Finding Direction: The Wind Vane Chronicles

[Note:  I'm so sorry for being so long between posts in this series, but the past three days I've had excruciating pain from my pinched nerve and have just found the help I've needed, for over a month, yesterday and more so today.  So, please bear with me.  And - continue to pray with me that I be healed.  Dee] 

   April 1st – Wednesday Evening:  Three "Country Bumpkins" (You’d Have Thought) Hit Big Time

 At the end of my last post, we were just coming into the DiamondJack Casino Hotel in Bossier City, Louisiana to get a room for the night.  Laura thought it was really neat and coincidental that the personable young black man behind the counter was named Steven Hotel.  She was even more amazed when we got up to our room and discovered the young man unloading our luggage was Clarence Bellman.  And this girl has a college degree.  She’s always had a charming naivete about her, but it can get one in trouble.

And I knew we were in trouble.  We were in WAY over our heads here in this hotel next to, and part of, a casino complex. 

Our 6th floor room fronting on the atrium was really big with lots of neat things to check out (like a sitting area and huge jacuzzi/whirlpool tub – pictures next time), but (checking my brand new beautiful watch, photo below), we had to hurry back downstairs to get to the buffet before it closed at 9 p.m.

The watch.  I admit the close up is a little blurry, but you can still see how beautiful it is:

 We had pumped Steven Hotel for information about the cost of the buffet, etc, to the point he had to call our room to give us the low down.  Seems if you were "50+," and all three of us were (although you have to admit from the photos we all look much younger than 50.  Right?!?), and if we each got a casino "Member Reward Card," for free (we made sure), then we could each eat all we wanted at the buffet for 1/2 price – $8.25 apiece.  (We thought that was still high, since we only wanted salads, but hey – this was The Great Road Trip of 2009, right?) 

Sounded easy enough.

Mom was full, having eaten her entire sandwich, with sides and an apple, for lunch, but Laura and I wanted salads. 

We walked the length of the hallway to the Casino side; slowly because of Mom’s bum knee.  When we got around to the buffet entrance, I left Mom & Laura  there while I went to to get our 3 membership cards.  I hurried back to retrieve their driver’s licenses, then brought back three cards, each of which the card dispensers’ told me, was worth $10 dollars apiece.

We were excited.  I had to call Tom to tell him.  Not only were Laura & I going to have the buffet for 1/2 price (Mom had to have a card to even get in the buffet area), we could then go into the casino, cash out the $10 credit apiece on our cards and we would be $30 bucks ahead. 

Tom started to say something, but I told him I had to go – would call back later.

The buffet salads were good and we made more new friends, including Rachel, the waitress (or "Rachel Waitress" as Laura would have named her), and the young black family sitting next to us, with whom we shared our road trip story, once more, still excited about it.  The young black woman asked Laura & me if we were twins because our hair was alike and we were dressed similarly.  We laughingly told her no, and then got her to take our picture.

 

Now to go collect our $30 bucks.  Yea!  We slowly walked down to the casino, which was out over the Red River (in Louisiana & Mississippi, the casinos must be only on water somewhere, not land), and Mom & Laura hovered in the hallway just outside while I went around the corner to talk with a girl behind the glass window about what we needed to do.

It was there I found out (dummy me) that we didn’t get $10 bucks cash apiece, we got $10 credit at any of the slot machines.  (Which Tom had been trying to tell me when I cut him off on the phone.)  "Ooohhhh," I said, wising up and backing away.

I went back around the corner to tell Mom & Laura the bad news.  Mom said, and I thought, well, forget this.  Let’s just go.

But then Laura pipes up and says, "Well, I want to go in there and just hit the button one time."  Mom wanted to go, I told Laura if she did that, she might as well use up the whole $10.  Laura said, "Nope.  I just want to do it ONE time."

"Okay," I said, and Mom reluctantly said she’d come look.

We only ventured in as far as the very first quarter slot machine, right there by the hallway in front of the glassed in money tellers’ windows.  I told Laura I’d put my card in to see what the deal was.  The deal was, I couldn’t even figure out where the opening was on the front of the slot machine to put my card in.  

We fiddled around getting nowhere.  Laura went over to the tellers’ windows and Mom was halfway back to the hallway when a young employee from the floor came up and asked if we needed help.  She showed me where the card went in and told me what to do and left.  It still took me about three times to get it working right, but finally I did.

I punched 1 credit buttons, then 3 credits buttons, with Mom & Laura intently watching, until my $10 bucks was gone, which took a total of less than two minutes.

 Laura insisted on getting her "gambling fever fix" (her "one time only" trying the slots) at the dollar machine right behind me, so I set her up.  Ten (not one, of course) quick button pushes later, her $10 bucks was gone, so we turned to leave.  But then, sort of as an afterthought, Mom says, "Oh well, I guess I might as well use up my card, too."  Famous last words.

She decided to go back to the quarter slot machine behind us that I had lost on and I got her card set up.  She even sat down to "play" and was reading all the buttons and trying to figure out what all to do.  She hit the 1 credit button several times when all of a sudden the machine starting going "ding, ding, ding."  She’d won $1.25!!  She, Laura and I were shocked, flabbergasted and laughing our heads off as I started screaming, as if she’d won millions.  People all around were looking, but I didn’t care.  This was my Mom - a good Christian woman (up until now, I thought, until I led her astray here) winning money in a casino on their money!

I asked her if she wanted to play it or cash it out and she said cash it out.  It was a machine that didn’t use cash (quarters) at all (which was kind of a bummer), but tickets, so she got her $1.25 ticket, which I held so she could concentrate on her strategy – which was to start playing 3 credits at a time.

Twice more she won.  We were just as hysterical about those as about the first.  It was hilarious. Both times were $3.75 (since she was going 3 credits at a
time) and both times she wanted her tickets.  So, that’s how we ended our big gambling spree and Mom, at 87, was the big winner of the night, winning a total of $8.75 on the casino’s money.  Thus, the photo below, which we told her could not be used for blackmail for her gambling, because she didn’t gamble any of her own money!   

 

WE – WERE – HAVING – A – BLAST!!

But it was late; we were tired; so headed back over the hotel to go to our room and go to bed, not knowing that there would be yet more memorable experiences before we made it that far. 

To Be Continued . . .