Barney Vinson
​Chip Wrecked in Las Vegas

Then I came to Las Vegas....
I grew up in Texas, and the nice thing about it was that everything was so... orderly. Working hours, for the most part were normal.
The only exception I can remember was my uncle. I overheard him tell my aunt one day that he was working "graveyard" at the hospital. I was fairly young at the time, and the only thing I could figure was he was working in the graveyard behind the hospital.
Then I came to Las Vegas, and discovered that people worked all day, and other people worked all night. There was day shift, and swing shift, and—you guessed it—graveyard shift.

Being in the casino business, I worked all the different shifts. Graveyard shift was the worst. I'd get out of bed early in the morning while the rest of the world was fast asleep, take a shower, get dressed, drive to work. The streets were deserted, a heavy blanket of silence covering everything like wintry snow. Then I'd go inside the casino and the noise would hit me like an avalanche. Rock music blasting, people
My biggest problem was that I never could figure out when I was supposed to sleep. Some people went straight to bed as soon as they got home, others stayed up until mid-afternoon and then slept until it was time to go back to work again. Some people slept for a while, got up for a while, slept for a while, then got up again. A few people, it seemed, never went to bed at all. Personally, I was so rummy by the time I got home I couldn't even concentrate, but I was still too wired to go to bed. My eyeballs were frozen open.

To make matters worse, my wife Debbie was wide awake. Sure, she'd been sleeping all night! I'd try to sleep and the phone would ring. I'd close my eyes again and here came the garbage trucks clanging down the street. I'd pull the pillow over my head and the dogs would bark. So I'd get up, stepping around cans of paint in the hallway, heading for the coffee pot.
Cans of paint?
"I'm painting the walls," Debbie said, "but I'm having trouble getting the high parts."
"There's—uh—ladder in thuh—garage," I mumbled.
"It's too rickety."
"Here, gimme the brush. I—can reach it. Any coffee?"

The most frightening time of my life was when I was working at the Dunes Hotel. A balding floorman named Jack was in charge of the schedule, and he held it over you like life and death. If you wanted
The schedule was a jumbled maze of staggered working hours, anyway. See if you can figure this one out. You started on the four to midnight shift. As your name moved down the schedule, your hours changed. Suddenly you were working six to two. Then it was eight p.m. to four a.m. Then midnight to eight. Then two a.m. to ten a.m. Two days off, and you started over. Four to midnight. Your body was in a constant state of shock.
I was working the two to ten shift, two in the morning until ten. It was around eleven at night and I decided to lie down on the couch and catch a little TV before I went to work. Well, of course I went right to sleep. The next thing you know the phone was ringing. Still groggy, I fumbled it to my ear. It was Johnny, the shift boss at the Dunes.
"Barney, it's Johnny."
"Oh, hi, Johnny."
"Are you coming to work tonight?"
"Of course I'm coming to work tonight."
"Well . . . where are you?"
Something wasn't right here, my foggy brain was trying to tell me. "Er, what time is it?"
"It's two o'clock!"
"In the morning?"

An expletive from him, and then the phone went dead. Johnny was cool, though. We even laughed about it later.
Have you ever noticed how people's personalities change when they're working different shifts? People on day shift seem to be practically normal. Their eyes are clear, they chart the stock market, they do crosswords in the newspapers. People on swing shift are more extroverted. They have suntans, they chart the pro football games, and they've always got some big deal going on the side. "I bought five acres out in Pahrump and I'm building a whole subdivision on it. I'm getting bids on dry wall next week. And I'll tell you something. This time next year I'll be rich, and you'll never see me in one of these gambling joints again."

People on graveyard seem to have one common goal: trying to stay awake when it counts. On their breaks, they settle into big deep easy chairs and fall instantly into a coma. Twenty minutes later, their eyes pop open and they're ready for another hour of wakefulness. No alarm clocks, no one shaking them from slumber, they just wake up. I never could figure out how they did it. The only thing I know is that graveyard shift is for zombies. Watch any old horror movie on TV, and who is the monster? Why, it's Count Dracula, or the Wolf Man. They work graveyard shift, too, sleeping all day and flitting around all night.

At my last casino job, I only worked graveyard shift for nine numbing months. Then I was transferred to swing shift, and life took on some semblance of normality. The only problem was my days off. I was getting Tuesdays and Wednesdays off, and Debbie (who landed a job with the County) was off on Saturdays and Sundays. The only time I saw her anymore was when someone died and we had to go to the funeral.
Still, it was better than what happened to my friend Rick. This poor sap had worked in so many different casinos that every shift boss in town knew him by name. He was a good dealer, but he couldn't get used to working graveyard. By the time he woke up, the sun would be streaming in the window, and that was the end of that job. He'd get hired in another casino, at the bottom of the totem pole, back on graveyard, then do the same thing again. I heard that one time he called the Golden Nugget and told the shift boss, "This is Rick. I won't be in today. I overslept."
The boss at the Nugget said, "You don't work here anymore. You're working at the Four Queens."
 

The Dunes Reunion                                                         
 It was Pegg Wallace's idea. The tenth anniversary was coming up on the closing of the Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas, and she said, "We ought to have a party." So that's exactly what we did.

We printed up some flyers, nothing fancy. Just "DUNES CASINO EMPLOYEE REUNION -- 10 YEARS LATER. SEE OLD FRIENDS, HAVE SOME LAUGHS, AND SHARE SOME MEMORIES." A local bar agreed to host the party, even promised to lay out some free food. Of course, those chicken wings and meatballs would just make everyone thirsty, and that's what the bar was counting on.

John L. Smith devoted an entire column in the Review-Journal newspaper to the reunion, and by the night the party rolled around we didn't know what to expect. Would anyone come? Did anyone even care? Or would it just be Pegg and me, and our spouses, shooting pool and drinking ourselves into a coma.

Over the years I'd worked at quite a few casinos: Pioneer, Mint, Landmark, Caesars Palace. But the Dunes was special. It's where I made some lifelong friends, including a cute and sassy blackjack dealer named Debbie. Matter of fact, we've been married ever since the Dunes closed. Kind of like the end of one era, the beginning of another, you might say. If it hadn't been for the Dunes, I probably never would've met her, and who knows where I'd be now.
The Dunes opened in 1955 B.C. (before corporations) with 200 rooms, a "Magic Carpet Revue" featuring Vera-Ellen, and a 30-foot Sultan standing out front, hands on hips and daring you to say anything. If he could have seen the future that awaited him, he probably would have sprinted back to Arabia as fast as his fiberglass legs could take him. But in the fifties the Dunes was one of the classiest resorts on the Strip. It specialized in junket play, bringing in high-rollers every week from New York, Miami, St. Louis. Everything was free, as long as the players gambled.

They all had plenty of dough. You could tell that. It oozed out of their pores like expensive perfume, the men wearing pinky rings the size of my fist and the women wearing big black furs that had probably wiped out half the country's wildlife population.
For a young dealer, fresh from downtown, it was an adventure like no other, and it started on my very first night at the Dunes. I hadn't been working five minutes when this heavyset gambler threw me a handful of checks. "Gimme three thousand across," he said. God almighty, those were $500 checks! I'd never even seen one before. I just wanted to sit down and gaze at them for a while.

Then it hit me. I didn't even know what "three thousand across" was. I leaned over to the boxman, who was six feet tall, sitting down. "What is it?" he growled, looking at me like I was a piece of dog meat.
"This guy wants three thousand across!"
"Put 'em up."
"Okay." Then: "What is it?"
He exhaled slowly, hitting me in the face with a blast of garlic. "Five hundred on each number!"
I stood there, trying to figure out what the payoff was for a $500 six. Thank God a seven came up on the next roll, or I'd still be trying.
The whole night was like that, more money passing through my hands than I'd ever have in my whole lifetime. Where did it all come from, I wondered. How could someone bet $3,000 on one roll of the dice? If he could afford to bet that much money, then how much money did he have? And if he had that much money, why would he want to gamble in the first place? It was a complete mystery to me.

Sid Wyman was the big owner of the Dunes, and he was a great man to work for. He'd walk through the pit, saying hello to everyone, even greeting us by name. Of course, we were wearing name tags, but it was still a nice gesture. If you were running short, he'd advance you a few bucks till payday, right out of his own kick. Anything you wanted, just ask him for it and you got it. If you crossed him, you were out the door, but that hardly ever happened.
In 1978, Sid Wyman died, and the Dunes died with him. The hotel was taken over by St. Louis attorney Morris Shenker, mouthpiece for Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa. In less than ten years time, the Dunes went from the showplace of the Strip to a teetering high-rise on the brink of doom.
By the time Steve Wynn bought the 164-acre resort in 1992, there wasn't much left to do except blow the place down, which Wynn did the following year. The Bellagio opened on the site in 1998, and thousands of former Dunes employees were left with nothing but dusty old memories.

Now Pegg was lining up a party. And me? Well, I was giving her moral support, saying things like, "It's a great idea, Pegg." I even brought one of those disposable cameras to the reunion. The way the pictures came out, I should have disposed of it right after I bought the damn thing.
Yeah, I took a lot of pictures, because here's the thing. The party was a roaring success! I'm not exaggerating when I say there must've been 300 former Dunes employees at the reunion, people I hadn't seen in a whole decade.

One was a blackjack dealer named Eleanor. She came wearing a Dunes bow tie and a Dunes apron, and even had a $5 Dunes chip in her pocket. Another was a former Dunes cocktail waitress who had to be honing in on 80. Trying to be funny, I asked her where she was serving drinks now. "At the Hilton," she answered in a scratchy voice.

George Duckworth was there. He was one of the original owners of the Dunes, along with Sid Wyman and Major Riddle. "I retired in 1991," he told me. "Worst thing I ever did." I started to tell him I retired in 2001; best thing I ever did.
In fact, a lot of the Dunes people were retired. They were doing things they'd wanted to do all their life, traveling mostly. Others were now in other lines of work: real estate, law, construction. Some, though, were still in the casino racket, sitting box, working the floor, a few still dealing. One was even a casino vice-president. It made sense. He was the only one there under 40.

I wandered from group to group, taking my pictures. I got a couple of shots of Sam Angel, holding court with a few other old-timers. Sam never actually worked at the Dunes, but sold jewelry out of a battered suitcase over by the baccarat pit. I bought a ring from him one time, and I still get green on my finger every time I wear it.

It's funny, but when I first got to the party everyone looked.....well, ten years older. But by the end of the night all those years had peeled away. For one magical night, we were still working at the Dunes, waiting for another junket to land.
They're talking about making the reunion an annual event. I've got a better idea. We could all pool our money, borrow some more, buy the Bellagio, tear it down, and rebuild the Dunes. I bet it would be the greatest casino in town. And who knows, we might even hire George Duckworth back.


It's easy to get a job in Las Vegas today. 
All you do is call the hotel's Human Resources office and get a recorded rundown on which jobs are available. If the tape mentions a job you're qualified for, then you hustle down to Human Resources and fill out an application. Your name is then forwarded from Human Resources to Internal Security, and Internal Security runs a complete background check on you and sends the results back to Human Resources.
If you're clean—no outstanding bench warrants, no bankruptcy filings, no skeletons in the closet—then Human Resources schedules you for a drug test. If you pass that, (and I wouldn't trust anyone who did), you just might get the job. Then, if you pass the 90-day probation period, you're a full-fledged casino employee! See, I told you it was easy.

It wasn't quite that complicated when I moved to Las Vegas about 150 years ago. In those days, getting a casino job was all about juice. If you knew someone, or if you knew someone who knew someone, then you could always get a job. Of course, you had to know how to deal, and the only way you could do that was by going to dealer's school.

They were all listed in the yellow pages of the phone book. Casino Gaming School, Nevada School of Dealing, Dealers Training Center, Casino School, Las Vegas Dealers School. "Learn to deal in casino style surroundings." "Hands-On Training." "Learn at your own pace." "Day and Evening Classes." "Job placement assistance." My mind raced as I ripped the page out of the book. Not only could I learn everything I needed to know, but these people would help me get a job when I graduated.

The next morning I drove downtown. Behind a noisy slot joint called Honest John's was a dingy, gray building with a faded sign: "Nevada School of Dealing." I parked my Mustang in the Honest John's parking lot ("Customers Only" the sign read) and headed for the casino, the parking attendant watching me warily. As soon as I got inside, I ducked out through a side door and headed for the school.

The owner, a lanky man with a permanent frown on his face, introduced himself as Arnold. He showed me around, talking incessantly while elbowing students out of the way. There were three blackjack tables, a crap table with a worn layout you could practically see through, and a roulette wheel with a chipped "El Rancho Vegas" logo on it. It was probably worth a fortune as an antique; the El Rancho had burned to the ground almost 15 years ago.
"I can teach you any game in the casino," Arnold told me. "It's a hundred and seventy-five a game, and I suggest you learn at least three games. It'll make it that much easier to get hired somewhere."

I swallowed. "Uh, maybe just one game to start with. I was thinking about learning blackjack."
Arnold made a face. "I could teach a monkey to deal blackjack. You oughta learn to deal craps. Crap dealers are worth their weight in gold. Everybody wants crap dealers."

I swallowed again. "Gee, I don't know. It looks so complicated."
"Come on back to the office," he said. "I'll give you all the stuff you need to get started." Eyeing me over his horn-rims, he added, "You got the money, right?"
"Yes sir," I answered, handing over a crisp hundred dollar bill and four twenties. In an instant, my bankroll had been depleted by almost a third. I was full of questions as I followed Arnold into his office. How long was the course? When did classes start? How would I get a job when I graduated? I learned then that this wasn't an actual institute of higher learning, like a regular college. You showed up whenever you felt like it, you practiced on the table with the other students, and Arnold would tip you off if one of the downtown casinos decided to hire a break-in. That's what we were, break-ins. In other lines of work, we'd be called gofers, or flunkies, or interns. In Vegas we were break-ins.
Arnold gave me some mimeographed sheets of paper and told me to memorize everything. One look at the pages and my heart sank. The first one was about the pass line and the don't pass, and "odds," whatever that was. The next page was about come bets and don't come bets, then came another page on proposition bets and an ominous something called "hardways." That figured. This was turning out to be a hard way to make a living.
"I've got to memorize all this stuff?" I cried.

"It's not that hard," Arnold shrugged. "Just think of everything in units. One unit pays a certain amount, the next unit pays twice that much. You'll get it down in no time."
I went through the pages again. "I don't see anything in here about how the game is played. Don't you have a text book or something?"
Arnold laughed. "You'll learn all that in class." Again: "It's not that hard." He looked at his watch and then brushed past me. "Why don't you go meet the others and I'll see you when I get back from the bank."

I wandered around the place for a good two hours, but Arnold never came back. I found out later from one of my classmates that Arnold didn't go to the bank with a new student's tuition. He went to a downtown casino and "invested" it at the tables. When he lost, he didn't come back. Maybe that's why he was gone most of the time.

By the end of the first day, I was getting the hang of the game. It was called "craps" because the shooter lost if he rolled a craps number on the first roll — a two, three, or a twelve. There was a man with a stick called a stickman, and two dealers who took everybody's chips when the shooter didn't shoot what he was supposed to shoot.

And that was another thing I learned. All the players took turns shooting the dice. You didn't have to shoot if you didn't want to, but it was kind of what held the whole thing together. Besides, it was like being in the limelight for a couple of minutes. Everyone watching you, everyone counting on you, everyone smiling at you when you rolled one of their numbers. Heck, I thought it was more fun being the shooter than being one of the dealers.
It was still a lot more complicated than blackjack, but I was starting to get the general idea. Of course, I still didn't know what a lay bet was, or a come bet. But one of these days it would all fall into place. I just had to study harder, that's all.

I also started making friends with some of the other students. A group of us ate lunch together in a downtown casino, where I got a whole sundae glass full of shrimp (and lettuce) for a buck. We didn't talk about our hometowns or anything else of a personal nature. We talked craps, and I could feel the excitement bubbling in my veins. It was the same feeling fighter pilots must experience after a bombing run over enemy territory, or how a major leaguer feels after he pitches a no-hitter. We were all going to be dealers someday, and Vegas would never be the same
 
Coming of Age
After less than a week at dealer's school, I was dealing craps like I'd done it all my life. The camaraderie I felt with the other students was hard to explain. It was almost like going to summer camp, being away from home for the first time. We were all pals, all allies, all out to become Las Vegas dealers.

We'd take turns dealing the game and working the stick, then we'd become regular players, trying to stump everyone else with some screwball bet. "Gimme a horn high ace-deuce for a nickel," I would bark, tossing a fake chip to the fake dealer.

The instructor would grin and say, "Book it, Danno. That's a legitimate bet."

And I would stand there with a smug look on my face, proud as an eagle. The only problem I encountered was handling the chips. They kept falling out of my hands when I tried to pay a bet. Here I had the payoff all worked out in my mind ($12 six pays $14), then I'd try to pay it, dollar chips in my left hand and $5 chips in my right. Suddenly gravity would kick in and the damn things would go scattering all over the table. "Where'd this come from?" the dealer on the other end would ask. "That's mine," I'd answer with a sigh. "Roll it back over here, will yuh?"

The instructor took me to one side. "You're gonna be a good clerk," he said in a confidential voice. "But you can't cut checks worth a crap. I want you to go over to the Nevada Club. Buy yourself a $5 stack of 25-cent checks. When you get home, spread a blanket or something on the kitchen table, and practice cutting checks. Ninety percent of the game is cutting checks, remember that."

There's another one I'd have to stick in the old memory bank. Tourists called 'em chips. Dealers called 'em checks. Don't ask me why. They just did, that's all.

The Nevada Club turned out to be about the seediest gambling joint I'd ever seen. The carpet, if you could call it that, was held together with spit, and stained with every kind of blotch and smear you could think of. Hopefully, it wasn't blood.

The place was crawling with drunks, hookers, and down-and-out grinders. It was almost like being inside Ripley's "Believe It or Not." The food for the help must be pretty good, though. Every dealer in the joint had a stomach out to here.

I edged cautiously to the casino cage, on the lookout for pickpockets and serial killers. The cashier pushed me a stack of quarter checks that were so worn a seeing eye dog couldn't tell what they were worth. I hefted the checks in my hand, feeling some kind of power from deep inside. Here came gravity again and one of them went rolling toward a blackjack table. As I picked it up, I glanced at the table. One of the seats was empty. The occupant must've gotten the DT's or something.

You know what? This could be some kind of omen. They say everything happens for a reason, so just why did my 25-cent check land at the foot of a blackjack table with one empty seat? Yes sir, my guardian angel was working overtime, telling me it was time to make myself a quick double sawbuck.

I stuffed the checks in my pocket and dropped a twenty on the table. "Change," the dealer called over her shoulder to a bored pit boss who was either doing paperwork or reading a racing form. "Go ahead," he said, never giving me a second glance. The dealer, 80 years old if she was a day, pushed me $10 in iron and two $5 checks. At least I could read the writing on them.

Four hands later I was down twenty bucks. I busted every single time. I learned one thing, though. You don't say, "Hit me" at the blackjack table. You scratch on the table if you want a card, stick the cards under your money if you don't, especially in a joint like the Nevada Club. Say "Hit me" in there, and that's what was liable to happen.

Out came another twenty, only now my heart was starting to pound. No one liked to lose, but not everyone was carrying his life savings around in his back pocket, either. The dealer gave me four $5 chips this time. "Change," she called. The pit boss didn't answer. He was probably having his own problems at Santa Anita.

This twenty went just as fast as the last one, and just like that I was down forty big ones. Maybe if I struck up a conversation with the dealer she'd take pity on me. At least, I might be able to break her conversation and get her off that winning streak. "So where you from?" I asked her, digging in my wallet again.

"Here and there."

"How long you been a dealer?"

"Too long."

"Well, you sure are lucky, I'll say that."

"Hey, I just deal the cards, Mister. I don't care who wins."

"Yeah? Well, I'm gonna be a dealer myself. Soon as I get out of school, I'm gonna be a crap dealer."

"Change!" she hollered, scooping up another of my twenties.

Nothing from the pit boss. Not another word from her, either. Here came the cards again, and I finally won a bet. I decided to double up, and let the whole ten ride. Wrong move. It was the same old song and dance; she got the gold and I got the shaft.

By now my mouth was so dry I couldn't swallow, which was just as well. I hadn't seen a cocktail waitress in this flea trap since I sat down.

To make a long story short, I lost $150 that afternoon, and the $5 in quarter checks to boot. It was like watching a horror movie on the big screen. I was the knight in shining armor. The dealer? She was Dracula.

It was a long ride back to the motel. I'd never felt like such a loser in my life. And let's face it, that's what I was—a loser. Everyone knows you can't buck the casinos and come out on top. Who paid for all those lights and all those high-rises anyway? We did. The losers of the world.

Every store I passed seemed to have a sale going on. Stereos: $150. Men's suits: $150. Caribbean cruise: $150. Leather sofas: $150. Sterling silver dinnerware: $150. New television sets: $150. I could've bought any of those things for the money I threw away at the Nevada Club. I could stay in the motel another week for $150, with money left over for other luxuries. . . like food and the next payment on my Mustang, which was already past due.

The worst part of it all was trying to fall asleep that night. Every time I closed my eyes I saw playing cards. Sixes and sevens, aces and face cards, spades, hearts, clubs, diamonds. Then the dreams started, and in those dreams I was winning every hand. The checks were piling up in front of me, and soon a crowd gathered to watch my phenomenal run of luck.

I woke up and for a moment I thought I did win. For just a tiny instant my heart soared and my spirits lifted. Then I opened my wallet. Sixty-three dollars. That's all the money I had left in the world. Sixty-three lousy dollars between me and starvation. Suddenly I felt the bile churn up in my stomach, and then I was kneeling in front of the commode, heaving my guts out.

I never gambled again.

Boxmen Get the Boot
Vegas casinos are at it again, chopping down trees to plant a forest. This time, it isn't change personnel who are getting the boot, but the boxmen at the crap tables. For those who don't know what a boxman is, let alone how to shoot craps, the boxman is the casino supervisor who oversees payoffs, signs markers, orders fills, and does all the other mundane tasks at the table that the floor supervisor is usually too busy to handle. After all, most floor supervisors are now watching two games or more, when they only had to monitor one game in the good old days.

The problem is that table games in Nevada are slowly spiraling into oblivion. According to the Nevada State Gaming Control Board, the 351 dice tables in Clark County generate an annual income of $390 million (or an average gross win per day per table of $3,049), while nickel slot machines alone bring in more than $1 billion!

A slot machine requires practically no human participation, except for a slot technician who comes along once a day and empties it. And the new ticket-in ticket-out machines require even less attention.
Meanwhile, look at the number of employees at a dice table. There are four dealers on each dice crew, a boxman (until now), and a floor supervisor. Six casino employees, each getting free meals, medical benefits, 401 (k) plans, uniforms, and salary are stationed at each of those 351 dice tables in Clark County.

So to save money, and yet offer the games that make each casino a full- fledged resort operation, the powers that be have decided to pare down the help. At a daily salary of around $175, each boxman off the payroll gives the casino an annual windfall of $45,000. Why, that's enough money to wine and dine a highroller for almost a whole weekend.

Casinos have apparently lost sight of the fact that the role of the boxman is to protect the game. Without the boxman, it becomes the responsibility of the floor supervisor, whose shoulders are already heaped with more paperwork and customer interaction than he or she can scarcely handle.
Another problem is catering to the whims and whimsies of table game regulars. Unlike slot players, who have been trained since infancy to use their slot cards for meals and shows, table game players want every amenity in the casino, and they want it now. A highroller with a credit line of more than $1 million isn't going to twiddle his thumbs while the floor supervisor scurries from table to table. He wants reservations for eight o'clock in the gourmet restaurant, and a tee-off time tomorrow morning on the golf course. "And if you don't get somebody over here right now, I'm taking my business across the street!"

Lose just one player like that and there goes all the money the casino saved by unloading its boxmen.
Not only that, but how about all the scam artists who have been ripping and tearing in casinos since time immemorial? These include past-posters (players who sneak bets against the house after the shooter already has a number); claim bet artists (players who try to get paid for nonexistent bets); and railbirds (players who sneak other people's money out of the rail while everyone's attention is riveted on the table). Without a boxmen to oversee the game, these unsavory characters will have a field day. All the casino bosses will hear is one of their best customers wailing, "Hey, what happened to all my $1,000 chips?" To pacify him, the casino will have to — you guessed it — reimburse the player for all the chips he claimed were stolen.
"Give Mr. G $25,000 in yellow chips. Sorry about that, Mr. G."

There goes another half a year's pay for a boxman, who could have prevented the entire thing in the first place.
Megaresorts like MGM, Bally's, and Las Vegas Hilton have already done away with their boxmen. So now what happens at smaller Vegas casinos, which operate on an even smaller profit margin? Chances are they'll say, "Well, if the Hilton is getting rid of their boxmen, we should do the same thing." Eventually, every casino in town will have their floor supervisors doing the work of two people. The boxman will be a relic of a bygone era.
Next step? Why not make the dice tables smaller so that the casino only needs three dealers instead of four? Why not install computerized hardware on each table so that a highroller can get money just by inserting his player number into a computer? That way, they won't need floor supervisors, either.
Trimming the payroll might save money in any business, but by operating with fewer employees the casino industry will find itself in a no-win situation. One old timer put it best when he said, "The casino business is a people business. We don't sell bread; we don't sell shoes. All we sell is service."
Without enough manpower to sell that service, the casinos may find themselves another relic of a bygone era


Hustling
When I was breaking in at the Mint I must've been the hardest-working chump in Vegas. Forty hours a week dealing craps, working double shifts on weekends, and doing a disc jockey show Saturday and Sunday mornings at a radio station.
The show ended at noon, which was when my shift started at the Mint. So every weekend there I was, racing across town, knowing I would be late, knowing there was nothing I could do about it. I'd told the other guys about my part-time radio gig, so they always covered for me. Unfortunately, they told other people, and the next thing you know it was all over the joint. "He's got a job on the radio. He's a disc jockey. He uses the name Johnny Holiday."
Then again, maybe it wasn't such a bad thing after all, everyone knowing I was a deejay. My skills as a dealer weren't developing that rapidly; I was still making a lot of mistakes. Let's face it, I was terrible. This one boxman, his name was Duke, would get so nervous when I was dealing that his hands would shake more than mine did. In fact, the pit boss once suggested they put seat belts on the stools so the boxmen wouldn't go flying off the table every time I paid a bet.

The boxmen couldn't hurt you, though. The floor people could. They had the power to hire, and the power to fire. If one of them didn't like you, you were history, simple as that. There was this one floorman named Joe Caruso who was tough as nails. The rumor was that his dad was a crime boss back in Chicago, and that Joe had been sent to Vegas to escape a murder rap. Like I say, it was just a rumor, and maybe Joe started it. But hell, he even looked like a gangster, wearing silk suits and flashy ties, and he was Italian to boot.

He used to give me a hard time, always standing right behind me when I was dealing, shaking his head when I made a mistake, shaking his head when I didn't. And coming up with little snide remarks all the time like, "Don't buy anything on time, kid." Or: "You've got hands like a sturgeon."
Then Joe found out I was doing a radio show. Suddenly I was a star in his eyes. A dealer at the Mint, working on the radio! "Hey," he whispered in my ear. "You think maybe you could dedicate a song to me on your show this weekend?"

So I did. Not only did I dedicate a song to Joe Caruso, but I dedicated songs to every boss at the Mint I could think of. From that moment on, I was okay in their book. I had a job for life. That is, as long as they stuck around.
I was learning more and more about this crazy racket. And you know what? Dealing was only a small part of it. The big part was making friends with the players, sizing up who might be good for a toke, and the other 99 percent of them who wouldn't throw you a life preserver if you were drowning in the middle of the frigging Atlantic Ocean.

We needed tokes. We relied on tokes. We lived on tokes. Without tokes, we were just common laborers, living from paycheck to paycheck. And if you didn't get out there and hustle, you weren't going to make any tokes. Just fourteen lousy dollars a day, and after taxes you were lucky if you got anything at all.

The problem was that husting wasn't allowed. If a boss caught you hustling, it was the end of the line. So you were in a spot. If you didn't hustle, you wouldn't make any money. If you did hustle and got caught at it, you wouldn't make any money, because you wouldn't be working there anymore.
Hustling was an art form, and I learned from the Michelangelos of the Mint. When a new player stepped up to the table, the first thing you did was check out his appearance. Was he well-dressed? Was he wearing an expensive watch or any other nice jewelry? Was he drinking? Was he from the South? Add all these things up and you had yourself a potential George, our slang for a good tipper.

Was he from a foreign country? Did he have dirt under his fingernails? Were his clothes so filthy that he left spots on the table when he made a bet? Was he drinking beer out of a bottle? Add these together and you had yourself a stiff, our slang for someone who wouldn't give you a toke if their life depended on it. You might as well throw in females, young people, really old people, and anyone from the East Coast except New York, because they were just as bad.

Then, when you had a potential George on the table, you went into surgery. "Come on over here next to me, sir," you'd say, your voice as soft as maple syrup. You'd help him make his bets, make sure he had his odds, make sure he had a fresh drink at all times, two if possible. Then, when he started winning, here it came. "Put a chip down there on the pass line, next to yours," you whispered.
"What for?"

"For the boys," you whispered.
Here it came. And you'd have a bet on the pass line as long as he stayed, and you made sure he stayed all day.
I finally broke the ice with a woman player one day. "Where are you from?" I asked her. That was another thing. You always asked a new player where he or she was from, just to get some friendly conversation going that might lead to a toke. "California," she said. "I love California," I said. You loved any place the player was from. Reason? More tokes.

She was only betting $5 on the pass line, so things didn't look good. But the dice were running hot and after an hour she had about $300 in the rail. I couldn't stand it any longer. "Put a $5 chip behind your bet for me," I whispered.
"Okay," she said brightly.
Boom, winner four. I paid her $5 for her pass line bet, then paid myself $10 for the odds. "Thank you," I said, scooping up $15 and chunking it to the stickman.

"Hey," she said. "How come you got more money than I did?"
"I was taking odds," I explained patiently. "Odds pay more than the pass line does."
She replied, "Well, from now on I get the odds and you get the pass line."
"Okay," I said, biting my tongue. "You got a deal."
Life couldn't get any better than this.

Dad
Here I was in Vegas, dealing at the Mint Hotel and living in my very own apartment. I'd written my dad to tell him where I was, but he never wrote back, and he'd always been good about staying in touch. One morning I couldn't get him out of my mind, so I called him on the phone. There was no answer.
Still worried, I put in a call to my uncle, who was living in San Antonio. "I'm trying to reach my dad," I told him. "Do you know where he is?" Silence from the other end for what seemed an eternity, then my uncle said, "He's in the hospital. He's got cancer."
The wind went out of me. My dad was only 63 years old, for crying out loud. He'd never hurt anyone in his whole life, just went to work and came home, making every kind of sacrifice he could to raise my brother and me, and now he was all alone in some damn hospital out in the middle of nowhere. "How bad is it?" I asked my uncle, once I caught my breath.

"It isn't good," he said. "It's in his lungs and stomach and everything. I'm afraid it's just a matter of time."
The tears welled up of their own accord, and I just let them roll down my face. I should've stayed in Texas, dammit. What an idiot I'd been, shoving off to see the world, thinking about no one but myself, while some creeping disease was eating him alive. We should've spent more time together, because when you get right down to it time is all you've got. He could tell me things about his life I'd never know. Now it was too late.
"I want to see him," I said. "Just tell me where he is. I'm coming to see him."

"He doesn't want to see anybody," my uncle said. And I guess my uncle should know. They'd been close all their lives, grew up together, went through life together, and for a few years they'd lived together, right along with me, my brother, my two cousins, my aunt, and my grandmother.
I sat there, clenching the phone so hard my knuckles were white. "What am I supposed to do?" I asked him, my voice trembling.
"He wouldn't want you to see him like this. Just go on with your life. Write him a letter. He'd love to hear from you. And . . . I'll call you if there's any change."

I hung up the phone and walked down the street to a bar. I sat there in a dark booth all day, thinking about things, and I got myself good and plastered.
The next day I went back into combat at the Mint, my head pounding and a feeling of impending doom settling over me. But soon the whirlwind of line bets, come bets, proposition bets, tokes, Georges, and stiffs got me going, and there I was again, dealing to the usual bunch of scumbags.
It almost seemed like home. Home, that is, if you could picture the parade of motley degenerates who showed up every single day of the week including holidays. God, they were there so often you even knew them by name.

If we didn't know their names, we gave them nicknames. "Here comes Groucho," one of the dealers would moan. Sure enough, up comes one of the regulars, wearing horn-rims and smoking a cigar. "Here comes Alfred Hitchcock," someone would say, and here's this fat guy, jowls and everything, looking just like the original. Oh man, I could go on all day.

You've heard of battle fatigue? Well, every once in a while one of the dealers would get it, just like soldiers did during the war. And when you got right down to it, that's what I was: a soldier in a war. The dealers were the American G.I.'s. The players were the Viet Cong.
A dealer named Oz found himself missing in action after the following exchange took place.
Player: You didn't pay my four.
Oz: You don't have a four.
Player: I always bet the four.
Oz: Up your ass! You don't have a four.

If there was such a thing as a Medal of Honor for dealers, Oz would've earned one. He said out loud what the rest of us were saying under our breaths. Even though he got fired as a result, Oz went out like a true American hero. In our eyes anyway.
For the dealers, it was a matter of survival-—protecting our jobs and trying to protect the casino's bankroll. For the players, here was their chance to cheat, lie, steal, scam, do anything they could to get the casino's money without actually gambling for it. You'd be standing at your post, working away, then out of the corner of your eye you'd see someone's hand sneaking a bet on the don't pass after the shooter already had a number. It was called past-posting, illegal as hell, but players downtown did it every chance they got.

The first time I saw it happen I told the player politely, "Sir, you can't do that."
It wasn't 30 seconds later that here came the hand again, sneaking a bet on the don't pass. I pushed the chip back to the player and said, "Sir, I told you, you can't do that."

The boxman leaned over to me. "The next time that sonofabitch tries to past-post you, I want you to grab his hand and squeeze it as hard as you can. I want you to make that sonofabitch cry, and that's an order!"
Well, sure enough, here comes the hand again, heading for the don't pass. I reached out, got hold of his hand, and squeezed it with all my might. I felt like I was milking a cow back in Texas, until finally the $5 check dribbled out of his hand and went rolling across the table. Well, he started calling me every name in the book, which I won't repeat here for the sake of human decency. Let me just say that the nicest word he used was "asshole." Anyway, the boxman loved it, and that's all that mattered.


It was just another day in Vegas.
When you're gambling in a casino, it isn't necessary to specify the denomination of chips when you get change. If the minimum bet at the table is $5, the dealer will give you $5 chips.
One dealer related the following story. A man dropped a $100 bill on the table and said, "Give me twenty-five dollar chips." So the dealer gave him 25 $1 chips and three $25 chips.
"No," the man said. "Give me twenty-five dollar chips." This time the dealer gave him four $25 chips.
"No," the man said. "Give me twenty-five dollar chips." What the man wanted was 20 $5 chips, which is what he would have gotten if he hadn't said anything.

On a blackjack game, a player dropped a $100 bill on the table. "Give me twenty ones," he said.
The dealer, who was in the process of shuffling the cards, smiled and said, "I'll try."
After the shuffle was completed, she gave me the man twenty $5 chips.
"Give me twenty ones," he repeated.
"I'll try," she smiled again. Well, of course, she thought the man wanted her to deal him a 21 on every hand, and he what he wanted was twenty $1 chips.

It happened at a plush resort on the Las Vegas Strip. A South American millionaire was playing craps when the shooter rolled a winner 6 the hard way. The gambler had bet $10,000 on the pass line with $20,000 odds, receiving a payoff of $34,000. Apparently, however, it was not enough.
He spoke quietly to the dealer, who turned to the boxman and said, "The gentleman says that we owe him another $27,000."
"For what?" the boxman cried.

"Well, he said that he meant to bet another $3,000 on the hard 6, but he accidentally bet on the hard 8 instead."
The game was stopped while the boxman talked to the floorman, who then talked to the pit boss, who naturally had to talk to the shift boss, who had to call someone else on the phone. Meanwhile, the millionaire gambler talked happily with his friends. After all, he was stuck almost a million dollars, and there was no way he would lose this argument.

The shift boss hung up the phone and nodded to the pit boss, who nodded to the floorman, who nodded to the boxman. "Pay him," the boxman said to the dealer, and a beautiful stack of $1,000 chips was shoved in front of the gambler.
Just as the game was about to get underway again, a player at the other end of the table shouted. "Hey, I meant to put $50 behind my bet. How about paying me?"

It was just another day in Vegas.



Moving up the Corporate Ladder
I'd been working as a shill at the Pioneer Club in Vegas for almost a week, and now I had two beautiful days off staring me in the face. I should've been walking on air, but I wasn't.
For one thing, I was only making $11 a day and didn't even get free meals like casino employees everywhere else. If it weren't for complimentary refreshments at the snack bar, I'd really be screwed. My money was slowly running out, and I hadn't helped matters by getting tanked on wine at an Italian restaurant the night before.

In fact, I didn't even know I had two days off until I stumbled into work that morning. That's when Mop Top, the assistant shift boss, broke the news to me. Another $22 was out of my grasp forever, but it could've been a blessing in disguise. As weak as I was, there was no way I could stand on my feet all day.
I limped to the snack bar and took a seat on the cleanest stool I could find. Maybe a steaming cup of coffee would clear the cobwebs out of my head. The attendant shifted her gum to a cheek as she walked over.
"What'll it be, babe?"

"Coffee."
She pushed a chipped cup in front of me and filled it to the brim. "Thirty cents," she said in a bored voice.
I chuckled. "It's okay. I work here."
"Thirty cents," she said again.
"What do you mean? I just told you, I work here."
"Didn't you read the memo?"
"What memo?"

"No more free drinks for the employees. The memo came out last night. Here," she said, sticking a piece of grease-spotted paper in front of me.
"Notice to all employees," it read. "Due to financial difficulties, it is necessary to begin charging for ALL beverages at the Pioneer Club Snack Bar. Beginning Monday, July 23, there will be free coffee and water available in the Dealers Room." It was signed by Fredric J. Ward, whoever the hell he was.
Shaking my head, I fumbled for my wallet. The attendant must've seen the frustration on my face and leaned closer. "I'll tell you what really happened," she confided. "Somebody hit a keno ticket yesterday for fifteen hundred, and they had to get the money back somehow. So they figure they'll get it from us."

I wasn't really listening. Instead, I was gazing horror-struck at what was left of my bankroll. A twenty, a ten, a five, and three wrinkled singles, plus 70 cents in change scattered on the counter. One halfway-decent meal in an Italian restaurant, and now I was almost flat broke.
I finished the coffee, slurping every expensive mouthful, left a nickel tip, then hitched up my pants and walked out the front door.
"HOWDY PARDNER!" the Vegas Vic mascot boomed.
"SCREW YOU!" I boomed back.

Here it was, high noon in one of the hottest places on the planet, heat waves rising from the pavement in sizzling little swirls, sweat pouring down my face, pants stuck to my legs, socks stuck to my shoes, shorts stuck to my privates, and $38.65 to my name. I didn't believe in the hereafter, thanks to being bullied and beaten by a bunch of rabid nuns in Texas when I was too young to defend myself, but if there was a heaven and if there was a hell I knew exactly where they were. Heaven was Texas, and hell was Las Vegas.

Then, like an oasis in the Kalahari, a blast of cold air came rushing at me from the gaping entrance of the Mint Hotel. Just in the nick of time, too. I was starting to see spots in front of my eyes. I stumbled inside, then looked around in disbelief. Now this was more like it.
Chandeliers hung from the ceilings, splashing the casino with muted light, and piano music tinkled softly from the cocktail lounge. I even saw a porter, actually sweeping rubbish into a dust pan. At the Pioneer, we just kicked everything out of the way. The thing I noticed most, though, was the sound, or lack of it. It was almost like being in a meadow. Oh, there were a few slot machines ringing and the constant rumble of conversation, but there were no loudspeakers and no sirens, and some of the employees were actually smiling. What I wouldn't give to work in a place like this.
I walked up to one of the dealers on a dead blackjack table. "How's it going?" I asked him.
"Great. How about you?"

"Okay, I guess. Say, who does the hiring around here?"
"Sonny. He's the shift boss. Over there in the dice pit. The one wearing the gray pinstripes."
I thanked him and walked over to where three men were standing behind a crowded dice table, all watching intently as some guy in a cowboy hat shot the dice. Hell, all three of them were wearing gray pinstripes. Waiting at the end of a closed table, I tucked in my shirt and smoothed my hair with my fingers, wishing to myself that I was wearing a pinstripe. Anything but blue jeans and a sport shirt with little yellow stars all over it.
One of the pinstripes was walking in my direction. "Excuse me," I said, standing in his way. "Are you Sonny?"
"I'm Pete. You want to see Sonny?"
"Yes sir. I'm looking for a job."
"Just a minute."

Pete went back to the other two, said something to one of them, and here came another pinstripe. It figured. He was the biggest of them all, about six three, all muscle and bone with hands the size of manhole covers, a face that looked like it was chiseled out of concrete with a rusty pickax, the worst case of acne scarring I'd ever seen, and hard cold eyes that seemed to stare right through you.
"Sonny?" I gulped.
"Yeah, what can I do for you?"
"I'm looking for a job."
"Doing what?"
"Dealing craps."
"Any experience?"
"Yes sir. Fact, I'm working right now. At the Pioneer Club."
"When can you start?"
"Tomorrow?"
"Tell you what. Go to Personnel, fill out an ap, tell them to send it up to my office. You start next Monday, noon to eight. And wear a white shirt. A clean one."

Bingo. Just like that. I was working at the Mint Hotel! And I did it with no help from anyone.

The Big Time
I was walking on air. I'd just landed a dealing job at the Mint Hotel in downtown Las Vegas! It wasn't the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, even I knew that, but it sure beat shilling on a dice table at the Pioneer Club for $11 a day. I'd been hired by a pit boss named Sonny, who told me to go to Personnel and fill out an application. For the first time since I hit Vegas a month ago, I felt like a bona fide member of the human race.
I found the personnel office behind the casino, where I told a Bette Davis look-alike that Sonny said I was supposed to start work on Monday. She typed something on an employment application, then handed it to me along with a leaky ballpoint. Under "position" she put "Student Dealer." Under salary, she put "$14." Hopefully, that was $14 a day, and not $14 a week.

I filled out the application carefully, skipping over such unimportant questions as next of kin and current address. Hell, I didn't even know what my address was. Somewhere on Sixth Street was all I could remember.
"Fine," Bette Davis said, checking it over. "Now take this form to the Sheriff's Office and get a work card. You can't work in a casino without one. Carry it with you at all times."

Work card? No one ever told me anything about a work card. I'd been working at the Pioneer for nearly a week without a work card. That was something else I could tell the federal government about. The Pioneer was letting people work without work cards!
The Sheriff's Office was six long blocks down Fremont Street. Pushing on the glass door, I suddenly found myself in the midst of hundreds of people, most of them standing in two long lines that were barely moving. The room, which was about the size of a football field, reeked of stale sweat and other things I didn't even want to think about, and there were cops all over the place, their handguns sparkling in the afternoon sunlight.
I got into one of the lines, standing behind a tall Mexican with a scar on his face. He turned and looked at me. "Better git a nomber," he said. "You gotta git a nomber." Oh great. One line was for people with numbers; the other was for people waiting to get numbers.
It was dark outside by the time I got to the front of the line, and dark in Vegas means around nine o'clock at night. It was almost like living in Alaska, where the moon only comes out on a whim. I'd made it through the first line, then was told I couldn't get into the second line until I stood in a third line, this one for fingerprints and photographs.

The woman behind the counter stamped my form, then slid it over for me to sign. "You're all set," she said in a mechanical voice, handing me a plastic card with my mug shot on it. "That'll be $20."
I let my breath out slowly. No use getting mad at her, she didn't make the rules. "Do you take food stamps?" I asked her, digging out my wallet and saying goodbye to my last Andy Jackson.

The important thing was that I had a work card now, although it was officially called a "gaming" card. "LVMPD," it read, along with my name, my ID number, the card's expiration date, and "Mint Hotel" stamped on the other side. Every time I switched jobs, I got a new card. Twenty dollars. Every time I lost my card, I got a new card. Twenty dollars. Every two years when the card expired, I got a new card. Twenty dollars.
The LVMPD (Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department) said it was to keep convicted felons out of the casinos, hence the fingerprints. Mine were probably on their way to the F.B.I. right now, and I wouldn't be surprised if Diane's apartment was surrounded by federal agents by the time I got home. Personally, I figured it was just another slick way to fatten up the county's slush fund. With every casino worker in the city coughing up $20 every two years, the town would never go broke. The people might, but the town wouldn't.

I hiked back down Fremont to Sixth Street and half an hour later I was back at Diane's place. The aroma of peanut butter toast was wafting through the air as I plunked down on the couch and started rubbing my aching feet. Ahh, home sweet home.
When I told her the news, Diane was happy and sad at the same time. Sad that I was leaving the Pioneer where she worked, happy that I was making more money. Three dollars times five was fifteen extra dollars in the household budget every week. That would buy almost seven jars of peanut butter.
Anyway, Diane had news of her own. It was so slow at the Pioneer that she was off tomorrow. That gave us 24 hours together, all cooped up in a one-room apartment with nothing to do but stand around and look at each other.

"Er, Diane, let's do something tomorrow. I'm starting to go stir crazy. We could take a little trip, maybe get out of this heat for a few hours."
Diane rubbed her eyes, then settled her binoculars back in place. "You ever been to Mount Charleston?"
"No, where is it?"

"It's about fifty miles from here, up in the mountains. It's really beautiful, and it's twenty degrees cooler than it is down here. I used to go up there all the time with my mother, when she was still alive."

Suddenly I felt guilty. Every time I was around her, all I talked about was me, and my past, and my dreams, and my this, and my that. Never once did I ask her about herself, about what she wanted out of life. I was thoughtless and inconsiderate, that's what I was, and I vowed to turn over a new leaf right now.
"Well, if we're going to the mountains, I'm gonna need to put some gas in the car. Could you loan me a few bucks, babe?"
To hell with it. I'd turn over a new leaf in the morning.

The next day was absolutely gorgeous, not a cloud in the sky. A cold spell must've blown in during the night, too. It was only 107 degrees. We loaded the car with blankets, an ice chest, a backgammon game, some suntan lotion, stopped at a Kentucky Fried for a box of chicken, got some ice and sodas at a 7-11, then gassed up the old Mustang and took off down the Tonopah Highway.
It was almost impossible to believe we were only a few miles from Vegas. Cactus and yucca plants on the side of the road were giving way to big furry pine trees, and damn if I didn't see a little patch of snow off in the distance. Coming from Texas, it was the first time I'd ever seen snow in my whole life. It was beautiful, and it made me mad that no one ever took me to see snow when I was a kid, and that I'd never lived in a place where there were four seasons in a year.
In Texas, there was spring, summer, and fall.
In Vegas, there was summer. Period.

 Indoctrination Day
I was working at the Pioneer Club in Vegas, shilling my life away for $11 a day. Things weren't really as bad as they seemed, though. I had a "student dealer" job all lined up at the big beautiful Mint Hotel, but I didn't start working there until the following Monday. So I spent the rest of the week at the Pioneer, crying on the outside, crying on the inside. Let's face it, $11 was $11 and I needed the money. I owed my roommate Diane money, I owed the finance company money, and I didn't have any money.

There was one thing I'd learned about the casino business. If you were going to quit, you didn't give the place two week's notice, something that was always drummed into your head back in the real business world. Tell a casino you were quitting, and they'd fire you on the spot. Maybe they figured you were going to steal something before you left, which tells you something about their mentality.
And that was another thing. What could you possibly steal? The gambling checks weren't worth anything, not until you cashed them at the casino cage. They were just plastic chips, for crying out loud. Wouldn't it look kind of suspicious if I walked over to the Pioneer cage with my Pioneer name tag on and dumped a stack of $5 Pioneer checks on the counter?

But every single worker in every single casino was under constant watch. In fact, one of the first things I learned in dealers school was "clapping out" when you left the table. "You clap your hands, then hold them out, face up," the instructor told me. "That's to show everyone that your hands are clean."
"Clean?"

"You know, that you're not taking any checks off the table."
Rotten bastards. If anyone was doing any stealing, it was the goons that owned these places.
I waited until Sunday, then broke the news to my boss at the Pioneer. "Artie, could I see you a minute?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm quitting."
"Okay."

Damn. I was sort of thinking, maybe hoping he'd try to talk me out of it, tell me I had a great future here at the fabulous Pioneer Hotel and Snack Bar, but for all he cared I could've told him it was raining outside. "Okay," he'd said, and just like that I was off the payroll. Big deal, they were probably paying me out of petty cash anyway.

I almost kicked myself on the hike back to Diane's apartment. Seventy-seven dollars a week was almost enough to make one of my past-due car payments. I could've asked for different hours, like four to noon with weekends off, worked noon to eight at the Mint, did my radio show on weekends, and be making . . . $189 a week! Or I could just call the FM station back in Texas and try to get my old job back. Texas was looking better all the time.
I actually kissed Diane on Monday before I left the apartment, all dressed up in a wrinkled white shirt she'd bought me at Wal-Mart. Talk about nervous. I didn't have any idea what to expect, or if the guy who hired me even remembered me, for that matter. I didn't know what a "student dealer" was, or what I'd be doing, or where I'd be doing it. The only thing that propelled me down the street were four words echoing in my head: "Fourteen dollars a day, fourteen dollars a day, fourteen dollars a day."

I punched in at the time office, looking with pride at my very own time card with my very own name on it. Under my name was my new job title: "Student Dealer." It was true, then. I was working at the Mint, and the FM station in Texas could go to hell for all I cared.
I reported to the dice pit 20 minutes early. One of the higher-ups named Pete saw me and walked over. "Here's your name tag," he said, handing me a laminated card with "MINT" on the top, my name on the bottom. On the other side was a safety pin, ready to punch the first hole in my new white shirt.
"Today's indoctrination day," he said. "Go back to Personnel. Show 'em your work card and tell 'em you're being indoctrinated. They'll take it from there. You won't actually start working until tomorrow."

Oops, subtract $14 from the household fund. Pete must've read my mind, either that or saw my face fall to the floor. "You're on the payroll, though, starting today. And welcome aboard." He stuck out his hand, and for a second I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to shake it or kiss it.
Indoctrination, if you could call it that, went okay. Actually, it was more like being brainwashed in a concentration camp. "You will be courteous to the customers," the commandant said. "You will dress neatly and follow guidelines of personal hygiene. You will respect other employees. You will arrive at work each day in a timely manner." The only thing she left out was, "We have ways to make you talk."

The big kahuna, though, was getting a tour of the hotel. We saw where the eye in the sky was, which would probably make a book in itself. They had all these TV cameras mounted in the ceilings, and upstairs was a complete surveillance department, rows of monitors and banks of switches, this camera zooming in, that one swiveling around from one area to another. And I'm not lying when I say these things could actually zoom in so close on a girl's dress you could tell whether she was wearing a bra or not. The engineer saw me looking, and he quickly panned back out again.

Then it was on to the staff dining room. Oh my God, I don't know where to start. There were bins filled with sliced tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, carrots, celery, broccoli, crisp lettuce with dew sparkling on it. Fruit, real honest-to-goodness bananas, apples, oranges. There were trays of steaming food: meat loaf, fried chicken, salmon, spaghetti. Mashed potatoes, rice, corn on the cob. Soup, milk, rolls, cereal, oatmeal, a machine that dispensed cold orange juice and fruit punch and sodas. There was ice cream, Jello, cream puffs, pies, doughnuts, coconut cake. It was the most beautiful sight I'd ever seen—and it was FREE! Quite a switch from the Pioneer, where we didn't even get saltines, for Chrisakes.

Actually, we were told we got one free meal a day, but no one checked on you. You didn't have to punch in or punch out when you went through the gate. You just got a tray and loaded up. I didn't see where I'd be doing anything wrong if I hit the place more than once a day. You know, just for breakfast, lunch, and supper. Also maybe a little doggie bag every night, so I could wean Diane off of Jiffy's peanut butter.
"Is it okay if we get something to eat right now?" I asked the commandant timidly.

"I don't see why not," she smiled, and there was an excited murmur from the rest of the new hires. I was like a kid in a candy store, scooping up stuff with no idea if it was even edible or not. For the first time I could remember, all my internal organs seemed to be working in perfect harmony, my teeth chewing, my tongue tasting, my throat swallowing, my stomach digesting.
God, it was great to be alive.

The Mint
It was my first day as a student dealer at the Mint Hotel in downtown Vegas. I never even actually worked that day, but instead got a pep talk from some woman in a red suit, then trouped through the casino with a bunch of other new hires doing something called our "indoctrination." The nice thing about it, though, was that one of the stops was the staff dining room where I got to eat anything I wanted. And man, did I put the hurt on them.
After the meal, I burped and belched all through the rest of the tour, then headed back to Sixth Street again. My roommate Diane wanted to hear all about it, and I told her everything, leaving out the part about the free chow. She didn't even get coffee at the Pioneer Club, where she was working as a shill. I wasn't going to rub her face in it.

The next day I practically ran to work, getting there an hour early. I zapped my card at the time office, flew into the dining room, and after a waffle, two eggs over easy, bacon, sausage, ham, hash browns, whole wheat toast, and three slugs of orange juice I was starting to feel like my old self again. The only problem was, I could hardly move.

One of the pit bosses by the name of Pete introduced me to three dealers and told me I'd be working with them all day. They seemed nice enough, and I was wondering if they just got out of dealers school, too. No, it turned out they'd been working there a while. In fact, they weren't even student dealers anymore. They were honest-to-God real pros, and I'd be under their wing. The plan was that they'd deal the game, and I'd work the stick. I would just call the numbers and watch these seasoned veterans in action. And if it got slow, then I'd get a chance to try my stuff. Sort of like the Pioneer, but with dignity this time. Real dignity.

The day went by in a blur. I'd work the stick for an hour, go get something to eat, work the stick for an hour, eat, stick, eat, stick, eat. Then we were walking out the door, our aprons in our back pockets, rehashing the day and thinking about the next one. That's when Rick, who was like the captain of the crew, stuck a wad of bills in my hand and said, "Here's your cut."

Cut? What the hell was this? Oh my God! I was in on the tokes! I stuttered and stammered and practically knelt on the pavement. If they'd told me to fetch a stick or roll over and play dead, I would've done it. God bless these guys, each and every one.

I was hesitant to count the money out there on the street, what with people all around me and a billion light bulbs hitting me square in the face, but I just couldn't help myself. Here was a twenty, another twenty, another twenty, a ten, a five, three singles. Oh Jesus, I was walking around in public with $78 in my hand! Seventy-eight dollars. Almost four times my life's savings. More than I made in a whole week at the Pioneer Club. And that was just for one day!
Remember that old expression: "Today's the first day of what's left of your life?" Well, I was going to make it count. After all these years, I was finally getting somewhere, thanks to the Mint, which was just about the best casino in the whole damn world . . . except for the Strip.

Cruising the streets and talking with the other guys, I already figured something out. Downtown was different from the Strip. The Strip oozed money and class. Downtown oozed something else. In fact, I think I had some of it stuck to my shoe.
It seemed to me that dealers downtown were either on their way up, or on their way out. In other words, no one was there because they wanted to be. It was just a stopping place, like an airport.

Most of the new dealers were kids, barely old enough to even be in a casino. The boxmen and floor people, on the other hand, were throwbacks to the dinosaur age. There was one boxman at the Mint named Sundown who was so old he could actually remember Prohibition. Somewhere along the way he'd lost his hearing, probably from tommy guns going off during the Roaring Twenties.
There was another boxman named Fred, who was even older than Sundown if you could believe it, and he was blind as a bat. So what the Mint did was team the two of them up together on the same dice game. One could still see and one could still hear, so between the two of them they made up one boxman.
  
Surviving in Vegas
 
Here I was, almost 30 years old, all my old friends working at great jobs with great benefits and great futures, and me? I was a student dealer at the Mint Hotel in Las Vegas, scratching out a living at $14 a day. If it wasn't for the free food and a 20-minute break every hour, I would've probably fled back to Texas, my tail between my legs.

Oh, and one other thing I learned. My work schedule was misleading. Pete, the pit boss, told me I was working noon to eight, off Mondays and Tuesdays, so you'd think that meant I was putting in 40 hours a week, and that wasn't quite accurate. See, it was so busy on weekends that they didn't have enough dealers to go around, so they scheduled us for double shifts. In other words, we'd go in at noon, work until eight on our regular shift, then work from eight at night until four in the morning on our second shift. The old timers called it "pulling a double."

Me, I didn't care. That meant twice as much money, and twice as many tokes. The only problem was a weekend radio show I was doing to make some extra bucks. My show started at six in the morning, and if I didn't get off at the Mint until four in the morning that meant I only got two hours of sleep on Sundays. Hell no, I wouldn't even get that much. I had to get home, get undressed, go to sleep, get up, get dressed, and go to the radio station. I might as well just stay up, for chrisakes. Or just sleep as hard as I could, and make every second count.

Well, I'll tell you, that first weekend was a frigging nightmare. The first eight hours went by okay, my body was used to that, but at the ten-hour mark fatigue started to set in. On my next break, one of the other guys suggested we go outside and get some fresh air. Next thing, we were bellied up to the bar in the Horseshoe, putting down Budweisers.

An hour droned by, then here came another break. Word got around and this time there were a dozen of us, all making a beeline for the Horseshoe. By now I was drinking vodka on the rocks. You got a better buzz and nobody could smell it on your breath.

I don't have to tell you what happened next. Dealers all over the dice pit began to slowly slide to the floor, blank looks on their faces and eyes rolled back in their heads. Bruce, the head honcho on swing shift, thought it was from overwork, and sent the collapsees home early. I guess I was used to just about anything, and at four in the morning I was still standing upright.

I got back to the apartment and tiptoed into bed. All I could see of my roommate Diane was a big huddle under the sheet. Just one hour of sweet precious slumber, and I would be as good as new, ready for my six-hour stint at the radio station and 16 more hours at the Mint. Just one hour . . .
Diane was shaking me. "Wake up, wake up!"
"Huh?"
"It's eight-thirty. Aren't you supposed to be at the radio station?"
"Eight-thirty! Why the hell didn't you get me up sooner? Goddammit, I was supposed to be there at six o'clock!"
"I'm sorry," she said. "I must've forgot to set the alarm clock." She checked the back of it. "No, I guess we just didn't hear it go off, that's all."
I threw on my dealer's clothes and charged out the door, the speedometer needle on my Mustang all the way over in the red zone. If there was a cop anywhere in the vicinity, I would've probably got arrested, but I guess they were all busy eating doughnuts at Winchell's.
The night shift deejay gave me a dirty look as I stumbled into the control room. "Sorry," I gasped. "I overslept." He was getting ready to read me the riot act when I pulled some bills out of my wallet and tossed them in his direction. "Thanks for everything," I said, grabbing my earphones and settling down behind the mike.
"Thank YOU!" he said.

Later I found out I gave him something like $45, which was more than I was making at the radio station for the whole damn weekend. Hell, I was running my life like Jimmy Carter was running the country.
All I knew for sure was what I'd be doing in my retirement years. No golf, no trips, no working in the garden. Once I hit 65, I was going to get me a big feather bed, and just sleep the rest of my life away.

The Dunes
 
My buddy Russ had set me up with a possible job at the Dunes Hotel in Vegas. All it would take was $500, which I would "loan" to a pit boss named Bill that Russ knew from his hometown. It was a risky move on my part, but sometimes you have to go out on a limb, especially when you're almost flat broke with no job in sight.

So that night I went into the Dunes for the first time in my life. The sign cost a million easy, plus there was this huge fake sultan standing out front that must've been 50 feet tall. Kind of like Vegas Vic downtown, only this one had class. It didn't holler "Howdy Pardner" or wave its tinfoil hand in the air. This one just stood there, hands on his hips, daring you to say anything. The inside of the Dunes was just as classy, with big chandeliers sparkling like diamonds, carpet that almost sank you to your ankles, and I even saw a customer with a tie on. Yep, it was classy all right.

I walked over to the dice pit and asked for Bill. Here came a guy about my size, wearing a dark suit, his hair slicked back, his face pasty under the lights. Later I found out his face was pasty all the time. I told him I was Russ's friend and he whispered, "Meet me in front of the men's room. Five minutes."
Well, hell, there were men's rooms all over the place, I found out. There was one by the casino cage, one by the showroom, and another one next to the coffee shop. I'd have to go from one to the other, then just hope I was in front of the right one when he showed up. On my third circle, I spotted Bill. He gave me a nod, then looked around furtively to make sure we weren't being watched. I felt like I was passing government secrets to a Russian agent. Instead, I was passing a complete stranger five hundred smackers, half of which was mine and half of which I still owed Russ. I knew I'd never get the money back, not in a million years, but if this was what it took to get a job I had to do it.

Bill counted the money, C note by C note, then carefully folded it and put it in his pocket. "Come in tomorrow night and I'll introduce you to Johnny," he said. That was it. He turned around and walked away, not even a thank you or a goodbye or a nice to meet you. Rotten bastard.
I was expecting a hard-nosed ex-con packing a rod, but Johnny turned out to be a halfway-decent-looking human being, just like me. Bill introduced us, telling Johnny I was a good friend and would be an asset to the place, then gave me an exaggerated wink before walking away.
Johnny asked me where I was working. I wasn't, I told him. He asked me where I used to work. I told him the Mint, never even mentioned the other dumps where I'd worked. He asked me how long I'd been at the Mint. I told him two whole years. He asked me when I could start. I told him yesterday. That made him smile.

He said he would call if there was an opening. I shook hands with him and walked out the door, knowing in my heart there was no way I would get the job, not to mention ever see that $500 again. Hell, now Russ would be on my back, wanting his money, and I didn't even have a goddam job!
 
Zooks
 
My buddy Russ had introduced me to his friend Bill, who was a big shot at the Dunes. After $500 changed hands (half of which I still owed Russ), Bill introduced me to Johnny, the shift boss, and three days later the phone rang. It was Johnny. "We've got an opening on swing shift. You start on Monday, six to two." I was so excited I didn't sleep for two days.

The rest of the week dragged by. Then finally it was Monday and I was at the Dunes, strapping on my apron and meeting the rest of the crew. Every crap table in the joint was going full-blast; men bellied up, drinking up, and betting up. Well, craps was a man's game. Women liked slot machines, and blackjack. Back then anyway. That's where they all were, too, putting quarters in the machines or daintily playing blackjack at $1 a pop, waiting for their "boys" to finish up so they could get down to the real business at hand: shopping, seeing shows, eating in nice restaurants.

Two o'clock finally rolled around, and the four of us headed for the time office to punch out, splitting up our tokes and planning our next move. A hundred and seventeen dollars was my cut. Just like that I had enough money to pay Russ almost half of what I owed him, and that was only one night's tokes. Did I say tokes? All right, here's where it gets a little complicated. Guys on the Strip didn't call them tokes. They called them zooks. So from now on when I say zooks, you know I'm talking about tokes, which is the same thing as tips. Okay?

I was too wired to go home, and so were the other guys. We piled into our cars and headed for a nearby locals hangout called the Dive. It gave us a chance to get acquainted, not to mention spending some of our money on wine, women, and more wine.

Ricardo had been dealing ever since he sneaked into the country from Cuba, and he was dating a Dunes showgirl. Stumpy was from California. I liked him immediately because I was a better dealer than he was, and he'd been on the Strip for three years already. Turk was soft-spoken and polite, which was about as rare in Vegas as a virgin. He'd been to college just like me, and now he was dealing craps, just like me.
We took turns buying, and by the second go-around I could hardly see to get back to my apartment. How I got home I'll never know, but the next afternoon when I got up the Mustang was still in one piece, so I guess I made it back safely. Do that nowadays and you won't see sunlight for five years. In those days, though, driving while intoxicated was pretty much standard operating procedure.

Something else I didn't tell you about was "layoff." When dealers were making money, they didn't keep it all. They laid off money to the other people in the casino, the ones who were there when they made it. The floorman got a cut, the boxman got a cut, all God's chillun got a cut. So if we made say $600 total one night, we'd divvy it up four ways, then each of us would chip in a twenty. This gave us $80 to spread around in layoff. In fact, that first night at the Dunes we gave up $40, twenty to a floorman named Halfacre and twenty to a boxman we called Garlic Breath.

The other guys let me take care of the layoff that first time, just so I could get on friendlier terms with the "upper echelon." And when I dropped that twenty on Garlic Breath, he practically kissed me right on the lips. Ugh, I get sick just thinking about it.