Casino Tales

My first visits to casinos was in Las Vegas back in the early 1960's. Both were part off crosscountry treks via auto -- one a vacation, the other chasing employment. Both overnight stays in Vegas were profitable. In fact, on the vacation, after 4 weeks on the road, I came home with $300 more than I started with thanks to Vegas.

Some of that money came courtesy of George Burns. He was sitting next to me, smoking his trademark cigar for about an hour at the blackjack table. He lost, I didn't.

While I was working in Toulouse, France in 1967, I became a charter member of the Playboy Club in London. Since I was working at Sud Aviation and they had frequent flights to the English half of the airplane builder, I thought I'd be able to catch a ride up to London and go. That never happened.

But, when my time ran out in Toulouse, the company sent me to London to install a computer. Claudine, who was my girlfriend at the time, went with me. We ended up going to the Playboy Club for eats and the casino a couple of times. The last time, she was playing roulette and I was playing blackjack. I wasn't having any luck, so I stopped by to see how she was doing and if she was ready to call it quits too. She says, "Yeah, I am ready to leave, but I need to cash in these chips." My reply, "Oh, those chips are small, there's an easy way to get rid of them." With that, I pushed them all on black 13.

Wouldn't you know it. It hit. And there was more money in her chips than I thought. We won close to a month's salary on that one spin of the wheel!