So this past week my Mother was visiting my Grandmother in LA, and on Saturday they drove up to Fremont to see my Aunt. After a phone call around 6:00pm, I took the BART down to Fremont, and after a small dinner, the four of us went to Cache Creek, a reservation Casino about an hour and a half outside of San Francisco.
Arriving around ten, we played mostly slot machines until nearly 4:00AM, at which time I was exhausted, practically passing out while standing. At that time, my mother tricked me with “Okay, here’s the key to the car, go to the car and we’ll be right there”, which I did and fell asleep in the car, only to wake up at 8:00AM, thinking “What the…?” and then falling asleep until 10:00AM when my Aunt came by to get me and say “Let’s go get breakfast.”
So… we had breakfast at the buffet there, then after that, my Grandmother says “Let’s play just one more hour.” I was blown away! I had slept 6 hours in the car and was still pretty tired, but here they were, all three of them still going. In the end, after losing my Aunt for a while, we ended up leaving at 2:30PM, back to Fremont.
I have to say, all in all, I enjoyed spending that time with my family and enjoyed watching them all have fun with the different slot machines (my Grandmother’s favorite was “The Price is Right” machine; I remember growing up–I must have been 4 or 5 at the time–and watching that show with her), and in general just being with them.
Other Observations
The building was quite a beautiful building, if you could imagine it without all the madness of the slot machines and card tables there. Marble floors with beautifully colored carpets, the wood lining the different shops all that very classy dark stain, with gold trim on store names. The windows of the casino all revealed the beauty of that reservation, the hills in gold, the deep blue sky…
The wash of sound in the casino was curious, the way the slot machines would emit beeps that were the first, third, fifth, and octave of a scale, over and over. Some machines would also play half-phrases of music on one spin, then the other half the other spin. I have to believe there’s a psychology to it all that only draws in the customer to keep spinning, perhaps all in desire for a resolution to the group chord…
p.s. It guess it wouldn’t be a trip to a casino without seeing the lady with the O2 tank hooked to her nose, sitting in the smoking section! =o