You gotta know when to hold’em and you gotta know when to fold’em! Except for the fact that game machines, instead of cards, were Slickbuddy’s game of choice, he could have served as the model for the writer of Kenny Rogers famously popular song.

Slickbuddy was always watching others play the slots and the horse race machine while mentally calculating, counting and trying to figure out how to beat the machine. After a player failed to collect a win on a long series of plays, Slickbuddy would step up and put his nickel in the slot and pull the lever, believing that it was the calculated time for the machine to finally pay. By playing only a nickel or two, he had calculated to win a big portion of what others had deposited. After watching Slickbuddy play, I came to realized that Daddy was exactly right. Over the long run, the machines won more than they paid. Winning against Mr. Gene’s slots was an illusion, a play on the mind. A little common sense leads most to know that Mr. Gene didn’t provide those machines simply for public entertainment. That’s how he made part of his living. If his machines paid more than they received, he wouldn’t be in business very long. Those who enjoyed the machines for entertainment were okay with that proposition. Slickbuddy never accepted it, believing that he was smarter than the machine. His common sense told him if he studied the plays carefully and learned how it all worked, that he’d make more money from the machines than his job at the chalk mine.

Then, one day the government folks decided that playing the machines was a bad thing. So they passed a law making it illegal in Georgia for Mr. Gene to have those machines. It was kind of a sad day when Mr. Gene came to the store to take them away. The old horse race game, about worn out, remained but went to the upstairs of the mill house, never to be played again.

There’s an irony in the logic. The government believed that it was a bad thing for Mr. Gene to earn a few nickels from his gaming machine. Making Mr. Gene’s machines illegal was a claim on moral ground. Gambling was said to deprive families of needed income, exploited the poor, and took unfair advantage of ignorant opportunist. Now, the same government, runs a state sponsored Lotto, a gambling operation, and promotes it as the best thing to happen in public education since invention of the printing press. Somehow or other I think some of Slickbuddy’s offspring must have gotten into the statehouse.

After the government made Mr. Gene get rid of his gaming machines, checkers again reigned supreme at Myrick’s Mill. Unless Slickbuddy’s musing qualifies, gambling as a profession, never took hold of the folks around the mill. Strange thing, I guess, but I never remember anyone betting on checker games. Maybe some reasoned that the entertainment value of a game of checkers was sufficient or that maybe beating a real live player in a checker game didn’t carry the same odds as competing with a dumb machine. One thing for sure; Slickbuddy would never accept a challenge to a game of checkers. He said he wasn’t good at figuring out how to win at checkers.

©2003 - William C. Humphries, Jr.