Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 20, 1990 TAG: 9005200116
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
It was informal. Biller, 69, was in shirt sleeves and wore a Bud Light cap throughout the evening.
He is semi-retired, working as a parking-lot attendant. He used to be a restaurant man, including a tour as a waiter at the now-gone Boiler Room on the City Market.
This gathering had something of an easy ritual quality to it, as though Biller and the players belonged to a club with special rules that everybody knew and did not resent.
It was held in the social hall at St. Elias Catholic Church on Cove Road Northwest and was sponsored by the Knights of Columbus.
This is the legal use of bingo in Virginia - the raising of money for charitable causes.
This was not a stress-producing place for players who knew what they were doing - and most of them seemed to know that.
There were no signs thanking people for not smoking and the great debate about tobacco had been left outside in the late spring night.
Smokers, most of them far beyond their teens, lit up with no appparent fear of socio-medical consequences.
Helen Duffy, like several other players who were asked about it, said she doesn't like to spend more that $40 a night.
"You sort of have to control yourself," she said.
No matter how much is bet, this is not the kind of bingo in which corn kernels are used to fill the numbered spaces on the cards.
The traditional "hard cards" have transparent red windows that shut over a called number. A marking pen is used in "paper games" to daub the numbers.
There is instant bingo that is reminiscent of state lottery rub-off games.
There are closed circuit television monitors in all four corners. They show the numbers as they are picked up by the caller. There is a more traditional electric board that shows the numbers, too.
Biller and other players have been around the game for a long time and are no longer impressed with such features.
They possibly may be a little appalled that some fully grown persons are ignorant of such familiar modernity, although they are nice enough not to say so.
It is well known among these players that bingo had been getting a bad name in the city of Roanoke. A City Council commmittee - scheduled to report Monday - and the commonwealth's attorney are looking at ways to stop certain malpractices that have occurred or may be occurring.
This tainting of their game in public does not make these bingoists happy.
Elfreta Huffman, 80, who usually plays 18 "hard cards" per game, is among them.
There are persons, she said, who "can't stand to see people have a little fun."
Margarethe Webster indicated she is upset at government of any kind getting into the game.
Webster said she can spend her money any way she wants to. "The government doesn't ask me how they spend my money," she said.
"What is so bad about it?"
Clayton Biller, who helps with a bingo game for the American Legion in Salem and has been familiar with the game since he joined a carnival in 1948, said there may be some irregularities in some games.
"I wouldn't call it breaking the law - just bending it a little bit," he said.
"It's a good fund-raiser for charitable organizations if it's done right," he said.
After the "early bird games," Biller and his fellow bingo players and defenders settled down for a night that would end about 10:30 and would offer more than $2,500 in prizes.
Included are two prizes of $500 each - called "blackouts" because a winner has to have every number in a single card marked off.
Biller had 15 "hard cards" in front of him. He ran his hands over them like a surgeon, making sure the little red windows were open.
Behind him, another player had set her cards up at an angle, like tiles in a Scrabble game.
By the time he left the table that night, Biller had won $158. Including the cost of a hot dog from the concession stand, he had spent $41.
One of these wins came early in one of the paper games in which Biller made the "Crazy L" and shared $100 with two other players.
He had made the "L" marking off numbers with a magenta marking pen - an instrument that he used easily and steadily.
Biller, who says the odds in bingo are much better than in the state lottery, had some philosophy as he went along - playing and throwing losing paper sheets into a trashcan.
He barely missed one prize. "I needed a 10 and he called nine," he said. "That's bingo for you."
Later, Biller would say: "All I need is 15. There it is. Bingo."
Despite his success that night, Biller said of bingo luck in general: "I'm behind. Nobody's ahead."
Later, he would lose a game involving 18 paper squares. He put his marking pen down and said, "It only takes one square to win, if you have the right one."
There are a few young people in the crowd, but most of them are older.
"I think this is good for old people," he said. "It keeps their minds thinking."
There is an easy feel to the social hall, but Biller said, "We got some people who take this game very seriously."
Don Feick, who is chairman for the Knights of Columbus games, rested from running up and down the aisles selling tickets, taking money in and out of an apron and paying off the winners.
The crowd of 110, he said, was respectable: "This is OK. This is not great."
Earlier that night, Clayton Biller had another bout of bingo philosophy.
"Some numbers are easy," he said. "Some are hard."
by CNB