Memories of Bingo at Foxwoods

Last week Lesa and I went to Foxwoods Casino. We're not gamblers, per se, but we had the week off and we wanted to go somewhere that would seem like it was a zillion light years away. In that way, Foxwoods is like a remote island. In every other way, it is like being in a huge mall where everyone is throwing game shows at you.

We've done this before. Since we don't want to use up all of our money in fifteen minutes, we played Bingo. When you play Bingo you can spend about four and a half hours in the casino and only have to bet about forty bucks. In fact, you can play for as little as fifteen, but we splurged and bought the larger betting package.

The room that bingo is held in is like the room you'd have if you took every wedding reception that you've ever gone to and you combined all of those rooms into one huge room. Endless cafeteria-style tables stretch off to the horizon speckled with little white curly heads of hair. My estimate is that there were between two and three thousand people playing. Not all of them were over eighty. It seemed that most of them made this a weekly or possibly daily activity. They sit with their special decorated multi-colored bingo daubers, various good luck charms, paper-wrapped snacks and sandwiches, and cups and cups of complimentary coffee spread around them. It's like a little village, actually there were more people there then there are in a little village, there was a lot of "hellos" and "how are you this evenings" being passed around as we awaited the beginning of the games.

We got settled in a pretty good spot on one of the infinite tables. A mother, father, aunt, and 20 year old daughter sat with us. I looked up at the stage against the front wall where the Bingo Readers sat. Besides them and a security guard, the stage also held a prize wheel and a money machine.

"I want to go in that money machine" I told Lesa.

Do you know what a money machine is? It basically looks like a shower with four glass walls and a glass ceiling. You get in the machine and money whips up all around you and you try to grab it. I had seen one on an old game show as a kid and it seemed like just about the coolest thing ever.

When you play bingo in a casino, you are in it for the long hall. There are about 30 different games in which you hope to get bingo in various shapes. Sometimes it's just a regular bingo, sometimes it's an x-shape, or double bingo, or double bingo hard-way, or three-way bingo, or postage stamp, or six pack, or full card, or lucky L, or lucky F, or picnic table etc etc.

On either end of the enormous rooms are giant screens that display the bingo ball as it shoots out of the bingo machine, and spread throughout the room are smaller screens with the same scene. Sometimes, it gets pretty crazy as they read the numbers. In general you are working on nine bingo cards at once and if you lose your place it can be hard to catch up. But we kept it together even while shouts of slow-down were occasionally heard from some of our thousands of competitors. Each game goes until someone shouts out Bingo! If two or more people get bingo, then the prize is split between them. The prizes vary per game.

About half an hour into the action, Lesa leaned over to me and said, if the right number comes up, you have to help me shout "Bingo", and sure enough, seconds later, her number was called! She sang out over the room "Bingo!". She didn't need my help at all.

Another person also won so Lesa split the 700 pay-out and suddenly we had 350 cash dollars in front of us. Our two-day vacation was payed for and then some. Just like that. Out of all the thousands of other people, Lesa won. Amazing.

We kept playing since we had already bought all the cards, and about an hour later, I was at a point where I needed only one more number. My hand was shaking as it held my green dauber over the empty square and I heard the woman right next to me say to her friend, "all I need is I-18." I leaned over and said, "That's all I need, too." And then BAM! "I-18" was called! We both shouted out, "Bingo!". (I hadn't yelled that since the forth grade.)

Nobody could believe it. Not only did two people who happened to sit right next to each other win in the same game but Lesa and I BOTH won games?!? Unheard of.

But wait, there's more.

First, this woman and I split the 800 dollars prize money (Now Lesa and I were 750 dollars up) but it turned out that this was a special game and one of us two winners was going to go into, you guessed it, the Money Machine. I walked up to the stage with my co-winner. It seemed to take forever, it was so far away. When we got to the stage we were led up the stairs and the bingo caller explained that we were going to draw cards. The person with the high-card would go into the machine and any money grabbed would be split between the two of us.

I picked a card. It was a four. She picked a card. It was a two.

Holy crap. I'm about to go into a money machine. I'm on a stage in front of thousands of people and I am about to be dancing around like a monkey in banana heaven.

I stepped inside the glass box, a woman handed me a pair of goggles which I slipped on over my glasses, and they explained the process to me. There was a small slit in one of the walls, like a tiny mail-slot, and I was to grab as much money as I could, fold it, and pass it through the slot. Then I would try to grab more and pass THAT through the slot until the machine shut down. The woman told me that the best technique was to put my arm up against the wall and the money would swirl around and get caught on my arm and then with my other hand I would slide that money off of my arm, then I'd fold it and pass it through the slot.

She pointed down and said, "You're standing on the money. You don't want to do that".

I looked down and saw a carefully arranged circle of fives, tens, and twentys, below me. I stepped back a little and took the moment before the machine was about to start to look around me.

Outside of the box was this endless room of people, a number of them had walked up to the front of the stage to watch more closely. I saw Lesa down there looking up, trying not to laugh.

Next thing I knew, I heard a whirl and there was money flying all around me. I tried to remain calm, felling proud of how 100% NOT embarrassed I was feeling (all these years on the stage probably helped). I remembered the woman's instructions and slid the cash off of my arm like it was leaves on the windshield. Folding it was difficult, and the faster I tried to do it, the harder it was to do. I felt like I was trying to get my keys into the ignition while the serial killer was pounding on the window. I slowed down and folded the money and passed it through the slot. Then I did it again. And again. And Again. And then the machine stopped and I was lead outside. (Lesa told me later that while I was in the box there was cash plastered against my goggles - I had no idea).

When I stepped outside, the security guard said, "Nice job!" and the man-in-charge said, "You did really good, some people get nothing at all." He counted the money. My co-winner said to me that she was glad it was me and not her in there. The man tallied up the money and said the total over the intercom. "445 dollars!" The audience cheered as we walked back to our table.

So, after splitting up that money, Lesa and I left the casino with over 900 dollars more than we came with. Now we can buy that super powered snow-blower. It's not like we won the lottery or anything, but I did get to go in the money machine. How many people can say that?



"I can't believe I was in the money machine," I kept saying for the rest of the week, "what an incredibly ludicrous place to have been."