TALES OF OLD LAS VEGAS
I have endless stories about growing up in Vegas. Stories that are true.
I was fortunate to experience “benevolent neglect” from my loving parents.
This allowed me to sit a horse before I could walk, to ride my horse, Dolly-Dimples-Prancer, out into the desert at 7 years old, and stay there all day long with no supervision except for my trusty dog-companion, Tuffy, to baby-sit for mafia man, Dave Berman’s daughter and then learn that Mr. Berman was shot-gunned to death in the living room where, just days before, I had been teaching little Susie to play gin-rummy, and to meet Elvis in his hotel suite when I was 13 and have him kneel in front of me and run his hands through my hair while whispering to me that “girls should always wear their hair long”.
Mom owned a bar, aptly named “Mother’s Bar.” (Her silent partner was the sheriff.)
I attended LVHS (Vegas High) and can still sing the alma mater. I could go on and on.
C.C. Loveheart
PHOTO: The author with her mother, the models for Lana Dee & Kay.
I have endless stories about growing up in Vegas. Stories that are true.
I was fortunate to experience “benevolent neglect” from my loving parents.
This allowed me to sit a horse before I could walk, to ride my horse, Dolly-Dimples-Prancer, out into the desert at 7 years old, and stay there all day long with no supervision except for my trusty dog-companion, Tuffy, to baby-sit for mafia man, Dave Berman’s daughter and then learn that Mr. Berman was shot-gunned to death in the living room where, just days before, I had been teaching little Susie to play gin-rummy, and to meet Elvis in his hotel suite when I was 13 and have him kneel in front of me and run his hands through my hair while whispering to me that “girls should always wear their hair long”.
Mom owned a bar, aptly named “Mother’s Bar.” (Her silent partner was the sheriff.)
I attended LVHS (Vegas High) and can still sing the alma mater. I could go on and on.
C.C. Loveheart
PHOTO: The author with her mother, the models for Lana Dee & Kay.
The Bomb
As Kay says in the play, "The bomb is the best thing to hit Vegas since the Pony Express."
The Round-Up Drive-In featured Atomic Malteds and Uranium Burgers.
Ever since August 6, 1945 we’ve lived in a Nuclear Age. And at the same time as we were seeing, in stark black and white, the images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we were proud of America’s nuclear superiority. Then, as world rivalries led to a nuclear arms race, we told ourselves that world leaders knew what they’re doing. We had to, because the alternative was too frightening to think about.
The years went on and we learned to “live with the bomb”. The danger of nuclear devastation was pushed deep into remote corners of consciousness. We go about our lives. We can hear reports about the growing arsenals in the world’s “Nuclear Club” and say, “Pass the salt.”
The Play:
Las Vegas, 1951. 2 women and a little girl drive through the desert.
A bomb test can blow a hole in the earth as big as Manhattan and spread a radioactive cloud across 13 states while a mom buys her daughter a horse, a couple has the worse fight they ever had and someone wins big at the blackjack table.
This play is about all that ... and more.