Chapter 48 - Lost My Shirt in Vegas

AFTER THE DEBACLE with Bob Ringe at Mr. Chow’s in August, Blair was now living full time in Las Vegas with Caroleen Fisher, the heiress to the Fisher pen fortune. He would still drive in on the weekends to write and play music with Michael Japp, (who had just gotten a deal on Motown Records) and Stephen, (who was commuting from Santa Monica or staying on Michael and Ciri’s couch) on a part time basis. Robin and I felt like it would be a promising idea to get away from the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles and pay Blair a visit in Vegas. It would be nice to go out to the desert without having to deal with any UFO’s or channeling religious zealots getting inside information from the rings of Saturn.

 So early one late summer’s morning, we drove up to the ultimate American city of sin in my mom's Mercedes with no more than fifty bucks between us. Fortunately, my mom had lent me her Union 76 credit card for gas, which was about seventy cents a gallon. We had packed a puptent and planned on pitching it at one of the local campgrounds in the area if it wasn't too expensive— if it was, we thought we might set up camp in one of the empty lots next to a hotel on the Strip. We stopped at Bun Boy in Baker, California and we ordered the cheapest burger on the menu, then I went to a phone booth (remember them?) to give Blair a call. He said he would meet us at Cleopatra's Barge in Caesar's Palace, the place he used to play music with Bruce Westcott four or five years earlier. On the way there, we checked out some of the campgrounds, but they wanted too much money, so we decided we were going to find somewhere on the strip or nearby to camp.

We arrived in Vegas about three in the afternoon and the sun was blistering hot, so we thought it best to wait until dusk to make our camp We scouted out a place to pitch the tent in an empty lot between The Tropicana and some new hotel they were building that was about halfway completed. In the meantime, we would try to find Blair and maybe I would gamble a little, if he was late, and he usually was.

 We got to Caesar's Palace a little early, so I thought I would try my luck at blackjack. I promised myself I wouldn't gamble with more than twenty dollars—that would be my limit. I had envisioned making a windfall but the only way to do that was to win right off the bat. I went to a two-dollar table where there was an attractive blonde dealer who seemed to fancy me. It was all an act I realized, because after five minutes I had lost all my money. Robin was angry and I didn't blame her. Fortunately, she still had around twenty dollars left and we figured, if I didn't gamble that away, we would have enough for dinner and breakfast in the morning.

Blair was at his designated post at a table in front of the barge and we sat down, and he ordered drinks for all. His girlfriend Caroleen showed up fifteen minutes later and he bought her a gin and tonic. Caroleen was an attractive looking blonde, (Blair always had attractive women in his life) with big blue eyes and a toothy smile. She reminded me a lot of Cynthia but without the big Farrah Faucett hairstyle. We sat down and listened to Bruce Westcott (yes he was still there four years later) and his band and after a while Blair was asked to sit in. They sounded cool for a Vegas cover band. Soon, Blair wanted to do a little gambling and I was embarrassed to say that I couldn't join in because I had already exhausted my allotted funds. We figured it was best we parted company— saying if time allowed we would meet up again the next day, besides, it was around sunset, and we had a tent to pitch. We parked the Mercedes in the back of the empty lot behind a billboard sign so no cops would hassle us, and we made camp. It must have been a funny sight to see a small two-person puptent in between a luxury hotel and the construction site of a halfway completed luxury hotel. The ground was hard and rocky, and I don't think we got a minute's sleep; besides, the heat was unbearable, even at night.

The next morning, we woke just before dawn and the wind was blowing furiously like a gale, and it was difficult to break down the tent but somehow we managed. I knew gambling was out of the question, but we thought we had enough money to get one of those cheap Vegas breakfasts at one of the hotels. We found a place at the Denny's for $1.99— two eggs, toast and coffee. We even had enough to leave a dollar tip. We filled the tank at a 76 station and then headed out to Lake Mead where we figured it might be a little cooler by the water. It wasn't. The hot wind was blowing hard and when I put my blue and yellow Hawaiian shirt down on the sands then got up to go to the water's edge, I saw my shirt blow away. I tried to run after it but every time I got close it would blow further away. It was no use—it was gone—another artifact claimed by the age-old Indian Demi-God of the desert. I had literately lost my shirt in Vegas. After that, feeling totally despondent, me without a shirt and Robin without any sympathy, we drove straight back to LA without even stopping for food or drink. All we had left was a dollar fifty and a big jug of Arrowhead spring water.

As I had already mentioned before, Larry’s lady-friend Christa was brutally murdered in February of 1977, and he was really shaken up about it. Now living in Boulder City, Nevada with Caroleen secured a promising future for the young man. I believed her really loved her and seemed fantastically happy with Caroleen, but I don’t know what happened, maybe it was his frequent trips back to LA to play music with Mikel Japp or that he wasn’t marrying material (being a musician which were deemed or doomed to be rather flaky) for the Fisher family, but they eventually broke up later that year. Sometime in 1980, Caroleen had gotten into a horrendous car accident which ended her life way too soon—she was only twenty-seven years old. This is the second tragedy of the heart Blair had encountered and I am sorry to say there would be others in the future. He may be blessed with talent, good looks and a great sense of humor, but I am afraid he is cursed in the love department. But there always is hope that things will turn around. Ah yes, HOPE…the most effective stimulant in this game we call life.