Bingo Night - A Feature Article

It’s the lightning round, the Player’s Jackpot. Within thirty-two seconds, twenty-two balls have been called. In front of every player is at least two pages worth of bingo tables splayed before them to mark, but some will have as many as four or five.

Suzy and Lu Rivera are such a couple. In their hands--hands aged at the years sixty-three and sixty-eight, and perhaps mistakenly assumed to be slow at first glance--they clutch a paint dabber that will place dots on each blessed correct call. There’s a thousand dollars on the line, in cash. With each ball called that doesn’t call their numbers, an exasperated huff explodes, a muttered Spanish swear from Suzy. Lu is concentrated, focused.

For this game, there’s only one way to win. Coverall. Every number needs a mark. Suzy only needs three more: B7, I29, G53. She’s memorized what group of numbers go with what letter, she needs not look up, she only needs to listen to the number called to pluck the paint off her dabber.

“Thirty-seven.” The number belongs with N, it does her no good.

“Twenty…” Suzy is poised eagerly as this number is called. “...Eight.”

She curses, “Mierda!”

“Bingo!” A voice, not her husband and certainly not hers, rings out.

The churning of balls mixing next to the announcer stops, replaced by ripping of sheets for the next set to come. Suzy and Lu will have to wait for their chance in the next game.

Bingo may not have been legalized in Florida until 1970, as reported by the Tampa Bay Times, but that didn’t stop the sport of it.

According to Jane Feehan in her blog Jane’s History, it was not only something that authorities commonly looked away from, but it was encouraged in the late 1930s and 1940s, in order to help rebuild the economy after the depression.

“Bingo, sometimes called corn games when payoffs were made in merchandise, drew thousands to casinos (and to churches).”

“For $2 a patron could play six games to win $50, $100 - or much more. Operators would dump all remaining proceeds into the final game, driving the winnings up to at least $1000.”

These “corn games,” while they were lucrative and certainly helped build a sense of community, were not all positive. According to the same article, after at least fifty connection were made between casinos and organized crime, until finally, led by the hearings of U.S. Sen. Estes Kefauver, those early casinos in Florida were permanently closed in the early 1950s. Bingo would remain illegal until that fateful year of 1970.

At Palm Beach Bingo, George Peers, fifty-three years old from Greenacres, is a volunteer, walking along the tables to take orders during the ten minute breaks between games. The only money he’ll make is in tips tonight, but he’s got a smile on his face for every new and old face he sees. “You’ll be number crazy by the end of the night,” he says to every newcomer he sees.

The winner of Player’s Jackpot, an old woman with hair so blonde it’s almost white, calls his name. “George, can you bring me cheesecake?”

“What kind do you want?”

“The good kind,” she returns, practically glowing in her victory. “The kind that makes you fat. Decadent.”

Watching the scene, Dawn McClelland laughs. At the age of sixty-one, bingo is her weekly outing, the only thing she has to call her own. Though her husband drives her here from the Acreage, he doesn’t stay. “He stresses me out,” she explains. “This is for me to get away.”

For many, the game of bingo is a winter pastime. According to the Bingo Bugle, the summer weather calls most to the outdoors, and parents are busy planning activities for their children during recess.

The winters, however, with its early nights and colder weather, bring in an influx of players, sometimes to the chagrin of the regulars.

But with these influxes, what happens with the money? According to Florida Statute 849, gaming establishments must be sponsored by a nonprofit organization in order to function properly.

In early 2014, one Florida bingo hall donated as much as 90,000 dollars, as reported by National Swell.

The donation went to veterans assistance.

It appears bingo has come a long way since its alleged connections to the mob.

Suzy Rivera is antsy. It’s the last game of the night. The winner of this game won’t receive a thousand dollars, but they will receive two hundred and fifty, a nice and handsome sum for she and her husband to go home with.

They just moved to Florida from New Jersey, where they used to play bingo every night. Here, they have to settle for Sundays, Tuesdays, and Saturdays. Suzy could never give it up.

“Without being able to yell bingo, where’s the fun?”

The buzz of turning balls in their cage is back. Unlike the jackpot, this game is played slower, and Suzy can take her time. On the screen declaring numbers, the webcam shows a purple sleeve depositing each ball with the inscripted letter and number.

Volunteers bustle beside her, glancing over her shoulder to take a look at her work. One even helps her before a busy-body lady starts to huff too loudly.

Thirty-six balls called.

The rules are for coverall once again.

Suzy has only two more to go: N44 and O72.

George is the announcer this round, and as he calls the balls, he begins to announce, “Folks, on behalf of all of us here, I’d like to say…” He squints at the ball. “B52.”

The room erupts with laughter, all except for Suzy, who grumbles another stream of foul language. The idea of going home empty handed turns her stomach.

“Bingo!”

The voice, again, is not hers, and she’s about to release a new slew of profanities, until she realizes it’s her husband holding up his hand, one of his tables completely painted in green.

George looks up. “Did someone call bingo?”

“Yes,” Suzy replies with a fresh bout of laughter. “And he took his sweet time for it, too!”