Wedding Anniversary Time

Over the past 28 years, mine and Shirley’s wedding anniversaries have included a variety of festivities. Sometimes a trip to Hawaii was involved; sometimes it was a camping trip, other times maybe dinner and a show on the Las Vegas Strip.

Pirate show at the TI

This year, September 14 fell on a Friday, so we made a weekend of it. Every decade or so, we like to go slumming on the Las Vegas Strip like a tourist and check out what all the excitement’s about. So I made a reservation at Senor Frogs at the TI on Friday night and we made the 15 minute drive from our house in the suburbs to the Strip.

The TI is famous for its free “Siren’s of TI” pirate show spectacular which takes place every night starting at 7 PM and features acrobatics, explosions, dancing girls, and a sinking ship. The nice thing about dinner at Senor Frogs is that you’re right on the waterfront with an up-close view of the action.

So after our fish tacos, chimichangas, Dos XX beers and a brownie sundae it was time to burn those calories with a stroll down the most expensive strip of real estate in the world.

Volcano at The Mirage

Of course, Vegas is an international city- like Rome, all roads lead to here eventually, so it’s appropriate that a recreation of Rome at its zenith- Caesar’s Palace occupies a prominent spot of the Strip. As if that’s not enough, there’s the Venetian complete with St Mark’s Square, canals and gondolas imported from Italy along with The Paris and a 1/3 scale recreation of the Eiffel Tower.

Bellagio dancing waters

Free stuff to see includes the erupting volcano at the Mirage, dancing fountains at the Bellagio, and a surfeit of street entertainers as well as people-watching in general. In fact, at the main fountain of Caesar’s there was one guy the security guards call the “swimmer” who was going in fully clothed to snag coins.

One benefit of living in a town where tourism is the bread and butter is that there’s enough security to make sure crime is held to a minimum, especially along the strip, so you can stroll around in relative security practically any time of the night. Being a 24 hour town, the casinos don’t even have locks on their doors.

Caesar's Palace fountain

This is one of the best times of the year in Vegas- 90’s during the day and 70’s at night with that single-digit desert humidity. So we checked out the conservatory at Bellagio with its talking tree and admired merchandise in shops so high-end that they don’t even post prices. Out front was a street performer who had just been on “America’s Got Talent” for the skill of being able to dance while dislocating his elbows and shoulders. Whatever it takes to make a buck.

Elvis sightings area common

So that was Friday. On Saturday we had plans with our friends CJ & Gerrie to head out to Spring Mountain State Park- a desert oasis about 30 minutes out of town- where they have summer stock productions under the stars. You take your wine and cheese (or whatever sustenance you require) and have a relaxing evening enjoying a Broadway musical. Our selection this year was “Leader of the Pack- The Elie Greenwich Story” which told the story of the Brill Building songwriter who wrote so many of the Girl Group classics from the ‘60s. (Ronettes “Be My Baby”, “Baby I Love You”, Dixie Cups “Chapel of Love”, Shangri-Las “Leader of the Pack”).

It was a great show, and of course for Baby Boomers like ourselves, the opportunity to hear performances that are part of our musical DNA.

So in answer to the question, what do you guys DO in Las Vegas, that was one weekend out of our lives enjoying typical non-sinful activities in Sin City.

Picnic at Spring Mountain State Park

Enjoy the pictures!

Bellagio front lobby

The Paris Hotel

McDonald's on The Strip

Street performers

Performers ouside Caesar's Palace

Bellagio Talking Tree

Flashback: July '71 We arrive in Ibarra, Ecuador

"Well Jesse, you're not in Alabama anymore", I thought to myself as we headed north on the Pan American Highway from Quito, heading towards Ibarra.

I was on total sensory overload. At least, familiar faces had picked us up at the airport- Robert & Pat who we had met at our congregation in Mobile a few months earlier and sang the praises of Ecuador.

I was 18 years old and had been regular pioneering for a year since I had graduated high school. My father had made the decision that we should move to serve where the need was greater, and now here we were with my mother and father, 15 year old brother, 12 year old sister, and invalid grandmother. None of us spoke a word of Spanish and Ecuador might as well have been Mars for the amount of information we had on it.

Ivan Morillo & Jesse at my Ibarra house.

Now as I watched the eucalyptus trees zip by and admired the mountain scenery that was so different from coastal south Alabama, my primary thought was – “this should be fun.”

And fun it proved to be- and by the time we ran low on funds and had to return to Alabama two years later- the adventure proved to be the defining event of my life that has influenced me down to this day- four decades later.

Having to learn a new language didn’t scare me at all. After all, I had done it before when I was 8 years old and my father, an electrical engineer, got a job transfer to Wiesbaden, Germany. We were there 3 years and I attended German school for the 3^rd-5^thgrades where no-one spoke English and I was the one who had to adapt.

Having a new family move into the congregation was a big deal. There were only about 50 publishers to cover the entire province of Imbabura. The presiding overseer was Carlos Salazar (yb89 pp. 218-219), a Gilead graduate and native Ecuadorean who had grown up in New York and was fluent in English. He was single and lived with his elderly great-aunt.

Hugo Salas & Jesse

The congregation may have been small, but it was extremely zealous with an eclectic blend of regular and special pioneers. We weren’t the only Gringos. There were four elderly sisters from Canada who were living together on their social security. There were the Ginn’s, a younger married couple from Canada and the Convery’s, a Canadian family with a teenage son and daughter. Dave never met a fruit he couldn’t turn into wine- not as quickly as Jesus- but often with a 24-48 hour periodWith the addition of my family, there were now 17 Gringo publishers in the Ibarra congregation.

The Watchtower conductor was Rodrigo Vaca (see g85 9/8 22-25 for his life story), who happened to be blind, but not handicapped. I watched with amazement as the reader would read the question and whoever wanted to answer would say “Yo” out loud. Brother Vaca would recognize the voice and call on the person. Of course, in those days the Branch didn’t provide recordings of the literature, so a volunteer would record the magazines on tape for Bro. Vaca and he would essentially memorize them. 

Did I mention Rodrigo only had one hand, but he loved to play guitar? He would strap a leather pick thing around his right wrist and strum while fingering the strings with his good left hand.

Jesse & Rodrigo Vaca

And of course, he was a special pioneer, getting 150 hours a month in service time.

Of course, Alabama is not exactly a hotbed of ethnic diversity (in our congregation in Mobile we had black and white, that was it), and I had never met a Hispanic in my life. So the new variety was fascinating. Just the fact that my brother and I knew that “”Vaca” meant “cow” and that was a brother’s last name was a source of some initial amusement. Let me introduce you to some of the other brothers:

There was Guillermo Suarez, a high school English teacher who spoke very broken English in an almost unintelligible accent. For some unexplained reason and with no provocation he would loudly break into his favorite song, Doris Day’s “Que Sera, Sera”. (Sample lyrics: "When I was just a little girl I asked my mother, what will I be, Will I be pretty, will I be rich Here's what she said to me.")

Then there were the teenage Salas brothers, Fabian and Hugo. In our twisted minds, my brother and I pronounced Fabian like the teenage '60s teen idol Fabian and called Hugo “Juice”, not realizing the “H” was silent. 

Carlos Salazar

 A dear friend about my age was Ivan Morillo who lived in the poorer section of Ibarra. Of course I wasn’t aware of the subtle class distinctions of the culture, but Ivan and I became fast friends communicating in that weird “Spanglish” that people do when they’re learning the language. He became a fixture at our house and delighted in my mom’s pancakes and syrup, which he had never experienced.

That’s it for today’s retrospective, but there will be plenty more as I countdown to my long-anticipated return to “needgreater” status once again.

The countdown is on...

This will be a different sort of blog....both an affectionate look to the past and a hopeful look towards the future.

By way of introduction, my name is Jesse and my wife is Shirley. We have lived in Las Vegas, NV for 22 years and share our household with a paint horse named Trooper, bull terrier Thor, and African Gray parrot Diego.
We are active Jehovah's Witnesses and the "countdown" in the title refers to our goal of moving to Ecuador to serve where the need is greater in a Spanish speaking congregation.
As this blog continues, you will find entries regarding our life in Nevada (so often when we travel, we find that many folks are amazed that are thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses living and prospering in Las Vegas). 
There will also be entries and photos regarding one of the happiest periods in my life- when as a young man of 19 I was privileged to serve where the need was greater In Ibarra, Ecuador along with my parents, brother and sister




We spent two good years there in the full-time ministry before returning to Mobile, Alabama (thus the "Yellowhammer" alias). That was in the early '70s (you do the math), and I had always thought that when my circumstances would change (as they will in 2 years time with retirement) that I would return for another go at it. Although I serve in an English congregation, I've been able to remain fairly fluent in Spanish and look forward to working in the Spanish field.


Pebble Road Kingdom Hall- Las Vegas

It's funny- I read a lot of the blogs and communicate with some Gringos in Ecuador, so I have a good idea of how life is and what things cost. But with all the changes, the culture remains the same, and even though 40 years may have passed, the things I loved the first time around are the things I'll still enjoy. Those are some of the themes that will be addressed in future blog entries.
I don't know where we'll end up in Ecuador (I'm open to suggestions), but it will need to be somewhere in the Sierra, and of course I have a soft spot for Imbabura and that fabulous weather. As the time gets closer, I'll write the Branch and see what they recommend.
Obviously no-one can foretell the future, but two years passes very quickly, and having a specific goal helps to keep focus.
So we'll see what happens.
For everyone who happens to come across this blog- welcome to the journey.