Casino-mania
The first time I actually set foot in a casino was while I was in the Navy. It was probably either late 1968 or early 1969, on one of the first Caribbean cruises that I took. I believe I was serving on the USS Boxer at the time, and we were visiting the island of Nassau. The casino was British owned and operated, with an opulence that can’t be imagined outside of movies.
Except for the other sailors present (we were in our dress blues) it seemed that every man was dressed in tuxedos or dinner jackets, while the women were all in the most expensive gowns you could imagine. At eighteen years of age, to me it seemed as if I had stepped into a scene from a James Bond film.
Besides getting my first taste of slots and watching the more experienced folks at the tables, seeming unimpressed to be dropping stacks of chips, I learned the wonderful fact that if you played you were offered ‘free drinks’. Well, hell, you certainly can’t go wrong with a great deal like that!
I mean, what could be more sophisticated than dropping twenty bucks in a machine and getting a watered down rum & coke (worth maybe four bucks). So okay, maybe it seemed like a good deal at the time.
I have long since lost count of the various casinos that I’ve frequented both here and abroad, but there is still a thrill I get whenever I travel and find myself entering a new gambling establishment for the first time. They are all so different in the way they try to fashion the total experience of the patrons.
I’m certainly not going to try and top what Joe Bob Briggs is doing over on his site with his regular “Vegas Guy” column, but I do plan on running several posts (spread over the next month or so) on my personal experiences. Along the way I’ll probably post some links to casino websites so you can check out things for yourself.
The first two will deal with my visits to Las Vegas. Later I’ll have some comments on Atlantic City, followed by shorter accounts of visits to the two ‘native American’ casinos here in Connecticut (Foxwoods & Mohegan Sun) and also one on what I’ve experienced in the shipboard casinos of both the Carnival & Celebrity cruise lines.