In the fall of 1970, I moved my family from New Orleans to Las Vegas, where I had taken a job in legal publishing. Since I was already a jogger and handball player, I immediately started looking for an athletic club to join. The only club I could find that was open to the public was the old YMCA on Casino Center Boulevard and Bonanza Road.
This was a great location for me because every day, for an extended lunchtime, everything I wanted was there in one place. The other guys in the club were insurance agents, accountants, attorneys and business owners, and they all accepted me into their group. Before long, I was jogging Bonanza Hill (at the rear of the pack) or skipping across the street to the Dula Center to play handball. Sometimes (when the teams were desperately short of players) I played basketball.
In the late 1970s as the city grew, the YMCA moved west, and other public athletic clubs opened up. Meanwhile, I moved south to Henderson.
I'll never forget those guys at the Y and that's true for two reasons: Because of the fun we had together, and because I still read their names in the paper every day. Those guys went on to become assemblymen, city councilmen and county commissioners. One became a district attorney, another a governor and one is now a United States senator.
Even today, I can't drive through the Spaghetti Bowl without noticing the RV park where the Y used to be, the place that gave me so many pleasurable memories during my early days in Las Vegas.
ALBERT LEVITT
DALLAS
The summer days of boyhood
My story is a simple remembrance of Helldorado Days, 1962. I was the 8-year-old son of an enlisted Air Force staff sergeant at Nellis Air Force Base. We lived on Miekle Lane near the base.
That year, my father and I went to one of the Helldorado rodeo events with a friend of the family and his son. What sticks out in my memory was the pageantry of the parade that opened the rodeo. All the horses were decked out in highly decorated silver harnesses and saddles.
Somehow, the rodeo riders made less of an impression on me than the clowns. My 8-year-old brain wondered, "How could anyone be so brave as to run around in front of those bulls, taunt them over and over again, then jump into a barrel and hold on for a ride?" Only the clowns were that brave.
I left the rodeo that day with a small rubber toy -- a horse and rider. I'd press a small plunger and the horse would buck repeatedly. I wore that toy out, yet that horse never did throw that rubber rider.
My father retired from the USAF in 1971, and I followed his lead and retired from the USAF in 1994. My family and I now live in New Hampshire.
Las Vegas will always hold a special place in my memory -- the glorious summer days and us kids running barefoot, shirtless, and shoeless under the relentless summer sun; tirelessly chasing the occasional horned toad or lizard always amazed that the lizard's tail kept wiggling while the rest of its body scampered into the brush.
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