
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, September 5, 1994                   TAG: 9409080008
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

JUST PUT ON YOUR BEST POKER FACE

As if I didn't have enough to worry about - as in moving to New Zealand to avoid voting in Virginia's U.S. Senate election - this outfit promoting riverboat gambling in the state sends me its brochure.

I have to tell these people right now that I am vastly uninterested in riverboat gambling. I used to play a fair game of seven-card stud, deuces wild, but that was in the safety of somebody's kitchen.

I also was widely known as one of the more steely eyed persons ever to play five-card stud, nothing wild.

I wonder, should this kind of gambling be authorized in Virginia, if games like Dr Pepper Showdown would be allowed. Only those of us who listen daily for the trumpet know that in this game 10s, twos and fours are wild.

If Dr Pepper Showdown is allowed, I can see any number of gentlemen, wearing tails and ruffles at their necks, flipping derringers out of their ruffled sleeves as a disagreement occurs. All hell then breaks loose in the main salon of the Penhook Queen as she steams on Smith Mountain Lake.

This sort of thing - although riverboat gambling is something the state really, really needs - would not please Gov. Allen, a law-and-order person if there ever was one.

Without the derringers and ruffles, this is what used to happen when we played Dr Pepper Showdown. I once heard a gentleman refer to a lady as a "warthog" during one such disagreement.

I suspect that scantily clad young ladies carrying trays of drinks will move among the gamblers. I have nothing against scantily clad young ladies bearing booze, but I hope the people who handle such things would have a number of young ladies who strongly resemble Ava Gardner moving about in hoopskirts.

They could wave their swansdown fans coquettishly and watch over the shoulders of the players and help suppress gunfights that erupt consequent to Dr Pepper Showdown.

Listen, governor, a little discreet cleavage never hurt anybody.

I would also hope that this new adventure for Virginia would not include and person or persons singing "Waitin' for the Robert E . Lee."

I'll remain basically what I have been - just your average stay-at-home poker player.

I'll give you a call sometime, and we'll play one-eyed jacks wild at the kitchen table. Or five-card draw, jacks or better to open.

I hope you'll leave your derringer and any cleavage you may have at home.

by CNB