Bill prefers Home and Garden TV. I watch B&G—Blood and Guts, aka True Crime. Something I happened to see last week took me back to the summer of 1966. I had just graduated from the U of A. That summer, while I was waiting to see if I’d be offered a contract by Tucson District # 1, I headed up to Vegas to stay with my boyfriend’s family while I looked for summertime work.

Eventually I was hired as a secretary/receptionist for a small construction company. A few days later, my boss told me that that evening a big boss was flying in from Honolulu to confer with some people from Bullhead City, and they needed someone to go along to Searchlight to take notes of the meeting. Guess who was elected?

Late that afternoon, a guy showed up at the house in a shiny new Cadillac, and off we went. I have no memory of what we discussed on the fifty-plus mile drive from Vegas to Searchlight. When we got there, the town was then—as it is now—not much more than a wide spot in the road. I know there were two casinos and maybe two motels, but not much more. When we arrived, the Big Boss pulled into the first casino, and in we went. He looked around, told me the Bullhead people weren’t there yet, so we walked up to the bar where he asked me what I wanted.

At the time, I was a few months shy of age 22, and the only alcoholic beverage in my vocabulary was “screwdriver,” so I ordered one of those. The Big Boss ordered Chivas on the rocks. We were close to the end of those first drinks when he told me, “I’m going to go call and see where they are.” Since there was no such thing as cell phones back then, he headed for the pay phone. While he was gone the bartender turned back up, checking to see if we needed a refill.

“Who’s going to win,” I asked him, “him or me?”

“Isn’t he your husband?” the barkeep asked.

“No,” I said. “He’s my boss.”

“Lady,” the bartender told me with a grin, “don’t worry about a thing.” Needless to say, my second drink that night was straight orange juice. So was drink number three and the one after that as well.

At some point, I remember Big Boss saying something about my being able to hold my liquor. I told him, “I believe in mind over matter. I came here to do a job. There’s no way I’m going to get drunk.”

Several drinks later, Big Boss told me that the first casino was dead and maybe we should try the other one, so we headed there. Having had only one drink over the course of the evening, I figured I could handle another, but the first bartender had already called the second bartender, and my first drink there was straight orange juice, too. By the way, I believe that’s the last time I EVER ordered a screwdriver.

Eventually, Big Boss told me, “Obviously the other guys aren’t coming, so we should probably try to get some sleep.” At the motel across the street he ordered two rooms at the desk, but when he let me into mine, he walked away with the key. By then I was tired and actually needed to sleep, but there was no way on earth I was going to be caught in that bed. So, having been raised on Doris Day romantic comedies, I came up with a Doris Day solution—I gathered all the bedding and pillows from the bed and put them in the bathroom tub. Then, after closing the door, I wedged the back of the room’s only chair under the doorknob. Then I undressed, climbed into the tub, and actually fell asleep.

Eventually, Big Boss returned to the room. He pounded on the bathroom door for awhile and tried unsuccessfully to open it. I didn’t budge. Later, however, when I heard the sound of prodigious snoring, I got dressed, left the bathroom, and tiptoed out of the room. He was lying on the end of the bed fully clothed with his feet still on the floor. He didn’t budge as I went past. As much as he’d had to drink that night, I’m surprised he didn’t die of alcohol poisoning.

Once out of the room, I walked across the street to the second casino, where I found that the first bartender, now off duty, was visiting with the second one. Sitting there, drinking coffee, they told me that from early on in the evening, Big Boss had been ordering and paying for doubles for me while I’d been drinking straight orange juice. Several hours passed. At five o’clock in the morning, the two bartenders walked me outside, flagged down a passing Greyhound bus, and sent me on my way back to Vegas. The bus driver dropped me off at the Showboat Hotel which was only a couple of blocks from where I was staying.

It must have been seven o’clock in the morning when I walked into the house. My boyfriend’s mother, the woman who would eventually be my first mother-in-law, was watching TV in a cloud of cigarette smoke in the family room when I stepped inside. Her first words weren’t “How are you?” or “Are you okay?” Nope, she asked me, “Did you roll him?” Actually, although he’d been flashing a wallet stuffed with hundred dollar bills all night long, the thought had never even crossed my mind. .Obviously Mary Grandma was a whole lot more worldly than her future daughter-in-law. Later that afternoon, my boyfriend drove me back to the construction company where I went inside and collected my paycheck. That was the last job I had that summer. I spent the rest of the time reading books.

But what came home to me last week, after watching that particular B&G episode, was how close I may have come that night to turning up in the Nevada desert as unidentified human remains at the age of not-quite twenty two. And it occurred to me that it was high time I said thank you to those two unsung heroes—two regular guys working in down-at-the heels bars—who may well have saved my life all those years ago.

I have a feeling that there are a lot of other observant bartenders out there who have done the same thing for other naive young ladies in distress, and I’m saying a heartfelt thanks to all of them. As my mother, Evie, would say, “Whoever you are, you know who you are.”