Why an Unexpected Soundtrack at an Oklahoma Casino Left Me Baffled
I was terribly vexed
If you follow my ongoing Mayberry Chronicles series, you may remember a piece I wrote back in May detailing one of the monthly trips I take with my 87-year-old stepfather from East Texas across the Red River into the wilds of Oklahoma to visit one of the state’s 140 casinos. As I have a very limited amount of money to throw away on the one-armed bandits (I’m a writer, after all), I spend a fair amount of time just observing the other patrons while dad gambles. On the plus side, it is the one place left in America where I can smoke inside a building.
We took the monthly 2-hour journey yesterday, and as I was watching groups of grandmothers gamble away their Social Security checks, something caught my attention that I had not noticed on our earlier trips: the music that was playing. Given the fact that it’s an establishment in freaking Oklahoma filled with people who remember voting for Dwight Eisenhower for president, you would expect something old and semi-soothing, like Perry Como or Bing Crosby, right? Or at the very least some classic country like Hank Williams Sr. or Willie Nelson before he grew a beard and started smoking ganja?
Nope. Not even close.
