It's been an exciting week with getting ready for SOKY's Got Talent semi-finals and going to the open house at my granddaughter's school being among the highlights. But I'll have more on the talent competition next week.
Let's start out this post with a song.
๐ ๐ The was a farmer had a dog and Bingo was his name-o.
B-I-N-G-O
B-I-N-G-O
B-I-N-G-O
And Bingo was his name-o๐
At one time or another during childhood, everyone has had fun clapping along to that one.
I've used it to introduce the subject of this post, how BINGO has part of my life and soon will be again.
While I was growing up, going out to play Bingo was something my parents did for fun; especially my mom. She would go with her friends and family members an average of 2 to 3 nights a week. There was a Bingo game, somewhere in the Easton/Phillipsburg area, where I grew up, almost every night. The "circuit" included: The Harmony Township fire house, St. Peter & Paul's Catholic church, The Castel Club, The Elks Club, The Eagles Club and a few more I can't remember.
Mom loved going to Bingo. She had her own "kit" that she took with her each night. It included a plastic bowl that once held a pound of margarine; but was now filled with colored plastic translucent circular Bingo chips. She also had several bottles filled with colored ink used to daub on cards to mark the numbers.
As a kid under 10 years old I often asked to go along with my mom. But of course I was too young. I spent a good portion of my childhood determined to "go to Bingo" the day I turned 16.
For years I could only imagine what it was like at Bingo nights until the magic world of television changed that. In the early 70s our local cable company started a public access channel on a closed circuit.
One of the programs they offered was a play-at-home Bingo game. Viewers could play by going to one or all of the show's sponsors once a week to get playing cards. Twice a week from 4 to 6 in the afternoon, the host, a local radio personality named Charlie Weaver, would get on the air and call numbers. If a viewer got a BINGO they called in to the studio, had their card verified and were declared the winner. Of course, in between calling numbers, there were commercials featuring the sponsors who furnished the prizes.
My mom was a "super fan" of this Bingo show. On the weekends, she would have my dad drive her around to the sponsors to get her cards. She collected as many as she could and would play them all.
At times she had enough cards to cover the tops of two 4x4 card tables. This was way too many for her to play herself.
Being anxious to be a part of my mom's passion for Bingo, at 11 years old, I jumped at the chance to be her partner in the game. I remember having so much fun playing together. Occasionally, she won a smaller prize by getting a simple straight line BINGO but I don't remember her ever winning the big cash prize for getting cover all.
I was obsessed with the TV broadcast. Every time I helped mom play I would imagine myself as the host of the show. I thought calling BINGO numbers on TV was even cooler than being a radio DJ.
I started asking for my own Bingo game set. In December for Christmas, I got a small kid sized version. Once I got it, I spent quite a bit of time in my bedroom playing as host of my own imaginary Bingo TV show.
I know that might sound kind of strange but it came right in between the days I spent in my room"announcing" the roller derby games I played with my Hot Wheels cars and talking over the intro of records using my DJ record player/sound system. The best Christmas gift my parents ever gave me. I got it when I was 15. So you see there was a pattern.
By the time I was well into my teens, the cable channel Bingo game was history and I wasn't the least bit interested in hanging out with my parents on their BINGO nights.
Besides that, they had replaced going out to BINGO with weekend nights hosting or going to relative's homes to play Pokeno.
It's a game like BINGO but the numbered balls are replaced by a deck of cards. Also an element of small time gambling was part of it.
Players would ante up a penny in each of about half a dozen cups. They would win those pennies when they covered the same poker hands on their cards (four of a kind, full house, four corners, middle space, ect.) that were written on the cups. A straight line Pokeno on the card ended the game.
My Parents kept their stash of Pokeno pennies in a small plastic bank shaped like a jug with a cute little poem on it.
Okay, now we make a time jump over several decades. It is now 2001 and I am 40 years old, living in south central Kentucky.
Paula, then my fiance, won a prize from a local radio station for a free package at a Midnight BINGO game in a hall set up in the old mall in Bowling Green.
On Saturday, February 23, we decided to make our weekly date night one to play all night BINGO.
The session started at midnight. We played for 4 hours but didn't call "BINGO" once. I did answer a trivia question that won us a free pizza from Godfather's pizza.
On our way home at 5 in the morning we went through the drive-thru at Krystal to get some burgers.
It was a very memorable night. I preserved the memories of that BINGO experience in my 2001 yearbook. Here's the page I created with reminders of that night.
The event was a country fair set up with booths that had various activities and games to play. One of the games was BINGO. I was asked to be the caller. Given my history, you know I jumped at the chance.
I called the numbers and gave away a variety of prizes along the way. The final big prize (I don't remember what it was) was to be awarded when someone got "Cover All".
When the game finally ended there were only 2 numbers left in the wire cage. I took them out to make sure that all the numbers were there before I put the set back in the box.
That's when I saw a ball in the grass just under the table. I quickly realized that I had played the entire game with one number missing.
As I quickly picked it so hoping no one would notice, I realized something ironic. The number I had dropped was the same as James' uniform number, 51.
Let's jump forward again to just last year. My wife, Paula, was building up her wardrobe with clothes from a line by LuLaRoe.
One of the sales reps that she bought from on a regular basis, rewarded customers by sending them a BINGO card with each purchase.
Then once a month she would go on Facebook live and play a game of BINGO with all her customers.
Paula usually had quite a few cards. So many in fact that she needed my help to play. Over the course of 2018, we spent several nights playing BINGO with a LuLaRoe dealer out in San Diego, CA. In these games, Paula actually won a couple of pretty nice prizes.
I've written all of this to show you how much BINGO has been a part of my life so far. Now its coming back once again.
This Sunday night as part of her Color Street Facebook group, Paula's Nail Haven, I will be helping my wife play a live game of BINGO.
We have purchased a very nice game set to use.
If you would like to play, you can do so by requesting to join Paula's Facebook Group. Here's the link: Paula's Nail Haven
Request to join, answer the 3 questions to complete your invite, and then request a BINGO card. I will send you one through PM. You have up until an hour before the game starts to do so.
So there you have a brief personal history and stories when it comes to BINGO. Hope you enjoyed at least some of them.
Have a great weekend and I will be back on Monday with the next Yankee Near Nashville blog post.
LuLaroe Bingo
Color Street Bingo Game
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