Monday in America

My boss needed a ride to Oklahoma.    It was a big weekend for Texas sports and I hated Texas sports.  I knew that the Riverwind Casino was up there in Norman, out on OK-9 on the Chickasaw Indian Reservation.  I thought I'd get out-of-town and out-of-pocket, play a little blackjack and put Austin down for a little while.  We loaded up the Brown Hornet and hit the road.

The Riverwind Casino is a very bad place.  It’s cheap gaudy neon belches up on you off 35 in the Heartland like some doomtown megaplex.  There’s a sign on every door.  It reads:

Greetings from the great unconquered and unconquerable Chickasaw Nation.

Inside the cursed white man sits, dying a fat old death at the nickel slots w/a pack of Gold 125s.   Women with whorehair and in stretchpants stretching in unintended and undesirable ways  are beside them.  The air is filled w/ still life and the ringing of major triads from the slot machines and shitty countrified classic rock.  The non-playing public gets cordoned off and the only exit is the River Theatre or the gambling floor.  Everybody walked so slow and spoke w/ such thick mid-Western accents it was best to act as if you understood and walk on.  At the end of the line the buffet is $50 a head and they serve nothing but crab legs and cow fat and call it prime rib.

The staff looked like they had a hard life and didn’t mind dying.  The brightest among them were the little black haired&blonde-betty cocktail waitresses with fake tits in plastic dresses.
I blew $50 at the Blackjack table and made out with a cocktail waitress named Misty in the bathroom.  Jimbo’s big Saturday Night in Oklahoma.

That’s all I really care to recount about our sojourn in Sodom.  This post is more about gambling than any legal fleecing of doomed fools living in the midwest by the unconquerable Chickasaw Nation.  What’s most important  in situations like these is the escape.  I was $50 down and terrified.  After the sun had set there was  a howling wind out on the prairie that was haunting&surreal.
Things could only get better the farther and faster we drove from Norman, OK.

I was $15o up and in Clover by the time we left the Interurban Bar&Rest Area.  The Longhorns had a bye week, the Saints beat Houston
thanks to Mark Ingram’s 13 yard run and a two point coversion by special teams,
the Eagles got smacked down to last place in the NFC East by the New York Giants and even though I did not know it then, the Detroit Lions were paving the road to Victory and carving a very special place in my heart w/their win in overtime against the Minnesota Vikings.

When we pulled off the highway on Monday I was salty&hung over but certainly feeling better than that sad cowboy back at the Interurban.  He bet with his heart and he lost it all.

We pulled into the parking lot of Bombay Express off 35N at Rundberg.  We were watching the Cowboys game over plates full of Tandoori Chicken and Lamb Roganjosh.  We made it home in good time but now this…

The Cowboys were down by a point with two minutes on the clock and my temporary crown had come off.  There were bones in every bite of Mutton Korma, but in my fatigue&rage and  hate&disgust I just crunched down on them in pain.  I lost it all to some Indian in a pro-Wrestling tee shirt.  You should never bet with your heart.  My boss felt for me.  She paid our tab and we left.

Before the turn off at Lamar some drug addled freak was dancing on the corner.  He looked like some mutant hybrid of Michael Jordan and Flavor Flav during his crack years.

 He was going for the full workout and for full attention.  His candied cocaine dancemoves had me transfixed in disgust&horror.  The best ethnic restaurants are always in the ghetto.
There is trouble in the ghetto but it was Monday in America and there was trouble everywhere.