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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.