Book authors venture to Las Vegas to meet the main subject of Classroom 15 – NRToday.com

Smoke swirled lazily throughout the hazy, stale atmosphere of the MGM Grand Casino as the sounds of slot machine payouts and rowdy groups of bachelors flooded the room. One of the most famous hotel-casinos on the Strip, the colossal emerald building towers over most of Las Vegas Boulevard as it has for a couple of generations of revelers.

The smoke seeped through the automatic doors as throngs of tourists walked out and onto the Strip, immediately exposing themselves to the hot, arid desert air. The scene outside the hotel was an extension of the inside crowds and noise its a wonder anyone can live in this oven of a climate.

Of course, only a few of the people who live in Las Vegas reside along the infamous Strip. Suburbs surround the city, and thats where Janice Boyle and her husband live.

The ride to Janices was a calm, pleasant one as calm and pleasant as a drive through Las Vegas can be. Its easy to momentarily forget that there are places in Las Vegas beyond just the Strip, and that these places are lined with homes and families that look and act just like most cities and Americans.

The glitter and glamour of the Strip faded away as the road turned into one filled with residential homes, basketball hoops and AstroTurf front lawns. The Strips grandeur was replaced by a sense of idealized 1950s-style American domesticity, which must have provided a comforting transition from building bomb shelters during the hyper-tense Cold War era to the relaxed simplicity of post-Red Scare backyard barbecues and pool parties.

Her terra-cotta-roofed stucco home sits on the corner of her residential subdivision, with heat waves visibly radiating off the roof tiles. Janice and her husband live in Henderson, a suburb of Las Vegas that is already a sweltering 90 degrees mid-March.

Janices dogs are inside, barking at the undoubtedly threatening Jeep that dared pull up outside their house. Janice hushed the dogs and welcomed me to her home and memories.

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Book authors venture to Las Vegas to meet the main subject of Classroom 15 - NRToday.com