Burning Money

For the past few years, I’ve been toying with the idea of writing an expanded piece about the strange world of parlor bingo in Roanoke. I’ve started this work close to twenty times, but each time I run into some serious roadblocks to effective writing. Simply put, I have never been able to describe what I’ve seen and experienced through many years of working as an attendant in vivid enough detail. There is a story there, however, and I plan to uncover that story slowly here on this blog. Piece by piece. Layer by layer.

Burning Money

Part One: Understanding the Mania

“Beano!” At American country fairs early in the last century, winners would scream in ecstasy. Bingo! is a game that has been traced back to Italy in the 1500’s. It was originally a lottery game called, “Lo Guioco del lotto D’Italia.” Over the next few hundred years, the game spread to France and Germany before finally landing in Atlanta, Georgia. The year was 1929 when the duo of Edwin S. Lowe and Carl Leffler revolutionized the game. Lowe renamed the game after supposedly hearing a winner mispronounce “BEANO!” by screaming “BINGO!” No doubt this contestant, a gray-haired lady with a cigarette dangling out of her mouth, had her hands too occupied with cards and markers to take the time to extract the cancer stick from her swollen mouth. Hence, her “Beano!” was muffled into BINGO!” Lowe must have thought that was his ticket to fortune. Leffler redesigned the basic card so it closely resembles the form we know today. Within a few years, Lowe was contacted by a Catholic priest from Pennsylvania who wanted to use Bingo! as a church fund-raiser. Contrary to what people may believe, Bingo isn’t referenced directly in the Bible. For that matter, neither is gambling. By 1934, over 10,000 games a week were being played all over the country, and these days over $90 million is spent on the game each week-most of that in the Roanoke Valley of Virginia. http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blbingo.htm

I remember a few years back when people were trying to reestablish the sport of kings, thoroughbred horse racing, in the state of Virginia At that time, there was a cry from across the state that allowing such gambling into peaceful and tranquil towns and cities would make us wallow in noisy dens of inequity. Just two years ago; Vinton, Virginia-a town connected to Roanoke like a neglected relative- just barely passed a referendum to allow Colonial Downs horse racing track to set up an Off Track Betting (OTB) parlor. People screamed about the morality, the greed, and the sin…while they puffed away on their cigarettes in their bingo parlors. I’ve heard that Vinton, spends more money per capita on Bingo! than any other place in the world. While many continue to attack horse racing, Bingo thrives and is embraced.

Let me state this as clearly as I possibly can. Bingo is gambling, high stakes gambling. Roanoke boasts many bingo parlors that churn out game sessions just about every day of the year. Happy’s (Now closed), Valley Hall (Vinton Bingo), Salem Banquet Hall, American Legion Hall (Now Closed), and Charity Games Incorporated (Voice of the Blue Ridge) are all places that I’ve personally visited to learn more about this madness. In each of these places and for each of several sessions every day, players stream in to the buildings bursting with cash. After paying for their basic card set and obligatory extras, they will have already spent their first $30.00. Soon after that, the real madness begins, and it’s not the actual game.

Bingo parlors are built as charity profit sharing institutions. Basically, organizations rent the hall and run their games. The hall owner receives a cut of the proceeds as does the charity. Their take is strictly regulated by the state’s gaming commission. Many organizations completely fund their particular enterprise by running Bingo! Bands, swim clubs, and athletic clubs are the predominate sponsors in Roanoke. The “take” is a combination of money made after all pay-outs in each of the approximately 25 games played in the sessions as well as a built in profit in the sales of instant “tab” games.

The real madness in the bingo hall is the tab games (a.k.a. instants, cards, tickets). The games are very similar to lottery scratch games, another gambling game sponsored by the state. In tab games, players purchase tab or cards which are usually about 1 x 2 inch rectangles. Eager, greedy players then pull perforated tabs to hopefully uncover fabulous cash prizes. Each game comes in a box with a predetermined number of tickets with a defined number of winners. Typical games have between 1000 and 2000 cards. All cards sell for $1. Usually, the top prizes are in the neighborhood of $500 to $1000. Some tab games build a jackpot which has been known to reach into the $20,000 range.

When the doors open about an hour before the first actual Bingo game, customers stream in with wads of cash, and after they purchase their bingo cards, they begin feasting on the tab games. It is not uncommon for one player to dump $100 at a time to purchase cards. The games are very addictive, and some people play twenty cards at a time throughout the whole session. They crack the tabs like a hoarding houseguest around a jar of salted peanuts. More, more, more! They want more, more, more. Once while working at Voice of the Blue Ridge for the Gator Team, my instant team sold 14 boxes of tickets (2,000 tickets per box) during our 3 hour session.

Bingo today is huge business. The people who play this game are people you might think could least afford to play, but addiction rules.

Next: The People Who Play

Coming Soon-

Looking For the Lost -a new series:

Diving for Balls- Part one of my golf ball hunting series