Casino

Casino

For all intents and purposes I grew up in the casino business. Of course I was way too young to play any of the games, and one of the few times I have ever gambled was on my 21st birthday. Since then I’ve probably played the slots once or twice more. I have never had any interest in gambling. To me, you might as well as take the money you are to gamble and put it in a trash can. Although I must admit I one $1,000 on a free spin and used some of it to take me and my best friend to the Stanley Hotel in Colorado.

My mom left the casino business in the late 1990s after about 15 years in it so I’m kind of clueless how the Midwest does it now but when we moved to the Midwest so my mom could open Station Casino in Kansas City (now Ameristar) the rule was the casino part had to be on water. Which we thought was the dumbest thing ever. Reservations don’t have to follow that rule. For my mom to get her casino license she had to be grilled by the Missouri State Patrol and they had no idea what they were doing, so instead of acting humble and kind they acted like the worst stereotype of the FBI or CIA you could think of when it came to questioning.

From the ages of newborn to about four I was an extremely sick child and my mom spent all of her time with me; well, as much as she could. My dad got a union job doing heavy construction and eventually got a permanent job at the Nevada Test Site where he and a group of men would enter tunnels to clean out waste made from atomic tests.

After my open heart surgery at age four at UCLA my tetralogy of fallot was fixed and I could join society and my mom could get a full-time job. She got a job at Harrah’s on the strip (across from the Mirage) as a secretary to someone connected to the mob (he made me wooden toys). To be fair, in the early to the late 1980s most people in the casino business were either the mob or connected. I got two huge stuffed polar bears from people connected to the mob, one guy dealt with entertainment at Balley’s. It was probably through him that I had an opportunity to go onstage with Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis but I was way too shy. It’s my biggest regret. My mom had lots of stories of meeting Sammy Davis Jr. and being in the Jerry Lewis Suite at the hospital when she had a hysterectomy.

My mom’s beloved boss died in the mid-1980s and after grieving my mom taught herself how to run computers and what one does in Information Technology. By the end of the decade she had taught herself so well that she became head of IT at Harrah’s.

Because I was such a quiet and good girl I got to go to work with my mom quite a bit. I would play on the whiteboard or on the typewriter in the computer room, the room withe giant servers that were very warm. Sometimes I would go to very fancy restaurants with my mom and co-workers.

Then my mom had a chance to be head of IT of a brand new casino called Texas Station. She helped open it and would have to visit every department, like the kitchens and the games, etc. to make sure everything was working right. This was July 1995.

That Christmas break I went to work with mom nearly every day. They had a movie theater there and I would watch and re-watch and re-watch and re-watch Toy Story. I was blown away by the animation and of course the story was great and funny. After the movie I would enter the “Employee Only” door and some officious guy would say, “Are you supposed to be here?” I’d get nervous but say, “I’m Penny Jacobson’s daughter.” He would move aside and say, “Oh, go right ahead.”

On my way to my mom’s office I would stop at the place where kitchens kept spices and frozen food as that’s where my dad worked. When either Bush or Clinton signed a law to diminish atomic testing, my dad got laid off and my mom got him this job. He would put spices away and put things away in the freezer. His main co-worker we called The Crypt Keeper and the guy took a liking to me. I hope to God he just liked me and not LIKED me.

When I was at work with mom and we would walk amongst the casino I was allowed to do so. Not so in the Midwest. They block the casino and demand a casino card. Get a grip. You’ve already allowed casinos, so go all the way. Don’t pretend to be pious.

All in all I had fun. I have fun in casinos despite not gambling much (my rule is to take a $20 bill and put it in a slot machine; if I lose all of it in two minutes that’s it).