“Gambling craze has pal in daze” from the March 2, 1978 Door County Advocate
KETA STEEBS
Gambling craze has pal in daze
This town needs Gamblers Anonymous.
The first inkling I had of this dire need was the morning I called a friend to comfort her on the death of a relative.
“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered hurriedly. “Thanks a lot but I almost missed filling in my B-24 because of you.”
I looked at my watch. WDOR’s bingo game still had three minutes to go so I prudently waited a full half hour before placing my next call. This gal plays sixteen cards at a time and the strain is beginning to show.
“I’m not only getting crosseyed, I’m going color blind,” she sobbed. “This business of changing cards every week is driving me crazy. Just when I’m getting used to concentrating on shocking pink, I’m switched over to chartreuse or lavender.”
Not only that, she said, she’s so mad at the cards she’s getting she thinks she’s the victim of a conspiracy. A friend, who only plays with ONE card, has won three times in the past few weeks. My friend, who has yet to yell her first “Bingo” is getting so discouraged she’s tempted to quit and get a job.
The only thing holding her back is her fear of leaving the house. She’s scared stiff she’ll miss the station’s other hit program, the jolly jackpot call. People who listen carefully and have good memories can win whatever amount the jackpot holds. Providing, of course, they’re called.
“I don’t even bother with hellos anymore,” my friend confessed. “I just yell twenty-one-sixty-seven or thirty-three-ninety-five or whatever’s in jackpot and pray it’s a friendly announcer on the other end.”
She admitted the time she screamed ten-four, her amazed caller thought he was calling the county jail and hung up. “He’s the one spreading the rumor I’m getting flaky,” my friend said sadly. “He doesn’t know what terrible things can happen to people who sit home all day thinking of getting something for nothing.”
My friend really has changed. The day we met for coffee (before that day’s Bingo game began) she came in bleary-eyed, shoulders sagging, lugging a tote bag filled to the brim with little red cards. After greeting me with a mumbled “eight-ninety-eight” (it was too early for the jackpot to amount to much) she piled all her little cards on the counter and started punching them full of holes.
It was pathetic to watch. With each punch, I could hear her pray, “It’s gotta be a 985, please let it be a 985, all I need is a 985 and I can say goodbye to this crummy town forever.”
A 985, I learned from our sympathetic waitress, was the one number my friend needed to fill all four corners of her bingo card. If she came up with a precious 985 (the same number our waitress and the guys sitting around us needed) my bleary-eyed friend would be $2,000 richer.
Unfortunately. after messing up the counter with her discarded red circles, my friend was her usual broke self. There was no 985 in the heap nor was there any other number she could use.
That’s when she dipped into her tote bag for another intriguing game. This one is similar to bingo but with a difference. Playing card facsimiles are used instead of plain old numbers and my friend desperately needed either a King or Queen of Hearts to say goodbye to food stamps forever.
Alas, the royal pair proved as elusive as her badly needed 985.
“I give up,” she said dourly. “From now on I’m concentrating on sure things.”
“Like what?”
“Well there’s the Reader’s Digest Sweepstakes and the Publisher’s Clearing House Giveaway and the Spritzer Gift Book’s mystery prize and the Burpee Seed catalog grand award and the Michigan lottery and ......……..”
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
Articles by Keta Steebs
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/keta-steebs
Posts about gambling
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/gambling