At the Casino

As we pulled in, I suddenly thought, “I’ve got to give my kids the talk.” Admittedly, this strategy was a sort of afterthought, a last second emergency Hail Mary justification after the sudden realization as to what I was doing—taking my three video-game-loving kids, 4,6, and 9 to a casino with flashing lights and ringing bells. We were on the way from Lake Mille Lacs to Grandpa and Grandma’s house and we needed to stop to eat. Mille Lacs Grand Casino loomed to our left like a Minnesotan Taj Mahal with a stoplight for easy access, and a ready buffet: no waiting, no picking from a menu, no grease-laden kids’ meals of mini corn dogs, French fries, and soda. But cheap—and therefore a no brainer. I didn’t give a second thought to what I was doing until we pulled into the parking lot and I looked with my mind’s eye into the windowless hall of wonders. What was I doing?

I think I’m right on the watershed of, well, opinion or judgment or popular attitudes of Christians toward gambling. Cards were never an issue in my household like they were in others, but it was understood that gambling was one of the great evils of the world. Las Vegas was sin city and I would never go there.

Today, of course, things have changed dramatically. There is a casino a half hour from where I live—and soon there will be a casino one hour from where I live, and there’s one two hours and three hours and four hours. In popular culture, “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” has made its way into the vernacular. I know CRC people in good standing who see an evening at a casino on par with having a six-pack of beer: acceptable in moderation and with limits.

But I’m old enough to say I have qualms about the carnival atmosphere that my children are about to experience. They’re ripe for the wonder of it all. So I prepare my speech.

A note about where we’ve been and where we’re going. We’ve just spent three days at Izaty’s resort, a pretty nice resort on Lake Mille Lacs. And by pretty nice I mean a place with a golf course, a pool, a bar and hotel. I mean villas on the lake; I mean employees with lawn mowers and weed whackers daily prowling the grounds for awry blades; I mean fifty yards of shoreline in perfect bluegrass and Bermuda. Wonderful. We had stayed in a three bedroom townhouse. We had taken a golf cart down to the docks to go out to fish. All on the grace of a relative’s relative.

We’re going to grandpa and grandma’s house. They’ve loaned us the boat, which my dad bought after he sold our farm equipment and went trucking for Bayliner, buying it directly from the company for cost, a seventeen-and-a-half foot fishing boat. Now, they live in Breezy Point, a town that grew up from a resort, in a modular home, not on the lake. They live on a fixed income. I’m pulling the boat; the kids are in the old model Toyota Sienna with my wife. Thus, I can’t give them “the talk” in the car.

So we go in the front door. The entry has a hotel check-in to the left; ahead is an open hall with the typical flashing lights and games and gaudy carpet. We find a map on the left wall with a red “you are here” dot. We can walk straight through the gaming hall and find the restaurant on the right. Or we can drive around to another entrance and hope to access the buffet more directly. Who am I kidding? What casino is going to be set up so that you don’t have to walk past the gaming machines?

We plunge ahead. I would put blinders on the children if I could. Avert their eyes—an excellent parenting strategy I’m sure.

The shiny slot displays include wolves, pirates, exotic—though surprisingly conservatively clad—women. It’s a hall of escape, promise, myth. It smells. Cigarette smoke makes my daughter pull her shirt over her nose. I’m shocked, too. No smoking laws don’t extend to casinos. No doubt it makes sense to let addictions grow together, I think. But of course, this is no doubt a tribal decision. A tribal sovereignty issue.

I was right about cheap. $28.81 for a family of five. Less than a Pizza Ranch buffet.

We no more than find our seats before son number one has to go to the bathroom. On the trip out I begin tallying: one man with a walker; another with a cane; a lady dragging a foot like a peg leg. That’s just on the way to the bathroom. On the way back, I see a woman with her ankle wrapped with a standard ace bandage, the appendage hooked in a crook of the slot machine so she can pull the handle and keep her injury elevated too.

While my wife aids one of our sons at the buffet line, I hold the table and think of what I will say during “the talk.” This is a place that draws in poor people, I will tell them, largely blue-haired retirees on fixed incomes without hobbies, people who shouldn’t be here. And working class men and women who feel trapped by life and are willing to throw their lot on fate for a chance at escape. They watch Fox news. Or CNN. They don’t go to church. Or do. They live in Raymond Carver short stories.

When the kids return, I launch in. “This is a place that people come and throw away their money because they think they can make more without doing anything,” I begin, catching the eyes of a woman at the next table. Suddenly, I think I’m caught in a Flannery O’Connor short story. That I will necessarily caricaturize these people. That I like this cheap food. That my judgments necessarily judge me.

No, there’s a bigger reason for this and other casinos’ existences. I’ve heard casinos called the latest chapter in the Indian wars: that tribes use their sovereignty to target the sitting ducks of American culture. Then again, casinos are about jobs in notoriously jobless areas. Then again, Lake Mille Lacs has a carefully monitored industry in Lake Mille Lacs itself. Then again, I would dare to wager that 0.00 Native Americans work at Izaty’s Resort. Then again, I’ve heard rumors that tribes are not the only ones benefitting from casinos, that there are powerful individuals and management groups making beaucoup bucks behind the scenes.

I think about the people I’ve witnessed. Is this handicap day at Grand Casino, I wonder? Is it stereotype day? I think, this is the underbelly of the American economy, where the dispossessed draw in the dispossessed to dispossess them and repossess themselves. With certain powerful individuals looming like mysterious specters behind the scenes.

Then I think, why am I so judgmental? Why isn’t the casino experience akin to drinking a six pack of beer? What do I know about the woman in her fifties at the adjacent table and the man with her, wearing a Marine Corps hat? What if this great hall, half full with the elderly handicapped is something quite different? Maybe this hall is the new Salvation Army, with its army of cripples and castoffs of society?

I am in a Flannery O’Connor story and Mille Lacs Grand Casino is transforming into the kingdom of heaven before my eyes, a gathering of the poor and downtrodden.

Before we eat, I squint hard and deliver the softest version of “the talk” that I can, still catching the eyes of the woman at the next table, as if she’s listening in, shocked at my tale, my judgment. I don’t back down; I warn my children and direct them to the problems that can occur in the hall of wonders.

Eventually we all have our meals. My youngest son gets barbecue sausage, broasted chicken, green beans and carrots; my other son gets breakfast; my daughter gets a combination of breakfast, chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy; my wife has a regular Thanksgiving dinner; and I have the barbecued sausage, cabbage and stuffed peppers. Because we are on vacation, my wife lets my children have the pop of their choice. So much for health.

Because of the nature of the buffet, we’ve gotten our meals at different times and have started in eating at different times. With all that’s happening with our plates and in my mind, we forget to pray. So much for consistency.

Flannery O’Connor, eat your heart out.