Aug

The Penny Pitcher

Fri Aug 19th 2011 @ 4:35 pm

As I restlessly continued to search for that “something” that was missing in my life, I started gambling. Football games, basketball games, cards….you name it. There was a nightclub where a lot of gamblers and bookies hung out. I started hanging out there, too, and over time I got to know a lot of these guys pretty well. Some of them were just ordinary men with wives and kids who chose to gamble for a living. Others looked like they belonged in a police line-up…and occasionally they were.

They could be scary characters, but they could also be funny…without meaning to be: one night I was having a drink, when suddenly, a bookie named Mickey came running up to my table and exclaimed, ”Ed, quick! Come with me! D.L. is in the parking lot and we’ve got to stop him!”
“Stop him from what?” I asked.
“He’s got a machine gun in his trunk and he wants to go shoot up the front of his ex-wife’s house!” I’m in a panic thinking, “and you want ME to go take a machine gun away from a drunken gangster?” Fortunately, before I had time to wet myself, D.L. came back in the club. He had cooled off and said sheepishly, “I guess that wasn’t a very good idea.” Then he added, “Besides, I didn’t have enough bullets to load the clip.” And these were guys I was hanging around.

Freddie owned the club. Freddie was a pretty nice guy, but he had a problem: he was a pathological gambler. He was addicted. He bet on everything…and lost. He financed his gambling losses by dipping into his cash register, which would have been fine…if he had left enough money to pay his payroll taxes. He didn’t. Ever. Inevitably, the IRS caught up with him and gave him 30 days to pay up before they padlocked his club.

The day he got the notice from Uncle Sam, a few of us were headed to Vegas on a gambling junket. Freddie decided to come with us: he still had a line of credit at one of the casinos. He decided that he would WIN the money he needed. Right. Good luck with that. Well guess what? He did it! He won the $70,000 he owed the IRS. His business was saved. We bought him a drink to celebrate and then we all headed to our rooms to get some sleep. The next morning, when I got downstairs, there was Freddie at one of the tables. He had come back down during the night, lost the entire $70,000 and then used his line of credit with the casino to run up an additional $10,000 debt.

Later that day, the casino set us up with a free cruise on Lake Mead. Freddie came along because, as he put it, “with no money and no credit what else can I do in Vegas?”
While we were waiting on the dock for the boat to arrive, I saw something so pathetic that it’s been stuck in my memory ever since. Freddie, who had once been a successful, prosperous businessman, was down on his knees on a filthy dock, pitching pennies with some kids and dock workers…trying to raise a stake to go gamble some more. A sad, lonely man with nothing left. And I thought to myself, is that all there is for him. Pitching pennies? Then I thought, “Is that what I’m doing? Is that all there is for me?”

I never went back to Las Vegas and I ultimately stopped gambling. Freddie had taught me something: I didn’t want to end up pitching pennies at life.

Epilogue
The oil magnate John Gates, founder of Texaco, once placed a huge bet with the equally wealthy John Drake (whose family had founded Drake University) that his bread, dunked in coffee, would attract more flies than Drake's. Gates won. It was later discovered that he had secretly added 6 spoonfuls of sugar to his coffee.

Thought for the Day
When you’re educated, you’ll believe only half of what you hear. When you’re wise, you’ll know which half.

A semi-interesting fact
Dance the samba? Did you know the word "samba" means "to rub navels together."

Joke Du Jour
This guy dies and is sent to Hell. Satan meets him and shows him the doors to three rooms and says he must choose one of the rooms to spend eternity in. So Satan opens the first door. In the room there are people standing in cow manure up to their necks.
The guy says "No way! Show me the next room." Satan shows him the next room and this has people with cow manure up to their noses. And so he says no again. Finally, Satan shows him the third and final room. This time there are people in there with cow manure up to their knees drinking cups of coffee and eating cake.
The guy says, "I'll choose this room!"
So the guy is standing in there eating his cake and drinking his coffee, thinking, "Well, it could be worse", when the door opens. Satan pops his head in, and says "O.K. tea-break is over. Everyone back on your heads!"

Really???
A disgruntled Alabama church musician allegedly zapped a pastor with a stun gun after the pastor fired him following Sunday services. Six people were injured during the church brawl which erupted at the New Welcome Baptist Church. The sheriff's office alleges musician Simone Moore zapped Rev. Daryl Riley after the pastor fired him. After Moore zapped Riley, a deacon then allegedly stabbed Moore's mother in the arm with a pocket knife. "It was unbelievable for it to be at our church. It was shocking to me to see that going on," said Lashea Gray, who lives near the church. All six injured people have been released from hospital. The musician and the deacon are wanted by police.

A British woman said she removed her 7-year-old son from school after a visiting church group had his class eat paper to repent their sins. Celia Mullen said she pulled her son out of the Church of England run primary school after he was traumatized during a classroom visit by members of the evangelical New Life Baptist church. Mullen said the children were made to write "sorry" on pieces of paper and then eat the paper to apologize to God for their sins. Eat your sins?

Worry, Worry, Worry
The late Bill Bright once wrote: “Some time ago I was amazed to read the following scientific fact: According to the National Bureau of Standards, a dense fog covering seven city blocks to a depth of 100 feet is composed of something less than one glass of water! Isn't that incredible?

This can be compared to the things most people worry about. If those things were reduced to their true size, you could probably fit them all into a water glass! Someone has said that the things worried about never happen. That may not be always true but I know it is true in many, or even most, circumstances. Worry needlessly saps our energies and serves no purpose.

Worry is a form of fear. Faith is the antidote to fear. Someone has said, "When fear knocked at my door, I sent faith to open it, and no one was there."

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.... Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own" (Matthew 6:25-34).

Are you kidding me???
The Bible, the world's best-selling book, is also the world's most shoplifted book. Clearly, a lot of folks need it!