Bet you're in for some gambling odds and ends

Published: February 7, 2010

Article Tools

Font size: [A] [A] [A]

Our Social Networks

Facebook

I'm not much of a gambler. The biggest gamble I take these days is when I pass one rest stop along the interstate and it's 78 miles to the next one.

I didn't start off life so cautiously, though. "You wanna bet" probably tied with "It wasn't me" as the three-word phrase I uttered most often when I was a kid.

Looking back, I would have to say that I regularly issued the betting challenge because I was argumentative and not for the gambling aspect.

"You wanna bet" became my favorite tactic whenever I found myself debating one of my friends and we grew tired of going back and forth with "did"-"did not."

It was fortunate for me and my meager financial resources that my fellow debater and I rarely went past the threat to bet.

(Even when we did get around to setting a bet, it was much better to wager $1 million than a 5-cent Zagnut® bar. Nobody expected to collect a million, but the loser could be held responsible for the candy bar.)

The reason I am grateful for the fact that I rarely bet candy bars and cold, hard coins is that I am usually a lousy gambler.

This became evident early on when I would place a shoe box full of baseball and assorted other collector's cards on the macadamized school grounds that served as the neighborhood amusement park. More often than not, I returned with an empty shoe box because I "shot cards" with the top local card shooter and came in as runner-up.

We would lean 10 or 12 cards against a wall and try to knock them down by throwing other trading cards at them. The guy who knocked down the last card claimed all the cards by sweeping them up from the macadam, much in the manner of a poker player scraping in the winning pot.

On a good day, I might come away with a couple of well-worn Clay Dalrymple baseball cards and a few stones that where on the ground when I swept up my scant winnings.

Atlantic City was still primarily a boardwalk and salt-water taffy supply point then and not the gambling mecca it eventually became. Even if it were, I wasn't tall enough to reach the arm of a slot machine.

No, I got my first taste of big-time gambling at the annual block party run by the town's Lions Club. Yep, I plunked down my hard-earned dimes and quarters on numbers between 1 and 6 while the stand man would spin the big wheel.

It didn't seem to matter what numbers I bet my money on. The other numbers always came up. On the last night of the three-day event, I figured how to win at least once. I put a dime on all six numbers. As I awaited my first winning bet, the guy spun the wheel, which spun right off its stand and down the street.

My first taste of indoor gambling came in a pool hall. One day, I had absentmindedly gone into the billiards parlor instead of my original destination - the library.

I played quite a bit of pool, but only for the educational aspects. I had to put my geometry to use by trying to figure out bank shots. However, I was so bad at pool - and geometry for that matter - that I rarely played for money.

Instead, my spare change would go into a pinball machine. In place of the usual flippers and targets, this machine just had posts and numbered holes. The machine had six lighted cards with the various numbers set up like bingo cards.

You could rack up games for getting three numbers in a row, more for four and a gazillion or so for five in a row. Despite the sign on the machine that it was "for amusement purposes only," its lure was that if you won enough games you could cash them in.

I played this lousy machine for years before I finally got the five-in-a-row jackpot of $5. Subtracting for the all the quarters I put in left me $493.25 cents in the hole.

My rather spectacular lack of luck at mechanical games of chance prompted me to try another area of betting - cards (and I don't mean Clay Dalrymple cards.)

One Saturday afternoon, my friend Clarence and I gathered on the second floor of my folks' garage to play some gin rummy. To add to the gaming atmosphere, Clarence snuck out of the house with two of his dad's cigars. I don't know what left me greener around the gills - the cigar or what I wound up owing Clarence after we got done with gin rummy.

Thoroughly chastened, I vowed never to gamble again. Now, 40 years later, I can say that I have kept that vow.

Don't you believe me that I don't gamble?

You wanna bet?

(Kozlowski, a freelance writer from Mount Carmel, composes "Walt's Way" for each Sunday edition.)

Ads by Yahoo!