Golden Anniversary

In December, 1959, Lillian flew to El Paso where I was stationed at Ft. Bliss for our wedding. Her flight was mostly filled with women going to Juarez, Mexico, just across from El Paso, for their quickie divorces. Fortunately for me, Lillian didn't listen to their advice. After being married in the Ft. Bliss Chapel, we drove to Las Vegas for our honeymoon. The highlight was seeing Jo Stafford at the Stardust. At that time, the Strip only had one or two casinos, e.g., the Flamingo and Stardust; most of the action was on Fremont St, where we spent a lot of time in the Golden Nugget, getting free drinks and free pictures. Dining then was cheap as were the shows where we could see headliners just for the price of a drink.






















We've been back a number of times, but last December we returned to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary. After 50 years, things were really different. We stayed at the Venetian

and dined at the best restaurants. We had a great dinner in the Eiffel Tower restaurant, enjoying the view of the water show at Bellagio, which were spectacular at night.











We celebrated our anniversary by dining within the Venetian and seeing the Phantom of The Opera. Excellent meal and a terrific performance.






The night before we had seen Crazy Girls, a topless show featuring five girls featuring reformatted boobs; plastic surgery at its worst. Here I'm standing by the famous bronze statutes of the Crazy Girls. The picture ext to it we are in a bar in an auto museum.















In the Bellagio they had nice Christmas decorations, including a G-scale model railroad. The Wynn was also nicely decorated as this picture of Lillian shows.



Meanwhile within the Venetian, there were many fine places to dine or drink.












The next night we saw Cher at Caesar's Palace; typical Cher with fantastic costumes and including nostalgia videos with Sunny and Chastity. Here we are dining in Caesar's palace just before seeing Cher.






















We took a ride to Fremont St and saw the Golden Nugget, but it had significantly changed from when we were there 50 years ago as the picture with Lill below standing on Fremont Street shows.














Fremont St is now a pedestrian only street with a cover over it; not the hub of activity of days gone by.




On our last night we saw a Las Vegas Jubilee, a girly review, at Bally's which was real nice. It featured lots of beautiful topless girls in extravagant costumes, one of whom has me in her clutches.





As we flew home, we got a great view of the Hoover Dam. When we were there on our honeymoon, we visited the dam and took many pictures which later became know as our dam pictures.