11/20/2023 0 Comments Bingo madness game![]() And he's got a five-year contract and a piece of the action. He's president of the Newport News, Va., management company that runs the show. Then it's on to the hall.Īlmost three years after people first began shouting "BINGO!" here, the impoverished Eastern Band of Cherokees is raking in the cash, boosting tribal revenue by a third, cutting unemployment in half and fueling the dreams of bingo entrepreneur Sherman Lichty, 55. ![]() "Should have gone to Atlantic City," says a frowning Boone.Ĭome sunrise on bingo Saturdays, buses loaded with players like Boone grind into the reservation past huckster chiefs in bright feathers whooping it up for tips, black bears in roadside cages, snake shows, and racks of tomahawks, bows, arrows and bullwhips for sale at the Honest Injun Trading Post. "But 'close,' " she says, "only counts with horseshoes and hand grenades." And Norfolk housewife Claire Mathis moans that she was only one number away, so close. "BINGO!" comes a shout, midway through the 100-odd games that will be played before the night is out. You got a good heart, it'll give you a heart attack." "But the bottom line is, you got a bad heart, you shouldn't come here. "You don't holler loud enough, they don't hear you, they call another number and you lose. "Bingo is nothing but four letters - L-U-C-K - and knowing how to holler," she says. To court the proper spirits, Boone rearranges charms about her cards, marking numbers with a red dauber. Others serve up tales of bingo addicts hocking the family jewels to buy bingo cards. "I'd eat popsicles for lunch just to have enough money to play bingo," interrupts a friend. ![]() "I love bingo better than anything in the world," says Boone. Brandishing red magic markers, they wore jeans and motto-blazoned T-shirts: "Keep Grandma Off the Streets, Send Her to Bingo," or "I'm a Bingo Nut." They meant business.Ĭontemplate America's Bingomaniacs, vanguard of an estimated 50 million who regularly play the game, wagering $3 billion to $5 billion a year coast to coast, say industry experts, from firehouse benefits that raise millions for charity to no-holds-barred Indian reservation bingo a la Cherokee. Make no mistake: Some may have rolled off in wheelchairs, but they weren't little old ladies out for a church social. One Saturday morning last month, 94 buses rumbled into the parking lot out back, four of them from Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia. It's the Super Bowl of Bingoholics, played four times a year in the heart of North Carolina Indian country, and promising even bigger prize money July 4 weekend. Seconds later comes the shout: "BINGO!" And a groan goes up from the losers.Įnter the lair of Million Dollar Bingo, as played in a marathon session touted as dangling the world's fattest bingo jackpot. "All that carrying on means someone's got it." "Sat on it till it made my tail sore," she sighs. Elsewhere, Carol Boone sadly removes a gold horseshoe from beneath her bottom. Suddenly, shouts and claps erupt from one corner of the cavernous hall. A young man in white shirt and tie reaches in and plucks them out, displays their numbers on closed-circuit TV screens, then calls a number. High on a stage sits a cage of ping pong balls, hopping about like frenetic neutrons. "Money," says one gray-haired grandmother, toting a war chest of potato salad, Mars bars and sodas to a table. So why? Why risk the few good years you've got left? Didn't you hear one player just got carted off in an ambulance? That's right, heart attack. Here you are chain-smoking away tension beside strangers, turning daylight to purple haze at high noon every other Saturday - when the action begins. What brings you forth from as far as Alaska and Canada to hunker down on hard folding chairs with 3,000 fellow devotees for 16 grueling hours - then the trip back? Why pay $250 just to get in the door of a converted bobby pin factory on an Indian reservation to endure this madness? So, ladies, what brand of courage inspires you to climb on buses back home and roar down the interstates, riding all night like Carol Boone, 40, a stocky Forestville, Md., secretary, unarmed save for Doritos, Dr Peppers and lucky rabbits' feet, hellbent to make her stand here in the rugged Smoky Mountains?
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