I lived in Nevada, for a number of years, and worked in the casinos. It was somewhat of a normal job, go to work, put in your eight hours and go home. Shop at the grocery, live a normal life, like in any other town.
I had many friends out there, people I worked with, neighbors, people I got to know around Reno. They too lived normal lives, surrounded by all that "opportunity" and money. In those days we used silver dollars, thousands of them, everywhere.
Working in the clubs on the tables, you remember winners, generally you don't remember losers.
One of my friends, a man I had gotten to know over the years, Wick, owned a couple of barber shops, had a nice home, wife, played golf when he could, had some land up at Tahoe, with plans to build a retirement or vacation home, a Cadillac and a couple of pick-up trucks, Wick, to say the least, was well off.
The only time he would venture in to the clubs was to entertain someone from out of town, or to see some entertainer they liked, or on some occasions to have lunch, and that is where I got to know him. The Nevada Club had great food, and you could enter the club from the rear, eat, go back out, and not have to pass any tables. He and his wife stayed out of the clubs and the atmosphere that went with them. I got to know him from cutting my hair, and an occasional lunch if my breaks coincided with his lunch hour.
Every Thursday night, he and his wife, and four other couples, would get together at one of their homes, have a potluck supper, sit and chat, after dinner, the wives would play Canasta, and the boys would play poker, penny ante. They had been doing this for many years.
One night, Wick lost twenty dollars in the poker game. Twenty dollars did not mean a lot to Wick, I have seen him tip a waitress that much for one drink, or to a valet parking attendant.
They went home after that evening, and that twenty dollar loss, for some reason, got to Wick. He could not get it out of his mind, and the twenty really meant nothing to him, just the fact that he had "lost" it, in a poker game.
He could not sleep, that loss was getting to be too much for him.
He got up during the night, his wife was not sure of the time, called a cab, and went to downtown Reno, to win his twenty back.
Within two days, he lost everything he had, drove out near the Reno Airport, and put a gun to his head, and pulled the trigger. It all happened so fast that there was nothing anyone could do to stop him.
And all over twenty dollars, a man who rarely went in the casinos, who was as stable and reliable as a rock, yet, that "gambling" bug got to him, and in just a few days, lost everything, including his life.
This is a true story, I knew the man. And it happened because the casinos were there, the temptation was too great, all that "free" money, to just get his twenty dollar bill back, and it really meant little to nothing to him.
I know of a few other instances, where fortunes were lost, or someone lost everything and took their own life. This is a portion of what casinos will bring to Ohio, if they are allowed to come in.
And the FOP, some elected officials, some powerful figures in Ohio, have the bold faced audacity to say, "This is good, for Ohio."
