffalo Chips and Indonesian mini-skirts and our luggage down in the back and away we went. Cousin Fred’s CB-whip antenna bent in the breeze with a small black flag emblazoned with the motto “Et Tu Brute?” flying from the top.

I still wasn’t sure I understand what Cousin Fred’s plan was for the contraband goods we were carrying, but after Shattuck my teeth were chattering so badly that I didn’t really care.

By the time we were approaching Tucumcari, NM, the Brutus was getting low on fuel. Cousin Fred began broadcasting over his CB radio that ETB Enterprises would be setting up shop in the Flying J Travel Plaza parking lot on the east side of Tucumcari. He announced we were selling exotic snacks straight from the kitchens of Western Oklahoma and that we had special gifts for all the trucker’s wives and girlfriends straight from sweat shops of Indonesia. With Christmas rapidly approaching we were a virtual Target Store (truer words have never been spoken) for everyone on every trucker’s list.

We no sooner arrived at the Flying J than the Brutus’ engine gave out…we were out of gas. Fortunately, we were able to roll into a spot on the north side of the parking lot where all the traffic had to see us as they rolled in.

By some miracle, we sold one entire box of Buffalo Chips and thirty-five of the one-size-fits-all Indonesian mini-skirts. We had rolled into the place with nothing more than a car load of crap and now had $300 cash. Ain’t America grand?

I started to open another box of the Buffalo Chips, but Cousin Fred stopped me saying we would save them for further down the road and the return trip.

After filling the Brutus, we hit the road again. We did the same at the Love’s Travel Stop west of Gallup, NM. We rolled out of there with another $200. I was actually beginning to think things were looking up for us and I began to allow myself to relax a bit (in between teeth chattering) and think about our pitch to Chick Farris the next day.
But then…somewhere around Winslow, AZ, we began to pick up chatter on the CB about “cheatin’ varmints” and “snake oil salesman” and a “coupla hippies in an old Ford headed west”…at which point, Cousin Fred turned the CB off.

After multiple stops along the way, including a quick trip to the southern rim of the Grand Canyon where Cousin Fred urinated over the edge – said it was a lifelong dream of his – we finally rolled into the parking lot of the Oasis Boutique Motel in Boulder City, NV at 4AM.

Cousin Fred was dead asleep before he hit the pillow I think. We’d been at it for nineteen hours.

I’m looking forward to the meeting with Chick and able assistant this morning. Stay tuned!