Las Vegas and Grand Canyon

[Jim Colyer]

My son and I flew to Las Vegas June 7, and returned June 13, 2007. We spent the first two nights at the Sahara at the north end of the Strip. The third and fourth nights we were in the Red Feather Lodge at the Grand Canyon. We stayed at New York-New York the last two nights. We flew Southwest Airlines. I bought tickets at the airport using my check card. We concentrated on the new side of Vegas. We rode the monorail which links the Strip from the Sahara to the MGM Grand. Themed hotels are the stars in today's Vegas.

We landed at McCarran Airport at and took the shuttle to the Sahara. We travelled light, taking things which were necessary. The city of lights came to life on our first night. We relished the view from the Eiffel Tower at Paris Las Vegas. The Tower is a 1/2 replica of the real thing. Vegas sprawled across the desert. Its population has grown to 1.8 million.

Las Vegas has changed since I was there in 1993. There are mega-hotels: New York-New York, Bellagio, Paris Las Vegas, Venetian, Mandalay Bay and Luxor. They exist for the purpose of making money for the people who own and operate them. We spent conservatively and aimed for an experience consistent with our needs.

We knew why we were here and what we were going to do. We bought a digital camera, and Michael got 140 pictures. We walked through the hotels. The Bellagio fountains put on a spectacular show while Elvis sang Viva Las Vegas. The Bellagio was Michael's favorite. He called it a "5 star high roller." It was built by Steve Wynn. We saw Bob Dole in the casino.

Our second day began with Michael getting his picture with a showgirl at Harrah's. He glowed! We visited the antique car collection at the Imperial Palace. I posed behind a 1955 Cadillac Elmerado.

People were everywhere. We kept moving and doing things. We played video poker. I helped Michael with the hands, having played poker in my younger days. We ate well while keeping the cost down. When we were tired, we rested. We walked to Mandalay Bay at the south end of the Strip. We watched the Yankees play the Diamondbacks. The Bay is home to Mamma Mia! I told Michael we would see the movie.

They had started the Luxor the last time I was there. I kept thinking, "That looks like a pyramid." Then someone told me it was. The beam from the top can be seen 250 miles away. The Sphinx and the obelisk are out front. An obelisk is a four-sided needle of stone with a pyramid top. The idea of a curse always surrounds Egyptian stuff. It is not true, of course, but it plays with your head.

Phase 2
We rented a car and drove to the Grand Canyon. We stopped at Hoover Dam on the way. A bypass is being built. The dam provides electricity for California, Arizona and Nevada.

Michael drove. We took 93 south to Kingman, Arizona, and went east on Interstate 40 to Williams. We headed north on 64. It is a 4 or 5 hour drive. We had reservations at the Red Feather Lodge in Tusayan, near the park entrance.

I spotted it, the most awesome spectacle on the planet! The Grand Canyon! We pulled over for a picture. We stopped at a number of overlooks along the south rim.

We attended the star party at Yavapai Point. We saw Jupiter and Saturn through telescopes. I pointed out the Big Dipper and North Star to Michael. The Grand Canyon Star Party (GCSP) takes place each June. I want to be in the Valley of Fire for the Perseid meteor shower in 2010. There will be no moon.

We drove to Desert View Watchtower at the eastern end of the south rim. The tower was built by architect Mary Jane Colter. We climbed it. At Desert View, Michael and I saw the Colorado River at the bottom of the Canyon.

We saw hikers rehearsing at Bright Angel Trail for their descent the next morning. Michael said the next time he comes, he will go to the bottom. The length of the Canyon is 277 miles. The Colorado River cut it over 7 million years. The rocks at the bottom are two billion years old.

The Colorado River flows from the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains through the Canyon. It dumps into the Gulf of California. The Grand Canyon became a national park in 1919.

We were at the Canyon two nights. Michael thought one night would have been enough. I insisted it is not every day that two guys from Nashville see the Grand Canyon.

Valleys are in the east. Canyons are in the west. There is a sameness about the red buttes and mesas which makes it hard to concentrate on them.

Phase 3
Back in Vegas, we checked into New York-New York. Our room was on the 25th floor.

New York New York is a replica of the New York skyline. There are the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty and the Bar at Times Square.

I soaked in the tub each morning and wore my straw hat to keep the sun off the top of my head. I had the bag Charlotte bought me when I went to Sweden. Michael took a suitcase. We watched TV in our room before going to sleep.

Michael sat by the pool while I visited the Atomic Testing Museum. We checked out the Palms because it had a Playboy club. We ate at the Outback, my first time. I had "shrimp on the barbie."

The Beatles' Love was at the Mirage.

We went to Fremont Street downtown and got pictures of Vegas Vic and Sassy Sally.

We saw Jubilee! our last night in town. I saved it for the finale. Jubilee! was started by Donn Arden. He exploited the showgirl persona.

We went to Red Rock Canyon the morning before we left. Red Rock is a National Conservation Area protected by the Bureau of Land Management. It is a 13-mile loop out Charleston Boulevard. The red sandstone formations make an interesting drive. The Las Vegas Astronomical Society meets there. I may join them. Michael saw Joshua trees for the first time.

We made our way to McCarran Airport and flew to Nashville. It was a direct flight. Karen met us.

My goal was to introduce Michael to one of the country's most exciting cities and to give him an experience in the west. I try to bolster his confidence and his ability to get around. Chances are, he will attend a convention in Vegas in the future. I told him the city is a magnet and he will return.

[vashti]

Umm... who are you?

[Jim Colyer]

I was born in Louisville, Kentucky on December 29, 1945. Famous people with whom I share a birthday are Mary Tyler Moore and Andrew Johnson, the only President besides Bill Clinton to be impeached. I grew up 15 miles east of Louisville in Middletown. School began for me in the fall of 1952. I hated school, everything about it. My first grade teacher grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me because I tried to work a puzzle which was too hard for me without first asking. She was a dominatrix. She had two huge dogs which she prized. Maybe that is why I hate dogs to this day. Anyway, I went through grade school and high school without opening my mouth. I sat and waited for the bell to ring at 3 o'clock so I could go home and listen to rock & roll records on my little turntable. I bought Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis. Only in my senior year did I find a means of expressing myself in public. It was 1964, the year of The Beatles. I latched on to The Beatles. I looked in the mirror and saw John Lennon. If I had no talent and was too lazy to work, at least I could grow my hair. My hair became my vocation. I sat up half the night trying to write songs. My mother pulled me out of bed each morning by my arm. She was determined I would graduate from high school. I strolled through commencement like a zombie in that stupid cap and gown. The cap crushed my Beatle hairdo. Thank God it was over!

Little did I know, it was only beginning! President John Kennedy was assassinated during my senior year of high school. It set off a tumultuous chain of events that took 13 years to run its course. The Vietnam War, race riots, illegal drugs, religious fanaticism, women's liberation, homosexuality and the political corruption of Watergate piled wave upon wave. I plowed through my 20s. I got an Associate degree from Lindsey Wilson College in central Kentucky in 1967. I was majoring in English. For the first time, I was taking an interest in literature. I was reading novels and grappling with European history. I thirsted for knowledge. I was eligible for the draft. Like other young men, I was confused about Vietnam. The war made no sense. Nor did the draft. We were told we were in Vietnam to contain Communism. I had trouble understanding what a Communist was. No man could look at another man and recognize him as a Communist. The isolated position of Vietnam was a problem. It lay behind the Philippines on the map. It did not jut out like the Korean penninsula. It was hard to get to, hard to defend. The draft was hard to justify. Something in me was saying no man had the right to take another man off the street and put him in a war against his will. Nevertheless, the draft was real. You went when you were called or risked the chance of being sent to prison. After getting a third year of college as an English major, my draft papers came. My education was without direction, and I went into the Army in October, 1969. I took basic training at Fort Knox, Kentucky. After further training in radio school, I received orders for Germany. I remember standing in formation and looking at those orders. Imagine my relief! By 1969-70, most of America had turned against the war. Richard Nixon was slowly pulling troops out. Vietnam was becoming something people wanted to forget. I set off for Germany. I had studied German for two semesters. I knew a few words, that was all. Once in Frankfurt, I readily found the prostitutes spoke fluent English. I avoided them. I was thinking of the girl I left behind. I knew it was over but consoled myself with false hope. I did not care for Germany. It was dark and depressing. The buildings were drab. It was like going back to the Middle Ages. I ended up in a nuclear platoon. It was over my head. I drank too much German beer. Potent stuff! By the time I was discharged from the Army, America had changed. Hippie life had become a norm with young people. A grass roots religious movement was sweeping the country. Baby boomers searched for answers in the aftermath of war. They looked to Buddhism and different forms of mysticism. Cults flourished. I became involved with a group of Jesus Freaks for awhile in Louisville. We attended a Pentacostal church, spoke in tongues and wrote Gospel songs. Jesus Paid My Debt came from that period. To this day, I regard the essense of the New Testament as ultimate reality.

In late 1973, I recorded a song called Long Live Rock & Roll. It was a tribute to what was then 20 years of rock & roll. I pressed 1000 copies in Nashville and mailed them across the country. I would hear from that song. In 1981, I was working for the State of Tennesse in Nashville. The people who had the publishing on "Long Live Rock & Roll" called to tell me Elvis Presley recorded my song before he died and that RCA had released it on an 8-record set called "Elvis Aron Presley." I was ecstatic. Wasn't this what I had dreamed of? I went to a record shop and bought the vinyl set. I took it home and played it. I was disappointed. It was my title, and I was credited as the writer, but it was not my song. It was hard to say what it was. The band was jamming and Elvis was moaning. My dad said it was my song. I knew it was not. We argued. It makes a funny story today, but it was all irrelevant to the fact that making a record gave me new hope. I could do things. What next? I decided to finish college with help from the GI Bill. I had a plan. I had the idea of being a librarian since I had read a variety of books by this time and wanted to be around them. It did not occur to me that I did not have the temperament of a librarian. I was a bull in a china closet. I had to do something. I got my Bachelor's Degree in English from Union College in Barbourville, Kentucky. Nearly all my courses were independent. I wrote papers and took them in. I took courses in Greek drama, the British Romantic poets and Shakespeare. I was out of my mind but graduated and moved to Nashville to get a Master's Degree in Library Science from Peabody College. Peabody is now part of Vanderbilt University. I am living in an apartment complex at Vanderbilt as I type, 30 years later. It is hard not to believe in full circles. I got my degree and took a library job at Castle Heights Military Academy in Lebanon, Tennessee, east of Nashville off Interstate 40. It was a high school. For someone who hated school, I could not get enough of it. I was in my early 30s. Working with teenagers gave me a sense of responsibility. I quit drinking and tried to hold myself as an example for young people. I put on the same uniform I wore in the Army several years earlier. It was not easy. I was neither a soldier nor librarian by nature. These were things I was caught up in from my youth. My second year at Castle Heights, the songwriter in me came out. I put together a band from among the students. We recorded an album with a friend of mine named Bill Davis. I met Bill while attending Peabody. He was a music student with ambitions of writing serious music. He would make quotation signs with his fingers when he talked about "serious music." Our album was centered around a song I wrote called "Phoenix." We called the album "Phoenix Rising." I was fascinated with the idea of resurrection, the idea of rising from one's own ashes. I liked comebacks. Comeback songs became a category within my catalog. I came to suspect I may be knocking myself down so I could have the opportunity of making still another comeback. The album left me closer to the students than the faculty, and I received a pink slip. I could no longer do the military thing. I was 32. Jimmy Carter was President. Times were good, and disco music was on fire. ABBA was on the radio with "Dancing Queen." The Bee Gees answered with "Night Fever." I wanted a girl friend. I wanted a house. I wanted to get married. I bought a house in Lebanon and moved in alone. In October, 1978, I took another library job (God! I was not cut out to be a librarian!), this time with the State of Tennessee in Nashville.

Destiny stepped in! While at Castle Heights, I fell in love with the wife of a faculty member. We paired off every night in the cafeteria. We gazed dreamily into each other's eyes and confided our feelings of alienation. "We are under siege." she said. Her hair was dark, her eyes blue and her skin seductively pale. She reminded me of Madame Bovary from Gustav Flaubert's novel, the tragic, lonely wife waiting for some mystery lover to wisk her away to a better place. I wanted to. I thought it was going to happen. I contemplated it for two years. There was one huge obstacle. She had two young boys. It was not in me to take someone else's kids. The spell broke. I bought the house and lay in bed every night for 10 months hurting over this woman. Her husband finally told me she had a boy friend, a disc jockey from Knoxville. There would be a divorce, but she was not moving in with me. The pain cut like a knife. I vowed that if I ever became enamored with another married woman, I would strike like lightning!

[Jim Colyer]

It did not take long. I went to work at the Tennessee State Library as the Serials Librarian. My assistant sat behind me at her desk. This was Karen. I had no way of knowing Karen was the future mother of my son. We talked and got to know each other quickly. Karen was married to a man who worked on another floor of the library. It was the same story, another unhappy wife. She told me that the week before she loaded her car and drove around the block only to return because she had nowhere to go. Karen wanted a house. Her husband wanted to drink his money up and run off to Florida everytime he got a chance. Karen wanted a baby. Her husband did not want a baby because he had a child by a previous marriage. Karen and I sat side by side, checking in serials. She tought me the job. The chemistry was strong. We sat rubbing our legs together. Other employees noticed. Ten days after I took the job, Karen was in my bed in Lebanon. We set up a pattern of Thursday nights. Karen told her husband she was selling Avon. She would drive from Nashville to be with me. One night, we met on a corner next to the library to go to a movie. A fellow employee drove by in his car. We were sure he saw us. We saw a Woody Allen movie that night called "Interiors," one of his worst. Things came to a head. I told Karen to leave her husband and move in with me. I was 32. I had a house and an income. I promised her a baby. She was not sure. We lay on the floor of my living room after sex. She cried and asked me to give her six months to think it over. Her mascara ran. I laughed and told her she looked like Alice Cooper. Six months was too long. I insisted she move in right away. She said she would do it after Thanksgiving. Karen spent Thanksgiving with her husband and detested in-laws. She remembered thinking, "This is the last time." Karen's daddy rented a U-Haul and moved her furniture and belongings to my house the next day while her husband was at work. It was Friday. Karen and I fell asleep in each other's arms that night. It would be that way for awhile. We did the right thing. God was on our side!

A clash with Karen's husband was inevitable. He was waiting for us Monday morning, pacing on the sidewalk outside the library. He and I butted heads over the next few weeks. The climax came in the lobby of the library. We went after each other. He was bigger. I was more determined. I had him by the hair with his head down. He shook like a bull. I was a matador. We inched toward the stairwell. A wrong move, and we would have gone over.

I heard a bellowing voice. "What in the hell is going on here?" We looked up. It was the head librarian, a crusty, cigarette-smoking dyke. Behind her, library employees were peeking through the main doors, their necks stretching to see the fight. It was over. I was given two weeks notice. Fistacuffs were not expected from library-types. Karen and I left together, and I would never use my degree again.

I had been through Las Vegas the previous summer. I got the idea of finding work in Vegas. Karen and I loaded my Ford Maverick and left for Las Vegas on Flag Day, June 14, 1979. We drove west on Interstate 40. A couple of nights in motels, and we found ourselves cruising down Las Vegas Boulevard. We rented an apartment and looked for work. It was useless, at least for me. The trip gradually turned into a tour of the American west. After a month in Las Vegas, we retreated to Nashville. Karen got her divorce. It took a year because her idiot husband contested it. He sued me for "alienation of affection." I could not believe a lawyer would take such a rediculous case. He found one stupid enough to take it. Karen and I were married in April, 1980. I came in one morning from working all night at the U.S. Post Office. Karen informed me it was time to get married. I was going to wear jeans. She made me change into a pair of slacks. We drove to the courthouse in Lebanon. We were married by a woman. I tipped her $20. One picture was taken of Karen and myself kissing. It was enough. It felt no different now that we were married than it did when we were living together.

These were years of travel, my 30s. Karen and I were loose on the country. I was fascinated with great places. Suddenly, I was free to go to places I had heard about all my life. My galleries are filled with pictures. Karen took them. I wrote papers. After awhile, I had that full circle feeling. We were repeating. As prices went up, we got less from it.

Karen and I began watching "Dallas" in the fall of 1979. It sounds crazy but when J.R. and Sue Ellen became parents on the show, that was when I realized I was going to be a father. I never thought it possible before. Karen and I knew we would be parents. We also believed we would have a boy which is what she wanted.

I built up a collection of books on human sexuality. I must have had 20. I studied diagrams of the female reproductive organs. I learned about ovaries, Fallopian tubes and the uterus. I visualized my sperm cell working its way through Karen's tubes to fertilize her ovum.

Karen removed her IUD (Intra-Uterine Device). She began trying to get pregnant. Things often go awry, and it takes a couple of times to get them right. That is how it was. Karen was pregnant by late 1982. In March, 1983, she called me where I was working as a printer for the State of Tennessee. She was at the doctor's. She had a miscarriage. I recall walking through the streets of downtown Nashville with tears in my eyes. That night, Karen and I hugged in the kitchen. I said we would try again. Karen must have gotten pregnant the second time around June 11. Michael Brandon Colyer was born 9 months later on March 11, 1984. As it turned out, the pregnancies were so close that only one of the babies could be born. This was hard to understand and hard to explain. I accepted it as God's will. I came to feel that God brought me to Nashville for the purpose of becoming Michael's father. Years later, I felt He brought me back to help my son after he got older. Karen and I divorced, and I ended up living in my parents' basement in Louisville. But I lived with Michael over a year, long enough to establish a permanent relationship. He never forgot me.

I turned 40 in my parents' basement. It seemed my life was over. I would be in the basement 12 years, 1985-1997. We perceive time differently after 40. It becomes a running facet. Days, months and years slip by with little meaning. We approach 50. We feel our strength ebb and watch ourselves turn gray in the mirror. We depise the music of the day and have no interest in television. We long for our youth and are envious of the younger generation.

"I must go on." I wrote that line, New Year's Eve, 1985. Everything I have done since has grown from that seed. Michael came first. I was virtually broke but started going to Michael when I could afford it. There was no pattern. I went to Nashville when something inside me told me the time was right. I would either get a motel and do things with Michael and Karen or bring him to Louisville. My parents sometimes went with me. I would have been on the street without them. It was the same for Karen. Her parents built an apartment onto their house for her and Michael.

The basement years passed. I read books and wrote papers. I wrote a book about ABBA. I watched movies on home video. I went to Las Vegas and Sweden. Bill Clinton was elected president, then reelected. It was 1997, and there was a 70s revival. I had an environmental pop song called Save The Planet and advertized for a female vocalist in a local music paper. A lady in southern Indiana answered my ad. I went to her house. We made a tape of my song in her living room. I still believe in that song and finally recorded it in Nashville at Direct Image Studio. I sang it myself. For such a song to gain acceptance, I feel we need to be in a liberal era. A Republican administration and a War on Terror are not a favorable climate. Hopefully, we will win this war and peace will be restored.

I ended up back in Nashville in July, 1997 in an apartment on Music Row. It happened quickly. I began writing songs like crazy, girl songs. It was the Shania Twain era. In retrospect, it seems like destiny. I came to feel that God brought me back to Nashville to help Michael. He was 13, and it was good for me to be close so I could get to him when he needed me. We began having meals together and seeing movies. We talked about life, school, girls and the future. We had many conversations while riding in the Nissan truck I bought at Hippodrome on Broadway.

I was singing my songs on public access TV. It kept the ball rolling. I was recording girl singers with Doc Dockery in Indiana and Kenny Royster in Nashville. My biggest problem was trying not to fall in love with my current singer whoever she was. Songs poured out of me: All Roads Lead To You, I'm The One, Hard Earned Love, Half Crazy Half The Time, Rough Night, Heartbreaker, Name, Number & Message, The Truth. I was a genius in my own mind as the 20th century faded into the 21st. I did karaoke. I sang the songs of the big 4: Elvis Presley, The Beatles, ABBA and Shania Twain. Being older, it did not bother me to get up and sing a Shania song. I was writing for women anyway. I tried not to be affected by 9/11. There was no way not to be. It touched us all. I voted for John Kerry in 2004 but eventually became a Bush supporter. One thing I have learned is to keep an eye on the future. I took Michael to Florida while he was in high school. I took him to New York City and Washington, D.C. in his third year of college. I will take him west. I am thinking Las Vegas, Hollywood, the Grand Canyon and the Sequoias. We are making plans.

Jim Colyer

[misombra]

damn.
_____

[Steve2004]

wait. you have a son? does that mean you're married? are you the one that's in love with a married woman? so you're BOTH married. holy jesus. i'm going to tell you right now, you're not going to get any positive feedback

[vashti]

You sang the songs of the "big 4": Elvis Presley, The Beatles, ABBA and Shania Twain?!?

Bahahahahahahahaha!!!!

[jurupa]

Quote:

Originally Posted by vashti

Umm... who are you?

Why the hell did you ask him that? He posted a dam book about him self.

[Charlie Boy II]

This guy's just a whole new brand of freak.

[Only-virgins]

I'm just going to Vegas for one thing, women. Shame you don't speak of that much...I heard they are dirt cheap and awesome over there. F the rest of that shit.

[jurupa]

Cheap yes, as far as being awesome, I don't know about that.

[Only-virgins]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jurupa

Cheap yes, as far as being awesome, I don't know about that.

As long as they are not fat...then awesome they are.