Weekly News: BINGO!

The last time I played Bingo I was in either elementary school or Junior High. Gramma Mary went every weekend to play with her senior friends from Saint Anthony's and would bring Christine and I along, on occasion. The two of us would spend the night at her house on Friday night, eat ice cream that she bought with change she made from recycling aluminum cans and sit on her couches watching 'Murder She Wrote' and 'Columbo' before bed. We shared the full sized bed in her second bedroom and stayed up giggling and talking. Sometimes she would come in and tell us to be quiet and go to sleep.
We played with Gramma's Bingo group during our summer vacation in a small two-room building on the side of the church which was hot and had a swamp cooler that seemed to work only half the time. The games were played for pennies and Christine and I used a collapsable plastic cup to hold our pennies in. Most of the regulars would have a jar of pennies and about 20 cards in front of them. C and I would have one or two, which is probably as much as we could handle. I also remember that they used to have clever ways of calling out certain numbers. Such as "B - ELIVIN... one, one", or "B - four... be-fore I grew up and I was a child...", and then everyone would laugh.
Last night, my friend 'K' and I went to the Ft. McDowell Casino to play Bingo. It was my first time going to play and I have to say that it was a totally different experience than Gramma's Bingo. There are hundreds of people who play, everything is electronic and a winning bingo can look like a "Crazy Tree", "Picture Frame" or giraffe. Although winning $1.26 at Gramma's Bingo was very rewarding, I could handle winning $100,000 for a $3 game. Yes... I could stand that.