“CBS News Sunday Morning” is one of Gilda’s and my favorite telecasts. Last week it aired a piece on the continued interest among adults playing bingo for cash prizes. If you haven’t seen it, here’s a link: https://share.google/Jzp0rE2IXV9Zneg2T
I bring this gaming note to your attention because years ago, more than half a century ago, actually, closer to 57 years ago, I was an active participant in a successful weekly bingo game run by my parents’ synagogue, Congregation Pri Eitz Chaim Ocean Avenue Jewish Center, in Brooklyn.
It was during my father’s glory days at the shul where he was president for several years that every Thursday night the noise level in the gymnasium would build to ear-piercing extremes. Excitement would grip all those present. Moans would go up after every call. Shrieks of, “Just one more,” would reverberate against the cement walls.
No, a basketball game was not being played (I can’t remember any athletic contest ever happening in the gym). Rather, the sweaty anticipation and exhilaration emanated from the hundreds gathered for the weekly bingo game.
Bingo was a major fundraising endeavor for the OAJC back then, with my parents in charge, mom in the back room watching over the money, dad working the floor, making sure sufficient tables and chairs were set up in rows to accommodate the hundreds of players drawn to the game. They even enlisted me, first as a bingo card salesman and then as a game caller.
With $1,000 in prizes ($500 for the final jackpot game), OAJC bingo drew players from miles around. They were a quirky lot. Mostly middle-aged women, they would engage in good luck rituals. Before the first game, some would run a lighted match under their game cards. Others would scratch their behinds to coax out desired numbers from the air machine that popped out the numbered ping pong balls. Several played a dozen or more cards by sight and memory—no chips over the numbers of the hard-backed board cards they brought from home or no dab of colored ink on the paper game sheets bought that night and spread before them.
Calling the games was the most fun. I’d sit on a platform at one end of the hall, under one of the two electronic scoreboards that lit up each called number. Next to me would be another volunteer. He’d hand me the balls when they were pushed out of the machine. I’d announce the number, wait a second or two and announce it again. Especially as the jackpot game progressed, tension in the hall would become palpable. Fifty-seven years ago, $500 was a more considerable sum than it is today.
I-22, G-53, O-69, N-37. As the cards filled up, with no number producing the cry of “Bingo,” excitement would build. Despite the microphone, players would shout they couldn’t hear the numbers over the kibbitzing from nearby players. It was time for the one decorum-producing remedy you could do but once a night. “The next number,” I’d intone, “is, B-Quiet.” For a moment, players would rustle through their cards, looking under the B column for the number. Then they’d chuckle at their gullibility, settle back down and, when finally, a winner was selected, lament they were just one call away from winning the grand prize.
