All is not what it seems.

The first thing we wanted to do was to go around the country and bug some relatives for a while. So, we left Austin on a bright clear Saturday and headed for Hoover, Alabama, home to Jim’s brother John and his wife Rita. However, we decided to spend a few days getting there so we could do some things along the way. One of our stops was in Biloxi, Mississippi, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Among other things, there are some gambling casinos there on “watercraft” in the water of the gulf. What a farce. They are nothing more than regular buildings built over the water and constructed to look like ships… river boats, sailing ships, pirate ships… you name it. The laws say that the casinos must be “on the water”. I understand that the original intent was for them to be on real floating craft… and in the beginning, they evidently were. But somewhere along the way, the non-floating version came into being and now you have the phony ships. Whatever, our luck “on the water” was just as lousy as it usually is on dry land. So, somewhat poorer, we moved on toward Alabama.