According to a national survey conducted by Harrah's, a top-tier casino company, 51 percent of American adults believe "casino entertainment" is "acceptable for anyone." Another 35 percent say it is "acceptable for others, but not for me." Even "gambling," the term that once conjured up green visors, cigar smoke and gumball-size pinky rings, has been buffed with warm fuzzies. Had any of us Buddies brought children along to Biloxi, we could have deposited them in the cheery child-care facility at the Grand Casino. Much has been made of the new PG Las Vegas, of the theme park hotels, the troops of Dorothys and Totos, buccaneers, knights and hunks in mini-togas who now cavort where made guys and hookers once ruled. On the strength of such boons, Mammon's had a makeover. It can fatten portfolios with new high-performance issues. It can vanquish the ugly specter of raising taxes and shake cash into shambling infrastructures, Head Start programs, fire brigades, tribal medical clinics. To these grateful constituencies, gambling is no longer a sin, but a saving grace. Our modest stakes have become the last best hope for budget-strapped state legislatures, for long-impoverished Indian tribes now permitted to run gaming ventures, for stockbrokers and investment bankers looking to salve the wounds inflicted by 80's excesses. America has come to count heavily on our cheerful folly. They're limitless, but with absurdist odds. "Hell, why not?"Īnd so we stand in lottery lines and climb aboard buses on the strength of possibilities. "Three cherries and you take the family to Red Lobster instead of ever-lovin' Roy Rogers," a gent in a string tie explained to me recently in Las Vegas. And if we do hit, our expectations are modest. We'd like to win but we sure don't count on it. Between us we dabble in bingo, the ponies, the dogs, the lottery, keno, cards and the slots. Rolling toward the Louisiana state line in a big German-made bus, we are the new Gambling Nation, a yammering, munching, snoring aggregate of Italian-, Polish-, German- and African-Americans, 10th-generation Texans, Latinos - and one Comanche. "Okay, Buddies, sing it out!"Ĭause Jeanne's Bingo Buddies go everywhere As this century turns, it's expected that virtually all Americans will live within a four-hour drive of a casino. More than 60 Indian tribes have gaming compacts with 19 states. Thirty-seven states have lotteries 23 have sanctioned casinos. Ninety-two million visits! Legal gambling revenues reached $30 billion, which is more than the combined take for movies, books, recorded music and park and arcade attractions. More Americans went to casinos than to major league ballparks in 1993. Gambling is now bigger than baseball, more powerful than a platoon of Schwarzeneggers, Spielbergs, Madonnas and Oprahs. And we are part of the great, teeming, itchy-fingered masses that have made legal gambling - now known as "casino entertainment" - America's new national pastime. They'll be waiting for us there in the yawning bus bays, counting heads, papering us with discount coupons. These are casinos so new that construction workers must weave through gamblers, so busy that some of these $25 million to $50 million investments can pay for themselves in a matter of months. Louis to Gulfport and Biloxi, beckons a row of floating "dockside" gaming palaces, voted in in the early 90's by Harrison and Hancock counties, some up and running within five months. Out east on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, strung over 30 miles from Bay St. "Gonna leave our worries back in Texas, and our money in Mississippi!" Voices in the dark add a gamblers' homily: We're headed east, into the teeth of it had prayers before we reached the Interstate. We are Jeanne's Bingo Buddies of Houston, driving all Friday night in a storm that has already spawned killer tornadoes. THE EAST SIDE GAMBLERS THE BIG MACHINE FULLTonight we have been plucked from rainy parking lots all over the Houston area, and we have clambered aboard prepared: pillows, shawls, lucky trolls, full thermoses, white bread, thick stacks of Saran-Wrapped luncheon meat. We come by bus - "motorcoach," if you want to get la-di-da about it. That is casino workers' slang for the millions of Americans now arriving at their portals in smelly diesel waves.
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