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Vegas Voice 11-18

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As Kids We Caught Lizards<br />

By: Joey Kantor / <strong>Vegas</strong> Retrospective<br />

As kids we caught lizards. The grand prize,<br />

because she always remained so well hidden<br />

and did not like to scurry like your standard little<br />

lizard, was the horny toad.<br />

The horny toad is the friendliest lizard you’d ever want to meet.<br />

They run and scurry too but not like their thinner counterparts. These<br />

little friends are almost round and have a head that looks like a little<br />

triceratops. When you hold them their belly is soft and you pet it there<br />

and you bond.<br />

You’d eventually let him go.<br />

The desert, lizards, the smells of the rain back when rain soaked the<br />

earth - Las <strong>Vegas</strong> was a land of nature back then. It was rugged. It was<br />

natural.<br />

Near Decatur and Sahara we had plenty of desert to romp there as<br />

kids. Mike Hines’s ranch was just up the street, replete with ostriches<br />

and dogs and horses; a true <strong>Vegas</strong> living environment par excellence<br />

of old.<br />

Our dog Snooper, liked Mike Hines’s ranch so much that he basically<br />

adopted it, going back and forth between our Brady Bunch home and<br />

that wild land of fun where us kids would go through the desert to look<br />

through their fence at real live ostriches. He joined the ranks of about<br />

fifteen other dogs, got sick of ‘em and would come home.<br />

We had horses too for a while. We once attempted to ride horses<br />

from our property all the way up<br />

to Redrock Mountain. Once you<br />

got to Rainbow not many people<br />

would be bothering you anymore<br />

and it was pretty much a straight<br />

run through the desert up to<br />

Redrock. However, Buck wasn’t<br />

going for it.<br />

He was a light brown horse who just didn’t like to leave the stable. He<br />

preferred to stand there within eyesight of his watering trough where<br />

maybe a little hay would still remain until suppertime.<br />

Now the notion of deserts as the natural Las <strong>Vegas</strong> landscape is<br />

mostly gone. Everything is bought up and everything is cemented per<br />

county and city code. You have to fight for the preservation of desert in<br />

the county. Codes will want to cement you in. If you think about it, the<br />

Las <strong>Vegas</strong> that I know wasn’t meant to be covered in cement.<br />

Naturalistic and intelligent, even alternative community-oriented<br />

thinking is needed to make up for the deficit of beauty and play space<br />

handed to us through the paving over of our deserts.<br />

We need to cultivate an understanding that man has a need for<br />

the openness of rugged nature, a fact which can inspire actual art in<br />

cloistered corners. Yes, folks, art exists.<br />

To me, old properties in Las <strong>Vegas</strong> are its treasures, the closest things<br />

we have to the time of deserts in Las <strong>Vegas</strong>.<br />

Joey Kantor is a journalist and novelist. He writes fiction<br />

under the name Fargo Kantrowitz. His Las <strong>Vegas</strong> based novel,<br />

Babybirds, is available at Lulu.com.<br />

12<br />

November 20<strong>18</strong><br />

Songsters “Got Talent”<br />

The Sun City Aliante Songsters is a non-profit choir of more than<br />

45+ seniors living in Sun City Aliante 55+ Community who love to<br />

sing or play instruments.<br />

This year the Holiday Concert “Make a Joyful Noise” will be<br />

performed at the Sun City Aliante Community Center on December<br />

7 th, & 8 th at 7 pm. Tickets are $10. For tickets call Warren Geller at 702-<br />

538-9441<br />

For more information about The Songsters, please contact Linda<br />

Egge at 702/ 232-2<strong>11</strong>3 or email her: lregge62@gmail.com.

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