The Gambling Legacy

Some of my earliest memories involve my parents, my sister and I going to my dad's parents to play cards. They lived about 5 miles from us in the town of Lonaconing, MD. My paternal grandparents lived in an apartment above the Lonaconing Republican Club. They had once owned a house, but it was about a mile from the center of that little town. When they inherited the house from my Pap's Uncle Johnny they were living in that same apartment above the Club. Once they moved into the house, my Nana missed being "in town", so after a brief period of home ownership, they sold the house to my aunt and uncle and moved back into the same apartment. In any case, when we would go to visit and to play cards, the first order of business was usually dragging my Pap upstairs. He spent, how shall I say this, a considerable amount of time at the bar in the Republican Club. The game of choice when playing with my mother's family was typically Canasta, but when my dad's family played it was usually Set Back, Knock Rummy, or Kings in the Corner (Kings in the Corner was introduced into the rotation after my grandparents took a trip to Kansas City, MO and learned the game there) with dealer's choice poker thrown in occasionally. When the game was Jacks or Better/Trips to Win you could almost count on my Nana folding to a bluff. She would then cuss her way through the conclusion of the game until someone finally produced at least trips to win. If I played with only Nana we played three card rummy. From the time that I was big enough to belly up to the card table I was welcomed to play, but it was always with my "own" money and the "don't play if you can't afford to lose" mantra was repeated over and over. Meanwhile, down stairs in the bar there were always tip jars and machines available. I can remember sitting on my Pap's lap playing poker machines. Through the years there were true slot machines, mechanical horse racing machines, and later video poker and eight line video slots. These machines were always illegal in that town, but that rarely meant that there were not available. The VFW, the American Legion, the Republican Club and even Gladys Brown's Taxi Stand offered an illicit thrill. Sometimes Pap would bring a handfull of "tips" upstairs for me to open. If you are not familiar with tip jars, they contained hundreds of little packets which when opened revealed 5 numbers. If the numbers were 055, 155, 255, 355 or 455 they were worth $5. Zero11 through 411 were worth $10. If the number ended with 00 it was a "holder". Once all packets were sold, a seal was broken to reveal an 00 number with that "holder" winning $100.
As for the illegality of gambling in Maryland, my Nana would often say that the powers-that-be were fools not to legalize gambling and benefit from the taxes. To this day Maryland is still dragging ass while millions of dollars are crossing the borders to WV, DE, NJ and soon PA to the north will have legalized gambling. I am sure that I am not the only one who finds it ironic that Maryland promotes it Horse Racing Heritage for all it's worth and that there is a new scratch-off lottery game constantly being offered as well as legalized Keno, but full scale gambling is still taboo.
Meanwhile, 18 miles down the road in Cumberland, MD. my uncle was operating as a bookie. He, at one time, also owned a Democrat Club and the Capitol Lanes Bowling Alley. Uncle Jack kept his betting slips in a portable dishwasher. I can vividly remember my dad burning these slips in our wood burning stove. Some of these scorched and charred slips would exit the flue without being destroyed and I would go around the yard and pick them up. Every July my Uncle Jackand Aunt Juanita would rent a huge cabin at Deep Creek Lake and anyone in the family was welcomed to come spend a few days or the entire two weeks. During those two weeks, my uncle's brother Billy would drive back to Cumberland every morning to "run the shop". Each evening he would drive back up to the Lake with the cash and betting slips carried in a cooler. I don't know if it was true, but he said that if he was ever stopped with the slips laying directly on the seat, the car could be confiscated, but if the slips were in the cooler, all they could confiscate would be the cooler. As a child, this was all too intriguing to me.
Many years later the booking operation came to a close. My aunt and uncle were on a weekend trip to visit her sister in Frederick, MD. My uncle's brother was once again "minding the shop" in my uncle's absence. A few friendly State Troopers paid a visit and hauled my uncle's brother to the local barracks. In those days, you rented your phone from the phone company. Of course, the phone was confiscated. As far as I know, my aunt still pays a monthly rental fee on that phone. And thus, my uncle was no longer a bookie.
This has been a long way to go to get to the point. My entire life I was surrounded by gambling in one form or another. It was romantic in a sick sort of way. When I turned 21 I made frequent trips to Atlantic City and later Las Vegas. My first trip to AC started my casino chip collection. I took home a single chip from that first AC trip. It was a $2.50 chip from the Atlantis that I won while playing $5 BJ. I still have that chip along with literally thousands of other chips. Each chip tells a story. Maybe I actually played with it. Maybe a friend or relative brought it back from one of their gambling excursions. Maybe I traded for it or bought it off of Ebay. Many of my favorite chips are from a time before I was born. Perhaps from the Flamingo in the 1950s or even from Cuba before Castro rose to power and shut down the casinos there. Some of these chips just reek history.
Often, as I was driving into Atlantic City via the Expressway, I would get goosebumps as the skyline of AC opened up before me. Later those goosebumps would be quickly replaced with dread as I mentally calculated how much I would likely lose while in AC. The first time that I visited Mecca (Mecca being Las Vegas if you hadn't already figured that out) I was awake for over 50 hours. At times the floor seemed to swirl beneath me, but I was ALIVE. I ended up in the ER after that episode, but that is another story for another day.
There was little doubt that I would live in LV at some point. It took me many years of toiling away in a "career" that I increasingly disliked before I got up the nerve to close the book on one chapter of my life and start another. Today I am surrounded by gambling (I don't like the term Gaming...It's Gambling!!) like never before. Shopping at Albertson's for groceries? They have machines. Need something from the drug store? Machines are there too. Ubiquitous is the proper term. For the VAST majority of people gambling poses no major issues. The pull simply is not there. I talk to people all the time who look at me like I have three heads and ask "You lost HOW MUCH "? They simply don't understand. Others, who have also been bit by the bug just nod knowingly. They know EXACTLY how you feel. They have been there and are there. I can't help but think that Stephen King hit the nail on the head when he centered the forces of evil in this little desert town in The Stand. For some, the epitome of evil dwells here in this dusty oven.
I have no plans to live anywhere else anytime soon, so I have once again given up playing the machines. 18 days and counting. If there is something else out there, after this life, I can't help but wonder if Pap and Nana are playing cards. If Pap has a beer in his hand. If Uncle Jack is once again taking wagers on the ponies.
For now I will keep on dishing out the cards to the poker players of the world. Don't blame me if you can't seem to win. I just deal the cards. What you do with them is your business.