"Reno, Las Vegas, Phoenix. Not necessarily in that order."
"WHY?"
A couple of them are casino meccas, and our hotel in each is actually a casino. A couple of them are too HOT temperature-wise! Most of the time my assignment to these cities is one that puts me there in the dark and in a few short hours--long enough for a legal layover which is about nine hours--I leave. Again in the dark. But our exit is in morning dark. Las Vegas is just FULL of people from all over the world--PACKED. Reno and Phoenix have a lot of homeless people. Just a lot of reasons I would rather be on a layover somewhere else.
I had flown with an out-of base-crew one trip a few years ago. When our plane landed at noon in Reno, they were scheduled to go to the hotel and not leave until the next morning. A couple of them had plans to gamble and were happy. The third was bummed and said he could think of a lot of other layovers he'd rather be at than spend a whole lot of daylight hours there. I whole-heartedly agreed.
During my United years, I had been in Reno a long enough a few times to walk around. I knew how to get to the Walgreen's nearby where I usually bought post cards. And one time in the winter at that store, I opened a bottle of body wash in the personal care aisle just to see how it smelled. It burped soap all over the front of my navy blue uniform overcoat! The more I tried to clean it up, the bigger the soap "stain" became, which remained a faint white for years even though I sent my coat to the cleaners after that trip.
Then, not long after I flew with that other crew, I got an assignment to fly to Reno and MY layover was from noon to five a.m. The casino hotel we stayed at also had a rental car desk. So, that day I rented a car and went to the Reno Temple. It was only about 4.5 miles west on the main road. Had a lovely and spiritual time there. Then I found a Curves facility and did a workout. Then I had some supper at Taco Bell before I returned the car at the airport and hopped the shuttle back to the hotel. I was in my room by 9 pm and couldn't believe what a great layover I had had! Surprisingly to me, I did have this one outstanding layover in Reno that was very untypical, and very memorable because I got away from the downtown and even went to the temple.
Last year I was also there during the day, but the temple wasn't open. No sense to rent a car. I started walking AWAY from downtown and the casinos and actually got to some neighborhoods a couple of miles west that had no homeless people lining the sidewalks with their moveable lives stacked around them. There was a really nice thrift store affiliated with some kind of animal society. Don't remember if I bought something, but I took a mental note that I would return to it if I ever had a longer layover in Reno again.
That "longer layover" happened again this week. We arrived in Reno just after noon and were at the hotel by 1 pm. I laid out my stuff for morning, set up my Fort CollinsTemple picture to make the hotel room my "holy place" while I was there, and Googled thrift stores. There were THREE within walking distance, including the one run by the Nevada SPCA. I had hoped the weather wouldn't be hot, but it was 85 degrees by then. Fortunately there was enough of a breeze that it tempered the hot except by the brick buildings which were BAKING and radiating heat.
St. Vincent de Paul was several blocks on EAST Fourth Street. As was another thrift store just across the street and another block further east. Good thing it was broad daylight. Not only were there a lot of homeless people, they were SCARY homeless people--drunk, looped out on drugs, sprawled out in their little space on the sidewalk surrounded by blankets and a shopping cart full of other items to maintain their homeless state. I literally had to walk over them.
St. Vincent de Paul was part of a whole complex of Catholic Charities including immigration and legal services, as well as other aids for homeless people. The store wasn't at ALL like the St. Vincent de Paul in Billings across the street from our hotel. This one was full of tattered, worthless cast offs. Again the whole parking lot was full of people with their lives spread around them.
I looked down the street. The road crews were rebuilding the sidewalk, so there was no place to walk even and that store front was closed. But, I "soldiered" on and found a side opening, and the sign in the window said "open". I went in. The display areas were in small nooks and crannies until going up the stairs the whole second and third floor was full of furniture and other household items. These weren't shabby or worn, but I wasn't in the market for that stuff. I had told the man at the register when I went in that I collected elephants and Nativity sets. He said they didn't have any Nativity sets, but that I might find an elephant on the white shelves beyond the furniture.
It didn't take long to see that there were NO elephants or Nativity sests on the shelves that jumbled dishes and pans and trinkets all together. I turned to leave and my eye caught a commemorative plate stacked with some other dinner plates. It was for 1973 with a picture of Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus in a regular Old World cradle. In fact I have a little cradle like that which I purchased in a thrift store somewhere--no baby or any other pieces in the set--which I use for a different Baby Jesus in a display high up over the kitchen cupboards.
I didn't particularly like the looks of the Joseph on this plate. It wasn't the traditional I am partial to. But, since I don't have anything similar to that in my collection, I thought maybe I would purchase it. No price tag. Checked the box, the plate itself....nothing. I took it to the clerk. He said, "Oh, you found something." I replied, "Yes. But I couldn't find a price." He didn't even look at it, "How about three dollars?" Sounded great to me and I agreed. He even gave me a Senior Discount, so the purchase price was a total of $2.54. Not bad for a different addition to my collection!
It wasn't until I had walked ALL the way back to the middle of Reno and walked WEST on Fourth Street to the SPCA thrift store, ate at McDonald's and walked back to my hotel room in the heat and with really sore feet that I discovered I had purchased a real treasure! I had seen some writing on the back of the plate at the store, but couldn't read any of it except "Holy Family" because I didn't have my glasses on.
It is an authentic Hummel plate from a painting Berta Hummel painted for her family while she was a nun in the convent. I don't know if the Nichols Family remembers our visit to the Hummel factory in Germany where we saw the figurines being made and heard the story of Berta Hummel and her sketch book of little kids from which Hummel manufactured all those popular characters. I even have a couple myself which I purchased after I learned that interesting Hummel story. I hadn't liked them before that. And now, I have a commemorative Christmas plate! Forget that I don't think Joseph looks the way I would imagine him. I no longer care. He fits into the stylized German look.
Needless to say, Reno will now be part of my Christmas story. And, the discovery of this treasure moved the place I have never really liked into a position of higher eminence in my perspective of what constitutes a decent layover.
Will wonders never cease? Who would have thought Reno would produce such a gem....
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