Wendover

I want to qualify this entry right from the top.  I went out to see my friend, his wife, and son.  To that end, I had a great time.  We talked and laughed and laughed and remembered some very funny times.  (You'll have to ask him about the butter.)  I met his wife for the first time and she's beautiful . . . I think he tricked her into the marriage, it's the only explanation I can come up with.  His son surprisingly took to me right away, teaching me about Airplanes (favorite movie: Top Gun, no surprise given his father), Trains, and firetrucks.  We ate once at the best Hamburger Restaurant in the country, Mildred's.  It's owned by his father and used to be in Logan, Utah, but has relocated in Wendover.  Always good and I'd drive a hundred miles for the burgers.

So, I don't anyone to think that my post about the flight or about Wendover is any complaint about the actual trip because I didn't go for the casinos or the town or the airline.  I went to be with friends, and I was.

That said, I have some things to say about Wendover that reflect on the United States of America.  Wendover, Utah is The Dark Shadow of the American Dream.  It's a town on the brink of hope but assured of crushing despair. 

The majority of the town's residents don't have anywhere else to go.  They've already failed at life and Wendover is all that's left.  They have drug addictions and alcoholism and a craving for the fix of neon and the thirst for instant wealth that'll free them of their troubles, putting them back in the game, giving them the chips for one more deal at a new hand of life.

The town is populated by a lot of Mexican immigrants, legal and not.  Those hard-working immigrants who start businesses and bring strong family values to conquer America with an influx of "can do" at any price didn't make it to Wendover.  These are the "at least it's better than nothing" immigrants who don't really care about the present and haven't the will to worry about the future.  They live in shitholes, and that's no exaggeration.  Anything seems better than what they had in Mexico, so beat up trailers with corrugated patches and blankets hung where doors normally go.  I don't know if they have electricity or water, but it didn't look promising when we drove around the town.  Their children go to school but don't learn because the parents don't care if they go or not.  It's all about the now and now they can make enough money at the casino to pour twenty into the slots and hope for a big payday.  When that payday hits, they don't use it for shelter, but instead for the instant gratification of chrome wheels for the truck and a new silver and gold belt buckle.

The rest of the town is ramshackle at best.  Permanent structures are built with off the rack Home Depot accessories and stock floor plans from a twenty-year-old "build it on the cheap" home design magazine.  It's the desert, so there aren't any yards.  But I didn't see anything approaching landscaping either.  It seems that wealth is measured by how successful one is at keeping the mice and lizards out.   

Contrasting this desolation is the glamour of the casinos with no expenses spared for the comfort of the wealthy guests from out of town.  Massages, spas, room service and wonderful steak dinners for them because they have the promise of America.  For the rest, substandard health care and the burden of debt inflicted on those who believe that touching that dream is the same as living it.

It tore at my heart.  Those kids in that town don't deserve the life they're living.  No one does.  But they don't have a choice.  Addiction, at some level, is a choice, but when it's all you've ever known how do you escape it.  Those kids don't have much of a chance.  They'll never live the dream and for them it's a blatant reality.  For most of the rest of the country its a tempting tease to keep some of us motivated while deepening the wealth divide and gutting the middle class.

My time in Wendover revealed that truth starkly.

- CV Rick

Comments

[Cherise]

Wow... You are an amazing writer. :)

[Success Warrior]

I have learned a lot about people from living in Wendover.

[CV Rick]

Thanks, Cherise.

I learned a lot about people living in Wendover from you, Success Warrior. You've got to get out of that town, it's surer death than arsenic or Hemingway's shotgun.

[Success Warrior]

Are you talking about the radiation in the water or the pollution in the minds? =)

[CV Rick]

If I'm betting, I think you can withstand a higher dose of polonium-irradiated ground water than Litvinenko. He was weak.

But get your wife and child out of there.

[Success Warrior]

Oh I will. Just want to pull some financial things together first. We'll see what kind of magic I can pull off in the next year.

You'll have to email me and let me know how the weekly meeting went. It's going to be one of the keystones to my plan.