Jackpot!

My dad loved to play cards. He’d play any game, except bridge, as long as you outlined the rules before dealing. Most of all, he loved to play for money. His favorite place to play was Las Vegas. He played blackjack. He didn’t get to go as often as he would have liked. but he made the most of his time there. He and Mom went with friends a few times. Later, I took him.

When Ruth and I first married he asked me several times when he and I were going to go. One day Ruth called his bluff and said, “He can go anytime you buy him a ticket.” Game on. A few weeks later, he booked a trip for the two of us. We stayed in the then garden rooms behind the Flamingo. A few years later, the garden rooms were gone. Ruth and I own a timeshare where those rooms once stood. Small world.

As we were checking into the hotel, we saw a man hit a jackpot of $250,000 on a slot machine. We hadn’t been in town more than an hour. Dad turned to me and said, “One day one of us is going to hit it big!” He never did. I’m still trying.

On one of my parent’s first trips they had their picture taken at the Horseshoe Casino in downtown Vegas. The casino featured a $1,000,000 display where visitors could have their picture taken. Ruth and I have a similar photo somewhere.

The last time Dad and I made the trip, my Uncle Harry and my friend, Jim, joined us. We’d traveled as a foursome the prior year and they wanted to return. Jim and I both received comped rooms at Ballys so that made the trip more affordable for everyone. In reality, it gave us more money to gamble.

One evening we took a cab downtown to try our luck. Dad played blackjack while Uncle Harry, Jim, and I shot craps. If you’ve never shot dice, the premise is pretty simple. If you throw a 7 or 11 on the first roll, you win. If you throw a 2, 3 or 12, you lose. Any other number thrown becomes your “point”. You must throw your “point” before you throw a 7. Once you make your point, you start over. There a multitude of extra bets, but that’s the basis of the game. Players roll the two dice until they “seven out”.  The process for each player normally takes a few minutes, sometimes less than one.  The goal is the hold the dice for a long time, making several points.  The more points you make, the more money you win.

We selected a table with a clear view of the blackjack table where Dad was playing. By now he was using a walker to move about, so we wanted to keep an eye on him. Uncle Harry wasn’t very familiar with the game, so he just followed our instructions.

Three people cover the action on a craps table, a stickman who controls the dice by pushing them to each player, and two who pay off the players at either end of the table. They rotate through the positions in twenty-minute shifts with a fourth worker who takes a twenty-minute break. The three of us walked up to the table just as the shift change took place. After another guy at the table took his turn, I was the first of our crew to handle the dice.

My come out roll was a four, meaning I had to roll a second four before I rolled a seven. A second four meant I won, while a seven was a loss. I rolled the dice for an hour and thirty minutes straight. During the entire time I only had to roll two points. Both were fours. I rolled dozens of fives, sixes, eights, nines, tens and elevens. There were so many chips on the table I had to aim at the only bare spots available on the table. Sometimes the dice got caught in the chips. Everyone made money while I rolled. One man amassed over ten thousand dollars betting on me. Uncle Harry won eight hundred (although he didn’t understand how or why), while I won fifteen hundred, and Jim cleared almost two-thousand.

In between rolls I glanced at Dad piling up his own chips on the blackjack table. He was laughing, sitting with a pretty lady in a green dress, and having fun joking with the blackjack dealer. Winning and pretty girls raise your spirits, and his were high.

That evening was a fitting end to our trip. We all made money and had a great time. That was Dad’s last trip to Vegas. Although he didn’t win his “jackpot”, we talked about the trip for the rest of his days.