Lost and Found in the Whale Room

Sure, people talk about Travels with Charley and Blue Highways, but for me the Definitive Travel Book is Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  “We were almost out of Barstow when the bats descended” paraphrases a paragraph in Thompson’s ode to the road trip that frequently comes to mind in all sorts of situations – often involving my buddy Plotts, but not always.  Thompson also had a keen political insight (at least up until the point in his life where decades of serious drug use seemed to prove Nancy Reagan correct) but his description of driving through the desert with his attorney, a giant Samoan man who would say things like, “as your attorney, I advise you to drink heavily,” has always stayed with me as his Classic American Story.

Therefore, when my friend Mitch (“Jeanne Michelle” is just too long) and I decided that she should blow off a couple of days and get some R&R before I left town, and wound up in an Indian casino in western Michigan, Fear and Loathing seemed an appropriate theme.

(I feel obligated to clarify that there were no psychotropic drugs involved in the making of this story, and the fact that I feel obliged to make that statement illustrates a key difference between Our Age and Thompson’s.  You can decide for yourself whether that constitutes progress.)

To begin, it was a beautiful day.  High 70’s in late October is something to be treasured, so we started with lunch on the deck at El Azteca, everybody’s favorite Fort Wayne Mexican restaurant.  To my own surprise, I ordered a Diet Pepsi rather than a margarita, but it was early and I wanted to pace myself.  After the significant logistical undertaking of letting Mitch’s dogs out (she has a Newfoundland which is larger than all of my brother’s children combined, and that’s just one of her dogs), we hit the highway.

Perhaps we should have taken a back road, but out of habit we jumped on I-69 to Satek Winery in Angola.  I’d never been, and despite their lack of Triscuits, our little wine tasting was productive.  The wine was good and the wine guy (sommelier?  proprietor?  vino-master?) had lots of interesting things to tell us.  He talked fast and I drink fast, so the experience felt a bit like a quickie, but not in a bad way.  To no one's surprise, Mitch and I bought enough wine to easily qualify for their volume discount.  (Our host was polite enough not to suggest that we apply for distributor status with his company.)  And in my own defense, I was buying to take to Omaha for my family - a combination of hostess gift and what I have learned to be standard Hoosier defensiveness that yes, there are good things here.

With the back of the Vue loaded down with the fruits of Indiana agriculture, I suggested that it might be fun to hit the Firekeepers Casino in Battle Creek (or maybe it's Marshall -  one of those Michigan towns along I-94 that all sort of run together).  Mitch was up for nearly anything at that point (her tolerance for wine being a little lower than mine), so we started north.

I am not an expert on Indian casinos, or even the so-called “riverboat” casinos that are apparently considered more morally acceptable than casinos on dry land, but Firekeepers seemed pretty typical to me:  gigantic parking lot, impressive parking garage and lots of room for tour buses, surrounding a nice (if unadorned) entrance into a large windowless building.  Except for the fire burning out front (“Firekeepers” – get it?) we could have been in Council Bluffs or Michigan City.  Still, blackjack is blackjack and I had no complaints.

Up until now, Mitch’s casino experience had been limited to Hoosier Park in Anderson, which for the non-Hoosiers out there, is a horse racetrack supplemented with slot machines and automated table games as a way of generating revenue for A) the State of Indiana and B) the owners (in that order) when parimutuel betting took a dive in the 1990’s.  So this was the first “real” casino she’d been in.  She was a little disappointed at the, um, understated building.  It’s not a pole barn, but it’s no MGM Grand, either.  Those Indians are frugal people and nobody’s going to look at the building anyway.  And did I mention the fire in front?  Firekeepers, get it?

We found the $10 blackjack tables and I promptly dropped $100.  I have never played at such a cold table – and it wasn’t that I’m not good at blackjack.  I mean, I’m NOT good at blackjack, but nearly every hand was going to be a loser regardless of what I did.  I’ve never seen so many 4's.  And when you’re playing a 4 against the dealer’s 7, to quote the guy from Argo:  “this is the best bad idea we can come up with.”  No good choices.  And so, off in search of the bar.

We were ably assisted in our quest for beverages by a nice young man named Lane who complained of feeling badly after a workout.  Sometimes it’s best just to nod and smile sympathetically and hope that no more details are forthcoming.  Fortunately, none were, and even with his impairment, Lane mixed a nice drink.

It is both the joy and the curse of cellphones that even in a casino you can be tracked down by someone with a political situation to discuss.  And I was.  And so I did.  Talking about Fort Wayne politics at a casino in Michigan while everyone is getting ready to watch the Tigers play Game One of the World Series is a little weird, but one adjusts.  Still, after a few minutes we clearly needed to leave the bar and find our Next Stop.

Which turned out to be a lovely lounge with a fireplace (Firekeepers, get it?), several TVs, a bar, and a little couch area.  We plopped down on the couches, received drinks from a Very Nice Waitress, and congratulated ourselves on our good fortune in finding such a comfortable little place.  Another political call from My Attorney (for the record, he is not Samoan - not that there's anything wrong with that), and we decided that the classic bar appetizer of 1998, hot artichoke dip, was just what the doctor ordered.  When I told him where we were, My Attorney confided that his Official Ban from Firekeepers had probably just about expired, which had involved a recent incident involving him taking a large drink of beer while standing at a craps table just as one of his associates made a funny comment, resulting in the beer being spewed all over the craps table, requiring a team of men in hazmat suits to clean up, closing down the table on a Friday night much to the consternation of all concerned.  But that had been several months ago, and to be fair to him, beer probably wasn’t the worst thing that had ever been spewed on that table.

It was around this time that I observed that the menu didn’t contain prices.  I mentioned this to Mitch, along with the gnawing feeling that we weren’t supposed to be here, and she provided the kind of advice which is the reason we are friends.  “It is the job of people in the hospitality industry to make you feel comfortable.  They didn’t stop us when we came in, right?  Besides, look around, it’s not like we don’t fit in.”  Of course, she was right – we were squarely in the middle of the crowd, appearance-wise, other than a barely noticeable lack of Tigers fanware.  So I settled back down and enjoyed it.

Suddenly, an idea popped into my little head.  “We need to call Henry!”  Henry (of course that’s not his real name) is a friend of Mitch’s whose job takes him constantly on the road.  Our initial thought for the road trip had actually been “let’s find out where Henry is going to be this weekend and meet him there.”  Although the plan had been slightly modified by Life’s Demands, we weren’t yet ready to give up the essential element in our Great Adventure.  So I called Henry, because it is true that most people never progress past middle school in their behavior.  At least, at that moment, Mitch and I hadn’t.  Henry recovered his confusion very admirably and advised that he would be in Detroit on Friday night with an uncertain plan for Saturday.  Ahh, this could actually happen.

As the central character in this little report, Mitch has had editorial control over it.  So, if you are now reading about how giddy she was it’s because she’s okay with my sharing it on the interwebs.  One might have initially credited the whisky for her giggling but since that lasted long after the whisky wore off I would have to say that the cause was something else.  Okay, someone else.

We sat around and giggled until the Very Nice Waitress stopped by again and we asked to settle up.  That will be Five Fifty, she said.  Looking at the debris of two cocktails, an appetizer, and two bottles of water, I was uncertain what I heard.  I was expecting a lot more than $5.50, but $550.00 seemed more than a little stiff for a casino in Western Michigan.  Mitch, being more assertive than I, called the Very Nice Waitress back over to ask for clarification.  And now, the Moment of Truth. 

“It was $11 but you get half off,” she said.  We looked confused.  “You aren’t VIP members?”

Ummm….no.

“Well, then I cannot give you half off, and I do need to ask you to leave,” she was half-apologizing and half-commanding.  It was actually an odd tone that I don’t think I’d ever heard before.

Even $11 seemed ridiculously cheap for what we’d consumed so I gave her a large tip and we left before she needed to call security.  After all, she was a Very Nice Waitress.

My desire to play more blackjack was somewhat muted by this time.  We watched some guys playing a more traditional form of blackjack – that is, the kind where you win some and you lose some, and all of the cards aren’t 4’s – until Mitch received a text from a friend in Fort Wayne who advised that we were missing a great time at the North Star Bar and Grill (more bar than grill, but who’s counting), what with the live music and good company and all, and we immediately departed back to Indiana, Land of Freedom.

Southbound we amused ourselves with Aretha Franklin and the Allman Brothers – not at the same time, of course, although come to think of it that might be an interesting mélange.  I spent most of the ninety minute drive trying to decide whether I was playing Raoul Duke (the Thompson character) or his attorney.  Obviously my initial instinct was to be Duke, but I didn’t want to be unfair to Mitch because it’s always more fun to be Duke and I hate to be grabby.  I reached no resolution to that internal struggle before we hit the North Star, leaving yet one more unanswered question for my vision quest.