We had a restaurant downtown here in Newark, some years ago, and I used to send out a fax to a list of our customers. Close friend Craig kept all of them, and gave them to me last week. In reading over them, many fond memories came back. Read one this morning that brought back a "Nevada" memory I had related.
In my "dealing" days in Nevada, many stories circulated about incidents that had happened around town. Harold Smith wheeling his Dad around the club on a cart one New Years Eve, the time the IRS closed a table at Harold's Club, Sandy being hypnotized and falling asleep while dealing at the Golden when Baron Von Brenner was appearing on stage, the guy who crawled under a crap table one New Years Eve at the Golden, cutting a hole in the bottom of the money box and collecting all he could get, a lot of good stories.
One I saw, and can attest to, happened at the old Palace, one of the older casinos in town. They had the old floor that was made of little white tiles, very old.
Some friends and I were sitting at the bar one evening, talking and watching the "action." We noticed one of the crap dealers, who seemed to be new, and we also noticed a few of the "moves" he was making, and, obviously, to us, he was inexperienced. To us, they were very "tell tale."
One method of stealing money, if you were so included, was to wear a "sub." That, being a dealers apron, double layered, with an opening on the side to slide in either money or chips, one way to steal money from the house. Let me say in all my years in Nevada, in the casinos, I never stole a penny from them, that was just not for me. I think much of the success I had in Nevada came from having a good reputation. I was a dealer, box man, floor boss, managed a casino pit, and was in consideration to manage a casino, all before I was 30. I am proud of that.
Also, when I worked out there, we used actual silver dollars, chips were for the higher denominations. We noticed this dealer going to his sub, with silver. A smarter dealer would have "gone South" with chips, they weighed much less.
Anyway, he was going on a break, performed the ritual of brushing his hands, took about three steps, and his sub was weighted down, and broke. We estimated that about 20 silver dollars hit that hard tile with a bang, then, noisily started running around the floor. Gotta hand it to him though, he just kept on walking, right out the door. Never saw him again.
