A new book, Fade, Crumble and Sag introduced a number of authors writing about the decomposition of Las Vegas during Las Vegas Book Week.
I thought I would add my chapter, entitled, "Families, or what is left of them"
Two second grade girls are picked up by their mothers after school wearing six inch heels, breast exposing tops and shorts covering little. Not a blink on the playground of hundreds- parents picking up students after school. These girls are proud of their mommies, of course.
After Christmas vacation one year a little boy did not return to my class. His mother had murdered her boyfriend with a butcher knife in front of her five children. After a month he returned, quiet, withdrawn, spending time in Child Haven which is not an experience anyone would wish on an eight year old child.
A lock down lasting until 6pm kept nine hundred students in my school one year. A man shooting a high powered rifle directly across the street had to be killed before we could release the kids.
A student I tutored at home had six locks on her front door, along with all the
windows barred. A few months after working at her home her father was arrested as a gang leader and a drug lord. Her mother previously lost custody due to her drug habit.
Some staff are not much better. A principal and counselor were arrested for drug dealing, another accused of stealing from the school-was not fired but a senior staff member was for with holding information about the alleged thefts.
Families move here for the same reason singles do-it is a city in which one can disappear. The likelihood of protective services, the police or the government sticking noses into peoples business is minimal. Corruption is so rampant child abuse, neglect, gang activity or prostitution are all small potato issues for this hands off government.
Las Vegas sounds no siren call of seduction. Las Vegas makes no empty promises for those who come to the city to make a life. Las Vegas is not a deceitful mistress, mother or father figure.
It is exactly what is promises to be-sinful, evil, careless, cruel and heartless.
Be it the kindergartner who comes to school with rope burns around his wrists, the old man who dies alone in his trailer and is buried in a mass paupers grave, the homeless families who beg at Wal Mart, the mentally ill who's self talk is passed by without a blink, or the line of homeless vets, families and singles who line up on Owens Avenue in cardboard boxes, settling in for the night.
Those who defend the city are the predators-"If you don't like it, leave!"
As if those who are game for these predators have a chance of leaving, unless by cheap death-another staple of the Vegas experience.
