The American Southwest is amazing country. You will find yourself in a lounge at, say, the Westward Ho Hotel in downtown Phoenix. There will be cowboys in red satin shirts who have never sat on the back of a horse.
In a corner of the bar will be a sleepy-eyed Hopi Indian sipping his tequila or mescal brandy and licking the salt. And sitting at a table with his friends, strumming a guitar, will be a hophead high on life and the aromatic scene of the whacky tobaccy he has just smoked.
I have spent the better part of my professional life as a journalist working on newspapers or radio stations in the Southwest. Once when I was enjoying a weekend in Santa Fe, N.M., I rented a horse and rode into a cemetery to find Kit Carson's grave.
Two drunken Apache Indians blocked the trail. They were shooting dice on a blanket spread across the trail and drinking tequila from a bottle they shared.
I reined my horse to a stop and waited patiently for them to clear the path. Finally one looked up.
He removed a ring from his finger and said, 'Hey, Amigo, how'd you like to buy a lucky turquoise ring?,' he said. 'If you buy it, three things will happen to you. You will get rich, you will become powerful in politics, and you will meet a beautiful woman.'
The price was right and I bought the ring. That was 22 years ago and one out of three isn't bad.
I became a lost weekender myself after my divorce became final. My wife left me in Mandeville, LA. and moved to Springfield, MO. with the kids. I traveled to West Palm Beach, FL. where I worked briefly as a reporter on a newspaper before driving to Lake Elsinore, CA.
There I worked out an arrangement with the owner of the Sahara Dunes Card Room. He would give me a free room and free room and all I had to do was play poker four hours a day. I did better than that -- I gave him six to eight hours of poker per day and lived like a king for 18 months. I went into Lake Elsinore with $400 and left with a good used Cadillac and $6,000. The poker powers were kind to me.
I became a weekend saddle bronco rider in Phoenix. We did it for fun, not money. After a six-pack of beer, I would head over to Bud Brown's Barn and somebody would saddle a green-broke Mexican bronc that needed riding. There were rodeo girls to cheer us on and to help us while away our evening hours. A few kisses and a hug could make you forget about the pain of being dumped.
And holding it all together, of course, would be the gambling.
Poker wasn't quite legal in those early years, but you could always find a game if you looked hard enough. Phoenix had greyhound dog racing and thoroughbred horse racing at Turf Paradise and Prescott Downs. I was a decent handicapper and usually won more money than I lost. Or maybe I just fooled myself into thinking that.
Waylon Jennings, a cowboy vocalist who became an outlaw along with Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson, and I became friends. I would travel down to a country western night club called J.D.'s RiverBottom in Tempe, AZ. and listen to him play.
He recorded a song that i especially liked, 'Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys.' One of the lines hit home when Waylon sang a cowboy is 'always alone even with someone he loves.' The words could not be more true than that. Waylon lived that kind of life and so did I.
Hopis, Hopheads and Lost Weekenders. They will always be a part of the American West.
Author: Geno Lawrenzi Jr.
(Geno Lawrenzi Jr. is an international journalist, magazine author and ghostwriter and poker player who lives in Phoenx, AZ. He has published 2,000 articles in 50 magazines and 125 newspapers. If you want to share a gambling story or book idea with him, send an email to glawrenzi@gmail.com ).
