Green Dice at Midnight
What is your gambling-related superstition? “I will stand on my head to beat all deals”. That was a sales line that a man named Cal Worthington once used in his TV commercials to try to get you to come down to his lot and buy a car. I don’t know if he ever actually stood on his head for anyone. I doubt it. It was just something to say to get our attention. All he really had to do to beat any deal was sell a car for a penny less than the dealer across the street. That line might have worked better for him than the truly meaningless things some of us do to try to get a slot machine to pay off. I see people tapping screens, hitting them, rubbing them, blowing smoke on them, and more, in the hope of conjuring up a jackpot from an otherwise reluctant machine. Where in the world anyone gets the idea that might work is beyond me. An old friend, Neal, insisted that finding a craps table that offered a chance to play green dice at midnight would bring good luck. We never found any, but it w...