Wherein Our Redneck Native Son Does Vegas. By Jeff Smith LAS VEGAS, NEV.--By an extraordinary sequence of coincidence and misadventure, I find myself in this improbable setting in the God-forsaken southeastern Nevada wilderness, attending a trade show. It's quite a bustling little community, and in view of the oddities and downright bizarre cultural milieu, it amazes me that we haven't heard of this place before. But, as they say, fortune smiles on the innocent: You have Smith on the job, and I will do what I can, in the spirit of an earlier lost and confused voyager/voyeur, to bring news of this land beyond the edge of the world, back to civilization. Las Vegas lies about 30 miles northwest of Hoover Dam, ringed by snow-capped mountains in a high desert plain known as Silicon Valley. You've probably heard of it. A popular misunderstanding has it that Silicon Valley derives its name from the computer chips made from the sand that is the sole component of the local geology. Don't you believe it. First the pioneer Las Vegans--a populous clan, of mixed Mormon/Sicilian extraction--built a wayside inn they called The Sands, in honor of...sand, and then they found something else to do with the stuff. Given the fact that there was just one diversion left to the Mormons after booze, cigarettes, coffee, Cokes, gambling and dirty dancing were officially proscribed, and given the Sicilian side's enthusiasm for all these vices, and the virtue of cottage industry, silicon found its way into the damnedest places. And Las Vegas found itself the wellspring of a new style of family values. Family is the foundation of Mormon culture, and anthropologists tell me that "The Family" is pretty powerful amongst Sicilians as well. In the tongue of the prehistoric settlers, Las Vegas means "the meadows," but if you can find anything approximating a meadow secreted amongst the sand, the concrete, the neon, Astroturf and wall-to-wall shag, I'll kiss your ass. Or, if you'd prefer, you can find a 900 number on any of the trillion taxicabs that cruise the Las Vegas thoroughfares, and talk to one of the city's sisters, who will kiss that or any other part of you. Over the phone. Real hospitable folks, these Vegans. I eased my pickup into the slow lane and anxiously scanned the street signs for a clue as to the location of the motel I was booked into. Evidently it wasn't a five-star resort, because I drove past the Boulevard of Budget Inn, past El Camino de Motel Six, and finally exited at La Cul de Sac of YMCA and asked a lady at a drive-in liquor window. She directed me to the corner of Railroad Overpass and Calle Titty Bar, where the hostler charged me a hundred bucks a night (in advance), told me not to park my truck in backwards, and said there was a pop machine and a phone booth out back. Correct change only. It turns out that hospitality is a variable thing in Las Vegas: Either you can call an 800 number for free, book into some Disneyland of the Dissolute where luckless gamblers from the Midwest underwrite everything, the rooms are cheap, the food is free, the waitresses wear no clothes, there are three phones in the bathroom, plus cable, or you can do what I did and hold out for the Roach Motel, where the answer is None of the Above, and the tariff is $100 a night or $20 an hour, and they don't even have a hot-plate and a packet of Sanka in the room. I might have left Las Vegas a physical and emotional wreck were it not for the town's overwhelming impulse to take the weary pilgrim in, and clutch him safe to its bosom. As my sojourn wound to a close, hunger of two kinds overtook me, late one night or early the next morning, I know not which. And I took to the streets. The shimmer and shine of The Strip literally overwhelmed me, and parking appeared problematic, so I wandered away into a somewhat muted glare, along the side streets that time and capital had left behind. There's still plenty of gambling and a topless cabaret between every convenience market and gas station, and a feller can get a prime-rib dinner every hour of the night for $2.98. And a sweet sister of the Lost Tribes of Whatever who will sing you a lullaby to the accompaniment of a karaoke machine, and show you how her tribal elders became fathers and mothers, only pretend. For less money than you're paying the motel-keeper. And, as if by accident, though the firm hand of fate and The Family have steered your every step, you experience an epiphany. This is what Las Vegas is all about: Money and meat.

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