On the Coat Tales of a Gambler
Sailor reminisces about his childhood.
As a kid, growing up in the South, we were never short of things to do. First of all, free time was precious and when it came around, there was no wasting it. There were always chores that came first. Depending on what our dads did for a living, boys often would have some job helping out there too. My Uncle Dan had a gas station. When I was about twelve years old, he let me do a bit of work there, cleaning up mostly. As I got older, I got to pump gas and pour oil while my uncle worked on cars in the garage. That was weekend work during school time, and half days during the summer. He’d give me a few bucks cash at the end of the week and all the RC Cola I could drink… which was a lot in the sweltering humid summer heat. I saved up twenty bucks and bought a $5 gold coin. It was uncirculated and fairly old, 1887, just a small coin. In the early 90’s I sold it for 32 rounds of silver. Back then, silver was trading around four bucks. Now it is more than $28. I’m holding silver for a rainy day.
My uncle got oil in thirty-three-gallon barrels. I asked him if I could have three of the empty ones for a raft. He laughed, figuring that I was dreaming, and I would never get around to it. With the help of my buddies, we scrounged around for scrap lumber, nails, rope, and a pole for the mast, we made us a hell of a raft. It took us half the summer. We could only work on it during our spare time. Eventually, we had gathered enough material, nailed it together, and tied three of them oil drums to the bottom. We built the raft over at a buddy’s backyard. His dad was okay with a bunch of us boys using some of his tools and working on the raft. They lived near the river, which turned out to be a good thing. The raft ended up a lot heavier than we thought. We managed to drag and roll it over six-inch cedar posts, down to a low spot on the river. With peanut butter sandwiches and sodas, we set sail. The raft floated high in the water, drifting in the slow current. However, one of barrels was missing the plugs, where the oil could be pumped from. The barrel took in water that we did not expect. (I guess it was hopeful denial.) Eventually, the raft began to sink, and ran aground on a sandbar in the middle of the river. My dream of floating down to the Gulf and over to Cuba, ended before we could eat the sandwiches. Funny to think about it now… Cubans trying to float over to the U.S. and me my buds, trying to do just the opposite.
Playing marbles was one of my favorite pastimes. It was my first gambling experience. I wore out my pants in the knees from playing marbles. I inherited my marbles from my older cousin Miles. He gave me a coffee can filled with marbles along with a marble bag, hand sewn by his mom, from an old pair of his jeans. It had a drawstring closure with three shooters and about a dozen older, chipped marbles. Miles told me to always play with the beat-up marbles first.
Shooters were marbles that were slightly bigger than an ordinary marble. A shooter was needed to knock marbles out of the ring. One of the shooters Miles gave to me was an aggie. A hard marble made from agate rock. It was rare to have an aggie, making it valuable, and I never used it in a game when playing keepsey. Before starting a game of marbles, it was always declared “funnzy or keepzy.” Sometimes, in a game, the shooter marbles were bet along with the marbles in the anti. If a guy were using an aggie, it could be at risk. I still have that aggie, somewhere in an old cigar box.
Depending on the skill of the players, a circle, we called it a ring, was drawn in the dirt. Smaller rings for younger kids and larger ones for the real marble shooters, three to six feet in diameter. I was pretty good and played four-foot rings mostly. With a larger shooter, I could knock out a marble in the ring. If my shooter “stuck,” in the ring, I’d get to shoot again. The trick was to clear out the ring of marbles, sticking your shooter. Playing keepsey, I would get to keep any marbles that I shot out of the ring. It was like playing pool, knock a ball in the pocket, keep shooting.
One Friday, after school, I ended up playing marbles with the school bully. All my buddies headed home for the weekend’s chores. I was alone, still hanging out in the school yard, when the bully showed up. His name was Duane. He lived just across the street from the school. Anyway, he was a year older and bigger than me.
We got into a game of “pots.” Pots was a simpler game for kids who could not shoot marbles. Duane was not a ring player. It is an acquired skill you have to develop. He could not manipulate the shooter with his hand. Playing pots requires a small hole in the ground a few inches deep and maybe four to five inches wide. Each player would anti a marble, sometimes more, depending on the game and number of players. About ten to twelve feet from the hole, a lag-line would be scratched in the dirt. We’d take turns lagging a “jumbo marble” trying to land in the pot. To determine who go to go first, we’d lag from behind the pot to the lag-line in the dirt. The player who lagged their jumbo into the pot won the marbles. Duane was not much for marbles, and he didn’t have a jumbo marble for pots. Before long I had won most of his marbles. Being a bully, Duane was also a sore loser. He bullied me into putting all the marbles I had won into one pots game. Once my marbles were in the hole, Duane swooped down and stole the marbles. When I objected, he grabbed me around the neck, under his arm and flung me to the ground. He told me I could have the marbles back if I got him down on the ground. Well, I was mad enough to try. He threw me down a bunch more times before I finally got it and headed for home without my marbles.
Duane had a younger sister. The weird end to the story is, I ended up marrying her, out of all the girls. I never really became friendly with Duane. He was a drinker, had problems with his marriages and did jail time for assault. He did not get into trouble from beating up his wives although. It was always over arguments, in a bar. His mean personality, as a bully, followed him throughout his life.
I was just a kid of twenty-five, but I was the pop of two girls and later, two boys would come along before mid “69” My four years of military obligation was over with the marines, and I thought I was done with military service forever. How wrong I was. I recall that it was in August of 1970. I had been out of the marines for a while, but that’s when I joined the navy. The navy offered me a much better deal. They offered a better deal in “59” too, but I was too young and dumb to take it. I thought a tough guy like me belonged with the marines.
Anyway, in May “66”, I was a machine operator at a Union Carbide plant. I had been working there for thirteen months. I had a good future there, according to my reviews. They said I would be in line for “Scratch Foremen” in a year or two. I worked the swing shift and did not like it much. It was good money, forty-nine hours a week with nine hours of time and a half. That was good “jack” with four kids and a wife to take care of. The shift was getting to me, I was never home with the family, so with the advice from a few friends, I quit in May 1966 to become a city fireman in Robstown. I thought it would be a better job with more security.
I enjoyed being a fireman. The job paid more in the long run because I had a lot of time off and worked side jobs. It also provided me with time to hang out with Scarpone, which got me real good dough, but that eventually stressed out my marriage. All the above proved true, by the way.
Already at the fire dept were some guys I went to school with: Billy Cox, Henry Danielson, James Whitehead, and Woodrow Jamison, (Woody). There were others that I forget, but I don’t think it’s so important. It was through Woody that I met Scarpone. I played a lot of poker in that fire house. I’ll tell you this for sure, you get pretty good at cards sitting around a table with the same mugs for four years. I quit the fire department eight months before going into the navy. Woody quit just before me. Whitehouse left in “68.” He left to be an Alabama highway patrolman. He looked just like the cop in that Smokey movie with Burt what’s his name….? No charge for that bit of grand history of mine. Have a great week… hope to see you soon down the road.
Later, Sailor wrote in another email…
You know, telling that tale of the Florida trip with Scarpone, I thought of an old girlfriend that he kept on the side. She was a real looker too. Of all the women Scarpone was with, she was his best match by his account. Donna was her name. A girl from the north, hot blooded and hot tempered. I think she even had Scarpone in tow. They never married though. Anytime she wanted, she could get her way with Scarpone. Scarpone told me a story of how Donna wanted him to drive her to Las Vegas. Donna had an uncle that worked for the mob at the Dunes. He was a doorman, but being connected, he was able to get Scarpone and Donna set up in the hotel, with a real nice room. They got to see Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher in the show room and Scarpone told me he played craps with Mickey Rooney. This would have been about 1955-56. I knew of Scarpone before, but I was still a kid. Donna was not a dumb blond… she was a brunette. She could pass for blond, though, when you hear the story. On the drive out to Nevada, Scarpone asked Donna to pull out the map and see if she could figure out where they were. It was night-time and they were somewhere in Arizona near Kingman on Route 66. Scarpone says to Donna, “how far is it to Las Vegas from Kingman?” Donna replied, “it looks like about two inches.”
Scarpone loved Las Vegas, but he did not care for the gambling there. He was more of a wide-open kind of player, not exactly a crook, but, like I told you before, he knew how to take advantage of people. Playing in Las Vegas, Scarpone was like a fish out of water. He didn’t like being the one that was being taken. Okay, he had crooked dice and marked cards and he carried a gun. I guess he was a bit of a crook. I suppose my respect for the guy blurs my sense of reality. I liked the guy. He treated me with respect and showed me some of the best times of my life.
I still have friends back home. I sent an email to an old buddy who knew Donna’s husband. He gave me an email address for Donna. I thought maybe she’d know how Scarpone died. I got a reply back to my email. Donna passed away a week before Thanksgiving. That was all that was said. It had been years after he dumped her… I am betting that to some extent, life back there is still the same as it was. Kind of made me sad to hear that news about Donna. She must have been in her sixties. Scarpone only went with young women. I think his oldest wife was twenty-one when they got hitched.
On The Coat Tales of a Gambler continues in Episode 8 – Real Dice Controllers