After the convention this year I drove north to Reno to use a couple of comped nights on my way home. After some table time at Fitzgerald’s I headed out the door for a walk. Past Harrah’s, a casino I never found to be any comfort, bland, gold and white and all business. Cal-Neva didn’t rate a tour either, too smokey usually and kind of a dead-end losing type of crowd. Thought I’d check Siena just across the river.

Once you negotiate the slot and café area of the place you’ll find a nice open casino floor in this property with Mediterranean aspirations. Not many players this evening so I took third base at an empty table for a one deck pitch game. Single deck 21 is now the norm in Reno with 3:2 bj, DAS but doubling only on 10 and 11. Not bad and I like to count to make the game a little more interesting and with the widespread match side bets you can usually see most of the other player’s cards before you act. The bums at Eldorado took out the cheating Mindplay system but continue their weasel-ways with 6:5 blackjack.

My dealer was an attractive lady a few years senior to me and the first few decks were business-like and uneventful. Passing the time, she found that I was returning home from Las Vegas, I had been to a convention and that we were convening to celebrate chip collecting and buying and selling and trading the silly things. Had I acquired anything good? Well, sure, I got a really lovely Bank Club $100 I liked a lot. Ah yes, she says, “The Bank Club.” Boy, I liked the way she said that! One of the things I really enjoy about playing in Reno is that you find dealers who have worked at some of the bygone joints. One of my favorite Sandy’s (there’s Big Sandy and Little Sandy) at Fitzgerald’s worked the Onslow Hotel and Eddie’s Fabulous ‘50’s. So I pointed out that my chip was on the table when McKay and Graham ran the Bank Club and that these were indeed two mean fellas. They would let Baby Face Nelson lam out there in exchange for doing certain local “tasks”. I was hoping to see if my dealer had any insight to Reno’s past. I guess the idea of gangsters prompted her to tell me she had worked at the Nevada Club.

Well!

Nevada Club happens to be one of my favorite areas of chip collecting. Although I collect any Nevada Club, Lincoln Fitzgerald’s places were the ones in which I found the most interest. I said, “You know, when he died they had his picture in the paper, but since he didn’t let anyone photograph him, who knows whose picture that was.” She says, “Yes, he was pretty much a recluse.” Okay, now we’re off into Life At The Nevada Club! I’m asking questions and follow-ups and the cards are coming and I’ve quit counting because having a very interesting discussion with a beautiful lady seems pretty pleasant at the moment. I’m on Basic Strategy Auto-Pilot and I’ve plenty of chips yet and more questions.

LF personally interviewed applicants at his casino. My dealer appeared at the Club at “high noon” as instructed before a shuttered cage teller’s window. The window opens and The Man demands “What do you want, Skinny?” “I want a job!” my dealer shoots back at him. Made him chuckle behind his thick lenses and she was hired. I’d ask some questions and they’d be deflected or politely ignored but in the end I found a lot of really interesting stuff about LF and his Club.

Seems when Skinny was working for him Lincoln Fitzgerald was a paranoid micromanager with a stingy bent to running his places. Doesn’t sound like the sweet old “Mr. O’Lucky” that’s the logo character of Fitzgerald’s today. No fraternization of males and females during working hours, the men and women went to breaks in separate rooms and shift changes and reliefs were made by segregated groups. A very formal and militaristic attitude about punctuality was observed. Once Skinny was late coming back from break and was rushing down some stairs and rounded the corner pell-mell colliding with Fitzgerald himself. “He had a big bodyguard on each side of him and they strong-armed me!” As appealing as grabbing Skinny may seem, I’d have to believe you’d do so at your own peril. During the melee, our heroine managed to throw an elbow that caught the bystander Fitzgerald pretty square. While the goons collected The Boss, my fair lady made her escape.

Another working condition tale concerned working the Chuck-a-Luck, a favorite device of LF. My dealer was assigned to the game one slow night. Fitzgerald used to walk through his Club and he always wanted a carny type of show going on at the Chuck-a-Luck. Being a young rookie our subject was at a loss for any sort of barking routine. Here comes the boss to find a beet-red Skinny girl yelling “One, two, buckle my shoe!” and other inanities to the amusement of her fellow dealers.

I related the story of how when Fitzgerald found that the employees of his recently acquired Monte Carlo at Crystal Bay were stealing from him; he fired the lot and converted the place into a storage room and coffee shop for his adjoining Nevada Lodge. “Well, he stole from us, so…” Really! Turns out LF would collect the dealers toke boxes and make settlement with an additional check on payday in an amount, “he thought we should get!” Fed up, our storyteller hit the door for the last time just short of a year’s employ at the Nevada Club.

He had a big house and a very nice apartment upstairs at the club according to my dealer, “But he lived in the vault, he was just so paranoid.” Well, he did get a belly full of birdshot one night, I pointed out. Possibly some of the boys from his old days with the Purple Gang in Detroit, but never known for fact. “Oh yeah,” she said. “But no one cared about him anymore after awhile, no one was after him, it was just silly.”

A couple of times I brought up cheating resulting in the deflections and no answers I spoke of earlier. I said if you got caught cheating the house over at the Bank Club you were gonna get worked over pretty good out in the back alley between the Bank Club and Harolds. “The famous back alley…” she said with a little something that made you want to avoid that fate. Finally she did let on that most dealers in her early days learned among themselves how to deal seconds and other feats of dexterity. Uhh, this is the lady who’s hold our deck in her hand and dealing me cards!

Shift change, I’m up one redbird that I slide over to her and thank her for all the great stories. It was fun she says. Sure was.