Ben Raskin

Author: Ben Raskin

  • The Elk Hunt

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    Ben Raskin
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    40-miles east of Kamas along a road that begs to be driven hard through curtains of quaking aspen and lodge pole pines, a crystal blue lake hides in the mountains of the Uintas. The air is biting cold in the late afternoon even though the sky mimics a child’s blue marble. Up a beaten path,…

  • The Beat Writer

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    Ben Raskin
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    Who would have thought it started with a love of musicals? A couple of years ago while tending bar at Keys On Main, a group of friends came in towards the end of the evening on a Thursday night. The room had died. The balance of the guests had left for the evening and I…

  • Leaving Las Vegas (Part Two)

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    Ben Raskin
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    When my father was my age, I was 11-years old. He was the medical director at a clinic in Las Vegas, owned a mortgage and was married with four kids. He had been done with medical school for 13-years and was 17-years removed from when he first started college at the University of California, Berkeley.…

  • A Dirty Mother

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    Ben Raskin
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    He looked Pat O’Brien on a bender. Salt and pepper hair with a trim mustache, wire frames, suit and perfectly capped teeth. He carried himself with the confidence of an assistant high school principal and was unaccustomed to being told no. He sauntered up to the bar with his wife and asked me what goes…

  • Leaving Las Vegas (Part One)

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    Ben Raskin
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    We were somewhere around Spanish Fork leaving the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I had just taken a Claritin. My allergies were pounding between the late pollen from ragweed and the wild fires raging alongside I-15. We were speeding north towards Salt Lake with nothing but Las Vegas and…