Been meaning to post this - and I reckon it's about time.

These details come from my employer, Burton Jacobson, who once was legal counsel to the card room.

Harold Spielberg was a character - no doubt about it. At age 18, he enlisted in the Army - and promptly found himself in the Normandy Invasion. He quickly figured a way to survive: step in footprints of the soldiers ahead of him to avoid land mines. From there, he fought in numerous battles, including the Battle of the Bulge. At one point, feeling "neglected," he wrote a letter stating the Army wasn't treating him well - and addressed it to Franklin D. Roosevelt. Some months passed, and one day his commanding general (don't know if it was Patton, although Harold eventually served under him) assembled all the troops - and asked Pvt. Spielberg to step forward. When Howard got to the podium and faced the General, the General held out his letter and asked: "Private, is the Army treating you well now?" Harold hemmed and hawed and then admitted that conditions had changed, he was being treated just fine. "Good," replied the General, "then you WON'T be writing any more letters to the President!"

Returning home (the San Francisco Peninsula) after the war, Harold looked around for a career - and chose to open an adult novelty store and theatre. He did well enough at it to open another, and another, eventually owning a chain of such stores around the Bay area. Magazines, films, dildoes, whatever - he was able to buy in volume and keep his prices down. One fateful day, his daughter came home from school with that awful assignment (I think we all went through it) - "Teacher wants to know what my father does for a living." Harold thought and replied, "Why, I own a casino."

The more Harold thought about that, the sweeter it sounded and so . . . he found a building at 3901 El Camino Real in Palo Alto and actually did open . . . HAROLD'S CLUB. Combination fancy French restaurant and supposedly swanky casino. He had chair covers embroidered with the names of his best customers so that their seats would be reserved, he offered Flambe cuisine and other top-notch amenities. In vain Burt tried to tell Harold not to do that, gamblers would be content with just a hamburger or chow mein, but Harold was stubborn.

The casino ended up costing Harold more than he took in. In part, because the City of Palo Alto demanded that the club close at midnight, while similar card rooms down the street in Mountain View could stay open until 2 a.m. The card dealers Harold hired were suspected of pilfering funds. There were some fist fights between patrons which attracted the negative attention of the police. Harold had little time to be at the card room every night to keep tabs on things. Still, the casino might have lasted longer but for the day a Cease-and-Desist Letter came from Harold Smith, the Harold's or Bust guy in Reno. Smith had taken out a Federal Trademark on the "Harold's" name and declared that he alone could run a Harold's Club. Burt and Harold made efforts to fight the claim but upon further research, they seemed doomed.

According to Burt, Harold dropped the Harold's Club identity as requested, and gave the casino a new name which he does not remember, and which I can find no record of. The only information I came up with is that an Ecuadorian restaurant later opened up at that location.

As for Harold Spielberg, he eventually came down with a fatal blood disease. He sold off the adult novelty store chain for over a million dollars so his family would be well taken care of.

As for the chips - almost none of them ever turned up. It's likely that Spielberg destroyed them all. Burt said that he didn't know people collected chips (he didn't know me back then) and if Harold were still alive, he'd try to contact him to see if I could buy any - but by that time, Harold was long gone.

Anyway, that's the story of Harold and the still-missing chips.