Well, I’m homebound as the city of Houston cleans up from yet another flood. They just keep coming, and we just keep fighting back!

So, what should I do??? Clean up the yard of all that trash? Repair the gardens? Nah, let’s start digging into some chip research backlog.

I dove into the below chip, and although I haven’t uncovered a monster story, I did find one funny example of just how rough and tumble these gambling joints could be.

The Mason record show:
S. I. Rost
1452 North Euclid Ave
Pittsburg, PA
1935

A little digging discovered a Saul Rost who was a local gambler going back decades. He was frequently visited by vice officers at different locations, so to figure out where this chip might have been used, I needed to focus in.

Unfortunately the address above was his house, so that didn’t help. We do however have reports of a raid in November 1935 on a “Rankin gambling house” at 107 Hawkins Avenue with “crap and card games in progress.” Rankin is a suburb of Pittsburg and Rost had a history of clubs there.

I haven’t found a name for the club yet, but Rost and associates were rounded up. As usually, the fines were small, one operator got $150, the others were all suspended.

However, in this raid, Rost and a couple guys were indicted for further charges stemming from the 1929 Bomb Act and violation of the firearms act. As reported, one of the men “was at the door and collected from the customers their weapons, which at the time of the raid, happened to include guns and bombs.”

Revolvers, tear-gas bombs and sawed off shotguns… My kind of place! If you want to shoot craps, you can’t be carrying any explosives. Good rule.

If interested, here is the entre article: