In Florida: Filling the Hours with Bingo !

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The Big Cypress bingo parlor is a corrugated-tin warehouse the size of an airplane hangar. It is surrounded by ramshackle houses and lots of old cars rusting on cinder blocks and stray dogs with mange and a few horses and small herds of cattle grazing in the swampy heart of South Florida that is the Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation. It seats 5,600 players and is the largest bingo parlor in the world. Every Saturday and Sunday morning, players are flown in from foreign countries, bused in from Canada and 38 states, bused in from every city in Florida, or drive in for a day of bingo before they are flown, bused and driven out that same night. They are greeted at the entrance by handsome young Seminole men in black tuxedos who direct them to the ticket windows. There they buy bingo packets costing from $79 to $289. They may win cash prizes ranging from a few dollars to $125,000, or a new Lincoln Town Car, or a beach-front condominium, or a trip to Las Vegas.

Today is a quiet Saturday morning at Big Cypress. There are fewer than 1,000 players seated at the long card tables lined up diagonally across the concrete floor. A plump Indian woman in native dress moves up and down the aisles selling bingo cards. The players have set up their cartons of cigarettes alongside their Bic lighters, their coffee thermoses, their good-luck coffee mugs, their plastic cups of French fries, and their little signs that indicate what bus group they are with. They are mostly silent, hunched over their sheets of cards. Occasionally a cheer will go up and cowbells will ring when someone yells "Bingo!" They scurry up, to a smattering of applause, to the platform in the center of the room to get their cash. If they don't scurry fast enough the other players hoot at them to hurry so they can get on with the game.

The players don't much visit rest rooms or the concession stands. They might miss a number. They seldom buy the chicken, only the fries. The chicken is too messy and requires too much concentration to eat. The fries are easier. The players can pick at them without looking up from their numbers.

Mostly, the players are women. Older, with bifocals resting low on their nose and a cigarette dangling from their lips. Working women of a certain type. They may have waitressed a bit at a truck stop, saved their money and bought a little beauty parlor at the end of town. And when their husband died or ran off with their young manicurist, they took to knitting for a while, or crocheting, or painting ceramic plates by number until their home was overflowing with all that stuff, and they were still lonely, until they discovered bingo. A perfect way to pass the eternally long weekends between work. So they come by the busload to Big Cypress because they are lonely and because they hold on to the fantasy of winning one of the big prizes, but they also come to flirt with Mr. Bingo.

Steve Blad, in his Mr. Bingo tuxedo and jewelry, surveys the players from the center of the hall. "A quiet crowd," he says, his mouth twisting. "I'll get 'em riled up in a little bit." Mr. Bingo is a master at "riling up" a crowd, and has been ever since he took over a bingo parlor for the Otoe- Missouria Indian tribe near Red Rock, Okla., five years ago. At the time he was a marketing analyst with a three-piece suit and a little money to invest. A few years later, Steve took his "foolishness" to Big Cypress.