Jean

About 30 miles outside Las Vegas is the little town of Jean. It has two casinos and a prison, a good model for the future of America. The casinos have huge billboards covered with high intensity lights so you can see they have 99 cent shrimp cocktails from 20 miles away.

I stayed at one of the casinos, the Nevada Landing, during several COMDEX's. The place was a major stopping point for truckers. I guess it is a convenient distance from LA and Nevada Landing caters to the truckers with big lots marked off for rigs. They weren't too careful about remembering if you wanted a nonsmoking room. I once had one that was so bad everything I had ended up smelling like cigarettes

The place was mostly deserted during the week but packed on the weekend. They bring in busloads of people from LA. There is no transportation to Las Vegas so they are stuck there for the weekend, grinding away on the slots.

One time I found a defective nickel slot machine there. It paid 5 nickels when it was supposed to pay 3. My pile of nickels kept getting bigger, much to the dismay of the change lady, who knew you couldn't slowly grind up on slot machines. I walked away with about $50 in nickels before the thing broke completely.

Primm