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| - I first learned about the El Cortez Casino in 1999 on a road trip from Cleveland to California. Long story...
So, I am in Arches National Park with my business partner and his 2-year-old son. It is 112 degrees outside and we are hiking around and enjoying ourselves. We were traveling in a camper. After a day in the park, we decided to head out and on the way to our next destination.
About 10 miles out of the park, we broke down. The engine was seized! No oil...oops. This was especially bad since we were 2 hours away from the closest town with an auto mechanic, which happened to be Green River, Utah.
We called in a tow, which came after a couple of hours and we were off to Green River. I drove our car behind the tow truck and my friend stayed in the camper with his son on top of the tow truck. This would have been fine, but I could barely keep up with the speed demon in the 18-wheeler in our purple Dodge Neon rental car.
When we finally got to Green River, it was bad news. The mechanic with one tooth said, "It's gonna take a while." I swear it reminded me of the mechanics that ripped off Chevy Chase in National Lampoons Vacation. After an evening of phone calls and begging for favors from friends, we decided to get another tow to a bigger town the next day.
Once the camper was in the right place and repairs had begun, we had to find a place to go for 10 days...how about Vegas?! With a 2-year-old! In a purple Neon! Off we went.
Has anybody tried staying in a Vegas hotel for 10 days? With a 2-year-old? Crap. That was a challenge. Try getting a bottle of milk from room service multiple times daily. What do you think a hotel charges to wash a pair of socks for a 2-year-old? Anyway, we drained our funds pretty quickly. Especially since my business partner kept raiding the bank for gambling scratch.
Finally, the phone call came from the guy fixing the camper. It needed a new engine, new tires, new this, new that. Blah! The total for repairs was over $6K. How much did we have left in our travel fund after 10 days in Vegas? $1K. Uh oh. I know my friends wife wasn't going to be cool with us coming home late or without the camper. What were we going to do?
Alas, the El Cortez comes into the picture. Since we were already screwed, I came up with the bright idea of going to the worst casino in Vegas with the last of our money and 'going for it'. My business partner, who is good at Blackjack and has a huge set of huevos, said he was in. We hired a babysitter who flew out from California (no joke) and headed downtown in the neon for a little action. We went straight to the El Cortez and parked in the lot on-site.
As we entered, the first thing I noticed was the exteme stench of cigarettes. This place clearly didn't have a ventilation system. We sat down at a Blackjack table and started playing. Within an hour, my buddy was up a few thousand dollars and I was up about $500. This was a great start, but we were not ready to leave. As the pit bosses started moving the dealers around, we decided to get up and move with the dealer we liked. This seemed to get some attention upstairs and we were being closely watched all of the sudden by pit bosses and a random person that came out from the back. For this reason, I stopped playing and began walking around the place and having a few drinks.
When I went back to check on my business partner, he was playing the table max bet and on a roll. He had at least $8K in black chips in front of him so I grabbed $6K worth and went to cash it in. No problem.
Another hour passes and he is still playing and still winning. Now, he has a stack of black chips in front of him that totalled over $9K...and I have his other 6K in my pocket!!! I told him we should leave and he agreed.
That was when we hit a little snag. As soon as we got to the cage, they had people waiting there for us. They said that we had to pay taxes on our cash because we had won over $10K. Being drunk, I began to argue and told them that he owed me the money that I took from the table. Technically, that was true since our money was pooled going in. They hassled us for a while, but ultimately paid us in full and let us leave. I will never forget running to the Neon in flip flops and cargo shorts, holding my pockets tight so the money wouldn't fly out.
I love the El Cortez because of this night. I will always love the El Cortez. I carry matches from that night everywhere I go to this day. They live in my briefcase. During our big win, I remember asking the pit boss if we were going to get a room comped to us. He said no. I asked what the most expensive room in the hotel was running that night. The answer was $19.95. I guess we didn't play enough to warrant the comp.
We left and got the heck out of Vegas the next morning. We picked up and paid for the camper repairs and his wife never found out that we even went to Vegas.
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