I have a llittle experience with swamp coolers in Las Vegas, also.
My friend from San Diego said he could win at Blackjack, by playing a system. I started studying the system, but then he wanted to leave Chicago a week early and I had barely gotten started trying to memorize it. Three of us drove all day and night and got to Las Vegas in the middle of the night.
We stayed in one room at the hotel of his choice the next day.
Then they laft (the third guy was another college friend of Dick's , going to visit him in San Diego.
Since I was there to make money, and not to spend it, I went looking for a cheap hotel. There was supposed to be one with AC, but I didn't know where.
I found one with air cooling, and I figured that would be fine because as everone knew, it gets cold in the desert at night. During the day I figured I would be at the casino.
I think I paid for a week. I know I was in LV for 7 or 8 days and left on July 5.
Boy, was it hot at night. The cooler was in the hall, only 3 feet from my room's door, which I left open, but the fan was blowing down the hall and my door was at a right angle. It might have been cool in the hall, but it wasn't in my room. (The hotel was built as a large house iirc.)
By the second or third night, I was sleeping in the back yard. Unfortunately, the yard had no grass, only gravel. I sleep on my belly so I put a towel under my face but it really wasn't comfortable.
Because I never got a good nights sleep, I wasn't able to memorize the
3 ten by ten arrays of numbers that I needed for the system (counting tens) so I didn't win money. Like most, I lost slowly. Playing 3 or 4 hours a day for 7 days, on small bet tables, I lost about 40 dollars. 1967 or 1969. Probably the first. But that's not much money, and I never planned to live on gambling, so I wasn't unhappy.I did go to the fireworks July 4, in a residential n'hood. On the way to the fireworks I walked past a public school and though seriously about sleeping on the grass there. I don't remember why I didn't. I guess I still worried too much about the police in those days. Within a couple years, or days, I realized they would never do anything to me for just sleeping.
Earlier I went on the tour of the Mint Casino, where they explain how to play craps, and show you a bit of how they watch from above the ceiling. I asked this guy if he was in the line for the tour, and he was, and we went on the tour together, and then to a drawing he was entered in across the street, and then he invited me to come out to dinner later in the week. He had his own simple apartment on the strip, behind the Flamingo Casino, and we met at the pool there. He took me out to dinner on one of those all you can eat coupons at another casino. During dinner he told me I was a great conversationalist. After dinner he propositioned me. He offered me free room and board and offered to rent a car that I could use to drive him around, or just myself the other half of the time. When I didn't bite, he offerred me an allowance, and to pay off the 40 dollars I had lost. (Of course I'd already paid it, but I guess he meant he would give me 40 dollars.)
I asked "What would this entail?" and although his answer wasn't vulgar by Jay Leno's current standards, it's too vulgar for me to write.
But now it was 11PM and the big dinner made me sleepy, and I had made the mistake of leaving my swimming suit in his apartment. (My cheap hotel had no swimming pool, and I was too law abiding in those days to swim in the Mint's rooftop pool, where they did check room numbers it seemed. I was hoping to swim in the Flamingo pool, where I think they knew him, but certainly I could have in his apartment pool.
So walking the 200 yards back to his apartment, I asked if I could stay there no strings attached. He said yes. He said I should sleep in his bed, but I said the couch would be fine. He said that it would be better for me to sleep in his bed because then he would know that I was on guard and he would be especially careful not to do anything I wouldn't like. I'm very smart, 1540 on the SATs, but consistently slow-witted, and as ridiculous as this last remark was, I didn't notice.
So he gave me a sheet and maybe a blanket and I went to sleep on the sofa, on my back as I do when I have to wake up soon. Not sure when, maybe 30 or 60 minutes later, I wake up to the feel of someone tickling me through my underpants. "What an idiot, I am" I thought to myself, without moving a bit or saying a word. "We're going to have a confrontation. He's going to be embarrassed, and he's going to kill me.** So what should I do?"
I just sat up without saying anything. He was kneeling on the floor by the sofa and he backed up as fast as he could, ending in a cheap padded chair with arms that was part of his living furniture, but only
3 feet away (since it was all in a corner of the living room). He was scared, and I liked that.But I still didn't preclude the notion that he would get tired being scared and turn into the aggreessor again. Once I don't trust someone, I don't trust anything about him. I had had girls stay at my apartment, and when the agreement, spoken or not, was that I wouldn't touch her, I didn't. How hard is that?
**Without any special evidence, I've long thought that one of the reason women rape victims get murdered at least some of the time, is they look emotionally crushed afterwards and the rapist is embarrassed and to make the problem go away, he kills her. I haven't looked for info on this, wouldn't know how, and if I were in the field, I wouldn't know how to gather info on this from real victims.But this guy's story was funny. He said he thought I might be cold (because of the AC) and he was trying to wake me to ask if I wanted a blanket, or a second blanket. Even slow-witted me knew that was a lie. And even if I were cold, I'd rather stay asleep cold than have to wake up to get a blanket.
In order to avoid a confrontation, I told him I was going back to sleep and after he went to his room, I went to the bathroom and got dressed, flushing the toilet so he wouldn't hear my belt jingling on the tile.
I had his number and I should have called him to tell him how lucky he was that I didn't beat him up. It took far far more to get me angry in the old days, at least to get me angry for more than 5 minutes. He did deserved to be beat up, so he wouldn't lie to someone else.
Oh yeah, one of the reasons I was willing to stay there was to finally get a good nights sleep, so I could finally memorize those tables and win at blackjack. But again I didn't get a good night's sleep. I was doubly stupid if I didn't get 9 hours of sleep each night. I think I was leaving the next morning, and only had a couple more hours to gamble then.
Maybe tomorrow I will tell you how I got back to Chicago.