Get me a Bucket or Blame it on Reno

Years ago, we took my mother on a little trip to Reno, Nevada. You know the place, “The Biggest Little City in the World!” This was the sweet dear’s first foray into the hot and heavy gambling world of Nevada’s casinos. Well, you would have thought we bought this woman a Mercedes she was so thrilled.

Each patron was given a bucket, comparable to one of those large popcorn buckets in the theaters.  Consequently, we changed our dollar bills into nickels to pour into that hollow bucket thereby allowing us to hit the slot machines and hope for the best. Reno, at that time, still had nickel slots.

This was a recipe for an old lady’s instant “addiction” to feeding the brightly lit and buzzing apparatuses and waiting for bells to ring and a few nickels to be spewed forth. Following a win on one machine, she moved to another, and so on, until, well, let's face it, she got lost.

Allow me to elucidate. We checked into Harrah’s hotel, which was essentially twofold. It had the main part of the hotel and casino room, plus an underground connection across the street to yet another casino filled with magical monsters begging to be fed coinage.


This was the last day of our mini vacation, and we were checking out. The hotel gives its patrons until one p.m. to move their cars from the parking garage before charging another full day’s parking rate. We split up and set on a mission to find this stray and defiant senior citizen and pry her loose from the grips of those seductive slot machines.

Finally, I observed a giddy, giggling grandmother clutching a bucket filled with clanging nickels rushing toward me. I interjected over her babbling bliss…“Ma, do you realize you wandered off and are now across the street? We have been searching the casino on the other side for you. Steve is moving the car and we have got to leave before we get socked for another day’s parking fee.”

She looked at my face, and there I saw a glazy-eyed alien. This was not my mother. She had been replaced with this diabolical, dealing, demon with fiendish vocabulary surging from her lips. “I am winning here, I cannot leave, and you cannot make me! I gave you life and I can take it back!” Whoa! Hold on woman; it's reality check time. I reached over, grabbed that bucket of nickels, and dashed toward the door.

This granny from hell started chasing me and yelling, “my bucket, my bucket, give it back!”

Okay, now all the pale patrons were gazing at the despicable daughter darting away with the poor defenseless old woman’s booty of nickels. Strangers were yelling obscenities at me. I was lucky to escape with my life. (Seriously folks, these people are in dire need of sunlight!) The only redeeming feature was that the nightmarish mother from the world of mischievous spirits was following her bucket right out of the casino and into the car.

Another crisis had been averted. I barely escaped fallout from the elder-bus patrons and casino hopping retirees shaking their fists in the air and yelling for some youthful casino worker to apprehend me.

Soon, the mother I knew and loved came back to reality and us. She laughed about the recent eccentricities she displayed; concurrently clinging to that bucket of clinking coins all the way home.


So, that my friends, was a family trip I will never forget.
Do not even get me started on her first Reno floorshow!


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