Brad’s Gambling Life – Part 14, The Early Indiana Years

After Brad got out of the Air Force in 1952, he settled down back in his parents’ home in Connersville, IN, with a job at Philco, a major refrigerator manufacturing plant in town. Then came marriage and four children.  There wasn’t a lot of money during this time for gambling activities, but there were always low-stakes Tonk games when relatives and friends got together in their homes.  There were also poker games at the American Legion.   And Tonk games were still going strong at the cigar stores where Brad had played when he was a young teenager.  If Brad had any extra money on Friday paydays, he and his friends would leave Philco at midnight when their shift ended and head for a cigar shop for an all-nighter Tonk game.

In 1962, the financial position of Brad’s family improved considerably when he could leave Connersville and Philco with its exasperatingly frequent layoffs.  He landed a job at Naval Avionics in Indianapolis and they eventually bought a new house there.  In addition to his federal civil service job, he was at times involved in a couple of business ventures, one as a co-owner of a downtown Indy bar and another as the owner of a flower shop in the Indy suburb of Broad Ripple.

Now there was money for what he calls his horseracing phase.  A few years earlier he had gone to Florida on vacation and discovered Jai alai and Greyhound racing.  That was so enjoyable that he decided to see if horses were as much fun as the dogs.  They were – and for the next twenty years, if he wasn’t working overtime, he would spend many weekends at the horse tracks – Churchill Downs, River Downs, Latonia/Turfway. He was a student of the racing forms and became a fairly good handicapper.

 But just because he spent a lot of hours at Naval Avionics, that is not saying that this was time away from gambling.  Just as it was in the military, people will find a way to make wagers, and much time is spent discussing them.  Parlay cards abounded during both the football and basketball seasons.  Checkerboards would pop up before any big basketball game, especially when IU was playing, and always during NCAA tournament time.  And this being Indianapolis, the biggest sporting and betting event was the 500 race.  Participants paid $4 every bi-weekly payday all year long to have a shot at huge payoffs in May. 

And there wouldn’t need to be a sporting event to have betting opportunities.  Every payday you could play paycheck poker.  And any day you could join a Coke bottle pool on your break.   Buy a Coke in the vending machine and carefully check the bottling location embedded in the bottom of the bottle.  The winner was the person who had a bottling location the farthest away. 

Brad’s daughter, Kandy, used to tell people her daddy even bet on the weather.  Yes, there was a daily 10-person pool for that.  Each one put in a dollar and drew one of the numbers from zero to nine.  Then at lunchtime they would listen to the local noon news and whoever who had the last number of the temperature would win the $10.  

It’s a wonder those Tomahawk missiles ever got to the Navy ships in time!