Pappa Hardy's Musings on Life.

We are up in Wyoming this weekend, dealing with Family Chaos. I use that term to describe the challenges to the family during the last two weeks. We have had 3 of 4 of the Wyoming Hardys in the process of moving. That is the chaos we are dealing with because this will be a new experience for everyone

First, Chris bought a new house and moved last weekend. I was not able to be there because of work concerns. I have been inundated of late at work and I couldn’t leave Utah. All the family forces were marshaled in Cheyenne and they helped him move. That job is still not finished.

This weekend it is Brian and Crystal and Julies turn. Bryan and Crystal are moving to Laramie because he has been accepted into the WICHE program for Medical School at the University of Washington in Seattle. He spends his first year in Laramie before moving to Seattle. That will be a great adventure.

Then, since Brian and Crystal are moving, that forces Julie to move to another place in Cheyenne. Therefore, this will be a very busy weekend moving the kids to where they need to be. I hope all goes well. We had one casualty last week when an arcade game got dropped on Gordon’s foot. It was still really swollen last night when we stopped in Laramie.

I hope that the chaos settles down. I am feeling older though, really not wanting to make the 8 hour trip as much anymore between Payson and Cheyenne. I do enjoy the kids. What I don’t enjoy is the sitting in the car for so long. It is so long across miles and miles of Wyoming desert.

Why is it that we think we are going to have fun by getting away from it all? I live in a nice, small town part of America that has streets that are not over crowded, grass, peace, and quiet. Why is it that we go on a “vacation” to get away from it all, and we go to the places that are where everyone is?

We recently traveled to Las Vegas, a bustling city that never sleeps. The concrete and asphalt are all over and actual pieces of nice, green, grass are few and far between. People are everywhere, bustling and knocking into you at every turn. It is really hot and miserable in Las Vegas in the middle of the summer. What the heck where we thinking?

I think the only thing that does it for me it the change of pace, the ability to go somewhere and see something different. Otherwise, why would I be at this place in this time of the year?

Monday and Tuesday has been a wild ride for one who is a banker. I have never experienced anything quite like this before. While at work, the stock of Zions Bank, for which I work, was falling like a rock during the day. While we at the bank don’t believe that there are real financial reasons for this to be happening, it does reflect how much emotion affects the way people feel about financial things.

The current recession is partly the result of the fact that people believe that it is going to be bad. When people believe the way they do, then it becomes that way. Well, I do hope that the bank can withstand this illogical onslaught by the waves of illogic. The bank is not in trouble. Well, today shall be another very busy day.

There are some things I liked about visiting Nevada, more specifically Las Vegas, but the noise that is in the Casinos is not one of them. I hate the noise of the people shuffling around, talking, yelling, and screaming. However, I think the noise that bothers me the most is the sound of the slot machines as they whirl and do their thing. Maybe I am just an old man, but that noise tends to drive me crazy and the sound of coin hitting the slots during a win (a sound that is disappearing because they are going totally electronic) did not do much for me either. I much prefer the sound of a nice, cheap room, with the voice of my wife being the only noise that is worth hearing.

Strangely enough, my recent trip to Las Vegas made me think about the time when I was a missionary many years ago, far too many years ago than I want to think about (38 to be exact) when I was a young, bushy tailed missionary in Taiwan. How in the heck does Las Vegas remind me about door approaches.

As an missionary, we pretty well identified who we wanted to talk to who would likely to most willing to listen to our message. Then, we were taught on exactly what to say and how to say it when approaching our potential “contact”.

In Las Vegas on our most recent trip, as opposed to previous trips that I made there, they were trying to sell time shares to a “Consolidated Resort Enterprise”, a time share near McCarran International Airport call the “The Tahitian Resort”. Every casino, at every door and in places in between, was engaged in selling these time shares and the approach is inevitably the same. The hook was to get you show tickets or gambling money for a bargain price, that is, listening to a presentation about the time share.

They were experts at it. Too bad we couldn’t have them proselytizing as missionaries for the LDS Church. Who knows, maybe we would have to build more churches in Las Vegas to hold all of the converts as a result of their hard work.

Recently my son spoke in his blog of Appliance Lust. He mentioned just how much he loved to go out and buy appliances for his new home. While he has lust after new appliances, my lust is for electronic contraptions. Furthermore, my lust is never satisfied because I never seem to get out and buy those things that I want so badly.

What is it I lust after? Well, I would love one of those IPODS, a Bose Acoustical Wave Machine, and a new handheld PDA. What else is on my to buy list? Well, there is an LCD projector, a Video Camera, and enhancements to my Digital camera system. You might say that I have an Electronic Lust list. My, what has happened to me, a child of the 60s, in this new age of electronics?

Las Vegas is a different world than the one I experienced back in 1965 when the Charles Hardy family came through there and stopped for a couple of days on our way back home from California.

My parents were wise, in that they got us a motel that had a swimming pool. I don’t think I had experienced 107 many times before then, and the family lived in the swimming pool while the parental units went and did some gambling. We had a grand time.

Las Vegas then consisted of a few larger casinos downtown, and a few casinos on the strip that were no more than glorified motels. Now, Las Vegas has an adult Disneyland feel about it. High rise hotels are connected to huge rambling casinos, with exotic restaurants, magnificent buffets, and of course, casinos that are huge with every way under the sun to lose money to the casino. No show, no outlandishness is considered too extreme. Huge skyscrapers jump out of the desert and stretch towards the stars.

Las Vegas has it’s on volcano, pirate battle, Eiffel Tower, and jousting tournament. There are casinos with themes ranging from a Treasure Island to King Arthur’s Castle. Nothing is too much for Las Vegas, and only in this place will you find the equivalent to the ancient Sodom and Gomorrah. I am certain that sometime in the future this place will be burned up like the twin evil cities of old. Yes, Las Vegas is now a different world, created by the mob, and a tribute to the 7 deadly sins which include murder, gluttony, and other grievous sins.

During my recent trip to Las Vegas, my current service on the Payson Planning and Zoning Commission came back to haunt me. Why is it that now whenever I see how the land is used and how the city is organized, that my service in Planning and Zoning comes into play.

While in Las Vegas, I was constantly looking at the signs all over and thought about how the varied uses would fit into the Payson Sign Ordinance. There were huge signs, small signs, signs of every description, used every way possible. I thought about how the surface of the sign, the square footage, the items displayed would fit into Payson’s uses. Payson’s ordinance is very confusing, and Las Vegas’ ordinance, must be a book.

I am sure that a lot of people don’t obey the ordinance either. There are signs everywhere, and that is just the sign portion of the planning and zoning bibles. For me, as a newly servicing Planning and Zoning Commissioner, it could be a Planning Commission Nightmare. Despite all of that, I have enjoyed serving on the Planning and Zoning Commission in Payson. Like other things that I have been doing in the years since I came back to Utah, this has been a new experience and I am doing things that I never have thought of doing before.

While in Las Vegas, we were marketed on incessantly by people “wanting” to give us a better deal, that is a “complimentary deal” on show tickets. They have some great shows in Las Vegas. One we were interested in was Mama Mia, which is the music of ABBA and is supposed to be pretty good. Well, the people on the strip weren’t stopping everyone, but they were stopping us and asking us where we were from. Normally, I just tell people we aren’t interested.

Bonnie however stopped once and listened long enough for us to find out why us two, married older couple, without children but obviously middle class, were being marketed on. The casino we were walking through (New York, New York) allows them to get people to come in and see a new time share deal in Las Vegas called “The Tahitian” where we would have been pitched a deal about how great the time share was.

Given our past poor association and experiences with time share pitches, we immediately said,
“No, we aren’t interested”. We never stopped at any of those places again, which was difficult because they literally were throwing themselves in front of you to get your attention.

One thing that is evident about Las Vegas is their desire to make this city a destination location. Some of the entertainment, some of the marketing, is oriented towards getting families to come to these casinos together. We stayed at the Excalibur, which is particularly oriented in this direction.

Obviously the reason to go after the dollar of these people is because they can somehow make people believe that being located close to gambling activities is somehow OK for children to associate with. I can hear the sound of children in the hallway outside of our room. I fear for the generation of children today who are exposed to the vices associated with Las Vegas, as they may not be able to separate gambling from fun, and from other formidable vices so visible and rampant here.