I feel the need to add a small glimpse of my history to the ongoing Oxford story. In order to appreciate my own insanity and addiction with poker, it might be easier to explain (without going into too much detail) that my earlier life was fraught with family death, family illness, (more than one family member in both circumstances), and the eternal struggle to put food on the table and pay the rent – in other words B-r-o-k-e, a lot of moves to different states, and general quicksand traps along the way. I won’t even begin to say that I handled anything well, in truth, I really didn’t know how to handle anything and that was another issue that surfaced for me years later. I never had options although I did have choices and I made some bad ones. But those were more related to husbands and relationships and since I never had two thin dimes to rub together, I didn’t make bad financial choices…until I became a poker junkie.
So when I climbed onto the bus heading for the coast, I hadn’t yet found my coded label embedded somewhere in the deep, dark corners of my brain, telling me that I had a compulsive addictive behavior disorder. In a way, it’s funny to even think about it, since I never had a drug addiction, nor an eating disorder, or a problem with alcohol, and really never had a gambling problem except poker.
But this is why I believe the poker hook snagged me and completely consumed my thoughts and attention:
These people did not conform to the standards that are implied when one is considered an ‘adult.’ Some of them did but there were others that broke all the rules of good behavior, consideration for your fellow man, kindness, honesty, fair play, and how to behave in a public place.
I watched them by the hour, some of them swearing up a storm when they didn’t make their hand or they got beat (just like I watched the kids at the Mirage Poker room years later doing the same thing), some of them jeering with contempt at the person they just beat, some of them whining and trying to undermine the poker ability of the person that just beat them (Yah, you got it! Just like the diptards in online games that call the winner a donkey and a variety of other things). Some of them came in straight from work and played through until early morning hours and never made it home but went right back to work. Some drank and ate continuously as they played. The list goes on and on and on.
The excitement of winning was incredible but losing all the money you had until payday was right up there on the excitement side too – emotions were hot and heavy – and when certain players were in the game, it was a real roller coaster of nonstop noise and chip action. And if you lost, you had an audience to listen to your whining tales of woe – no one ever left since it was the only game in town.
One of my first planted-squarely-in-my-head memories of the poker came when Bill Ogg took the whole backroom game to his house one night. John Dillon was the cage person most of the nights that I remember – when I was bartending and even later on when I was dealing and playing. I believe that Bill was supposed to be there some nights of the week to keep an eye on the place and since Brian Lundmark and his wife Anne worked the cage and handled most of the management during the day, Bill Ogg came in at night.
On a night that Bill was in the OX, I was tending bar and somewhere towards midnight or a bit later, Bill had a fit because John caught them playing Indian Poker as one of their game choices at the backroom table. Although I don’t know all the details, it appeared that John told Bill he couldn’t play Indian Poker, Bill argued, John called Brian, the answer was, “NO!”
Bill said the hell with all of this and told everyone to come out to his place and they would continue the game. I do remember them buying liquor to take out with them. Bill lived close to 25 miles out of town. I now can’t help but think about it and wonder how many of them actually made the drive out and how long the game went. If memory serves, Bill no longer came in and worked any part of a shift, I seem to remember hearing undertones that he was no longer part of the business…but rumors do drift.
It was sometime after that when Roy Whitt appeared (although he may have been around before but it wasn’t obvious to me) and he became the night/poker manager.
I stayed behind the bar, hating it by now, dreading seeing Karl or Chubby come in to grace the bar, and I still watched the poker games. Although I wanted to play, I was pretty timid and I really had no extra money. My home life was rough, we had left Hawaii with what we could carry in luggage bags and a few boxes. We slept on the floor, sat on the floor, and ate on the floor, but we were in our own place by now and had left my sis’s home. My three boys were going to school every day, Bob (my ex) was semi looking for work, and life was moving forward, but not nearly as fast as I would have liked so I could lose the bartending job.
Venturing into today:
Take a look at this beauty of a sunset in multiple photos:
