THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 10, 1995 TAG: 9512060052
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KRYS STEFANSKY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 134 lines
COULDN'T HAVE been worse timing.
Right in the middle of the U-Pick-M a woman keels over and needs a doctor.
About 150 people, well, about 149 now, are dabbing the numbers they scribbled on their bingo cards and here's this distraction.
The caller kept right on going. ``In between numbers, he'd go, `Is there a nurse in the house? Please go to the office . . . B-12,' '' said Ginger Miller. ``The ambulance came. They put the woman on a stretcher, put oxygen on her and wheeled her out. We never stopped playin'. That's bingo for ya.''
No kidding. Nothing comes between die-hard bingo fans and what could turn out to be their lucky card.
Miller, a regular player at several area bingo halls, is luckier than most.
``I've talked to women who've been playing for 20 years and never hit a jackpot. I hit two in a row last month, back to back. Bingo halls hate to see me come in,'' she says. ``I win. I win. I definitely win. I'm definitely not in the hole for bingo.''
Definitely not. Not too long ago she won $5,000 in two weeks.
``Got a new fence around my house, a new refrigerator,'' she says.
Bingo jackpots pay out $1,000. Regular games pay up to $100 per game.
In some halls, players can get in the door for less than $10 for a pack of cards. Many, like Miller, double and triple their investment to improve their odds. She's been playing about 10 years, ever since her parents took her to a church fair and she got hooked. She wins thousands of dollars a year.
Miller, a brown-eyed redhead who is the night manager at Norfolk's Lone Pine Restaurant, plays at least four times a week.
``I play Tuesday mornings, Thursday nights, Friday mornings and Sunday afternoons. I try to play all those days. If I don't, I have withdrawals,'' she says and laughs. Mornings can be good - fewer people play and the chances of winning are better. She keeps close track of what she's spent, never losing a grip on the game.
And Miller, 31, plays without any of the frou-frou and voodoo some players bring to it.
Creatures of habit, serious bingo players have favorite bingo halls, favorite times of day to play, even favorite seats.
Their strategy is simple: play a lot of bingo - three, four hours at a stretch glued to uncomfortable plastic chairs; play a lot of cards; and don't miss any numbers.
They drag into the halls with satchels stuffed with good luck charms, wild-haired dolls and a rainbow of bingo dabbers - giant magic markers - crammed into little pockets all around the outside.
``They've got their trolls, their lucky charms, their pictures of their kids, their pictures of their grandkids,'' Miller says, flapping her hand. When they get to their seats, they line everything up - dolls and pictures across the front, dabbers down the side, in color order, if you please.
Miller marches in with a small black purse that holds her money. Every time she plays, she buys her cards and one green dabber. She pokes the dabber's felt tip full of holes so the ink flows out faster and keeps up with her. Before she goes home, she gives it away.
She sits where she knows people, at least by first name and what they do for a living, and where there isn't too much talking.
The game calls for super concentration. Miller plays as many as three dozen bingo cards at once. When people like her husband, a Navy boatswain's mate, say bingo bores them, Miller says they aren't playing enough cards. Ready or not, every 13 seconds the caller yells out another number. Every two seconds if it's a quickie.
``Bingo's not for little old ladies anymore,'' Miller says. ``They couldn't handle it.''
It takes sturdier folk, like the woman who went into labor while dabbing her cards.
``Her water broke right there and she kept on playing till the ambulance came. Then she just waddled out,'' Miller says.
To win, you've gotta have tunnel vision.
There's the caller to keep up with, then there's a ``V'' screen where every bingo number pops up two numbers ahead of the call. Someplace else, an electronic calculator adds up the numbers called so players can estimate their chances of winning as play goes forward.
Every other month or so, Miller and a few friends hop in the car and drive six hours to South Carolina, where they play 12 straight hours of bingo, turn around and drive right back. The stakes are high and the thrills bigger.
It costs $150 to $200 to play, but the jackpot is $100,000, bigger than anything available here.
So far this particular week, she's spent $38 on bingo on Tuesday morning at Little Creek Road Bingo in Norfolk. That day, right before the session was over, she won $100 in a pact for 10 percent of a friend's $1,000 jackpot. The friend swore she was going straight home to hide her winnings from her husband and to wash dishes - a bingo player's trick for getting rid of the evidence - dabber ink marks all over the hands.
Tonight, a Thursday, Miller's sitting in the cigarette haze settling over the crowd at Norfolk's Princess Anne Recreation Center. Before play starts, she's already won $100 in Instant Bingo - cardboard tickets players buy and rip open to find instant wins or losses.
``Yay,'' she says, flashing a winning ticket. ``I'm playing free for the rest of the night.'' Knowing that, she settles down to keep her eye on $62 worth of cards, playing 27 at a time.
``She is lucky,'' says her friend, Kerrie Martinez, nodding her head once and leveling a look that says, ``No lie,'' over the smoke peeling off her cigarette.
That's if you don't count the time they laid a man right on top of Miller's cards.
``He was a havin' a heart attack or something. To calm the crowd down, they started playing bingo, but here he was, still on my cards. I think they got into the third game before they finally moved him,'' she says.
As the caller leads them through the games, from the ``X'' to the four corners to the postage stamp and letter ``Y,'' Miller sighs. The next game is her heart's desire.
``That's my bingo dream. I want to hit the straight, double, triple one day,'' she says, her arm moving up and down the rows of numbers, dabber thumping big green spots on her cards.
About 90 minutes into the evening, Miller wins again, hitting the letter ``X'' on one of her cards. There's a second winner, so Miller gets half the money, $50. That's it for the night. She wins two more times this week, once at Mid City Bingo in Norfolk, for a grand total after expenses of $208.
Add to that a frozen turkey that was a door prize at the Pythian Lodge 10 in Norfolk on Sunday and she figures she had a good week. Not her best, but it won't hurt.
``My mom thinks I should get a job with numbers,'' she says. ``People ask me why I don't quit my job and play professionally.''
She looks up, shakes the ink in her dabber and admits, ``I'm tempted.'' ILLUSTRATION: MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN color photos/The Virginian-Pilot
Ginger Miller, who plays bingo at least four times a week, calls out
as a player nearby wins. Below, Miller uses a green dabber to mark
the more than two dozen cards she plays at one time. Every 13
seconds, the caller yells out another number.
Photo
MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/The Virginian-Pilot
Her ability to concentrate is a key to Ginger Miller's success as a
bingo player.
by CNB