The Night the Lights Went Out

by Belinda Furby

Friday night on the Strip in Vegas, the crush of people was unbelievable. Old Asian women in baseball caps tried to shove advertisements into our hands for escort services, topless shows, and pretty much anything else sexually imaginable as we walked down the sidewalks. Young couples looking like they had just stepped out of a Lands’ End catalog pushed around their babies and toddlers in strollers - did they get lost on their way to Disney or what? College kids wandered around pierced, tattooed, and smoking. Fancy women walked with fancy men. Never having been to Vegas before, feeling a little like country-come-to-town, Matt and I were taken by the glitz, the lights, and the energy of the Strip.

6S

Belinda Furby, author of RDU to Lexington, was in Las Vegas on June 11, 2004 when the lights were dimmed for three minutes to honor Ronald Reagan. The lights were dimmed for tributes six other times: in 2001 for the 9/11 victims, for George Burns (1996), for Rat Pack members Sammy Davis, Jr. (1990), Dean Martin (1995), and Frank Sinatra (1998), and for President John F. Kennedy (1961).