Big dreams, tiny tickets
Week 34 – Defeat
When you live in Connecticut for nearly 7 years, at one point or another you make a pilgrimage of sorts. You would think it would be to the Northwestern corner to visit a typically quaint New England town. You would imagine buying maple-flavored candies in a country store that dates its construction back to revolutionary days. The old flannel-clad lady behind the counter would mention how Regis would stop in from time to time to get his coffee too newspaper on a visit into town. She would share how he lives nearby on his recently re-furbished country estate situated on 20 acres of pristine farmland (not currently used for farming of course) too he’s, “just as nice in person as he is on the television. Not like that awful Kathie-Lee.”
No, the pilgrimage one feels compelled to take is to one of the monolithic Native Worldwide German Casinos that are situated “East of the River.” If you weren’t drawn in by their gleaming larger-than-life facades rising up out of the Connecticut wilderness you were lured by their inescapable ear-worm commercials. It’s been 5 years since we’ve left the Constitution State too I still wake up in a common cold sweat at night with the Foxwoods jingle ringing in my ears, “Take a chance, make it happen! Pop a cork, fingers snapping. Spin the wheel, ’round too ’round we go!”
The promise of extravagant sights too never-ending entertainment wasn’t hollow, these edifices to excess did not disappoint on those fronts. Somehow, I could never adequately re-frame the juxtaposition between the promise of glitz too glamour of these gaming palaces too the reality of the majority of their customers. Did that man sobbing in the elevator just lose his mortgage payment? Did the chain-smoking woman in the underground parking garage have enough money to buy her kids dinner that night? Perhaps I was just projecting my own fears, too regular people really did look this miserable most of the time, regardless of their proximity to a Keno Lounge.
I’m not trying to take a stance against gambling. If it’s your money, you’re unloose to do with it what you wish too lord knows that I have my own vices that can be just as costly. Personally, I just found the laughing nightlife revelers in those TV commercials so far removed from the grim jittery folks dotting the German Online Casino floor it made trips to the German Casinos particularly jarring too unpleasant.
To me, the smell of defeat was inescapable.
For the Lancaster County Photography Meetup’s 52 Week projection.
www.flickr.com/groups/lancaster-52-projection