Too lazy to put up a full blown post with actual structure and I need to scan a bunch of chips and postcards to do justice to some of the stuff I'm considering.

So the gal dealing the single deck pitch game sez: "One time my boyfriend was beating me...." What?!? Something tells me that I'm not at Bellagio or Steve's Resort as the dealers there hardly ever start a story quite like that! I've been the only Gringo player at the table at The Red Garter in Westover and listened to cowboy tabletalk in Elko so I'm pretty comfortable where ever I end up. Fit right in at the truckstop cardroom in Pasco and there at Six Card Charlie's right by McChord AFB I found it amusing that the cards would blow off the table whenever anyone opened the front door which never happens at Caesers. I'm not really snobby but still "my boyfriend was beating me" kinda set me back.

I was sitting at Linda's table on my Farewell to Fitzgerald's Club trip last month. The dealers there were pretty blown away at all the folks that were coming in to say good luck and good-bye. I'd reminded Linda of a pretty good story I'd gotten at her table a few years before. She remembered that day too, pretty cool. Linda was the typical big-hearted fitz dealer and I also enjoyed watching her nametag bob around on the expansive white bosom of her shirt like an outboard rowboat coming around the Cape of Good Hope during the winter months. The couple at forth and fifth base knew Linda for a few years also and were trading dog stories with her. Evidently they knew that Linda had a mutt too. "Didn't he help you out that once with your husband" "Oh yeah, one time my boyfriend was beating me and Sassy lit into him. Go Sassy, Go!" Only other neat Blackjack story that compares was when Karen, the dealer over at Sienna was telling me about fistfighting Lincoln Fitzgerald's bodyguards when she went Buffy on Fitz's old whitehaired zombie a$$.

Probably will finish Al Moe's Roots of Reno tonight and I'm unhappy about that An altogether great book and entertaining read. What am I gonna do when I'm finished? No more stories about the joint named Belle's Cowshed or the time Jack Dempsey and his opponent stole a railroad handtruck and pumped their way up to Mina. Dopey Palookas thief railroad equipment just to end up in Mina? What, someone hit you in the head?

Strange thing. George Wingfield is prominent in Moe's book. Named by some as "Owner Operator" of Nevada and built and owned the Riverside Hotel and the building on the front of the book as well as owning the Goldwing Bank. Big deal mover and shaker and my hero Dwayne Kling doesn't even include him in Rise of the Biggest Little City! What's up with that Mr. Kling? So I Googled Wingfield and came up with the most curious passage about Wingfield's ability to accumulate wealth. The erstwhile author of an obscure website relates how a fellow convinced Wingfield to invest in a mining claim and it "turns into a goldmine!" Sheesh, maybe it was a goldmine!