Primmest of the Primm

Pam asked me what I wanted to do today, and on a whim I said I wanted to go to California.  Dennis suggested we dip our toes into California territory via Primm, so off we went.

Primm, like so many small towns in Nevada, is inexplicably settled in the middle of nowhere.  It's a tourist trap 30 minutes outside of Vegas consisting of three casinos and an outlet mall.  It also boasts exactly one apartment complex, but outside of that there is no residential housing so practically everyone who works in Primm must commute from Vegas.

For me, the big tourist draw was the fact that Primm is home to the Bonnie and Clyde death car located at Whiskey Pete's.  Like The Excalibur on the strip, Whiskey Pete's looks like an oversized White Castle.  Classy.

The death care makes it totally worth it though.  Plunk down in the middle of the casino floor is a nice showplace for the car.  I didn't count, but supposedly 167 bullet holes riddle the thing.

The small exhibit also includes the shirt Clyde was wearing when he was shot in Louisiana in 1934.  The tag sewn into the shirt reads, "Wasson's Towneshirt, Indianapolis."  Good ol' Wasson's!

Close inspection of the shirt did reveal a few blood stains, but obviously the shirt had been cleaned at one point.  The long cuts across the chest and the sleeves were made by the undertaker.  The shirt also revealed that Clyde was a small guy--the shirt almost looked too small for me.  The sign said that Clyde was 130 lbs. and Bonnie was only 4'11" -- a tiny but tyrannizing couple.  

The small exhibit at Whiskey Pete's also included a bullet-proof 1931 Lincoln used by Al Capone.   The glass is bullet-proof and the panels of the car are lined in lead.  I wish I knew how much the thing weighed and what kind of miserable gas mileage it must have gotten.  While sporting quite a few bullet holes itself, it was indeed in much better shape than the Bonnie and Clyde death car.  Better design through engineering, better engineering by design.

Part of the parking lot at the outlet mall in Primm spills into California, so I literally went 40 feet into California then back out again.  What lies 40 feet within California territory?  A small building that sells lotto tickets.  You have to go to California for lotto tickets because it's illegal in Nevada.  Lewis Carroll couldn't write these jokes...or these laws.