My immediate project was to “finish our family” before I turned 30, and I missed that goal by just a little over a month.  Baby Angela arrived on February 2, our little Aussie (who would have dual citizenship until she was 21).

We loved living in Australia and adjusted quickly to driving on the left side of the road and celebrating Christmas in the hot summer of this down-under land with the reversed seasons.  Our love of travel took us on frequent sight-seeing road trips, short weekend camping trips around Melbourne and longer vacation outings to Sydney and up and down the coast.

Our biggest travel adventure was a 10-day expedition to the Outback, an all-expense-covered camping excursion provided by Earl’s school, chaperoning 20 teenagers on their annual field trip.  Not a luxury outing by any standards; we stayed in tents and most of our meals were provided outdoors by the accompanying cook.  But it was a trip to desert places you mostly read about in geography books, still fairly undeveloped during this late 60’s trip.

One of the most interesting places we visited was the small opal-mining town of Coober Pedy, where, because of the extremely hot weather, most of the residents living in underground houses.  We toured one which was just dug out of the soft rock and we were amazed by how comfortable and well-furnished it was.  If you needed a new shelf, you just dug it out of any of your walls.  When I was researching how this amazing town was like today, I found that there was now a hotel there – and it had dug out one room underground that was a casino!  I’d like to go back and see that!

We ran across many aboriginal people, living in shacks all over the desert.  This was before government programs were widespread to help indigenous Australians integrate into the general population with modern living conditions.

One of the high points of our outback adventure was a visit to one of the most outstanding nature features of the country, Ayers Rock, which our whole group climbed, a steep ½-mile hike that took an hour to get to the top.  Although climbing this beautiful huge red rock is still possible today, it is now discouraged by its aborigine owners, who consider it sacred territory.

Earl’s teaching contract with the Australian government was for two years and we would be heading back to the U.S.  However, this trip home provided another travel adventure.  We stopped in New Guinea to visit some missionaries I had known for many years.  I know this country has become modernized in the last 50 years, but back then we flew into the interior on a tiny plane that landed on a very short rough landing strip where we were met by locals in native dress – more like National Geographic undress!  Yes, they looked fierce with their spears and warrior makeup but they greeted us warmly.  However, at last I had a brief encounter with  “real natives” that I had heard about from the missionaries that stayed in our parsonage home when I was a little girl.

However, we could see that overseas travel would take many many years of scrimping and saving. Then up popped a wonderful opportunity just as Earl was finishing his schooling for a teaching degree from Malone College.  We learned that the Australian government was paying travel expenses for teachers – and their families – who would come there for two-year high-school assignments.  Their economy was growing so fast at this time that there weren’t enough local residents to fill all the jobs being created so they were bringing in workers of all kinds from many other countries.  Free travel to a faraway country and a job awaiting – for us it was a dream come true.

To add to this dream, actually it could be combined with fulfilling a childhood ambition of mine.  Living in a minister’s home, we entertained many missionaries who came to speak in our church, and I was totally absorbed in their exciting stories, especially their slide programs showing what I consider to be their adventurous life in the jungles of Africa or South America.

Now…going to Australia wasn’t living with natives in grass huts in the wild – we had a modern house in a suburb of the big city of Melbourne.  We weren’t missionaries in the sense that a church back home had raised money to support us and send us there to “convert the natives.”  Instead we were volunteers, often called “occupational missionaries,” supporting ourselves but working as laymen to assist ministers in small pioneer start-up churches which were popping up to serve the growing population of the country.

Combining our desire for service opportunities with the chance to explore a big country so far from home – it was a made-to-order adventure for us.  So as soon as Earl graduated from college, we sold our car and all our furniture and, with our 5-year-old son David, we were ready to embark on our world exploration.

The first leg of our journey was on a small passenger-carrying freighter from New York City to Brussels.  It sounded like a great adventure when I read the advertisements – the 10 passengers had the run of the ship and ate gourmet meals with the captain – and the fare was low low, frugal low. However, those 10 days crossing the Atlantic were without a doubt probably some of the worst 10 days of my life.  The ship had no stabilizers – and we were skirting hurricanes from day one.  I took to my bunk and stayed there for 5 days; when there was nothing left to get rid of in my stomach, dry heaves took over. In the meantime, Earl and 5-year-old son David were having fun roaming around the ship this whole time, coming back and telling me about the great meals they were having with the captain.  On the 6^th day, I thought I was feeling well enough to perhaps eat a bite so I went to dinner.  This was a Norwegian ship and I guess a Norwegian chef – raw eggs garnished the entrée.  That sent me back to my bunk until – thankfully – we reached European dry land!

Next came 2 months driving around Europe in a tiny rental car, thanks to our travel fund we had built up the last several years.  However, it was not large enough to make this a luxury trip; Europe on $5 a Day was our travel bible.  We stayed in simple guest houses and mapped our route to include mostly free attractions and simple activities that a 5-year-old would enjoy.

The last leg of our long trip to Australia was on a cruise ship from England to the port of Sydney.  This was an exciting first for us, just as glamorous as it had looked in the movies.  We were in first class, even invited one night to dine with the captain.  The 12-day voyage was not smooth sailing the whole time, but fortunately I had gained some sea legs since the earlier freighter nightmare. One night while during a dance the ship hit a big wave and everyone on the dance floor was thrown to one side, with handsome ship officers scrambling to help the ladies.  I thought that was a romantic event suitable for a steamy novel!

We soon learned that the lower-class decks below us had much simpler accommodations – this was before the movie knowledge we learned from Titanic.  Those lower decks were filled with hundreds of male Greek immigrant workers who had been offered free transportation and jobs when they arrived in Australia.  We actually had quite a bit of contact with them.  The first day of the cruise, the ship’s news sheet contained a call for teachers, who would be paid to conduct daily classes to help the Greeks learn some basic English.  Earl and I both signed up. Even little David went along with us and was learning how to teach common words with a lot of gesturing and acting.   We three knew no Greek and our students knew no English, but we all did a lot of laughing and found that was a good start for universal communication.

After graduating from high school, there was really no question about where I would go to college. I would attend GBS (God’s Bible School) in Cincinnati, Ohio, for many years the conservative choice for many young people who were raised as I was in the fundamentalist evangelical church environment.  It was the school where my father had studied for the ministry and where my parents had met and married. They knew it would be a place that would continue to reinforce the beliefs and rules that they had taught me since I was born and would keep me from “worldly” dangers.  I had been raised in a very sheltered religious environment so had no personal knowledge about any other kind of college or alternative choices.  One could understand this better if you realize this was before the Internet age, and we never had a TV in the house to “corrupt” us.  (My parents never owned a TV, nor believed in watching one.)

However, my parents did approve one deviation from the protective college setting of GBS.  This bible school was not state accredited and therefore could not give me a degree that would enable me to get a teacher’s license.  However, it had enjoyed a good reputation over the years with the nearby University of Cincinnati, which would accept many of the GBS credits (non-religious subjects) for transfer students.  So, after two years of taking classes and living and working part-time on the GBS campus, I moved to a small apartment near the school, worked full-time as a floor desk clerk at the nearby Christ Hospital, and started classes at UC.  At age nineteen I was finally out in the “real world.”

Wedding Bells

It was at this time that I met a student who was just starting to attend GBS and who was also working at this same hospital where I was.  I had casually dated off and on in high school and then during the two years I had been attending GBS, but with no serious relationships.  However,  when Earl and I met, we both fell hard and were engaged within two months.

At the end of the school year, we married and set up housekeeping in a tiny damp one-room basement studio apartment, poor but insanely happy as only young newly-weds can be, in spite of a constant battle with cockroaches. However, the rent was an extremely frugal bargain and helped us stretch our poor-college-students budget to cover our living  expenses and pay for both of our schooling.

One thing Earl and I shared from the beginning was our strong craving for the adventure of travel.  Earl had grown up in rural Kentucky in a family of modest means that didn’t allow for travel vacations.  Although my family had moved around a lot, we hadn’t ventured outside the Midwest.   So after our first year of marriage, we decide to start pursuing our dreams.  Earl would join the Air Force and hopefully that could provide us with the opportunity for some frugal travel adventures.

The timing was good, we thought as we planned.  He would be going to basic training during my last semester of work at UC for a BS in Education, doing my student teaching.  So off he went to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, TX.   There was just one unexpected addition to this plan.  Earl got the news in mail call that he was going to be a father – and I did my student teaching in maternity clothes.

But we were happy and didn’t have to change plans.  After basic training, Earl was assigned to Geiger Field near Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, Washington.  I got my degree at UC a couple of months later and joined him there where we happily awaited the arrival of baby David.

Military pay was extremely low back in the 60’s so I taught school all during Earl’s enlistment to make ends meet. But we always took advantage of the times when we were both free to explore the area wherever he was stationed.   While we were in Spokane we did tent camping all around the Northwest, a frugal option that let us stretch our budget for more of the travel adventures we loved. Then the Air Force moved us to Newburgh, New York and we enjoyed the new big-city adventures that awaited us just 50 miles south in New York City. Sometimes a charitable organization would hand out expensive Broadway tickets to military families, and  I would make a big effort to snag these valuable freebies. Guess that was my introduction to comps!

Earl developed some serious medical issues so after 4 years he was out of the Air Force on a medical discharge, dashing our dreams for overseas assignments that would provide the opportunity for “world travel.”  Those goals were put on hold and we moved to Canton, Ohio, where I took a full-time high-school teaching position to support the family while Earl finished college and got his teaching degree.

Frugality continued to be center stage during these first years of adulthood, learning extreme money-management techniques necessary to cover high educational and family expenses on a low income.  My financial goal then – as it has remained to this very day – was to live within our income and avoid debt with all my might.

“Gaming” had not yet changed into “gambling” since we were still in a relatively conservative church environment. Actually, even game-playing was not a frequent activity during these years due to a busy schedule of juggling school and work and family duties.   It was limited mainly to joining other young marrieds with little kids getting together for occasional game nights.  By this time, I had walked away from some of the more extreme “rules” I had grown up with, those that didn’t seem to me to really be connected to “spirituality.” Friends introduced me to family games that used cards, like Old Maid, Rook, and Pit.  Of course, these weren’t “real” cards, and, of course, no money was changing hands, so could not even be considered as a beginning path from gaming to gambling.  That was still many years in the future.   But as it had been since I was little and played kiddie games with my sisters, I was still playing “for blood” even in just “fun games.”

Much to my relief, after frequent transfers and moves during my early years, my father finally was able to stay as pastor at the same church for four years, which luckily happened to be during my complete high school education.  I had been afraid that we would have to move and I wouldn’t graduate with the same friends I had known since 9^th grade. We now lived in the very small isolated town of Boyers, PA, which had no high school, so that meant a 13-mile bus ride every morning and again back home in late afternoon, a long trip with frequent pickups on winding country roads, to Grove City High School.

Since teaching as my chosen future career was firmly entrenched by this time, none other even lightly considered, there was no question that I would take the college-prep track throughout high school, but what subject area would be my concentration?   I didn’t enjoy math and science classes and found it took extra effort to maintain the high grades in those that I could easily attain in all my other subjects.  More skill with words rather than numbers led to the obvious choice:  I would take classes that would start preparing me to become a high school English teacher.

This was probably not a surprising choice since I had always been a bookworm.  Actually, I don’t remember being “taught” to read.  I just remember Daddy reading aloud from a big Bible in his lap during nightly family worship.  Often, he would point to a short simple verse and ask if I wanted to “help” him read that. I was just a tiny little girl but I managed to struggle through the words, albeit with a lot of his help along the way.  It doesn’t seem that it took very long until I needed less and less help even when the passages he chose became quite longer with more “big words.”

From early childhood I carried a book with me constantly so I was never bored when I had a bit of spare time.  I liked curling up in a soft over-stuffed chair and reading a whole book at one seating.  I was a super-fast reader (a skill that has been valuable my whole life) and often finished one book and started another one the same day.  However, my mother put her foot down and limited me to one book a day so “you don’t ruin your eyes.”  I complied since I was afraid I would go to hell if I disobeyed a parent! But after I was little older, I finally convinced her that this was “cruel and unusual punishment” and thankfully she lifted those limits.

Since I could zip through all my school reading assignments quickly, I had a lot of time for leisure choices. At an early age – perhaps still in first grade – I discovered book series.  So when I read – and loved – my first Bobbsey Twins book, I prowled libraries constantly to find more books about their adventures.  I still remember the intensity of my feelings when reading The Bobbsey Twins and Baby May. Would the family be able to find the parents of the foundling baby abandoned on their doorstep?  I could hardly breathe until I got to the end of the book!

As I got a little older, I found the Nancy Drew mysteries – and had a goal to read every one ever written.  I did the same for the Hardy Boys books – although I never thought those boys’ adventures were as interesting as Nancy’s!  Actually, that love of mysteries has continued for over 70 years and today my favorite TV shows are stories about how detectives solve real-life crimes.  When I was a little girl I wanted to be like Nancy Drew and now I sometimes wonder if I had known about forensic science in my teenage years would I have chosen to be a crime investigator instead of a teacher?

Early Frugality

Continuing to absorb all the lessons learned growing up in a family where thriftiness was next to godliness, one of the highlights of these teenage years was achieving one of my long-time “grown-up” ambitions – to get a paying job.  The opportunities in our tiny town were almost non-existent, but I never stopped looking.  And finally, at age 16, I was offered a job as a clerk in the little country store down the street from our house.  It was only for a few hours a week and the pay was just a pittance – no government minimum wage rules were considered here – but I knew I would be starting on my way to financial greatness if I spent this income wisely.  I knew if you wanted to be frugal you had to set up a budget.  So I wrote up a detailed list with my income and expenditures, a routine I would continue for the next 63 years, right up to this present day in 2018.

From my first day it didn’t disappoint.  I loved going to school, even in the primitive country building that required what seemed to a 5-year-old to be a very long scary walk to an even scarier dark outhouse.   I already knew how to read so I was ready for new learning challenges.  Back then there were no special “enrichment” or accelerated programs but fortunately that was not a problem; this was a one-room schoolhouse with all 6 grades. I could buzz through all my primers and easy assignments and then soak in whatever upper-grade lessons were being taught.

It wasn’t very many days into first grade that I had chosen my future career.  Although my teacher was stern and strict, walking the aisles with a wooden ruler that would come down painfully on the knuckles of any student talking instead of quietly working on a lesson – and I suffered sore knuckles quite frequently – I thought she had the best job in the world.  I started playing the role immediately. After school each day I would line up my dolls in little chairs along my bedroom wall and teach them “lessons.”  Then when my two sisters were born, I couldn’t wait until they were old enough to sit up in those chairs so I would have live “students” for playing school.  And much to their dismay as they got older, I was always the teacher – being the oldest gave me that birthright against which they could not argue! (And when we three now “old ladies” get together they sometimes remind me that they remember how I took advantage of my biggest-sister power!)

My family moved around frequently during my elementary years as my father transferred from one church to another. We left country living after my first grade in the rural Indiana one-room schoolhouse and moved to Louisville, Kentucky.  There I went to 2^nd grade in a city school – and certainly appreciated the indoor plumbing.  The next 3 grades were in the small town of Niles, Ohio. My 4 middle-school years were spent living back in rural territory, but in the modern Pennsylvania parsonage home beside a country church.  And I rode the bus to a modern consolidated school in Stoneboro, PA.

Since we usually lived in a parsonage next to the church, I added another play-teacher gig during these years.  We’d have a key to the church and go down into the basement classrooms where we could play Sunday School.  As my sibling grew older, I even sometimes relented to their pleas and let them be the “teacher.”  Our favorite teaching aid was the flannel board where we could tell Bible stories, with people figures and scenery pictures with sticky backing that would adhere on that fuzzy board.

I continued to “teach” my sisters – my version of home schooling before that was a common thing.  I still tease them that I gave them their first pre-med and pre-law education, since June became a doctor and Starr became an attorney.

 Ages 9 months, 5, and 10

Ages 5, 10,15

Were there any clues in my early life that might give hints about my later life? I was the daughter of a minister and a former high school English teacher. I am now an author who writes books and articles that explain how to stretch your money in casinos.  Could anyone have predicted way back then that I would become widely known as the Frugal Gambler?

 “Frugal” From the Git-Go

Well, “frugal” could have been my middle name.  In fact, I wonder if I actually heard about that valuable concept when my preacher father asked the doctor who delivered me if he gave a “ministerial discount.”  (That was a common courtesy given to “men of the cloth” back in those days.) He did, and it was part of our family lore that I was a “bargain baby.”

Although the economy was doing better as the country was exiting the Great Depression when I was born in 1938, people remembered its pain, and thriftiness was the ruling virtue of the time.  My father was just starting out as a minister in a very small church with a very small salary, so I learned early from my parents the techniques of stretching your money.  My father put in big gardens and I helped my mother spent the summers canning fruit and vegetables for our winter meals.  My mother was a skilled seamstress who made all the pretty dresses for me and for my sisters when they came along later.  My father did most of the grocery shopping while my mother was busy with household tasks, and I loved to tag along to the store with him. Even at an early age I learned that “sales” and “discounts” were important words.

“Gambling” – A Big No-No

Although frugality was woven into every part of my life growing up, the word “gambling” was not only totally outside my environment, but in a forbidden zone I should never enter. My father was a minister in an evangelical fundamentalist denomination and I was raised in the closed puritanical environment of an extremely conservative church.

And being the “PK” (the preacher’s kid) I was expected to be a good example, following all the church rules and avoiding anything that was on their “sin list.”  Gambling was very near the top of that list. We had no cards or dice in our home since they were symbols of this evil. If a game that we wanted to play came with dice, we’d have to throw them away and use a spinner from one of our kiddie games instead. We weren’t even allowed to play games like Old Maid, because we were supposed to guard against even the appearance of sinful behavior. Someone might have seen us playing and thought we were engaged in a poker game!

But if you simply change the word “gambling” to “gaming,” you might have gotten a little glimpse into my future activities.

Our family always played games.  One of my earliest memories is begging my mother or father to play the “Uncle Wiggily” board game with me.  Many first-born children are resentful of their younger siblings, but not I! I was exceedingly grateful when my parents provided me with two sisters with whom to play games.  My sister June arrived when I was five and by the time she was two I was teaching her how to play “Chutes and Ladders.”

When our youngest sister Starr came along another 5 years later, June and I tried to teach her games as soon as she could talk. Then as we all grew older we graduated from the simple don’t-have-to-read-the-rules games to Chinese checkers, chess, and finally Monopoly, the ultimate of all board games, I thought.

My family played games almost every night except Wednesdays (which was prayer-meeting night); on Sundays we played religious games. My mother would pop up a big bowl of popcorn and we’d pull out a board game. When we three girls were old enough to play Scrabble, the family’s competitiveness really blossomed. Until my father developed Alzheimer’s in his early 80’s, one of his greatest pleasures in life was to get together to play Scrabble with his three girls (now a teacher, a doctor, and a lawyer) and often beat all three of us! Even though he oversaw a very strict and ultra-religious household, the gaming spirit was strong in the whole family.  Intense competitiveness, playing to win – early strong clues that perhaps made my current life not entirely surprising.