LAS VEGAS — It’s a long way to travel for a rabbi joke — even one with perspective — but Henny Youngman used to play this 24-hour city.

I got my joke at Mass on Sunday morning, a short walk from the Fremont Hotel, where I stayed four nights through the weekend. Father Tad Winnicki, pastor at St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church, 315 S. Casino Center Blvd., delivered it. Here goes:

A guy visits his rabbi and tells him life can’t get any worse. He lives in a room with eight other people, all of them getting on one another’s nerves.

The rabbi tells him, “Take a goat into the room and leave him there.”

A week later, they guy comes back and says that things have gone downhill. The goat stinks and is ill tempered. People are afraid of the nasty animal.

“Take the goat outside and leave him in the yard,” the rabbi says.

A week later, the guy comes back and says, “Things are terrific, never been better. The goat is finally gone and now it’s just the nine of us.”

I don’t know what I expected from Las Vegas, a town I’d never experienced until last week. I don’t gamble. I seldom drink. I’m not much for showgirls.

But like the guy with the goat, my perspective changed.

My dad and brothers have gathered for pleasure trips — minus me — in Vegas for years. I’d pass and suggest meeting somewhere with a museum. Saturday, we visited the Museum of the Mob, located in the old federal courthouse in downtown Las Vegas, where one of the Estes Kefauver hearings on organized crime was held in the 1950s. The museum was detailed and deep about the Mob and its long history, both in Las Vegas and elsewhere. But most of it was connected to the Mob’s influence on Las Vegas. I even sat in the electric chair where some mobsters met their fate in Nevada. My kid brother pulled the switch. We both got a charge out of that.

My older brother, a Vegas regular, told me there are two ways to enjoy the city: Visit the strip, with massive hotels, big-name entertainment and plush casinos. Bring your wallet.

Or stay downtown, with hotels and casinos in tighter proximity, steaks for $8.95 and free entertainment on Fremont Street. It’s hard to beat free.

I dropped $10 on video poker — we were waiting to get into a restaurant — and I grimaced as it evaporated before my eyes. That did it for gambling. But I got to the treadmill in the mornings, did a little shopping, enjoyed the Fremont Street Experience, with hourly light shows overhead and a surfeit of attractive nuisances on the walk, and we enjoyed live music from a public stage every night. We haunted a cigar bar into the early mornings. There was this concession to age: I took a nap between dinner and music every night.

Las Vegas was packed — the rodeo was in town — and we wandered off by car for an excursion or two. One was Sunday afternoon to the Three Angry Wives Pub, where New England Patriots fans routinely pack the joint to watch their favorite team play. (Imagine the groans Sunday, when Miami pulled off a razzle-dazzle touchdown to win the game as time elapsed.)

We took off to Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area for a short, winding drive followed by a short, winding hike. The area may have hosted a half-dozen Native American cultures over its long history, and — my wife would love this — Roy Rogers and Trigger did a movie there.

There was so much left to see when I boarded my 1:05 a.m. flight home on Monday. There were so many surprises. On the flight in, I read some of “Joan of Arc, A Life Transfigured,” by Kathryn Harrison and was happily surprised to find St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church in the shadow of the Golden Nugget. The church was founded in 1908 — ancient history, for Las Vegas, which is younger than Port Arthur — and was intimate and beautiful. A statue of Joan was outside.

And here’s another joke from Father Winnicki, who celebrates a compact, tourist-friendly Mass. Consider it lagniappe. Here goes:

A priest has a reputation for delivering windy sermons that keep Mass dragging long every Sunday. One Sunday, in the middle of an extended homily, the priest notices a parishioner get up and leave. The guy returns shortly before Mass ends. The priest is curious and asks him after Mass about where he went.

“I went to get a haircut,” the guy replies.

“Why couldn’t you get a haircut before Mass?” the irked priest asks.

“I didn’t need one before Mass,” the guy responds.

Ken Stickney is editor of The Port Arthur News.