This reminds me of this time with my grandpa – you’ll like this one – this time I rode with him to the casino. He was, oh, not eighty yet. Seventy-nine? I’ll say seventy-nine, but back when seventy-nine felt old, you know? Not like now, the Rolling Stones still rocking, Sammy Hagar, or, man, Helen Mirren in a bikini.

But Gramps had this silver Cadillac Seville, one with the weird trunk, looked cut off? I thought it looked like a hearse. I played him some Cramps tunes once when we were riding around in it, told him the singer was Lux Interior, just like his Seville. Gramps, God bless him, he listened to “Garbage Man” and “I Was a Teenage Werewolf” and said, “Them boys ain’t half bad but they’re no Elvis.”

I never knew he liked Elvis. I always thought he was a Merle Haggard man.

So I forget why I was visiting him. My mind’s a little scrambled at the moment. I was in college, I remember, because I’d have had to be old enough to go in the casino. My mom told me I was lucky to still have my grandpa alive at my age. She’d barely known both sets of hers. Hard folks. Scandi farmers, growing sugar beets on the frozen tundra of Minnesota. They even stayed hard after growing filthy rich growing sugar beets. Always funny, you live near a sugar beet mill, it stinks to high Hell, but the farmers’ll tell you, “Smells like money to me.”

Yeah, Gramps was extremely well off thanks to the family sugar beet business, but he let his brother and cousin take care of the empire when his parents passed so he could go get rich in the oil industry instead. Moved to Alaska, bought cheap land, partnered with the locals, then screwed over the locals when Big Oil swallowed him up.

Gramps could’ve afforded much better rides, a new one every year, but this Seville was special to him. Nineteen Eighty-Five, top of the line, all the bells and woo-hoos.

You can tell he passed his love of Caddies to me. Until I hit that wall tonight, my Escalade fucking gleamed, didn’t it? Let everyone else have their sporty sports cars. I’ll take luxury.

Lux Interior!

Gramps told me he wanted to go to the casino. I told him I’d drive, picked up my keys, but he literally swatted them from my hand.

“Son,” Gramps called me Son. He said, “Son, you don’t pull up to Chief of the Prairie casino in your shitty Kia Soul.”

Almost forgot, yeah, what I was driving back then.

He said, “No, you show up in a Cadillac Seville and get instant respect. First impressions are the only impressions.”

Who was I to deny that sort of wisdom?

Couldn’t remember the last time I was sitting shotgun to Gramps driving before then. It hadn’t come up, you know? Maybe high school? I remember weekends at the lake cabin with my grandparents, fishing, all the comic books I wanted, chocolate shakes from the old timey store on the old timey main street down the way. We feasted on trout and tater tots every night.

Hey, I remember now, just occurred to me, why I was with Gramps when he wanted to drive the Caddy to the casino. It was because Grandma had died. Yes, Gran had passed on, her heart giving up. We all drove up to their house, this giant log-cabin house on forty acres of woodland. While my mom and stepdad and stepsister and uncle and aunt and another aunt were out dealing with funeral details, I was “babysitting” Gramps. “Grampysitting.” Hilarious.

I thought we’d watch TV, dial up one of those old Elvis movies he liked. Did I tell you how much he liked Elvis? I’d always thought he was a Merle Haggard man. But he liked Elvis a lot, too. He liked Elvis in black leather, his Comeback Special.

Did we watch the Comeback Special? I know for sure we watched one of his movies with Ann Margaret when I was much younger, because, I swear, it was seeing her dance that made me go lock the bathroom door and jerk off for the first time in my life. And by jerk off, I mean actually finishing. It’s like a whole rite of passage, knowing what’s supposed to happen but not quite sure how to get there until whatever had flicked your switch made you keep going this time.

Ann Margaret.

Viva Las Vegas, yes, yes.

Those tights, her sweater…

I’d never seen any woman do anything like this before. Twisting and shaking. Her wide open mouth… goddamn.

Next I knew, Gramps was in a suit and tie, swallowed by it. To me, Gramps had always been tall and skinny. A swimmer’s body. Now he was shrinking in real time, right in front of me.

Gramps was my mom’s dad. My own dad had died when I was eleven – accident at work. He was an electrician. I don’t remember much. One time he broke a ping-pong paddle on my backside spanking me. Just snapped in two. It made him laugh and he said, “Go on. Go play.” Never spanked me again.

So.

My tall, skinny, swimming Gramps, shrinking in front of me. Holding up a good front in spite of his wife of fifty-plus years having passed on their kitchen floor.

He’d kept a full head of hair, barely any gray. Switched from Brylcreem to mousse because Gran bitched about him staining the pillowcases, but that night in his Burning Down the House suit, you could tell from the slickness and pungency he still had a tube of Brylcreem hidden somewhere and was going heavy with it for his big afternoon out.

He had a duck tail.

Jumping ahead. Crawling ahead, I should say. By the time the fourth or fifth semi passed him on Highway 23 – sugar beet trucks, spitting out those filthy things all over us and the road – I was mortified. So embarrassed. Gramps kept a steady eight miles under the speed limit. These were the days before smart phones, before texting. I had a tiny flip phone with a green screen, and I called Mom, but it went to voicemail. No one had said, “Don’t let Gramps drive!” They should’ve.

Now that he was old, really old, Gramps was listening to tunes at an ear-bleeding volume, too loud for even me. It was a cassette, sounded worn and stretched after hundreds of plays. Elvis! More Elvis. I never figured Gramps for an Elvis guy. Always thought of him as a, as a…a Merle Haggard man.

He pulled up under the portico at the casino. The valet looked at the Seville, Jesus, I’m more mortified. Gramps climbed out, tossed the keys to the kid, but Gramps didn’t have much strength anymore, I suppose. The keys landed a few feet in front of the valet. This guy probably never seen a Seville like this before, one with the trunk looked sawed off.

Gleaming.

The Seville, not Gramps.

His hair, maybe.

He threw the valet the keys, missed, then breezed right past saying, “You haven’t done anything yet. I tip on the way out.”

After the valet bent over to scoop up the keys, Gramps turned and pointed at the guy. “Not a scratch!”

I handed the guy a few bucks. I mean, we were the same age. Working for a living.

No, I wasn’t working in college. I had a scholarship.

I remember Gramps asking me several times, “Son, where’re you working now?”

“Son, what’re you doing with your diploma? Working hard or hardly working?”

“Son, are you, are you working?”

I felt bad, you know, for not coming to see him sooner. I’d outgrown fishing. I had outgrown the fucking Cramps. I had outgrown Gramps. Period. And I regret it, I do. Fucksake, I do.

I told him, “I’m in college. I’m studying business.”

Changed it up now and then. “In college, studying art history.”

“In college, studying women’s anatomy. Get it?”

Gramps liked that joke a lot. Every time I told it. Every time was the first time, see? I’d heard Mom talk about his forgetting things, but only in passing, never paying much attention. For the first time it was in my face. First time. Every time was the first time.

In the casino I had a hard time keeping up, tell you the truth. Little ol’ Gramps made a beeline. Buzz buzz. A beeline for blackjack.

“Son, ever played twenty-one? I’ll show you how. Climb up here beside me.”

He handed me a fold of cash, bunch of twenties.

It wasn’t my first time in a casino, but I’d only played slots before. Played cheap slots, guzzled some beers. Might’ve tried a fifty dollar spin at one point, lost, got depressed about it. Guzzled more beer.

You see a pattern.

Gramps proceeded to teach me the game of blackjack. I knew the basics, but the etiquette was new to me. The table banter. The splits. The speed of it all. I went through his twenties pretty quick. Not that he noticed. Didn’t even occur to me where his own bets were coming from until he busted big time and tossed down a stack of hundreds and winked at me. “Take a load off. We’re going to be here a while.”

He taught me his “system” but I still lost. When I ran out of twenties, I asked for a Sprite and watched him keep at it.

The casino was mostly empty mid-afternoon in Bum-Fuck Minnesota. An Indian casino, small but lucrative. Some retirees drifted by, played a hand or two, ran away when Gramps said things like, “Don’t mind me. My wife just died and she never let me gamble. So fuck her.” And, “Here comes the shark.”

It only dawned on me right before they grabbed us.

First, Gramps was playing, laughing, having a good old time, win some, lose more. The dealer, a wide woman named Helen, gave him an exaggerated “You betcha, big spender” or some such every hand.

Until he started winning.

Then he kept winning.

It was like he could read the dealer’s mind.

Not that that would help, because the dealer didn’t know what card he had, right?

Gramps was cleaning out poor Helen. Stack of chips a foot high. Do I shit you? Do I? I do not. Or was it several stacks? None of them a foot high. But climbing, they were climbing.

Gramps didn’t cheer after each win anymore. Just called for the next hand. The dealer stopped the banter, went stone cold silent.

Where there had been one Indian security guy in a suit, tie, and Bluetooth earpiece, there were now four or five Indian security guards in suits, ties, and Bluetooth earpieces. Whispering. Looking Gramps’ way.

Pretty sure Gramps had been watching them gather, like crows over roadkill. Pretty sure he was aware. But he kept on playing, winning, his stacks climbing.

Until the five Indian security guys surrounded our table.

Tall and Bald said, “Sir, can you come with us, please?”

Stout with Braids confiscated the chips. Helen the dealer told him, “Oh yeah, not even trying to hide it.”

Hair Helmet – seriously, this was some maximum wattage hair, some star power hair – took me by the arm, not hard or anything, and asked, “Are you coaching him? Does he get a cut?”

Gramps, Satan bless the little devil, he transformed again before my eyes. Not Elvis. Not David Byrne. Not Sha Na Na. Definitely not Merle Haggard.

Transformed into the oldest I’d ever seen him.

“What’s going on? What’s happening? Where am I?”

Trembling. Unable to focus. Wasting away.

They brought a wheelchair for him, and we were escorted into the security offices, an empty room with no mirrors, no windows, just some folding chairs and a fake-wood grain table. They told us to wait, Gramps still shivering and groaning in the wheelchair.

“Son? Son? Where are we son?”

“Chief of the Prairie, Gramps. I told you already.”

“Where’s your Gran? Your Gran here? Where’s your mom?”

If they hadn’t taken my phone, I would’ve seen a flurry of missed calls from Mom, from my stepsister, from all my aunts. Panicked messages. Increasingly panicked.

I didn’t listen to them until much later, days, a week after the funeral. Still dazed. Not so much over Gran’s death as how your family changes when a parent dies. Or when an old parent dies. I was young when my dad passed, so I was spared whatever this ritual was. Mom reverting to sixteen, her brothers and sisters pissier than ever, their spouses ignored in favor of this cake in the middle of the table. This cake with too much frosting, dry as drywall, bitter. This cake called family. Real family, blood family, not the family we make for ourselves. An old parent dies and we take a step back into what it was like before. And how it’ll never be the same way again, but it hadn’t been the same way for the past twenty, thirty years already, but no need for an inconvenient thought at an inconvenient time.

Different security guys, two in suits and one in uniform, came back after a couple hours and talked to me as if I was the mastermind because Gramps was a carrot sitting in his borrowed wheelchair. A parsnip. A Brussel sprout. Might as well have been.

“I don’t understand,” I told them. “He did what?”

“He was counting cards. That’s why he was winning. Not dumb luck.”

I turned to Gramps. Picking his thumbs, staring at his lap.

“Is he going to jail?”

The older of the two suited men grinned. “It’s not illegal to do what he did. But we don’t have to like it. He’ll be banned from the casino, and all of the other casinos under our brand.”

Gramps got 86’d.

He got 86’d from the Chief of the Prairie casino.

And I was with him.

My parents and stepsister and aunts and uncles descended on the place, Mom reading the security guys the riot act – dead wife, increasing dementia, very stupid grandson who should’ve known better. They calmed her down, explained there would be no further reason to prolong the issue, as long as Gramps steered clear of their casino chain from then on.

I was the one who drove the Seville back to Gramps’ place while he rode home with the aunts. All alone, playing Elvis “Glory glory hallelujah!” at a lower volume. I’d never driven it before, and I could see the appeal – comfortable, like a private tank. Lux interior. The smell of Brylcreem, a smudge of it on the headrest behind me. The hulking engine growled, although trying to get it up to speed was madness. Like steering a submarine. King of whatever lane it chose. Maybe the semis and sugar beet trucks kept passing me, but they passed me with respect.

Gramps kept up the small-and-forlorn act until we had a moment alone the next morning in the kitchen waiting for the coffee to drip, when he winked at me and said, “Son, that was what you call a ‘Last Hurrah.’ Never forget.”

Which is when it snapped into place for me. Clear as night. The whole act. He’d wanted to get caught. The money didn’t matter. Sideshow to him. No, he got off on the excitement. Getting nailed for it.

What a character, my Gramps.

It truly was a last hurrah, too. Things went downhill fast. He couldn’t live alone anymore in his massive house on beaucoup acres of land. The uncles and aunts didn’t want to take him, and my Mom flat out couldn’t, too small of a house. Plus, as soon as he had his children helicoptering around him all the time, whatever strength or willpower he had to stave off the dementia shredded away.

Shredded, yeah. Felt like. Big jagged rips and tears, erratic behavior, temper flaring. This time it wasn’t an act.

They found him a home. A “memory” home. He had his own room and TV, plenty of activities, but I heard he didn’t much like his new “cellmates.” His word, not mine. “Cellmates,” he told me, one of the few times I visited him. Mom had to threaten me to get me there. The place smelled sickly sweet, and you couldn’t walk five feet without some hollowed-out zombie staring at you.

Gramps could still turn on the charm, though. Beamed when he saw me. I would say gleamed, but his hair was dry, wispy, flying all over. His voice was phlegmy.

“Son, you working? You hardly working? Studying up on women still?”

Or worse.

“Swear, ain’t seen you since you were…” He’d hold his hand to my ten-year-old height. When Mom was there, she’d correct him. “No, Dad, you saw him last month. And you saw him when Mom died.” But I wished she hadn’t. I’d tell her “Quit it. He doesn’t know.”

One of the last times, Mom fuming and off to see his nurse and complain about Gramp’s hygiene, I crouched beside him, hand on his knee.

“Remember when you drove us to the casino? Remember? They caught you cheating?”

Mom out in the hallway: “The money we’re paying, I’d expect you to brush his teeth more often.”

“Remember, Gramps?”

Cloudy eyes behind thick glasses. Wild eyebrows. Seeing right through me.

Mom: “Of course it’s not easy! Look around! You really thought this would be an easy job?”

“Remember the Seville?”

The corners of his mouth flicked. Damn near a grin.

Gramps winked at me and croaked, “Last hurrah, Son.”

He was dead a month later.

It took years for the remorse to sink in, the way I’d shoved him off into a mental glove compartment instead of embracing him. Who knows what I could’ve discovered about him? Buried treasure? Secret family? A fugitive from the law, never got caught? But I had my own shit to do. My own life to concern myself with. Gramps was always a wealthy clown. A blowhard. A Merle Haggard man. An Elvis man.

A Cadillac man.

So when Mom offered me the Seville and I recoiled like it was a snake? Oh, man, how I wish I could take it back. I wish I’d grabbed those keys with gusto. Back then, though, I told her, “Do I look like a mobster? Do I look like a gangsta? Jesus, Mom.”

She sold it.

Took twenty years, twenty more years, for me to run across an Elvis station on satellite radio one day, sick of my job, sick of being sick of it. Caught the Comeback Special. Took me right back to Chief of the Prairie and the Cadillac Seville. Made me forget about my shitty first marriage, all the fun sucked out by the day to day. No kids, thank Christ. Might’ve prolonged the agony.

I clicked off “Little Sister,” drove to a dealer, and traded a Toyota Avalon for a Cadillac STS. Silver. All the bells and woo-hoos. I drove it home, walked in, and packed a suitcase. Told my wife she could find me in Vegas if she wanted to find me at all.

Later, I married Chelsea, a showgirl, and she ripped me off, but we can’t get enough of each other. Me her body and her my money.

Wished she’d answered the phone last night.

Why’d I tell you all about this, officer?

Because thanks to Gramps, I’ve now had three Cadillacs. Crashed all three. This is DUI numero three-o. I even learned to count cards, but always lost my stack after a third or fourth bottle of wine. I use Brylcreem in my hair. That’s the stench. That and my own sick down my shirt.

Am I proud of myself?

Ask it another way: do I want to die like my Gramps, fogged out, stinking, and dirty in a “cell”?

I’m having the time of my life.

Last hurrah, motherfucker. I want every day to be a last hurrah.