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The Dunes
Reunion
It was Pegg Wallace's
idea. The tenth anniversary was coming up on the closing of the Dunes
Hotel in Las Vegas, and she said, "We ought to have a party."
So that's exactly what we did.
We printed up some flyers, nothing fancy. Just "DUNES CASINO
EMPLOYEE REUNION -- 10 YEARS LATER.
SEE OLD FRIENDS, HAVE SOME LAUGHS, AND SHARE SOME MEMORIES." A
local bar agreed to host the party, even promised to lay out some free
food. Of course, those chicken wings and meatballs would just make
everyone thirsty, and that's what the bar was counting on.
John L. Smith
devoted an entire column in the Review-Journal newspaper to the reunion,
and by the night the party rolled around we didn't know what to expect.
Would anyone come? Did anyone even care? Or would it just be Pegg and
me, and our spouses, shooting pool and drinking ourselves into a coma.
Over the years I'd worked at quite a few casinos: Pioneer, Mint,
Landmark, Caesars Palace. But the Dunes was special. It's where I made
some lifelong friends, including a cute and sassy blackjack dealer named
Debbie. Matter of fact, we've been married ever since the Dunes closed.
Kind of like the end of one era, the beginning of another, you might
say. If it hadn't been for the Dunes, I probably never would've met her,
and who knows where I'd be now.
The Dunes opened in
1955 B.C. (before corporations) with 200 rooms, a "Magic Carpet
Revue" featuring
Vera-Ellen, and a 30-foot Sultan standing out
front, hands on hips and daring you to say anything. If he could have
seen the future that awaited him, he probably would have sprinted back
to Arabia as fast as his fiberglass legs could take him. But in the
fifties the Dunes was one of the classiest resorts on the Strip. It
specialized in junket play, bringing in high-rollers every week from New
York, Miami, St. Louis. Everything was free, as long as the players
gambled.
They all had plenty of dough. You could tell that. It oozed out of their
pores like expensive perfume, the men wearing pinky rings the size of my
fist and the women wearing big black furs that had probably wiped out
half the country's wildlife population.
For a young dealer,
fresh from downtown, it was an adventure like no other, and it started
on my very first night at the Dunes. I hadn't been working five minutes
when this heavyset gambler threw me a handful of checks. "Gimme
three thousand across," he said. God almighty, those were $500
checks! I'd never even seen one before. I just wanted to sit down and
gaze at them for a while.
Then it hit me. I didn't even know what "three thousand
across" was. I leaned over to the boxman, who was six feet tall,
sitting down. "What is it?" he growled, looking at me like I
was a piece of dog meat.
"This guy wants three thousand across!"
"Put 'em up."
"Okay." Then: "What is it?"
He exhaled slowly, hitting me in the face with a blast of garlic.
"Five hundred on each number!"
I stood there, trying to figure out what the payoff was for a $500 six.
Thank God a seven came up on the next roll, or I'd still be trying.
The whole night was
like that, more money passing through my hands than I'd ever have in my
whole lifetime. Where did it all come from, I wondered. How could
someone bet $3,000 on one roll of the dice? If he could afford to bet
that much money, then how much money did he have? And if he had that
much money, why would he want to gamble in the first place? It was a
complete mystery to me.
Sid Wyman was the big owner of the Dunes, and he was a great man to work
for. He'd walk through the pit, saying hello to everyone, even greeting
us by name. Of course, we were wearing name tags, but it was still a
nice gesture. If you were running short, he'd advance you a few bucks
till payday, right out of his own kick. Anything you wanted, just ask
him for it and you got it. If you crossed him, you were out the door,
but that hardly ever happened.
In 1978, Sid Wyman
died, and the Dunes died with him. The hotel was taken over by St. Louis
attorney Morris
Shenker, mouthpiece for Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa.
In less than ten years time, the Dunes went from the showplace of the
Strip to a teetering high-rise on the brink of doom.
By the time Steve Wynn bought the 164-acre resort in 1992, there wasn't
much left to do except blow the place down, which Wynn did the following
year. The Bellagio opened on the site in 1998, and thousands of former
Dunes employees were left with nothing but dusty old memories.
Now Pegg was lining up a party. And me? Well, I was giving her moral
support, saying things like, "It's a great idea, Pegg." I even
brought one of those disposable cameras to the reunion. The way the
pictures came out, I should have disposed of it right after I bought the
damn thing.
Yeah, I took a lot of pictures, because here's the thing. The party was
a roaring success! I'm not exaggerating when I say there must've been
300 former Dunes employees at the reunion, people I hadn't seen in a
whole decade.
One was a blackjack
dealer named Eleanor. She came wearing a Dunes bow tie and a Dunes
apron, and even had a $5 Dunes chip in her pocket. Another was a former
Dunes cocktail waitress who had to be honing in on 80. Trying to be
funny, I asked her where she was serving drinks now. "At the
Hilton," she answered in a scratchy voice.
George Duckworth was there. He was one of the original owners of the
Dunes, along with Sid Wyman and Major Riddle. "I retired in
1991," he told me. "Worst thing I ever did." I started to
tell him I retired in 2001; best thing I ever did.
In fact, a lot of the
Dunes people were retired. They were doing things they'd wanted to do
all their life, traveling mostly. Others were now in other lines of
work: real estate, law, construction. Some, though, were still in the
casino racket, sitting box, working the floor, a few still dealing. One
was even a casino vice-president. It made sense. He was the only there
under 40.
I wandered from
group to group, taking my pictures. I got a couple of shots of Sam
Angel, holding court with a few other old-timers. Sam never actually
worked at the Dunes, but sold jewelry out of a battered suitcase over by
the baccarat pit. I bought a ring from him one time, and I still get
green on my finger every time I wear it.
It's funny, but when I first got to the party everyone looked.....well,
ten years older. But by the end of the night all those years had peeled
away. For one magical night, we were still working at the Dunes, waiting
for another junket to land.
They're talking
about making the reunion an annual event. I've got a better idea. We
could all pool our money, borrow some more, buy the Bellagio, tear it
down, and rebuild the Dunes.
I bet it would be the greatest casino in town. And who knows, we might
even hire George Duckworth back.
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It's easy to get a
job in Las Vegas today.
All you do is call the hotel's Human
Resources office and get a recorded rundown on which jobs are available.
If the tape mentions a job you're qualified for, then you hustle down to
Human Resources and fill out an application. Your name is then forwarded
from Human Resources to Internal Security, and Internal Security runs a
complete background check on you and sends the results back to Human
Resources.
If you're clean—no outstanding bench
warrants, no bankruptcy filings, no skeletons in the closet—then Human
Resources schedules you for a drug test. If you pass that, (and I wouldn't
trust anyone who did), you just might get the job. Then, if you pass the
90-day probation period, you're a full-fledged casino employee! See, I
told you it was easy.
It wasn't quite that complicated when I
moved to Las Vegas about 150 years ago. In those days, getting a casino
job was all about juice. If you knew someone, or if you knew someone who
knew someone, then you could always get a job. Of course, you had to know
how to deal, and the only way you could do that was by going to dealer's
school.
They were all listed in the yellow pages of
the phone book. Casino Gaming School, Nevada School of Dealing, Dealers
Training Center, Casino School, Las Vegas Dealers School. "Learn to
deal in casino style surroundings." "Hands-On Training."
"Learn at your own pace." "Day and Evening Classes."
"Job placement assistance." My mind raced as I ripped the page
out of the book. Not only could I learn everything I needed to know, but
these people would help me get a job when I graduated.
The next morning I drove downtown. Behind a
noisy slot joint called Honest John's was a dingy, gray building with a
faded sign: "Nevada School of Dealing." I parked my Mustang in
the Honest John's parking lot ("Customers Only" the sign read)
and headed for the casino, the parking attendant watching me warily. As
soon as I got inside, I ducked out through a side door and headed for the
school.
The owner, a lanky man with a permanent
frown on his face, introduced himself as Arnold. He showed me around,
talking incessantly while elbowing students out of the way. There were
three blackjack tables, a crap table with a worn layout you could
practically see through, and a roulette wheel with a chipped "El
Rancho Vegas" logo on it. It was probably worth a fortune as an
antique; the El Rancho had burned to the ground almost 15 years ago.
"I can teach you any game in the
casino," Arnold told me. "It's a hundred and seventy-five a
game, and I suggest you learn at least three games. It'll make it that
much easier to get hired somewhere."
I swallowed. "Uh, maybe just one game
to start with. I was thinking about learning blackjack."
Arnold made a face. "I could teach a
monkey to deal blackjack. You oughta learn to deal craps. Crap dealers are
worth their weight in gold. Everybody wants crap dealers."
I swallowed again. "Gee, I don't know.
It looks so complicated."
"Come on back to the office," he
said. "I'll give you all the stuff you need to get started."
Eyeing me over his horn-rims, he added, "You got the money,
right?"
"Yes sir," I answered, handing
over a crisp hundred dollar bill and four twenties. In an instant, my
bankroll had been depleted by almost a third. I was full of questions as I
followed Arnold into his office. How long was the course? When did classes
start? How would I get a job when I graduated? I learned then that this
wasn't an actual institute of higher learning, like a regular college. You
showed up whenever you felt like it, you practiced on the table with the
other students, and Arnold would tip you off if one of the downtown
casinos decided to hire a break-in. That's what we were, break-ins. In
other lines of work, we'd be called gofers, or flunkies, or interns. In
Vegas we were break-ins.
Arnold gave me some mimeographed sheets of
paper and told me to memorize everything. One look at the pages and my
heart sank. The first one was about the pass line and the don't pass, and
"odds," whatever that was. The next page was about come bets and
don't come bets, then came another page on proposition bets and an ominous
something called "hardways." That figured. This was turning out
to be a hard way to make a living.
"I've got to memorize all this
stuff?" I cried.
"It's not that hard," Arnold
shrugged. "Just think of everything in units. One unit pays a certain
amount, the next unit pays twice that much. You'll get it down in no
time."
I went through the pages again. "I
don't see anything in here about how the game is played. Don't you have a
text book or something?"
Arnold laughed. "You'll learn all that
in class." Again: "It's not that hard." He looked at his
watch and then brushed past me. "Why don't you go meet the others and
I'll see you when I get back from the bank."
I wandered around the place for a good two
hours, but Arnold never came back. I found out later from one of my
classmates that Arnold didn't go to the bank with a new student's tuition.
He went to a downtown casino and "invested" it at the tables.
When he lost, he didn't come back. Maybe that's why he was gone most of
the time.
By the end of the first day, I was getting
the hang of the game. It was called "craps" because the shooter
lost if he rolled a craps number on the first roll — a two, three, or a
twelve. There was a man with a stick called a stickman, and two dealers
who took everybody's chips when the shooter didn't shoot what he was
supposed to shoot.
And that was another thing I learned. All
the players took turns shooting the dice. You didn't have to shoot if you
didn't want to, but it was kind of what held the whole thing together.
Besides, it was like being in the limelight for a couple of minutes.
Everyone watching you, everyone counting on you, everyone smiling at you
when you rolled one of their numbers. Heck, I thought it was more fun
being the shooter than being one of the dealers.
It was still a lot more complicated than
blackjack, but I was starting to get the general idea. Of course, I still
didn't know what a lay bet was, or a come bet. But one of these days it
would all fall into place. I just had to study harder, that's all.
I also started making friends with some of
the other students. A group of us ate lunch together in a downtown casino,
where I got a whole sundae glass full of shrimp (and lettuce) for a buck.
We didn't talk about our hometowns or anything else of a personal nature.
We talked craps, and I could feel the excitement bubbling in my veins. It
was the same feeling fighter pilots must experience after a bombing run
over enemy territory, or how a major leaguer feels after he pitches a
no-hitter. We were all going to be dealers someday, and Vegas would never
be the same.
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Coming
of Age
After
less than a week at dealer's school, I was dealing craps like I'd done it
all my life. The camaraderie I felt with the other students was hard to
explain. It was almost like going to summer camp, being away from home for
the first time. We were all pals, all allies, all out to become Las Vegas
dealers.
We'd take turns dealing the game and working the stick, then we'd become
regular players, trying to stump everyone else with some screwball bet.
"Gimme a horn high ace-deuce for a nickel," I would bark,
tossing a fake chip to the fake dealer.
The instructor would grin and say, "Book it, Danno. That's a
legitimate bet."
And I would stand there with a smug look on my face, proud as an eagle.
The only problem I encountered was handling the chips. They kept falling
out of my hands when I tried to pay a bet. Here I had the payoff all
worked out in my mind ($12 six pays $14), then I'd try to pay it, dollar
chips in my left hand and $5 chips in my right. Suddenly gravity would
kick in and the damn things would go scattering all over the table.
"Where'd this come from?" the dealer on the other end would ask.
"That's mine," I'd answer with a sigh. "Roll it back over
here, will yuh?"
The instructor took me to one side. "You're gonna be a good
clerk," he said in a confidential voice. "But you can't cut
checks worth a crap. I want you to go over to the Nevada Club. Buy
yourself a $5 stack of 25-cent checks. When you get home, spread a blanket
or something on the kitchen table, and practice cutting checks. Ninety
percent of the game is cutting checks, remember that."
There's another one I'd have to stick in the old memory bank. Tourists
called 'em chips. Dealers called 'em checks. Don't ask me why. They just
did, that's all.
The Nevada Club turned out to be about the seediest gambling joint I'd
ever seen. The carpet, if you could call it that, was held together with
spit, and stained with every kind of blotch and smear you could think of.
Hopefully, it wasn't blood.
The place was crawling with drunks, hookers, and down-and-out grinders. It
was almost like being inside Ripley's "Believe It or Not." The
food for the help must be pretty good, though. Every dealer in the joint
had a stomach out to here.
I edged cautiously to the casino cage, on the lookout for pickpockets and
serial killers. The cashier pushed me a stack of quarter checks that were
so worn a seeing eye dog couldn't tell what they were worth. I hefted the
checks in my hand, feeling some kind of power from deep inside. Here came
gravity again and one of them went rolling toward a blackjack table. As I
picked it up, I glanced at the table. One of the seats was empty. The
occupant must've gotten the DT's or something.
You know what? This could be some kind of omen. They say everything
happens for a reason, so just why did my 25-cent check land at the foot of
a blackjack table with one empty seat? Yes sir, my guardian angel was
working overtime, telling me it was time to make myself a quick double
sawbuck.
I stuffed the checks in my pocket and dropped a twenty on the table.
"Change," the dealer called over her shoulder to a bored pit
boss who was either doing paperwork or reading a racing form. "Go
ahead," he said, never giving me a second glance. The dealer, 80
years old if she was a day, pushed me $10 in iron and two $5 checks. At
least I could read the writing on them.
Four hands later I was down twenty bucks. I busted every single time. I
learned one thing, though. You don't say, "Hit me" at the
blackjack table. You scratch on the table if you want a card, stick the
cards under your money if you don't, especially in a joint like the Nevada
Club. Say "Hit me" in there, and that's what was liable to
happen.
Out came another twenty, only now my heart was starting to pound. No one
liked to lose, but not everyone was carrying his life savings around in
his back pocket, either. The dealer gave me four $5 chips this time.
"Change," she called. The pit boss didn't answer. He was
probably having his own problems at Santa Anita.
This twenty went just as fast as the last one, and just like that I was
down forty big ones. Maybe if I struck up a conversation with the dealer
she'd take pity on me. At least, I might be able to break her conversation
and get her off that winning streak. "So where you from?" I
asked her, digging in my wallet again.
"Here and there."
"How long you been a dealer?"
"Too long."
"Well, you sure are lucky, I'll say that."
"Hey, I just deal the cards, Mister. I don't care who wins."
"Yeah? Well, I'm gonna be a dealer myself. Soon as I get out of
school, I'm gonna be a crap dealer."
"Change!" she hollered, scooping up another of my twenties.
Nothing from the pit boss. Not another word from her, either. Here came
the cards again, and I finally won a bet. I decided to double up, and let
the whole ten ride. Wrong move. It was the same old song and dance; she
got the gold and I got the shaft.
By now my mouth was so dry I couldn't swallow, which was just as well. I
hadn't seen a cocktail waitress in this flea trap since I sat down.
To make a long story short, I lost $150 that afternoon, and the $5 in
quarter checks to boot. It was like watching a horror movie on the big
screen. I was the knight in shining armor. The dealer? She was Dracula.
It was a long ride back to the motel. I'd never felt like such a loser in
my life. And let's face it, that's what I was—a loser. Everyone knows
you can't buck the casinos and come out on top. Who paid for all those
lights and all those high-rises anyway? We did. The losers of the world.
Every store I passed seemed to have a sale going on. Stereos: $150. Men's
suits: $150. Caribbean cruise: $150. Leather sofas: $150. Sterling silver
dinnerware: $150. New television sets: $150. I could've bought any of
those things for the money I threw away at the Nevada Club. I could stay
in the motel another week for $150, with money left over for other
luxuries. . . like food and the next payment on my Mustang, which was
already past due.
The worst part of it all was trying to fall asleep that night. Every time
I closed my eyes I saw playing cards. Sixes and sevens, aces and face
cards, spades, hearts, clubs, diamonds. Then the dreams started, and in
those dreams I was winning every hand. The checks were piling up in front
of me, and soon a crowd gathered to watch my phenomenal run of luck.
I woke up and for a moment I thought I did win. For just a tiny instant my
heart soared and my spirits lifted. Then I opened my wallet. Sixty-three
dollars. That's all the money I had left in the world. Sixty-three lousy
dollars between me and starvation. Suddenly I felt the bile churn up in my
stomach, and then I was kneeling in front of the commode, heaving my guts
out.
I never gambled again.
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Boxmen
Get the Boot
Vegas casinos are at it again, chopping
down trees to plant a forest. This time, it isn't change personnel who are
getting the boot, but the boxmen at the crap tables. For those who don't
know what a boxman is, let alone how to shoot craps, the boxman is the
casino supervisor who oversees payoffs, signs markers, orders fills, and
does all the other mundane tasks at the table that the floor supervisor is
usually too busy to handle. After all, most floor supervisors are now
watching two games or more, when they only had to monitor one game in the
good old days.
The problem is that table games in Nevada
are slowly spiraling into oblivion. According to the Nevada State Gaming
Control Board, the 351 dice tables in Clark County generate an annual
income of $390 million (or an average gross win per day per table of
$3,049), while nickel slot machines alone bring in more than $1 billion!
A slot machine requires practically no
human participation, except for a slot technician who comes along once a
day and empties it. And the new ticket-in ticket-out machines require even
less attention.
Meanwhile, look at the number of employees
at a dice table. There are four dealers on each dice crew, a boxman (until
now), and a floor supervisor. Six casino employees, each getting free
meals, medical benefits, 401 (k) plans, uniforms, and salary are stationed
at each of those 351 dice tables in Clark County.
So to save money, and yet offer the games
that make each casino a full- fledged resort operation, the powers that be
have decided to pare down the help. At a daily salary of around $175, each
boxman off the payroll gives the casino an annual windfall of $45,000.
Why, that's enough money to wine and dine a highroller for almost a whole
weekend.
Casinos have apparently lost sight of the
fact that the role of the boxman is to protect the game. Without the
boxman, it becomes the responsibility of the floor supervisor, whose
shoulders are already heaped with more paperwork and customer interaction
than he or she can scarcely handle.
Another problem is catering to the whims
and whimsies of table game regulars. Unlike slot players, who have been
trained since infancy to use their slot cards for meals and shows, table
game players want every amenity in the casino, and they want it now. A
highroller with a credit line of more than $1 million isn't going to
twiddle his thumbs while the floor supervisor scurries from table to
table. He wants reservations for eight o'clock in the gourmet restaurant,
and a tee-off time tomorrow morning on the golf course. "And if you
don't get somebody over here right now, I'm taking my business across the
street!"
Lose just one player like that and there
goes all the money the casino saved by unloading its boxmen.
Not only that, but how about all the scam
artists who have been ripping and tearing in casinos since time
immemorial? These include past-posters (players who sneak bets against the
house after the shooter already has a number); claim bet artists (players
who try to get paid for nonexistent bets); and railbirds (players who
sneak other people's money out of the rail while everyone's attention is
riveted on the table). Without a boxmen to oversee the game, these
unsavory characters will have a field day. All the casino bosses will hear
is one of their best customers wailing, "Hey, what happened to all my
$1,000 chips?" To pacify him, the casino will have to — you guessed
it — reimburse the player for all the chips he claimed were stolen.
"Give Mr. G $25,000 in yellow chips.
Sorry about that, Mr. G."
There goes another half a year's pay for a
boxman, who could have prevented the entire thing in the first place.
Megaresorts like MGM, Bally's, and Las
Vegas Hilton have already done away with their boxmen. So now what happens
at smaller Vegas casinos, which operate on an even smaller profit margin?
Chances are they'll say, "Well, if the Hilton is getting rid of their
boxmen, we should do the same thing." Eventually, every casino in
town will have their floor supervisors doing the work of two people. The
boxman will be a relic of a bygone era.
Next step? Why not make the dice tables
smaller so that the casino only needs three dealers instead of four? Why
not install computerized hardware on each table so that a highroller can
get money just by inserting his player number into a computer? That way,
they won't need floor supervisors, either.
Trimming the payroll might save money in
any business, but by operating with fewer employees the casino industry
will find itself in a no-win situation. One old timer put it best when he
said, "The casino business is a people business. We don't sell bread;
we don't sell shoes. All we sell is service."
Without enough manpower to sell that
service, the casinos may find themselves another relic of a bygone era.
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Hustling
When I was breaking in at the Mint I
must've been the hardest-working chump in Vegas. Forty hours a week
dealing craps, working double shifts on weekends, and doing a disc jockey
show Saturday and Sunday mornings at a radio station.
The show ended at noon, which was when my
shift started at the Mint. So every weekend there I was, racing across
town, knowing I would be late, knowing there was nothing I could do about
it. I'd told the other guys about my part-time radio gig, so they always
covered for me. Unfortunately, they told other people, and the next thing
you know it was all over the joint. "He's got a job on the radio.
He's a disc jockey. He uses the name Johnny Holiday."
Then again, maybe it wasn't such a bad
thing after all, everyone knowing I was a deejay. My skills as a dealer
weren't developing that rapidly; I was still making a lot of mistakes.
Let's face it, I was terrible. This one boxman, his name was Duke, would
get so nervous when I was dealing that his hands would shake more than
mine did. In fact, the pit boss once suggested they put seat belts on the
stools so the boxmen wouldn't go flying off the table every time I paid a
bet.
The boxmen couldn't hurt you, though. The
floor people could. They had the power to hire, and the power to fire. If
one of them didn't like you, you were history, simple as that. There was
this one floorman named Joe Caruso who was tough as nails. The rumor was
that his dad was a crime boss back in Chicago, and that Joe had been sent
to Vegas to escape a murder rap. Like I say, it was just a rumor, and
maybe Joe started it. But hell, he even looked like a gangster, wearing
silk suits and flashy ties, and he was Italian to boot.
He used to give me a hard time, always
standing right behind me when I was dealing, shaking his head when I made
a mistake, shaking his head when I didn't. And coming up with little snide
remarks all the time like, "Don't buy anything on time, kid."
Or: "You've got hands like a sturgeon."
Then Joe found out I was doing a radio
show. Suddenly I was a star in his eyes. A dealer at the Mint, working on
the radio! "Hey," he whispered in my ear. "You think maybe
you could dedicate a song to me on your show this weekend?"
So I did. Not only did I dedicate a song to
Joe Caruso, but I dedicated songs to every boss at the Mint I could think
of. From that moment on, I was okay in their book. I had a job for life.
That is, as long as they stuck around.
I was learning more and more about this
crazy racket. And you know what? Dealing was only a small part of it. The
big part was making friends with the players, sizing up who might be good
for a toke, and the other 99 percent of them who wouldn't throw you a life
preserver if you were drowning in the middle of the frigging Atlantic
Ocean.
We needed tokes. We relied on tokes. We
lived on tokes. Without tokes, we were just common laborers, living from
paycheck to paycheck. And if you didn't get out there and hustle, you
weren't going to make any tokes. Just fourteen lousy dollars a day, and
after taxes you were lucky if you got anything at all.
The problem was that husting wasn't
allowed. If a boss caught you hustling, it was the end of the line. So you
were in a spot. If you didn't hustle, you wouldn't make any money. If you
did hustle and got caught at it, you wouldn't make any money, because you
wouldn't be working there anymore.
Hustling was an art form, and I learned
from the Michelangelos of the Mint. When a new player stepped up to the
table, the first thing you did was check out his appearance. Was he
well-dressed? Was he wearing an expensive watch or any other nice jewelry?
Was he drinking? Was he from the South? Add all these things up and you
had yourself a potential George, our slang for a good tipper.
Was he from a foreign country? Did he have
dirt under his fingernails? Were his clothes so filthy that he left spots
on the table when he made a bet? Was he drinking beer out of a bottle? Add
these together and you had yourself a stiff, our slang for someone who
wouldn't give you a toke if their life depended on it. You might as well
throw in females, young people, really old people, and anyone from the
East Coast except New York, because they were just as bad.
Then, when you had a potential George on
the table, you went into surgery. "Come on over here next to me,
sir," you'd say, your voice as soft as maple syrup. You'd help him
make his bets, make sure he had his odds, make sure he had a fresh drink
at all times, two if possible. Then, when he started winning, here it
came. "Put a chip down there on the pass line, next to yours,"
you whispered.
"What for?"
"For the boys," you whispered.
Here it came. And you'd have a bet on the
pass line as long as he stayed, and you made sure he stayed all day.
I finally broke the ice with a woman player
one day. "Where are you from?" I asked her. That was another
thing. You always asked a new player where he or she was from, just to get
some friendly conversation going that might lead to a toke.
"California," she said. "I love California," I said.
You loved any place the player was from. Reason? More tokes.
She was only betting $5 on the pass line,
so things didn't look good. But the dice were running hot and after an
hour she had about $300 in the rail. I couldn't stand it any longer.
"Put a $5 chip behind your bet for me," I whispered.
"Okay," she said brightly.
Boom, winner four. I paid her $5 for her
pass line bet, then paid myself $10 for the odds. "Thank you," I
said, scooping up $15 and chunking it to the stickman.
"Hey," she said. "How come
you got more money than I did?"
"I was taking odds," I explained
patiently. "Odds pay more than the pass line does."
She replied, "Well, from now on I get
the odds and you get the pass line."
"Okay," I said, biting my tongue.
"You got a deal."
Life couldn't get any better than this.
Return
to Barney Vinson Index
Dad
Here I was in Vegas, dealing at the Mint Hotel and living in my very
own apartment. I'd written my dad to tell him where I was, but he never
wrote back, and he'd always been good about staying in touch. One morning
I couldn't get him out of my mind, so I called him on the phone. There was
no answer.
Still worried, I put in a call to my uncle, who was living in San
Antonio. "I'm trying to reach my dad," I told him. "Do you
know where he is?" Silence from the other end for what seemed an
eternity, then my uncle said, "He's in the hospital. He's got
cancer."
The wind went out of me. My dad was only 63 years old, for crying out
loud. He'd never hurt anyone in his whole life, just went to work and came
home, making every kind of sacrifice he could to raise my brother and me,
and now he was all alone in some damn hospital out in the middle of
nowhere. "How bad is it?" I asked my uncle, once I caught my
breath.
"It isn't good," he said. "It's in his lungs and stomach
and everything. I'm afraid it's just a matter of time."
The tears welled up of their own accord, and I just let them roll down
my face. I should've stayed in Texas, dammit. What an idiot I'd been,
shoving off to see the world, thinking about no one but myself, while some
creeping disease was eating him alive. We should've spent more time
together, because when you get right down to it time is all you've got. He
could tell me things about his life I'd never know. Now it was too late.
"I want to see him," I said. "Just tell me where he is.
I'm coming to see him."
"He doesn't want to see anybody," my uncle said. And I guess
my uncle should know. They'd been close all their lives, grew up together,
went through life together, and for a few years they'd lived together,
right along with me, my brother, my two cousins, my aunt, and my
grandmother.
I sat there, clenching the phone so hard my knuckles were white.
"What am I supposed to do?" I asked him, my voice trembling.
"He wouldn't want you to see him like this. Just go on with your
life. Write him a letter. He'd love to hear from you. And . . . I'll call
you if there's any change."
I hung up the phone and walked down the street to a bar. I sat there in
a dark booth all day, thinking about things, and I got myself good and
plastered.
The next day I went back into combat at the Mint, my head pounding and
a feeling of impending doom settling over me. But soon the whirlwind of
line bets, come bets, proposition bets, tokes, Georges, and stiffs got me
going, and there I was again, dealing to the usual bunch of scumbags.
It almost seemed like home. Home, that is, if you could picture the
parade of motley degenerates who showed up every single day of the week
including holidays. God, they were there so often you even knew them by
name.
If we didn't know their names, we gave them nicknames. "Here comes
Groucho," one of the dealers would moan. Sure enough, up comes one of
the regulars, wearing horn-rims and smoking a cigar. "Here comes
Alfred Hitchcock," someone would say, and here's this fat guy, jowls
and everything, looking just like the original. Oh man, I could go on all
day.
You've heard of battle fatigue? Well, every once in a while one of the
dealers would get it, just like soldiers did during the war. And when you
got right down to it, that's what I was: a soldier in a war. The dealers
were the American G.I.'s. The players were the Viet Cong.
A dealer named Oz found himself missing in action after the following
exchange took place.
Player: You didn't pay my four.
Oz: You don't have a four.
Player: I always bet the four.
Oz: Up your ass! You don't have a four.
If there was such a thing as a Medal of Honor for dealers, Oz would've
earned one. He said out loud what the rest of us were saying under our
breaths. Even though he got fired as a result, Oz went out like a true
American hero. In our eyes anyway.
For the dealers, it was a matter of survival-—protecting our jobs and
trying to protect the casino's bankroll. For the players, here was their
chance to cheat, lie, steal, scam, do anything they could to get the
casino's money without actually gambling for it. You'd be standing at your
post, working away, then out of the corner of your eye you'd see someone's
hand sneaking a bet on the don't pass after the shooter already had a
number. It was called past-posting, illegal as hell, but players downtown
did it every chance they got.
The first time I saw it happen I told the player politely, "Sir,
you can't do that."
It wasn't 30 seconds later that here came the hand again, sneaking a
bet on the don't pass. I pushed the chip back to the player and said,
"Sir, I told you, you can't do that."
The boxman leaned over to me. "The next time that sonofabitch
tries to past-post you, I want you to grab his hand and squeeze it as hard
as you can. I want you to make that sonofabitch cry, and that's an
order!"
Well, sure enough, here comes the hand again, heading for the don't
pass. I reached out, got hold of his hand, and squeezed it with all my
might. I felt like I was milking a cow back in Texas, until finally the $5
check dribbled out of his hand and went rolling across the table. Well, he
started calling me every name in the book, which I won't repeat here for
the sake of human decency. Let me just say that the nicest word he used
was "asshole." Anyway, the boxman loved it, and that's all that
mattered.
Return
to Barney Vinson Index
It
was just another day in Vegas.
When you're gambling in a casino, it isn't
necessary to specify the denomination of chips when you get change. If the
minimum bet at the table is $5, the dealer will give you $5 chips.
One dealer related the following story. A
man dropped a $100 bill on the table and said, "Give me twenty-five
dollar chips." So the dealer gave him 25 $1 chips and three $25
chips.
"No," the man said. "Give me
twenty-five dollar chips." This time the dealer gave him four $25
chips.
"No," the man said. "Give me
twenty-five dollar chips." What the man wanted was 20 $5 chips, which
is what he would have gotten if he hadn't said anything.
On a blackjack game, a player dropped a
$100 bill on the table. "Give me twenty ones," he said.
The dealer, who was in the process of
shuffling the cards, smiled and said, "I'll try."
After the shuffle was completed, she gave
me the man twenty $5 chips.
"Give me twenty ones," he
repeated.
"I'll try," she smiled again.
Well, of course, she thought the man wanted her to deal him a 21 on every
hand, and he what he wanted was twenty $1 chips.
* * *
It happened at a plush resort on the Las
Vegas Strip. A South American millionaire was playing craps when the
shooter rolled a winner 6 the hard way. The gambler had bet $10,000 on the
pass line with $20,000 odds, receiving a payoff of $34,000. Apparently,
however, it was not enough.
He spoke quietly to the dealer, who turned
to the boxman and said, "The gentleman says that we owe him another
$27,000."
"For what?" the boxman cried.
"Well, he said that he meant to bet
another $3,000 on the hard 6, but he accidentally bet on the hard 8
instead."
The game was stopped while the boxman
talked to the floorman, who then talked to the pit boss, who naturally had
to talk to the shift boss, who had to call someone else on the phone.
Meanwhile, the millionaire gambler talked happily with his friends. After
all, he was stuck almost a million dollars, and there was no way he would
lose this argument.
The shift boss hung up the phone and nodded
to the pit boss, who nodded to the floorman, who nodded to the boxman.
"Pay him," the boxman said to the dealer, and a beautiful stack
of $1,000 chips was shoved in front of the gambler.
Just as the game was about to get underway
again, a player at the other end of the table shouted. "Hey, I meant
to put $50 behind my bet. How about paying me?"
It was just another day in Vegas.
Return
to Barney Vinson Index
Moving
up the Corporate Ladder
I'd been working as a shill at the Pioneer
Club in Vegas for almost a week, and now I had two beautiful days off
staring me in the face. I should've been walking on air, but I wasn't.
For one thing, I was only making $11 a day
and didn't even get free meals like casino employees everywhere else. If
it weren't for complimentary refreshments at the snack bar, I'd really be
screwed. My money was slowly running out, and I hadn't helped matters by
getting tanked on wine at an Italian restaurant the night before.
In fact, I didn't even know I had two days
off until I stumbled into work that morning. That's when Mop Top, the
assistant shift boss, broke the news to me. Another $22 was out of my
grasp forever, but it could've been a blessing in disguise. As weak as I
was, there was no way I could stand on my feet all day.
I limped to the snack bar and took a seat
on the cleanest stool I could find. Maybe a steaming cup of coffee would
clear the cobwebs out of my head. The attendant shifted her gum to a cheek
as she walked over.
"What'll it be, babe?"
"Coffee."
She pushed a chipped cup in front of me and
filled it to the brim. "Thirty cents," she said in a bored
voice.
I chuckled. "It's okay. I work
here."
"Thirty cents," she said again.
"What do you mean? I just told you, I
work here."
"Didn't you read the memo?"
"What memo?"
"No more free drinks for the
employees. The memo came out last night. Here," she said, sticking a
piece of grease-spotted paper in front of me.
"Notice to all employees," it
read. "Due to financial difficulties, it is necessary to begin
charging for ALL beverages at the Pioneer Club Snack Bar. Beginning
Monday, July 23, there will be free coffee and water available in the
Dealers Room." It was signed by Fredric J. Ward, whoever the hell he
was.
Shaking my head, I fumbled for my wallet.
The attendant must've seen the frustration on my face and leaned closer.
"I'll tell you what really happened," she confided.
"Somebody hit a keno ticket yesterday for fifteen hundred, and they
had to get the money back somehow. So they figure they'll get it from
us."
I wasn't really listening. Instead, I was
gazing horror-struck at what was left of my bankroll. A twenty, a ten, a
five, and three wrinkled singles, plus 70 cents in change scattered on the
counter. One halfway-decent meal in an Italian restaurant, and now I was
almost flat broke.
I finished the coffee, slurping every
expensive mouthful, left a nickel tip, then hitched up my pants and walked
out the front door.
"HOWDY PARDNER!" the Vegas Vic
mascot boomed.
"SCREW YOU!" I boomed back.
Here it was, high noon in one of the
hottest places on the planet, heat waves rising from the pavement in
sizzling little swirls, sweat pouring down my face, pants stuck to my
legs, socks stuck to my shoes, shorts stuck to my privates, and $38.65 to
my name. I didn't believe in the hereafter, thanks to being bullied and
beaten by a bunch of rabid nuns in Texas when I was too young to defend
myself, but if there was a heaven and if there was a hell I knew exactly
where they were. Heaven was Texas, and hell was Las Vegas.
Then, like an oasis in the Kalahari, a
blast of cold air came rushing at me from the gaping entrance of the Mint
Hotel. Just in the nick of time, too. I was starting to see spots in front
of my eyes. I stumbled inside, then looked around in disbelief. Now this
was more like it.
Chandeliers hung from the ceilings,
splashing the casino with muted light, and piano music tinkled softly from
the cocktail lounge. I even saw a porter, actually sweeping rubbish into a
dust pan. At the Pioneer, we just kicked everything out of the way. The
thing I noticed most, though, was the sound, or lack of it. It was almost
like being in a meadow. Oh, there were a few slot machines ringing and the
constant rumble of conversation, but there were no loudspeakers and no
sirens, and some of the employees were actually smiling. What I wouldn't
give to work in a place like this.
I walked up to one of the dealers on a dead
blackjack table. "How's it going?" I asked him.
"Great. How about you?"
"Okay, I guess. Say, who does the
hiring around here?"
"Sonny. He's the shift boss. Over
there in the dice pit. The one wearing the gray pinstripes."
I thanked him and walked over to where
three men were standing behind a crowded dice table, all watching intently
as some guy in a cowboy hat shot the dice. Hell, all three of them were
wearing gray pinstripes. Waiting at the end of a closed table, I tucked in
my shirt and smoothed my hair with my fingers, wishing to myself that I
was wearing a pinstripe. Anything but blue jeans and a sport shirt with
little yellow stars all over it.
One of the pinstripes was walking in my
direction. "Excuse me," I said, standing in his way. "Are
you Sonny?"
"I'm Pete. You want to see
Sonny?"
"Yes sir. I'm looking for a job."
"Just a minute."
Pete went back to the other two, said
something to one of them, and here came another pinstripe. It figured. He
was the biggest of them all, about six three, all muscle and bone with
hands the size of manhole covers, a face that looked like it was chiseled
out of concrete with a rusty pickax, the worst case of acne scarring I'd
ever seen, and hard cold eyes that seemed to stare right through you.
"Sonny?" I gulped.
"Yeah, what can I do for you?"
"I'm looking for a job."
"Doing what?"
"Dealing craps."
"Any experience?"
"Yes sir. Fact, I'm working right now.
At the Pioneer Club."
"When can you start?"
"Tomorrow?"
"Tell you what. Go to Personnel, fill
out an ap, tell them to send it up to my office. You start next Monday,
noon to eight. And wear a white shirt. A clean one."
Bingo. Just like that. I was working at the
Mint Hotel! And I did it with no help from anyone.
Return
to Barney Vinson Index
The Big Time
I was walking on air. I'd just landed a
dealing job at the Mint Hotel in downtown Las Vegas! It wasn't the pot of
gold
at the end of the rainbow, even I knew that, but it sure beat shilling on
a dice table at the Pioneer Club for $11 a day. I'd been hired by a pit
boss named Sonny, who told me to go to Personnel and fill out an
application. For the first time since I hit Vegas a month ago, I felt like
a bona fide member of the human race.
I found the personnel office behind the
casino, where I told a Bette Davis look-alike that Sonny said I was
supposed to start work on Monday. She typed something on an employment
application, then handed it to me along with a leaky ballpoint. Under
"position" she put "Student Dealer." Under salary, she
put "$14." Hopefully, that was $14 a day, and not $14 a week.
I filled out the application carefully,
skipping over such unimportant questions as next of kin and current
address. Hell, I didn't even know what my address was. Somewhere on Sixth
Street was all I could remember.
"Fine," Bette Davis said,
checking it over. "Now take this form to the Sheriff's Office and get
a work card. You can't work in a casino without one. Carry it with you at
all times."
Work card? No one ever told me anything
about a work card. I'd been working at the Pioneer for nearly a week
without a work card. That was something else I could tell the federal
government about. The Pioneer was letting people work without work cards!
The Sheriff's Office was six long blocks
down Fremont Street. Pushing on the glass door, I suddenly found myself in
the midst of hundreds of people, most of them standing in two long lines
that were barely moving. The room, which was about the size of a football
field, reeked of stale sweat and other things I didn't even want to think
about, and there were cops all over the place, their handguns sparkling in
the afternoon sunlight.
I got into one of the lines, standing
behind a tall Mexican with a scar on his face. He turned and looked at me.
"Better git a nomber," he said. "You gotta git a nomber."
Oh great. One line was for people with numbers; the other was for people
waiting to get numbers.
It was dark outside by the time I got to
the front of the line, and dark in Vegas means around nine o'clock at
night. It was almost like living in Alaska, where the moon only comes out
on a whim. I'd made it through the first line, then was told I couldn't
get into the second line until I stood in a third line, this one for
fingerprints and photographs.
The woman behind the counter stamped my
form, then slid it over for me to sign. "You're all set," she
said in a mechanical voice, handing me a plastic card with my mug shot on
it. "That'll be $20."
I let my breath out slowly. No use getting
mad at her, she didn't make the rules. "Do you take food
stamps?" I asked her, digging out my wallet and saying goodbye to my
last Andy Jackson.
The important thing was that I had a work
card now, although it was officially called a "gaming" card.
"LVMPD," it read, along with my name, my ID number, the card's
expiration date, and "Mint Hotel" stamped on the other side.
Every time I switched jobs, I got a new card. Twenty dollars. Every time I
lost my card, I got a new card. Twenty dollars. Every two years when the
card expired, I got a new card. Twenty dollars.
The LVMPD (Las Vegas Metropolitan Police
Department) said it was to keep convicted felons out of the casinos, hence
the fingerprints. Mine were probably on their way to the F.B.I. right now,
and I wouldn't be surprised if Diane's apartment was surrounded by federal
agents by the time I got home. Personally, I figured it was just another
slick way to fatten up the county's slush fund. With every casino worker
in the city coughing up $20 every two years, the town would never go
broke. The people might, but the town wouldn't.
I hiked back down Fremont to Sixth Street
and half an hour later I was back at Diane's place. The aroma of peanut
butter toast was wafting through the air as I plunked down on the couch
and started rubbing my aching feet. Ahh, home sweet home.
When I told her the news, Diane was happy
and sad at the same time. Sad that I was leaving the Pioneer where she
worked, happy that I was making more money. Three dollars times five was
fifteen extra dollars in the household budget every week. That would buy
almost seven jars of peanut butter.
Anyway, Diane had news of her own. It was
so slow at the Pioneer that she was off tomorrow. That gave us 24 hours
together, all cooped up in a one-room apartment with nothing to do but
stand around and look at each other.
"Er, Diane, let's do something
tomorrow. I'm starting to go stir crazy. We could take a little trip,
maybe get out of this heat for a few hours."
Diane rubbed her eyes, then settled her
binoculars back in place. "You ever been to Mount Charleston?"
"No, where is it?"
"It's about fifty miles from here, up
in the mountains. It's really beautiful, and
Sooner or later, everything is bound to
happen in a casino. I was born in the U.S.A., raised in Texas, and moved
to Las Vegas a long long long time ago. I worked as a dice dealer at the
old 
blackjack table. He stood anxiously to the side, watching with awe as the
dealer on the game deftly arched the cards through the air. His eyes followed
the cards as they landed in neat little stacks, and if somebody asked him later
how many players were at the table he wouldn't be able to say. All he saw were
fingers and chips and beer bottles.