Bingo therapy:
Companionship, money, stress relief just a few reasons local players remain faithful
Sunday, October 22, 2006 12:37 PM CDT
By ANTHONY DAVIS
Texarkana Gazette
Today’s menu—2 6 full 2 6 1/2 $6—reads the wipe-off board above the cashier’s area.
It may not mean much to the uninitiated, but to serious bingo players it means they can purchase two full sheets and two half-sheets of bingo game cards for six dollars.
It’s Tuesday at Twin City Bingo, and there’s a good house tonight with hopefuls feeling lucky and others there for lack of anything else to do.
So what does one have to do to win cash at the bingo hall?
Well, there’s bingo with a Block of Nine paying $100 or $300 with 12 or fewer numbers; Letter X for the same pay-off; Double Horizontal for $100 or $250 with 12 or fewer numbers; Coveralls for $500 on a pack or $750 on a floor card.
That’s not including the Postage Stamp game, Reno Bingo, Six-Pack Hard Way, Both Ways Bingo or the Large Picture Frame game. But few come to bingo with the expectation of winning thousands of dollars.
Many bingo players are in the hall several nights a week because the game, the atmosphere and fellow players secretly acknowledge they play to forget about their troubles.
With multi-colored dobbers at the ready, players eagerly await the call from Jerry Morgan, whose been pulling numbers for Twin City for years.
Trolls and lucky charms are now pass/—artifacts from a craze now stripped down to the bare essentials.
Trolls and lucky charms are now pass/—artifacts from a craze now stripped down to the bare essentials.
Bingo is an important part in the lives of players such as Emma Hough.
She can be found on the back row at least four times a week. She finds solace in the game as her attention is sharply concentrated on the caller’s words.
Just as Hough is approached, she wins a whopping $38.
“I just won $38, but they’ve gotten a lot more than that from me over the years,” she says as she prepares her cards and handy dobber. “Oh, man, it’s hard to say how long I’ve been playing bingo. It’s been more than 30 years. I can play bingo with my eyes closed. I don’t figure I’ll ever come out ahead. When it comes to something like this, you might just win a little bit.
“This is where I relax. You don’t think about anything but these cards when you’re here. This is the best stress reliever I’ve ever had. I worked for the phone company until their last round of lay-offs. I can come out here and play and don’t worry about anything.”
A sort of “bingo nirvana” is dealing out karma tonight.
Other players approached about their interest reveal very similar reasons. It’s almost as if Baba Ram Dass’ “be here now” philosophy has been adopted as “bingo here now.”
Lou Holmes enjoys the activities at Twin City Bingo so much she works as an usher on the floor selling cards when not scanning multiple cards.
“I’ve been playing bingo for 20 to 25 years. I work here too as an usher sometimes. What attracts me to bingo? M-o-n-e-y,” she says positively. “But, really, I play because of my nerves. You think about nothing but the bingo call. It just calms me. You can find me here seven nights a week.”
Likewise, Holmes’ friend Anita Ferguson is a fairly rabid bingo lover.
“I’m a longtime player too. I’ve been playing more than 30 years. I come out three to four nights a week,” Ferguson said. “I like to win, but it also helps me with my worries. I have to concentrate on playing the game here. It’s also a social outlet. I haven’t been to a movie in 10 years. We don’t go out to bars and parties. This is our fun. If someone’s not here we know about it and we’ll check on them.”
Players generally sit with two to three empty seats between themselves and other players, in chairs they have virtually declared their own. Others sit in isolation in the nonsmoking room.
Believe me, the smokers are in the majority in local bingo halls.
At times the intensity of the game overrides all talk and laughter to the point one could almost hear a pin drop in the cavernous, cafeteria-like building. Three hundred players are not unusual on peak nights Tuesday, Friday and Saturday.
The simple game of bingo has a long history of controversy relative to its inclusion in the legal category of “games of chance” and “gambling.” But that issue didn’t arise until the game swept the nation in 1929.
The Italians had been playing a similar game since 1530. But American Edwin Lowe conceived of mass producing the game after discovering a version called “beano” being played at a county fair in Georgia. Players would cover a number with a bean until a certain number or pattern was achieved. When a person won, they would call “Beano!
After making some basic changes in the concept and eventually consulting mathematicians to expand the number of possible combinations, bingo, as we recognize it today, was born. It was a big hit with churches as well. The perfect fund-raiser.
Others called it gambling and legal battles were launched at the local and national level to place controls on the use of bingo monies for profit. Texas solved the problem with the arrival of the Texas Lottery.
The Texas Lottery Commission oversees and regulates the operations and winnings of bingo halls in the state. There are roughly 1,300 charitable bingo halls in Texas whose operations distribute 35 percent of the adjusted gross receipts handled.
The controls have resulted in more than $789 million from 1982 to 2004. More than 21 million players come through the hall doors annually. Charitable bingo receipts are dispersed to the organizations represented by the various halls. At Twin City Bingo the Randy Sams Outreach Center, Domestic Violence Prevention and American Legion Post 248 are the beneficiaries.
Twin City Bingo Manager Paul Patterson has been overseeing the local hall since 2002. He says the hall attempts to offer the public a safe, friendly atmosphere to enjoy a variety of bingo games.
“A pack is $3 to $5 per pack. We run specials during the week. For some, there’s five games in a pack, some have six games, some 10 games. We all operate under the same rules. Once they buy a pack, once they get on the floor, they can buy an extra sheet. Sometimes if the bingo card has wild numbers or they don’t like the numbers, they buy another sheet,” said Patterson.
“There are serial and card numbers on every sheet. We have to keep up with all of them because the bingo halls are audited. We have to be sure everything balances out. The limit is $2,500 a session. Maximum for a game is $750. Anything under four hours is a session. On Friday and Saturday we run two sessions. A charity can only do three sessions a week.”
A menu of 10 different games are the menu for an evening of card reading. There are many combinations to choose from. Players have 20 seconds to check all the numbers, but if the caller spies a person still dobbing, he’ll often wait a second or two.
Ushers move quietly and observantly as they stroll the aisles. They are permitted to sell extra strips and pull-tabs,which are a lot like lottery tickets—you know right away if you won anything.
Patterson says some players go to one hall, and if they don’t do well they’ll try somewhere else, but a core group of regulars is fairly reliable. Seating is sometimes a different story.
“People will sit in the same spot every time,” said Patterson. “I’ve seen people get pretty upset over someone getting their seat.”
That’s probably because they haven’t reached bingo nirvana yet. |
