Bingo!

Beneath the dated, harsh
fluorescent lights of church basements, in the drab expanses of massive halls,
men and women scan a dizzying array of numbered boards laid out before them
with the casual, cool efficiency of air traffic controllers. They don’t miss a
beat, gossiping between mouthfuls of popcorn or long drags on Virginia Slims.
Ears perk up eagerly as each number is called at eight second intervals — an eternity
when the prize is nigh. Eyes look intently to the surrounding monitors for that
one desired ball. Ink dobbers are clutched tightly, deliberately, purposefully.

            “C’mon G-51! Let me hear N-33!”

            To some, it’s a gamble, despite its charitable outcome.
For most, it’s just a night out away from the TV, a chance to kibitz with the
girls or rehash war stories with the boys. And there are some who have chosen
this as a career, hitting different spots each night.

            It’s the thrill of the hunt, the happiness of pursuit.

            It’s bingo.

This isn’t Vegas. It’s not the track or the ring, either. Bingo’s
never been that glamorous. You can’t picture The Rat Pack holding court in a
bingo hall.

            And there’s really no intoxicating, edge-of-your-seat
excitement. I made my first descent into bingo’s netherworld this fall. While
playing, I felt my tension mount as I waited for tension to actually mount.
Alas, it never really did.

            Bingo is slowwww, daddy-o. It’s lethargic. The game’s
steady cadence is painfully boring at times. Though the promise of cash can be
big, the payoffs are few and far between.

            Once recognized throughout the country as virtually a
sacrament in the Catholic Church, bingo is slowly getting squeezed out of
neighborhood parishes and VFW posts and into giant bingo halls, where patrons
can smoke and the prizes are bigger.

            Ed Schmitt, who runs The Empire Statesmen’s (a drum and
bugle corp.) bingo at one of those halls, The Bingo Palace on East Ridge Road,
blames building codes. “Building codes changed, and all of a sudden they
redefined the types of occupancy, along with restrictions, particularly in
regards to smoking,” he says. “That was the death knell for the average
Catholic school or VFW.”

            The quest for the dollar did its damage, too. Though
admission to both church and commercial halls averages around three bucks, when
it comes to the payouts, the road forks.

            “When New York State changed the rules and let you offer
more than $1,000 in prizes, that gave birth to these large, commercial bingo
halls,” says Joe Pocious, who runs what he calls “good, old-fashioned parish
bingo” at St. Josaphat’s Ukrainian Catholic Church in Irondequoit.

            The big halls “are able to give out $3,000 or more per
night,” Pocious says. St. ‘Phat’s offers a less-than-fat maximum of $1,500 at
its Friday night bingo. “People are going to go where the prize money is,” he
adds.

Bingo’s history can be
traced back to 1530 and the
invention of an Italian game called Lo Giucco del Lotto D’Italia. In the
late 1770s, it was introduced in France, where it was played among aristocrats
and called Le Lotto. The Germans also played a version of the game in
the late 1800s, and used it to help students learn math, spelling, and history.

            The game reached American shores in 1929, and was first
played in a carnival near Atlanta, Georgia. A dealer would pull numbers from a
cigar box as players marked their cards with beans, calling “beano” when they
won.

            New York toy salesman Edwin S. Lowe mistook the winners’
cry as “bingo,” instead of “beano.” Lowe developed the game with the help of
Columbia math professor Carl Leffler, who increased the number of combinations
in bingo cards to 6,000. According to author Mary Bellis’ essay, “The History
of Bingo,” rumor has it that Leffler then went insane.

            In the late 1920s, Lowe was approached by a Catholic
priest who wanted to use bingo to improve his church’s bottom line. Lowe helped
the priest set up a game, and within a few short years, bingo spread up and
down the East Coast and was moving west. By 1934, an estimated 10,000 games
were being played.

            Today, bingo has evolved to include shape-oriented games
like Bowtie, Goal Post, Crazy H, and Small Diamond. Cash prizes vary,
especially when there’s a “split pot” — that is, when a small percentage of
what the players kick in goes back to the house.

            Hard figures on bingo revenue are hard to come by, but
there’s huge money involved. For instance, according to the Soda Springs
(Idaho) Chamber of Commerce website, gross bingo receipts in New York State
alone were $166,293,430 in 1995, of which bingo purveyors kept $36,688,872.

Most of the church bingos I attended seemed like pot-luck suppers without the
food. At least, not the homemade type warmed over in Corning Ware I’d hoped
for. The grub was mostly popcorn, candy, soft drinks, coffee, and hot dogs kept
hot on World War II-vintage rotisseries.

            The warm buzz of conversation and the high-pitched
giggles of rambunctious rug-rats is kept low; you don’t want to miss those
numbers. But the hushed atmosphere is inevitably punctured by the infrequent
victory cry of “bingo,” followed by audible groans of dissention and defeat.

            (As a novice, I found out the severity of calling an
incorrect bingo the hard way. I mean, Christ, there’s a lot of numbers, and a
fella can get confused — joyfully, prematurely, incorrectly thinking he has
bingo. Take it from me and make absolutely sure you have bingo before opening
your big mouth. Some of these old ladies looked like they were going to kill
me.)

            “We have a nice, family environment,” says Delores
Schuler of St. Cecilia’s Church in Irondequoit, where the bingo balls tumble
every Friday night. Though the majority of players are senior citizens, even
children can play, as long as a playing adult accompanies them and they have their
own card. (According to Pocious of St. Josaphat’s, even infants must purchase a
board to be in a bingo hall, as decreed by state law — but they still can’t
smoke.)

            Thanks to the advent of commercial bingo halls, you can
play all day, seven days a week. Various churches and charities rent out the
halls. The volunteers who run the games are parishioners or members or the
various benefiting charities. The players, more often than not, are not.

            This is true even of those games still held on church
property. “It’s 99 percent non-parishioners,” says Pocious, “and some aren’t
even Catholic.”

            Ninety-nine percent of the bingo players I spoke with
refused to give me their last names, citing such reasons as bashfulness,
marital deception, and addiction.

            Warren, a player at St. Nicholas’ breakfast bingo at The
Patriot Bingo Hall in West-Mar Plaza, is essentially a bingo pro. Between bites
of his fried egg sandwich, he tells me he plays seven days a week and pretty
much breaks even.

            But to older
players like Warren, it isn’t all about winning and losing. Bingo is the
primary social activity for a lot of seniors. “You meet other regulars and new
people at the games,” Warren says. “It keeps you going, keeps you young.”

            “What else should I do?” asks Margaret incredulously.
“Sit home alone and wait for my kids to call?”

            Of course, there are those for whom winning is
everything: the bingo veterans with fingers crossed and eyes afire. You know
the ones: ladies with bingo-embroidered sweaters, an arsenal of dobbers, and an
immense spread of boards before them. These are the players who will curse you
under their breath when you call “bingo” before they do. And who knows what
other mojo they’re working?

            Whether it’s a quick shout-out to St. Bernadine of Siena
(the patron saint of gamblers and the closest holy figure I could find to a
patron saint of bingo), or the wearing of a lucky hat, all players concede it’s
pure chance.

            “It’s just the luck of the balls,” says one lady.

            Another lady I met was counting on divine intervention.
“Hopefully, He’s listening to you up there.” And hopefully, in addition to a
new school bus for the parish, He wants to see you knee-deep in cash.

            “It’s relaxing, even though it’s stressful,” say two
women who requested their names be withheld pending the outcome of the game.
They’d told their husbands they had gone shopping. “We’ll tell ’em [we were
playing bingo] if we win. Then it’ll be okay,” says one.

            Obviously, they didn’t win.

Whenever money is paid for the chance to win more money, it’s gambling,
plain and simple — though many bingo players and enablers are as elusive as
politicians when pressed on the subject.

            “We’re just here to pay off the mortgage,” says Father
Ken of St. Nicholas Church, which sponsors “breakfast bingo” at Gates Bingo
Center to benefit the church building fund.

            “It ain’t gambling,” one woman tells me, her hands on her
hips, boards spread out before her.

            Why?

            “Because I don’t gamble,” she says.

            On the other hand, Sharon, a laid-off Kodak employee,
gambles. She says she blows up to $80 a day on bingo. This, despite the fact
she increases her odds of winning by playing several dozen paper boards at
once, in addition to using a computer that can keep track of up to 54 boards.

            Though she said she’d already won $3,500 this month, she
didn’t look like she was having any fun. In fact, she wants to quit.

            “My mother died three years ago, and I didn’t want to get
involved in drugs or go out drinking, so I started playing bingo,” Sharon says.
“I won $1,800 right off and haven’t stopped playing since. I want to, though.
It’s a vicious cycle.”

            “A gambler always tells you what he’s won,” says Frank
Barattini of St. Theodore’s Church on Spencerport Road. “And very seldom what
he loses.”

The exodus of bingo
players from churches to commercial
halls is taking a toll on parish coffers.

            “We have three sources of income,” says Pocious: “The
Sunday collection, our annual Ukrainian Festival, and bingo. We could probably
operate without bingo, but it would be a struggle.”

            Bingo pays the church’s fuel bill and electric bill. The
game’s income is so important to the parish that they maintain a former school
building on the premises exclusively for Friday night bingo. Still, the take’s
not the same as it was in the past.

            “We’ve done it for 32 years,” Pocious says. “And each
year it gets a little harder. The revenue is dropping.”

            “When everything was going good, [bingo revenue] was
probably around $45,000-$50,000 annually,” says Schuler of St. Cecilia’s. “It’s
nowhere near that now.”

            Bingo is so important to St. Cecilia’s that parishioners
paid to construct a glass-enclosed area to accommodate smoking bingoers, who
make up almost 50 percent of the players. Apparently, bingo and nicotine go
together like peas and carrots.

Though I have plenty of well-traveled social avenues already, walking in
bingo shoes this past month has given me insight into a seldom-seen side of
American life. Sadly, this subculture is diminishing in intimate, suburban
parishes — where I had a better time than in the mega-halls.

            I’m convinced I’ll never get rich playing bingo — and
you’re kidding yourself if you think you will. But I got to rub elbows with
interesting characters, hear a few stories, share a few laughs, eat junk, and
win a few dollars.

            Six bucks, to be exact.

This article appears in Oct 16-22, 2002.