Reno, Nevada back then was as good a town as any and likely better than most.
Not a bad place to wind up when he came back home from the war. Things worked out fine for a while. But just as he figured, his flair for card playing began to fade.
He thought about going back east but that didn’t appeal to him. He saw the east as a place where the possibilities which interested him were delicately pushed out of reach.
Some days this struck him as an excuse. Other days a reasonable outlook. But every day spent in Reno, Nevada stirred a growing restlessness. The urge for a change of scene rattled his quiet thoughts like a shunting string of boxcars.
One of the guys in his platoon was from Wenatachee, Washington. From all the stories it sounded like a fine place.
So after lunch one day at the Monarch Café he lit out from Reno in his 1946 Chrysler New Yorker. A two-door Brougham Sedan he’d picked up used. That was something he’d definitely miss about the town. All those automobiles people sold, lots of them they’d only owned for just a few months, sold to pocket the cash that would get them back to the tables.
Driving was tough with the pounding wind. So was clear thinking. He didn’t like to second guess himself though he couldn’t help but wonder if he had left too soon.
Walking out on a boomtown may have been a mistake. But the cards weren’t falling his way and it didn’t feel like the pendulum would start to swing back anytime soon.
He didn’t think this was pessimism or defeatism. Just trying to get a handle on those wild rhythms he had been riding in Reno, Nevada every night.
He liked the way those wild rhythms swept him down Virginia Street, from Harold’s Club to the Nevada Club and then the Frontier.
And he liked a lot of other things about the town.
Chances seemed good they would be there waiting for him when he got back.
