He loved: hand buzzers, trick horses, fake vomit, squirting daisies, cowboy truisms, knock-knock jokes, and scatological humor. In any given room, my grandfather would find the smartest, strangest child and put himself in league with them against the adults. I had my eye on the casino because, when the wizard died, he left me short on a kind of magic I’ve been looking for ever since.
You’ll think this was naïve of me, but I was hopeful because I used to know the Wizard of Oz. I was hoping that, inside, the YBR would have a little bit of Oz-y magic to it. Above the awning, the Yellow Brick Road’s sign of neon bricks blink in a spiral. It is painted emerald green and has a wide yellow awning. I had been driving by this casino in Chittenango, N.Y., for almost two years. We set ourselves a $20 budget because we did not trust ourselves with more. We were not optimistic about this, but we thought it might be a laugh. My friend and I went to the Yellow Brick Road Casino, looking for a good time. “There’s lots of magic in all Nature, and you may see it as well in the United States, where you and I once lived.” L. “All the magic isn’t in fairyland,” he said gravely.
