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Bingo!
By Felice Prager
Bingo! To me, it was the family business and the place where I had my first job. It was how my dad was able to raise enough money to send my brother and me to college. To others, it was a night out, alone or with friends. For those running the games, it was income for their church, synagogue, or charitable organization.
For as long as I could remember, my dad owned the hall. It was a converted bowling alley. Long, unfinished wooden tables were lined up on the floor with stackable chairs scattered on each side. Disposable ashtrays were also scattered on each table. At the front of the hall, there was a table where a woman or man sat. That person called out the numbers as they popped from a machine. There was a master electronic Bingo card on the front wall. When a number was called, the number on the sign lit up.
Patrons paid admission and bought cards on which they played the game. My dad collected a fee for renting the hall and for running a food concession. The church, synagogue, or charitable organization kept the profits.
I remember many players had a dozen or more Bingo cards going at a time. They arrived early, ordered coffee, soda, hotdogs, pastry, or chips from the food concession, lined up their lucky charms that included crucifixes, photographs, rabbits’ feet, and troll dolls, and took out their plastic Bingo chips or Bingo markers.
I remember one “regular” who filled the time waiting for the games to start by doing The New York Times crossword puzzle – in ink. I once checked the puzzle she left behind on the table and the answers in her puzzle were all correct. This person used no chips and no markers on her bingo card. She simply remembered the numbers in her memory. When she yelled, “Bingo!” to indicate that she had won, she was always right. When I asked her if she had a photographic memory, she did not answer me.
Many of the patrons looked destitute as if all their extra money was spent on Bingo. Some people dressed up for a night out with friends or in an attempt to meet people. Most of the patrons were “regulars” who had specific seats and caused a ruckus when someone got their earlier and took their seat. Many insisted on having a whole section of a table to themselves, and these people were usually quite unpleasant.
I remember the hall (when it was being used for Bingo) being incredibly smoky. Regardless of the huge, expensive “smoke-eating” machines my dad had installed and ran 24-hours a day, getting the lingering smoke from chain-smokers out of the air was always an issue. Those who smoked refused to stop and had another cigarette lit before the first was done. Others, the non-smokers, were compassionate in my dad’s fruitless attempts to keep the air cleaner, but they were bothered by the smoke. Since my dad eventually died from lung cancer, I have my own feelings about what the effect was from this lingering toxin.
I am not sure where my dad got the idea to convert the bowling alley into a Bingo hall, but he did. When it was not used as a Bingo hall, the tables and chairs were folded and stored so the hall could be transformed for another function. Meetings for clubs, weddings, parties, and dances were also held in the building when it was not being used for Bingo.
Though variations of the game of Bingo date back to the 1500s in Italy and France where it was a game for the aristocracy, it did not come to the United States until the 1920s. It was called “Beano” then because beans were used to mark the cards. The name “Bingo” became the game’s name from someone excitedly called out the wrong name when she won.
Edwin Lowe and Carl Lefler are credited as the founding fathers of today’s Bingo. Lowe discovered the game being played on a business trip to Georgia, and he was mesmerized by the addictive appeal the game had. He created a version of his own that he eventually marketed. It was hugely successful from its earliest days.
Several months after Bingo hit the market, Lowe was approached by a priest from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. A parishoner had come up with the idea of using Bingo as a way to get the church out of its financial troubles. The priest had put the scheme into operation after having bought several sets of Lowe's $2.00 Bingo game. Problems developed when it was found that each game produced a half dozen or more winners.
Lowe could immediately see the tremendous fund raising possibilities of Bingo, but at the same time, he realized that to make the game workable on a large scale, many more combinations of numbers would have to be developed for the cards. To accomplish this, Lowe sought the services of an elderly professor of mathematics at Columbia University, Carl Leffler. The professor agreed to a fee that remunerated him on a per card basis. Lowe was impatient, and toward the end, the price per card had risen to $100. Eventually, the task was completed.
The E.S. Lowe Company had 6,000 cards. (According to Wikipedia, there are 552,446,474,061,128,648,601,600,000 (five hundred fifty-two septillion, four hundred forty-six sextillion, four hundred seventy-four quintillion, sixty-one quadrillion, one hundred twenty-eight trillion, six hundred forty-eight billion, six hundred one million, six hundred thousand) possible arrangements of the numbers on a bingo card.)
The church of Wilkes-Barre was saved. Word spread fast. Lowe received thousands of letters asking for help on setting up Bingo games. He received so many that he published Bingo's first Instructional Manual. This effort was followed by a monthly newsletter called The Blotter, which was distributed to 37,000 subscribers. By 1934, an estimated 10,000 bingo games were played weekly.
Bingo was first legalized in the 1950s in New York and New Jersey. When gambling spread throughout the US to Indian reservations, more Bingo games appeared for Bingo players. Today, Bingo takes in more than three billion dollars a year.
In the US, the game is primarily staged by churches or charity organizations. Their legality and stakes vary by state regulations and are carefully regulated. In some states, Bingo halls are rented out to sponsoring organizations, and such halls often run games almost every day. These games are usually played for modest stakes and occasionally larger jackpot prizes.
more articles by Felice Prager
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