Page 158 - a-columbia-county-boys-recollections-and-memories-of-columbia-county-florida-(2012)-lenvil-h-dicks

A Columbia County Boy's Recollections and Memories of Columbia County Florida (2012) Lenvil H. Dicks

inside his shirt. The officers were escorting him back to the hotel where he could put that money in the
safe.

It turned out that the second machine from the far end, which he went to play, on about his third spin,
rolled up the three 10 pay symbols. The progressive had built up to the point where it paid $47,000.00,
and that is the amount that Jack had inside his shirt.

Naturally, anyone would have been happy and delighted to have won S47,000.00, but Jack was
particularly excited because this meant that he could go ahead and wipe out all of his wife’s funeral and
burial expenses.

1 never questioned him about what he did with the rest of that money, but I do know that at least 3 years
later he was still spending some of it, because he seemed to have money in situations where formerly he
did not have any.

In addition to going to the casinos together, Jack and 1 have traveled across the United States on several
different occasions, just for the fun of seeing the country and seeing all of the sights. I have enjoyed
traveling with him, since he is ready to go whenever I am, he is ready to stop whenever 1 want to stop,
and he is all for going to see whatever it is that I might want to see on any one particular day. I suppose
the reason that we are such close friends is that he lets me be myself, and he is agreeable to most
anything that I bring up.

He will admit that 1 have been some financial help to him, inasmuch as anyone who knows anything
about southern evangelist preachers, knows that they do not accumulate much cash. Many times they are
preaching to congregations of very poor people who do not have much to put in a collection plate, and I
have known him to run revivals for at least 2 weeks, and come away with less than $300.00 in expense
money. Preaching revivals is certainly not a way to get rich.

It is somewhat strange that when jack and 1 are playing slot machines together, each of us seems to be
able to somewhat predict what a machine is going to do while we are playing it. For example, one
afternoon we were playing slot machines at the Boom Town Casino in Biloxi, and I was hunting a
particular ten time pay machine, which required three one dollar tokens and I could not find the
machine. I asked an attendant where they had moved it to and was told where to go look for it and find
it. I put al little money in the machine, and on about the third spin of the reels it rolled up two ten pay
symbols and a red seven, which paid $15,000.00.

At the casinos, any time you hit something that is $1,200.00 or more, the machine shuts down and an
attendant comes and gets certain information from you, and then brings you back the winnings in either
cash or a check, which ever you prefer. After hitting the $15,000.00, and while I was waiting for them to
bring me my winnings, and inasmuch as that machine was locked down until they paid off the jackpot, I
moved over a few machines to where there was a twelve time pay machine which worked just like the
ten pay machines, except that a twelve symbol paid you twelve times whatever the symbols on the reels
were, or if you had two twelve symbols it would pay you 144 times whatever the third reel showed in
the event it had been three reels instead of one. Jack was playing a machine nearby, and after a few
minutes playing at this machine, I told Jack, “Jack I can tell you right now this machine is fixing to hit
something big, and I feel that it is going to involve at least one 7”. About three spins later, I rolled up
two 12 time pay symbols and a red 7, which paid $17,400.00.

The odds must be in the millions that one man could hit two jackpots that size on a dollar machine
within just minutes of each other. I was afraid I might be fixing to get thrown out of the casino, but as
far as I know they have never found anyone who has discovered a method of cheating on the slot

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