what happens in tunica stays in tunica

Which is rather easy, as one is still in Mississippi and not privy to the hedonism offered in Nevada. No, I wouldn’t expect a Tunica branch of the CSI franchise anytime soon. In fact, the only sort of nightlife that non-gamblers like Mrs. Camino and myself could’ve experienced was a performance by Kenny G., and that, while certainly being something that one would wish to stay in Tunica for no other reason than the dreadful Kenneth’s act of musical necrophilia upon Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” a few years back, not to mention any other of his pieces of music selected at random, isn’t the sort of titillation that makes for good marketing.

So it was that we bypassed the claustrophobia of the casino buffet and drove fifteen minutes to Tunica proper where we dined in a relatively empty Mexican restaurant along highway 61. We later strolled through the casino for some people watching, but the hordes of half drunk gamblers sitting despondently in the unflattering light of the slot machines and the thick cloud of cheap tobacco smoke proved a bit more depressing than free entertainment should be. So we retired early. Besides, Mrs. Camino had to be up at a decent hour for her presentation.

That night Mrs. Camino dreamed of playing slot machines. She kept winning, but each time she won food instead of money.

I am not blessed with the gift of dream interpretation, but it seemed to me that she had actually been playing the vending machines.

While Mrs. Camino was at her conference I drove around in the drizzle looking at wide cotton fields dotted with pecan trees, pine trees, and the occasional shotgun shack or church. One is still in Mississippi. I then collected Mrs. Camino after her presentation and went to a park along the river where we happened upon the rare site of a live armadillo sniffing and snorting along the roadside for something edible. Bastard wouldn’t hold still.

It sort of looks like a possum dressed up as a samurai warrior for Halloween, does it not? Yes, someone should have named them Mexican Samurai Possums, I think. It would have done wonders for their marketing.