Another true story.

[Greg_Cornish]

I was in Las Vegas and decided to see the Sands hotel. I'd heard a lot about it throughout my life and heard it would be torn down. On entering I saw a familiar looking man who appeared to have freshly been struck with a bolt of lightning. Yup, Don King himself - totally surrounded by 30 black youth from 10 to 20 years old all begging for a shot. "Please Mr. King, talk to me, I'm a good fighter." He waved them all off and rapidly walked by on his way out. Several followed.

I remembered going up the elevator and on the way down, seeing Johnny Cash standing in a shop with things I thought Johnny Cash would not be interested in. I thought about talking to him but I decided his private time was valuable.

I was going to ask about the shows so I went to the desk. No one was there except a check-in and I.

I noticed a huge bowl on the desk. It was filled with what looked like condoms to me. Hundreds of condoms in black packages with "The Sands Hotel" written on them. Well, that'll make you remember the Ol' Sands Hotel. It said, "FREE" on them. I looked quizzically at the guest.

"Uh, are those what I think they are?" I asked.

"Looks like condoms to me," he said.

So I shamelessly took about 200 of them and put them in my huge man purse I carried on one knee. Feeling like a gluttonous thief I decided to go back to my Hotel. I put them in a bag and took them home to Sonoma.

Working for me at the time in an all guy copy store was a young kid who was going to Russia for 6 months. On his last day I whipped out the bag of condoms and yelled, "Take these with you buddy, I hear those Russian Girls like American boys. Everyone laughed and he said, 'THANKS!'"

He was gone for 6 months. His job was waiting, as his buddies were, to hear his Russian report. Times were hard in Russia then. Mikhail Gorbachev had just broken up the Soviet Union and gotten rid of Communism. I had donated a wheelchair to Russian Relief which my young employee had organized and he was there to see it given away. An older woman got it. Not for herself - for her 2 paralyzed daughters. She had twins, both born with spina bifida, an opening in the spinal column that paralyzes you in different degrees from birth. She was crying. The girls were 16 years old and never had a wheelchair. She'd carried them everywhere. When they were to old to carry them both, she carried one at a time. Now they were both to big to carry, and she was to old. Now she could wheel them around, one at a time.

I felt so good knowing that the chair went to such a deserving parent.

But the guys all wanted to know how many condoms were left. So I asked, "Do you have any condoms left?"

He glared at me. Those weren't condoms, you idiot, they were Wet-Naps!

"What? bologna!," I yelled.

"No Lie!"

"Well, how did you discover it?"

"How do you think?" he said.

We roared with laughter. I said, "You mean like, Hang on a second Honey, while I ...(Rip)...I...I... clean this thing off?"

We roared with laughter again.

"Well, not exactly, but something like that."

We all had tears in our eyes from laughing.

He said, "Actually those Wet-Naps helped me meet many women. In the eastern block countries some of the train stations are deplorably dirty. I went everywhere by train. If you slid your hand down a handrail, your hands got filthy. Many times I saw a girl looking at her hands and was able to walk up not know her language and tear open a wet nap and offer it. They always thanked me sincerely."

I said, "Its a good thing they didn't think you were approaching them opening a condom. You might still be in a Ukraine prison."