Looking back with Lot's Wife

You and the little man have planned your first vacation alone in the entire 35 years of your marriage. You will not be visiting your old Aunt Suzie because she needs John to fix her screens; you’re not taking a single kid or grandkid and you’re leaving the dog. No Disneyland for you—you’re going straight to Hawaii and laying your fat little body on the beach in a full coverage suit from Dahle’s and hoping like heck that you don’t see anyone from Springville for an entire 10 days! Suddenly, the day before you leave, the water main breaks in the front yard and your grass is now a rice paddy and you’re waiting for the water police to come by and take you to jail. The dog gets run over by the ice cream truck and the vet wants $600 just to look at his bloody back leg and your daughter calls and says she wants to move back home because she and Whatzhisname are thinking about an open marriage and maybe she just wants a divorce. Is this a sign? Are you just not supposed to go on this trip? Is ...

Viva Las Vegas? #1 January 8, 1992 Well, I’ve lost my virginity—after two husbands and five kids. I’ve been to see the fat lady as they used to say at the old time carnivals. In fact, there were about a million fat ladies. We’ve been to Las Vegas for the first time. Impossible as it may seem, we’ve gotten to be this old and this experienced without ever partaking of this sublime experience. I hope it never comes back. We went to Las Vegas expecting to see SIN in all its many guises. I expected to be beguiled by evils, so to speak. At the very least, I expected drunks in the streets and a carnival atmosphere. No one prepared me for hoards of seriously intent quarter pushers, people with the deep expressions of chairmen of the board facing hostile takeovers. No one laughs while gambling. It’s do or die, guns along the Mohawk with these people. I didn’t except everybody to be middle aged. The women in matching hot pink sweatsuits with bejeweled and sequined tops, the men in logo-bedecked ...