Which catered to strictly middle-class tourist trade that found Vegas either too expensive or crowded for their collective taste. Lots of people in their forties and fifties, with scads of Reagan For President buttons on display and not a single Carter, not that I saw, anyway. Who said Jerry Vale and Vikki Carr couldn’t draw anymore?

Back to me getting lucky-while I was in Boot Heel for business, my presence at the Four Jacks casino was happenstance. I’d skipped lunch, due to following a guy here from Vegas, and having to shadow his every move. I had established the guy had checked in to a motel on the far side of Boot Heel, and he hadn’t come out after two hours, so now I was looking for some place to sit and eat a sandwich and maybe figure my next move. Someplace well away from that motel.

An open parking space just down the street from the Four Jacks had called to me. I swung in-no meters in this friendly little burg-and was about to cross the street to check out the restaurant in the Golden Spike, the smaller casino/hotel opposite, whose marquee-not having Jerry Vale and Vikki Carr to brag about-promised a $5 steak sandwich with “all the trimmin’s.”

But traffic was momentarily thick, so I’d strolled down my side of the street instead, up to the half dozen glass doors of the Four Jacks. One casino restaurant was as good as another. I asked one of the liveried doormen where to get the best food in his place of employment, and he recommended the bar at the rear of the main floor. I went on in, experiencing a vaguely irritating symphony of sounds that included country western music, chattering gamblers, and slots digesting coins. Whirring, dinging, ringing.