Laughlin, Nevada, is presented as a gambling boomtown and a place of consequential employment in Linda May’s working life. At the Riverside Casino, she moved from outdoor cleanup contracts into casino work, first selling cigarettes and other goods and later serving as a cocktail waitress. The sequence shows both her ability to adapt when work changed and the limits of that adaptability: even years of employment did not give her the savings or security to stop working later in life.

A boomtown and a new job

Before Linda found work in Laughlin, she had been taking contracts to clear and rake debris. The work paid about $150 per contract and could mean laboring through summer temperatures as high as 120 degrees. After a windy bonfire at Lake Mead brought a ranger’s warning, she concluded that she could not continue raking weeds in such heat. Her construction technology studies had not led to the kind of work she had expected, and her older daughter and son-in-law had found jobs in the casino industry instead.

Linda soon became a cigarette girl at the Riverside Casino. The book situates this job within the town’s casino boom and notes that the casino’s owner, Don Laughlin, gave the town its name. Grateful for the opportunity, Linda sent him two dozen roses; when he asked about the gesture, she explained that it was simply a thank-you for the job. That exchange captures how important the position was to her at the time: it was not merely another contract, but an opening into a different workplace and source of income.

Work at the Riverside Casino

Linda sold candy, flowers, and tobacco from a tray carried on a shoulder strap. The tray was heavy enough that she initially wore a back brace for support, and the work kept her moving around the casino floor. She bought roses wholesale for 96 cents each and sold them for $4, often receiving an additional dollar tip. She purchased cigarettes by the carton and made a profit of 50 cents per pack. She also learned the spending habits of regular customers, including one gambler who would pay $5 for a 25-cent packet of aspirin when he had a headache. On a good night, Linda could clear $200 to $300.

The sales position was not her only casino income. Linda also hired and supervised people who cleaned the casino’s artificial silk plants. These two jobs combined selling with supervisory work, and the book describes the Riverside years as a period she remembered fondly. A surviving snapshot shows her in uniform, smiling with the Colorado River behind her. The photograph serves as a record of a period of work and relative confidence, even as her later circumstances make clear that the job did not establish lasting financial security.

A job ends, another begins

The cigarette-girl position became obsolete when tobacco vending machines arrived. Don Laughlin told Linda that her job was ending, but did not want to fire her; he advised her to speak with the general manager about another position. Linda asked which job in the casino paid the most, heard that dealing and cocktail service were the leading options, and chose cocktail waitressing.

The new role required a formal uniform that initially made her nervous. After her supervisor told her she looked beautiful in it, Linda surprised herself by accepting the appearance and trying the job. She felt protected on the casino floor by the bouncers, who intervened when gamblers treated waitresses disrespectfully. Her move from cigarette sales to cocktail service was a practical response to a disappearing job, not a break from the need to earn: the casino’s changing technology had removed one source of work, and Linda pursued another within the same workplace.

Work, age, and financial security

Linda was in her forties during her Riverside years. Looking back, the book places her fond memories beside a less reassuring trajectory: as she aged, her employment options would narrow rather than expand in recognition of her experience. Her casino work therefore stands as both an achievement and a temporary foothold. She had found a way to change roles when one position vanished, but the larger pattern remained a treadmill of low-wage employment.

By her sixties, Linda had little savings after spending much of her life living paycheck to paycheck. Social Security was her only safety net, and she expected it to provide around $500 a month. Her later question of how she could afford to stop working gives the Laughlin period a significance beyond a single job history: earning, adapting, and working hard had not translated into a secure retirement. The casino offered a real opportunity, and her resourcefulness helped her keep working when its first form disappeared, but neither the opportunity nor the effort erased the economic vulnerability that shaped her later life.