One day in May of 1986 my wife Ditty was dragging me out to a art and craft show in Boulder City, Nev. BC is about 30 miles from where I live, and I was complaining all the way. The last thing I wanted to do was walk around all afternoon looking at a bunch of cute stuff.
It was a fairly hot day for May and my griping and complaining combined to make me thirsty. Real thirsty. There was a Tony Roma's restaurant on the way there along the Boulder Highway in a place called Old Vegas, at which was a rather neat re-creation of the original Las Vegas townsite. Tony Romas was set in there in a Hacienda setting that was cool comfortable and laid back. Ahhh....just what I was looking for. We ordered a couple margauritas and I mellowed out considerably. On the way out, I noticed that the massive wooden gates leading to the back of Old Vegas were closed. I wondered why. We walked around the old adobe fort like structure in which Tony Romas was located to the area where the Old Las Vegas town was located. To my utter amazement, the area had a fire. It was a mess, but looking around I noticed that there was a locomotive more or less buried under a pile of burned timbers. I was familiar with the old engine as it had been on static display for some years and slowly rusting away. It was Eureka.
About then a security guard walked on by. I ask him how long it had been like that, and he said for a year. A YEAR!! God, no one had even bothered to even so much as pull the burned building off it in all that time. With that, something clicked in my little head, and I figured if no one else wanted to care for this old engine, maybe I could. So, I set about seeing if I could get it.
Well, eventually I did. But that is a whole different story.
The moral of my tale here, and what I found, is for all you guys to watch out for where your wife drags you. You may get worn out and thirsty from all your bitching and compaining and before you know it have to quench your thirst is some saloon somewhere. We all know how evil drink can change our lives in profound ways....even if it is only one. I know.
Dan Markoff
