What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas (unless it ends up on a blog 22 years later)

I spent some time last night scanning in old pictures to send to my cousin Patti--reminders of that infamous visit in 1987 when two of my brothers and I descended on Las Vegas (where all the cousins lived, at the time) for three days of gambling and debauchery.

Well, very little gambling. And zero debauchery. But isn't that what everyone assumes, when you say you're going to Vegas?

The pictures aren't very good. They've faded some, and lost some key ingredient--yellow, maybe. Or green. They all look either too blue or too red. And most of them are out of focus.

So I spent an hour or so cleaning them up as best I could, cropping them, using the magic "straighten" tool in iPhoto, and also the magic "sharpen" tool.

I remember taking this photo--I wanted to get everyone under that impressive "casino" sign, but because I understood (and understand) nothing about photography, I didn't know how to make both the sign and the people big. So I opted for the sign.

This picture is funny because my cousins and brothers were all trying to stand like my father (who wasn't even there). Guv was famous for shoving his hands in his pockets and hunching his shoulders.

Here you can see it a little better. Hilarious? Well, maybe you have to be a member of the family. That's Patti in the middle, in white. And my dad's brother, my Uncle Patty, in the sunglasses. And Patti's mom, Jane, on the end. Can you spot the two Minnesotans in the group?

The cousins weren't quite sure what to make of me. I was quiet (they are talky), I don't drink much (they did--not a lot, but more than I did), I wore button-down shirts and little sweaters. I think during the shooting of this photo, my cousin Richi decided to scandalize me.

Patti, by her parents' pool. Her folks weren't rich, but I think everyone in Vegas has a pool. It's a matter of survival, in the desert.

We weren't much for gambling, any of us, but casinos were the place to go for fun. We figured out that the slot machines just inside the door were looser than the machines deeper inside and paid off quicker. You know, to lure you in.

We found a casino ("The Horseshoe") that had a horse-racing game we could all play together. It looked like something you'd find in someone's basement rec room--a big table, with a track, and little plastic horses. You slid in your quarters and the horses started to move, and you'd get a payoff if you picked the right one to win.

This was fun because there were enough horses for all of us. (Otherwise, gambling is quite a solitary endeavor, with all those blinking machines.) We'd play until we were running low on quarters, and then head out to the lobby and win back some quarters from those loose slot machines, and then head back inside to lose them again on the horse-racing game.

We killed a couple of evenings that way.

Here, my cousin Kathi and my brother David and I pose in front of a million dollars. Oh, Las Vegas. Oh, Patti. Oh those old weird days that feel like yesterday, that feel like they never even happened at all.