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People ask, “What is the meaning of life?”
I think that may be the wrong question.
It’s so all encompassing it may take an
entire lifetime to puzzle out. A lesser
included question that seems manageable is
“What meaning am I going to build in my
life?” Still tough, but maybe doable. I
work through this meaning question in three
ways: What of my yesterdays is valuable?
What do I want my tomorrows to look like?
What small things can I do today to make my
imagined tomorrows attainable?
An additional layer
over building my tomorrows is connections:
family, social and work. This trip was
about connections. Reinforcing connections
to people and places that are a part of my
personal history. I was going to visit
family; And, visit places memorialized in
family lore. I was going to walk where my
father and grandfather had walked. Did
something like the things they did. I also
intended to visit Masonic Lodges and a
Rotary Club that I had not previously
visited. The Lodge and Club visits were to
find new connections to people who shared
similar values. I didn’t think that along
with family, Masons and Rotarians I would
get a healthy does of organized crime and
terrorism.
My three-day adventure began Monday,
mid-morning. I didn’t need the onboard
navigation to find my way to Las Vegas, but
the KIA K5 onboard system monitors traffic
and alerts the driver to upcoming problems
and potential alternate route. Of course,
going up the 15 to Vegas doesn’t have a lot
of alternatives. By 10AM, I’m all packed,
up onto the 210 Freeway and set the car to
drive itself at 79MPH.
Once I am in the fast lane, the K5’s “Driver
Assist” mode keeps the car in the lane, the
preset distance from the car ahead of me and
at a constant speed. I begin listening a
six-hour podcast “Meaning, Awe and the
Conceptualization of God.” If you want a
link to it, email me.
Once I make the transition to the northbound
15 Freeway, all I have to do is watch for
the outlet off ramp near Barstow. I make
that off ramp, get a cup of coffee at the
Starbucks and have quick smoke. The high
desert around Barstow is cold and clear with
stiff breeze that bites through your
clothing. Slightly chilled, I resume the
trek north. Roughly three and half hours
after I first started, I am in downtown Las
Vegas.
My three nights were at the El Cortez Hotel
and Casino. The hotel is alternately billed
as “Historic,” “Vintage” and “Remodeled.”
Historic: First, it has a historic
connection to me in that both of my
grandfathers and my father favored the
hotel. My aunt told me that my father had a
favorite slot machine that he always
played. Of course, ancestors stayed in the
Cortez in its heyday.
Built in 1941, it was the first major
downtown Las Vegas resort. It had 59
rooms. In 1945, it was purchased by a
company called the Midwest Group. A group
of investors that included Gus Greenbaum,
Moe Sedway, Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky;
All gangsters. If you are even a casual
viewer of the History Channel, you know that
Seigel (and the rest of the Cortez
investors) would go on to build the
Flamingo. What you may not know is that
they bought the Cortez for the purpose of
expanding it. The Cortez could have been
the luxury Flamingo. However, when Las
Vegas City officials got in the way of the
expansion plans for the Cortez because they
didn’t like the idea of East Coast criminals
running the Cortez, Siegel convinced his mob
pals to build the Flamingo outside Las Vegas
City limits.
The Flamingo doesn’t work out for Siegel,
who gets himself gunned down in his own
livingroom in in 1947, in Beverly Hills;
probably for the hotel cost overruns and
“wetting his beak” a little too much. But,
it does work out for the City of Las Vegas
who annexes the “strip” including the
Flamingo property in 1950. Mobsters might
be bad, but tax base is always good.
For many years, Las Vegas tried to downplay
the Mob connections with the building and
operating of hotels and casinos. I wouldn’t
say they always fought against the mobsters,
but they did try to control the image. So,
thumbs up on the hotel being historic.
I am sort of neutral on the hotel being
called vintage. Certainly, the corner
exterior on Ogden and Sixth is vintage. It
has changed much in 80 or so years. Through
the rest of original hotel and casino it is
difficult to spot vestiges of the original
architecture. So, if vintage is something
that is a representation of the best of an
original. It old, its historic, but its
kinda tired in places too.
As for remodeled. My room was on the 15th
floor of the remodeled tower rooms. It was
clean, it looked like it was done in a
combination of 1940s desert style. My room
was on the north and afforded a fabulous
view across North Las Vegas and into the
desert. You could see the low peaks of the
Mount Gass range very clearly. For a base
of operations, a good room. The only
problem was that the really hot water
doesn’t quite make it up the 15th
Floor. The water just peaks warm and
tickles hot. It never quite makes it to my
definition of hot.
As I look over the Vegas landscape, I am
reminded that while my father and his father
favorited this hotel, my mother’s father
didn’t like downtown Las Vegas. He was a
Sahara guy. Or, at least he was connected
to the Sahara. While he wasn’t exactly a
gangster he was a gambler, a number’s runner
and bagman for the mob.
 I
didn’t have time that first afternoon to
explore the casino because I had an
appointment. I was going to attend Oasis
Masonic Lodge No. 41 in Las Vegas. More
importantly, I was going to pick my cousin
up so that we could attend the Masonic
dinner and Stated Meeting together. We were
both made Masons in Mariposa Lodge No. 24 in
California. My cousin, Dean, had moved the
Las Vegas some six years ago and hadn’t
attend Lodge since moving. Neither of us
knew anyone at that Lodge so were just going
to show up.
When Nevada was still a territory, the
Masonic Lodges in the territory came under
the Masonic Jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge
of California. On January 17, 1865, five of
those Lodges met and established the Grand
Lodge of Nevada. The Lodge we were going to
attend, Oasis No. 41 was chartered in 1950.
My cousin’s house was about 10 miles
northwest of downtown. I got there pretty
early so my aunt and both of my cousins and
I sat around the kitchen table and caught
up. Dean and I excused ourselves and went
over the Masonic Modes of Recognition – our
secret passwords and handshakes, then off to
Lodge.
We arrived at Oasis No. 41 early, also. We
sat in the dinning room as Brothers
arrived. We were warmly welcome and
properly examined. After a dinner of some
cut of chicken with a red sauce, we were
admitted into Lodge. Nevada Masonic Ritual
is significantly different than California
Ritual.
As my Lodge’s Officers Coach, it is my job
to follow along with the ritual very closely
and give a word or a prompt if an officer
get lost in the ritual. In Oasis, I knew
what was going on, but not exactly what was
going to happen next. It reminded me of
being a brand new Mason and sitting in Lodge
for the first time. About 9, dropped my
cousin at his house, we agreed to meet
tomorrow to attend another Lodge and I drove
back to the Cortez.
I took a nearly hot shower, put on an audio
book and laid down. One paragraph into Carl
Jung’s Man and His Symbols and I was
asleep. I know it ran all night because I
woke up periodically to hear the reader’s
voice.
At 5AM I was up and in search of a cup of
coffee. There was no coffee machine in the
room so it was down 15 floors to the
casino. I found the servers station with
the great urns of coffee. Picked out an end
slot machine right next to the urns, put in
a $20 bill and pressed max bet. A few spins
and I had a cup of coffee. I sipped the
coffee, smoke a cigarette and watch the
wheels spin. After a second cup I was awake
and hungry.
The Cortez is trying to capitalize on its
gangster heritage through the remodel. Now,
you can have breakfast in Siegel’s Café.
You can even have the Lansky – A hamburger
named after the famous gangster. Strangely
enough, children are not allowed in the café
after 8PM. I don’t know why.
I order chicken fried steak and eggs. I was
very surprised on the quality of the food
and service. The eggs were cooked perfectly
and the chicken friend steak could hold its
own. The coffee came promptly and
everything was hot and fresh. I languished
over the breakfast while I read a book.
I wandered the casino floor for a few
hours. Played a few machines, a little 3
card poker and watched the people come and
go. About 11AM, I started to walk across
downtown. My destination was the Downtown
Las Vegas Rotary Club meeting. The meeting
is held in the Four Queens Hotel and
Casino. Its about three or four blocks from
the Cortez. As I walked toward the Queens I
could see just to the north of me a large
five story government looking building that
had a sign that said “Mob Museum.” That
caught my attention. I continued to walk
through the chilly Vegas winter morning,
passed the original “Welcome to Las Vegas”
sign and entered into the Freemont Street
experience.
It was bright, yet chilly but you could
still see the large overhead projection of
the sky and various geometric shapes. I
have only been on the Street at night in the
summer when it was loud and crowded. Now,
it was much more subdued. A small
smattering of street performers and little
clumps of tourists, no one with those giant
glasses filled with margaritas.
The Four Queens casino is pretty much like
all downtown casinos. You could be in the
Fremont, the Nugget, the Downtown Grand or
the Four Queens and not really tell the
difference. The actual meeting is held in
“Hugo’s Cellar.” I walked down a flight of
stairs into a dimly lit, brick lined
restaurant. As the light dims, so fades the
sounds of dozens of slot machines on the
casino floor. Hugo’s really welcomes the
Downtown Las Vegas Rotary Club. As you
descend the stairway and navigate toward the
rear dining area, the path is lined with
large freestanding displays of flags from
hundreds of Rotary Clubs. It is a tradition
that when visiting a Rotary Club that the
visiting Rotarian is often presented with a
small banner or flag designed especially for
the Club being visited. The visiting
Rotarian takes the banner or flag back to
his or her Club and it is displayed at
meetings. Clearly, Downtown Las Vegas
Rotarians are well travelled.
At the entrance to the rear dining area I
found the Club Secretary marking Rotarians
present and taking money for lunch. I
introduced myself and was warmly greeted. I
paid my $25 for the lunch, poured an ice tea
from the nearby service and walked into the
dining. There was a large screen at the far
end, obviously set up for the day’s speaker.
Rotary Clubs around the world (and there are
more than 32,000 of them) have a pretty
standard format. I have visited Rotary
Clubs in four countries and several States,
and can attest to this format. It begins
with an invocation followed by a Flag
salute, the singing of a song,
introductions, a meal, a speaker, Club news
and then dismissal. I sat at a table that
was near the front and in the center of the
room. Before I could get comfortable, the
Club Secretary came up to me and returned
by $25, informing that the Club President
had paid for my meal. This, also, is fairly
typically. Graciousness and the
attentiveness to guests is something shared
in common by Masons and Rotarians. I think
a large part of this is the recognition of
shared values.
Masons are bound together by their principle
tenants: Brotherly Love, Relief and Truth.
Rotarians by their principle tenant: Service
Above Self. A visitor is welcomed by both
as a traveler who shares these values.
The Club President, Eric Threeton,
brought the day’s speaker to my table and
then sat down with us. The speaker was a
medium height and slim, yet well built young
man with a board face and collar length,
somewhat unruly dark blonde hair. His
classic Roman nose had a very slight hawkish
end and was accentuated by his ever present
and genuine smile.
After the speaker has said but a few words,
our fourth table mate, a woman said
something like, “You’re not from here.” The
speaker had a clear accent and invited the
woman to guess where he was from. She
guessed Ireland and then Scotland. He
confirmed my suspicious that we was Dutch.
As lunch was served, he declined to eat,
preferring to speak on an empty stomach. I
silently agreed with him; if your going to
make a presentation you want a little
something in your stomach, but not a full
meal.
 As
we began to eat, the speaker was introduced
by the President. Ferry Zandvliet was a
speaker and writer from Rotterdam in the
Netherlands. Later he would explain that he
gives these presentations in English and
Dutch; and to a wide variety of audiences:
from school children to police officers. As
he began to speak it was clear that he not
only had a command of the English Language,
but also of American Idioms. Before he got
into his subject matter his style, voice and
positive confidence had my attention. Once
I understood the subject matter I stopped
eating to listen.
Ferry is a fan of Rock and Roll. In
November of 2015, he and his three closest
friends drove from the Netherlands to Paris
to hear a rock concert at the Bataclan
theater. The Bataclan was “designed in 1864
by the architect Charles Duval, its name
refers to Ba-ta-clan, an operetta by Jacques
Offenbach. Since the early 1970s, it has
been a venue for rock music.” What Ferry
and his friends didn’t know was that his
life was going to change forever.
At 9:15 that evening, as the rock concert
began, “three ISIS suicide bombers struck
outside the Stade de France in Saint-Denis,
during an international football match,
after failing to gain entry to the stadium.
Another group of attackers then fired on
crowded cafés and restaurants in Paris, with
one of them also blowing himself up. A third
group carried out another mass shooting and
took hostages at a rock concert attended by
1,500 people in the Bataclan theatre.”
Ferry was one of those under fire. As
people standing next to him were butchered,
Ferry crouched to the floor and began to
crawl over the dead, dying and wounded
(ultimately some 90 human beings were
murdered) in a frantic effort to escape the
carnage.
Covered in innocent blood, Ferry made his
way through the streets of Paris and did the
absolute right thing – he ran as fast as
could. He ultimately sought refuge in a
private home and was taken in by a French
family. Much later, the next morning, he
would be united with his three friends, all
of whom survived.
But that is only the beginning of
Ferry’s story. His journey living with
survivor’s guilt and PTSD drove him through
anger to a quest to make sense of what
happened. Not only did he form a
relationship with the French family that
rescued him, but he sought out and
befriended one of the families of the men
who murdered all those people. His mission
had become, “Turning the tragedy of
surviving a terrorist attack into happiness
by befriending the family of one of the
shooters.....and more.”
He explored how someone becomes so
radicalized that they see murder of
innocents as a rational response to social
and political problems. Ferry turned the
tragedy back onto the perpetrators by
becoming speaker and writer on “resilience,
personal leadership, media, health and
police related topics.” Ferry and I are
now exchanging emails and I have booked him
to speak at the Rotary Club of San Dimas in
July. I encourage you to learn more about
him here:
https://www.ferryzandvliet.nl
After Ferry’s presentation the Club went on
to talk about their current project and I
returned to eating lunch. The food and
service at Hugo’s Cellar was very good. The
lunch was an avocado burger with an ice
cream apple crisp combination for desert.
Hot coffee was served without asking. The
presentation and service of the meal was
excellent. If your’re downtown, Hugo’s
Cellar is worth a stop for dinner.
 It
turns out that the Downtown Las Vegas Rotary
Club had a somewhat indirect connection to
the topic. One of the purposes of Rotary is
to promote peace through cultural exchange
and international service projects. The
Downtown Las Vegas Rotary Club is very
involved in the Las Vegas Mayor's Cup.
Their club members “host teams, provide
transportation, housing and meals to our
sponsored teams. This is the largest
International Soccer Tournament in the US
with over 15,000 players participating and
bringing in over $20,000,000 to the Las
Vegas community.” The Downtown Las Vegas
Rotary Club sponsors teams from France, some
of who were impacted by the event described
by Ferry.
I walked back over to the Cortez and played
the slots for an hour or so. Took a shower,
dressed and headed over to my cousin’s
house. This evening we were going to visit
Nellis Masonic Lodge No. 46. My other
cousin, Chris, also a Master Mason from
Mariposa, was going to go with us this
evening.
Nellis Lodge “started at Nellis
Air Force Base as the Square and Compass
Club in April 1954. Brother General James E.
Roberts, then Commander at the Base, was
able to make a building available for the
meetings. The purpose of the club was to
provide a Masonic meeting space for the
military personnel to use while away from
their respective lodges. For the next few
years it was talked about forming a Lodge
but since most of the members were only
temporarily stationed there it never held
ground. In 1962 however it was decided to
create a chartered Lodge and also keep the
Square and Compass club. Our current member
Brother Al Schouten was the Worshipful
Master that presided over the first stated
meeting on December 13th, 1962.” Some years
later, Nellis Masonic Lodge would move off
base to the MMT. he Masonic Memorial Temple
(MMT), houses four Lodges (including Oasis
and Nellis) and the Las Vegas Valley
Scottish Rite.
Again, we were warmly received at dinner.
Our examination was a little more thorough
(an examination is the process whereby a
Mason proves his status as a Mason when
visiting a Lodge for the first time). In
addition to attending their Stated Meeting
we were fortunate enough to observe them
conduct a Master Mason proficiency. The
proficiency is a long and complex oral
examination of man’s understanding of the
Master Mason Degree. It is a huge milestone
in a man’s Masonic journey.
I dropped my cousins off just after 9PM. As
I drove back to the Cortez, my K5 dashboard
alerted me that there may be ice present. I
didn’t know the K5 did this. The outside
temperature was 37 degrees, so I suppose the
car has some program that activates the ice
indicator when the temperature drops to the
point wherein ice is a possibility. Despite
the alarm, the drive back to the Cortez was
uneventful.
The next morning I woke up just after 5AM
and repeated the slot machine/coffee
ritual. After an hour or so, back to the
Siegel Grill. Again, a great dining
experience. I then headed over to the Mob
Museum. The Mob Museum isn’t the full
title of the location. It is actually
called the National Museum of Organized
Crime and Law Enforcement. A few block from
the Cortez, “This building at 300 Stewart
Avenue in downtown Las Vegas opened in 1933
as the U.S. Post Office and Courthouse.”
Indeed, the courthouse was the setting for
the Kefauver Committee Hearings on organized
crime, in 1950.
Probably because it was early on a Wednesday
morning the museum was pretty empty. I went
to buy a entry ticket and the young woman
behind the glass partition asked me, “Are
you a Veteran, current or former law
enforcement; or over 50?”
“All three.” I replied.
“Which discount would you prefer?” She
asked.
“All of them.” I replied.
She thought for a moment and then told me
that I could not have all three. I could
only have one and I must pick. I asked,
“Which one gives a greater discount?” She
hesitated for a moment and then said,
“They’re the same.”
“You pick.” I told her.
She did. I got the official wrist band and
went up to the fifth floor to start the
tour. Opening in February of 2012, it is
five floors of exhibits. The most
interesting thing is the short movie on the
Kefauver hearings which is presented in the
room where the hearings were actually held.
You sit as if you are in an observer in the
courtroom watching the actual hearings. It
was informative and kinda cool.
The museum is like walking through an
episode on organized crime you might watch
on the history channel. Exhibits include
homemade prison weapons, Sheriff Ralph
Lamb’s rifles, and artifacts relative to
Howard Hughes. The direct relationship
between Las Vegas and the Mob seems
minimized in favor of a national and
international look at organized crime.
Indeed, lower floor exhibits focus on modern
day narco traffickers. There is also a use
of force simulator for public use as well as
mock up of a crime lab.
If you are downtown, save that last $20 you
were going to put into a slot and walk over
the Mob Museum. I walked back over to the
Cortez and tried lunch in the Siegel Grill.
Lunch was good, also. The grill has a very
good price to food quality ratio.
I was booked for one more night and intended
to take my aunt and cousins to dinner. The
prior evening my aunt told me she preferred
to eat around 4PM. I decided that if I went
over to my aunt’s a little early, had a
leisurely dinner at 4PM I could be on the
road at 6PM and home well before 10. A
really hot shower and a familiar bed sounded
good. Also, if you have read these
travelogues before, you know when I am done
with a trip, I am done.
Ultimately, we had dinner at the Bagel Café
in north Las Vegas. Sometimes, places that
provide large portions lack quality. This
isn’t the Bagel Café. I had liver and
onions. Very well prepared and a lot of
it.
Walking where my ancestor had walked and
spending time with family had given me a lot
to contemplate about the value of the past.
Through my cousins trips to the Lodge I met
new Brothers Masonry. At Rotary I had
discovered a gem of man with a powerful
message. The drive home was uneventful.
About the Author:
Lieutenant Raymond E. Foster, LAPD (ret.),
MPA
is the author of 11 books including Police Technology (Prentice Hall, 2004) and
Leadership: Texas Hold 'em Style. More information can be found about
Raymond at
Police Consultant.
Israeli expert on
security, protection, operations and prevention of criminal and terror acts;
and, Dr. Reuven Paz, Ph.D., an Israeli expert on militant and radical Islam and
Islamist movements.
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