Page 186 - 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

SLOT MACHINES

After they brought legalized casinos into Biloxi Mississippi, I developed a habit of going out there 3 or 4
limes a year to play the slot machines. It is a known fact that you are not going to win anything playing
slot machines over a long period of time, but I find them to be rather fascinating, and when I am playing
a slot machine I do not have to think about anything else at all. I can just get rid of any worries or
concerns I may have about anything else and just punch the button, and watch those reels spin.

When a person plays slot machines they never tell you about the times they lost. That would be rather
uninteresting to hear about anyway, but both the story teller and the listener seem to enjoy hearing about
winning.

When my sister Emerald was alive, I used to take her to Biloxi on her birthday, during her latter years,
as she just absolutely delighted in playing slot machines. Like me, sometimes she would win, and
sometimes she would lose.

I recall one time when she and Happy Jack were with me, at the Old Grand Casino before the hurricane
washed it away, and I hit a machine for a $20,000.00 jackpot. She was with me and of course that
delighted her, as it did me. When you hit any amount of money on a slot machine which is more than
$1,200.00, you have to fill out a form where Uncle Sam can get his share of what you made, and they
require you to give the attendant your social security card and your picture I.D., and then they will bring
the money back to you.

While we were waiting for them to bring me the $20,000.00, and in order to keep from just sitting there
with nothing to do, I started playing a wild cherry machine right next to the machine I had just won on,
and Io and behold before they got back with the $20,000.00 1 had hit $5,000.00 more on the wild cherry
machine. That made that trip quite successful.

On another occasion when Emerald and my son Andy were with me, I got hung up playing a 12 time
playing machine, and playing it for what seemed like an eternity. After I had played it long enough that I
knew I had over $1,500.00 in it, with nothing to show for it, I told Andy that he might want to play it a
little bit, since I had played it long enough that it should be ready to hit something. So he sat down and
put a few dollars in it and it wasn’t but just a few minutes until he rolled up 2 twelve pay symbols and a
purple 7, which paid him $14,400.00. Andy has been back to Biloxi on a few occasions since then, but
has never done anything close to hitting that much again.

Also while he was hitting the $14,400.00, Emerald was playing about two machines away from him, and
she hit $5,000.00. On another occasion, I took my good friend Doyle Cason with me to the casino, and
that was one of those times when it seemed like I could not do anything but win. I won on almost every
machine I played, including an $18,000.00 jackpot on a triple diamond machine, and 1 hit that the very
first time I spun the reels. Over all, I did pretty well on that trip, and when Doyle and I started to leave
the next morning we went up to a little restaurant on the second floor called Roxy’s, and had breakfast,
and came down stairs ready to check out and leave, at the foot of the stairs was a sizzling 7 machine,
which pays $1,000.00 if you line up 3 sizzling 7 symbols. I stopped and put $3.00 in the machine next to
the stairs, and on the first spin it rolled up 3 sizzling 7’s. Doyle said “Lenvil, why don’t you do that on
that other machine there?” So I put $3.00 in the machine next to it, and damned if it didn’t roll up 3

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