Calling America

7 October 2007

At home in Las Vegas

Posted under places beginning with: L; Las Vegas; Nevada .

This story about roots in Las Vegas comes from Nadine Ruggles currently based in Germany. You can read more of Nadine’s writing on here blog here.

I was born and raised in Las Vegas, a fact which continues to astound people that I meet. I remember being at a beauty shop with my grandmother when I was about seven or eight years old on a summer trip to Arkansas, and there were a number of other older ladies sitting under the dryers or having their hair put up in roller sets. One woman asked me where I lived and when I told her Las Vegas, it seemed like the whole place got quiet. Then she said “But where do you go to school?” and wanted to know if there were churches in Las Vegas!

There is more to Las Vegas than the lights and the shows, obviously, and I think I grew up like any other typical kid anywhere else in the early 1970’s. My mother and I lived with my grandparents for a time, on a fairly quiet street where all the neighbors knew each other, and the elementary school was right around the corner, and the playground was just over our back fence. My Grandmama had six cats, and all their names began with a “P” like Peri, Pedro, PittyPat, Poncho, Perdita and Punkin’. Grandmama helped the Humane Society rescue strays, and she never could say no when one was in need of a home.

I took piano lessons from my grandmother’s friend next door, though I was super scared to go upstairs or downstairs into the basement at her house. It was very dark either way, and never terribly clean. Our house didn’t have a second floor or a basement, so maybe that was part of it too. They had an above-ground pool in their backyard, which was very progressive for the time, so the neighborhood kids swam there in the summer to beat the heat.
Sometimes I went to visit the nice lady two doors down when my mother was at work and my grandmother had to go out. She would make me soft boiled eggs and toast for breakfast, and then if her son was not in school, he’d take me out to play in their RV that was parked in the driveway. He and another neighborhood boy, who were both teenagers at the time, would pull down all the shades in the RV and one of them would go and pretend do drive the RV, moving around and making the RV rock back and forth. They took me on fabulous trips to faraway places (like Arizona!) that way, but somehow we always made it home in time for lunch!

The Fourth of July was always fun in our neighborhood. My uncle was sometimes around for the holiday, which was nice because he was either away with the Army or away at school most of the time. Everyone in the neighborhood would gather in the street and pool the fireworks that they bought, and then we’d have our own private show. I never got to light any myself since I was young, but the sparklers were big hit!

A couple of years ago, my husband and I took our daughters on a trip to Las Vegas to visit family during the summer. We spent time with family members that still live there, and for the Fourth of July holiday, we had a barbeque and fireworks in the street, just like when I was little. My kids thought it was great, and we had sparklers for all. I think that was the best day of our whole vacation, the one that felt most like coming home.

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