Cajun Country

Charlie Stoll was a retired tungsten miner who lived in an elaborate house just outside the ghost town of Oatman, AZ. He also owned a private airport where he kept a twin engine private plane that seated six passengers.

I met Charlie and his wife after a bizarre incident where he was arrested by undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agents...

....who claimed he had assaulted them with a shotgun. The fact that the old shotgun didn't work and that he was only trying to protect his private property had no affect on the agents. They were determined he would go to jail and learn his lesson -- namely, don't mess with the federal government!

I was living in Phoenix, AZ. and covered Charlie's trial in U.S. District Court. Although it soured my relations with the DEA, it didn't matter. I thought Stoll was innocent and that the DEA had bungled their investigation of a marijuana smuggling operation.

When I wasn't covering Charlie's case against the DEA, he and I could be found gambling in Laughlin, NV., just 23 miles south of Oatman.

Laughlin has a number of glittering casinos built along the Colorado River. Charlie and I would fly in his plane to the Laughlin Airport and head for the Riverside or the Colorado Belle for an evening of gambling.

He shot dice and I played poker. While both casinos had good poker rooms, I preferred the Colorado Belle. It was shaped like a Mississippi gambling ship complete with paddle wheels and it had a chorus line of Cajun beauties who several times a day would sweep trough the casino and the poker room.

The skimpily dressed dancers would smile and drape the players with New Orleans style beads while throwing kisses at us. We would momentarily halt our play long enough to watch the leggy dancers disappear.

The Belle also had a restaurant upstairs that featured Cajun food like Po Boy sandwiches and red beans and rice. It was yummy. You never went hungry when you played poker at the Colorado Belle.

Charlie was a good dice player who won more often than he lost. Once he traveled to Las Vegas and won so much money he invited his mining partner Bob McKenna to fly to Las Vegas for a party. Stole held an impromptu Miss Nude Las Vegas contest and showered hundreds of dollars on the contestants during a four-day party that is still being talked about in the city that never sleeps.

Stoll was a good friend of Don Laughln who built the Riverside as well as the bridge that crosses the Colorado River from Arizona to Nevada. Laughlin was a genial host who never charged Charlie or me for a room when we wanted to stay at the Riverside.

I still remember the night I was playing poker at the Colorado Belle and Charlie was shooting dice in the casino. We had planned on flying back to Oatman after a night of gambling, but fate had other plans for me.

One of the dancers in the chorus at the Belle was from Baton Rouge, LA. When she was finished dancing, we began talking to one another. She discovered I had lived in Mandeville, LA. and had visited Jimmy Swaggart's church in Baton Rouge.

"Really," she said. "I attended that church when I was a child. I loved the church and Swaggart's singing."

After her shift ended, we retired to the bar and were sipping Robert Mondavai chardonnay when Stoll came by and found us there.

He smiled. "I'm ready to head back to Oatman, but I see you have other plans. How about I pick you up in the morning?", he said.

I told him, "That will be fine, Charlie," and the dancer and I both waved so long to him as he made his exit.