See this story at BrooklynDaily.com.
By Carmine Santa Maria
Brooklyn Daily
I’m madder than an air traffic controller with high definition attention deficit disorder over the fact that for the life of me I can no longer keep a train of thought from leaving the station with the passengers aboard!
Look, you all know the ol’Screecher has the mind of an elephant that never forgets, and I’ve always prided myself on the fact that whenever I write or tell a story I get right to the point, make may argument as clear as day, and have you walking away realizing both that I was right all along and that you’ve gotten smarter just from being in my presence.
But as I age, I am finding more and more that my steel trap of a mind is starting to rust, and sometimes I start talking about one thing when I’m actually explaining another.
Case in point is my shopoholic wife who is always bragging about how much money she saves whenever she’s spending my money. It gets me wondering if ObamaCare covers this disease that is as destructive as alcoholism.
Look, I don’t want to go on a rant here, but my wife spends so much money on her credit cards that they all send her “get well” cards if she doesn’t use them in a day or two, figuring she is sick. You wouldn’t believe the amount of “we miss you messages” I get from the Macy’s, Targets, Wallmarts, and Home Shopping Club cards she fans out like a gin rummy player every time she walks past a cash register.
And with all this shopping going on on the line, you can’t believe what it has done for the delivery industry. Not only is it flourishing, it is causing traffic and parking jams in front of my house, not to mention the overtime the traffic agents get paid to ticket these behemoths that have replaced station wagons full of kids heading to Sears.
But this column isn’t about DeBlasio’s brigade of coffer stuffers. No sir. It is about hope.
Sharon and I went to Atlantic City to celebrate my forthcoming 79th birthday on V-J Day, and of course, anyone of youse born after 1979 won’t know that my birthday is not only about celebrating me, but also the fact that the Big One ended after we dropped Little Boy and Fat Man, and I’m not talking about yours truly.
Which brings me back to hope. Our country has changed a lot since the end of the war, with China, once our ally, now our landlord.
I’m just glad we’ve all learned to live together in a peaceful society for the benefit of our children and generations to come. Let’s hope that can be achieved.
Where was I? Oh, yeah, Atlantic City. Lady Luck was not being nice to me or Sharon, so our fortune kept consistently dwindling down to a precious few. However, the accommodations were beautiful, and our bellies were full of comped dinners.
Still, I suggested we go next door to the Showboat and see it one more time before it closes for good at the end of August. I hear Lady Luck is also abandoning other Resort Casino in Atlantic city too I guess because the guys behind the cameras are doing something wrong. I sure hope AC survives the onslaught of too many neighboring casinos and on the line gambling.
To cheer ourselves up, we had a nice steak dinner at the Taj’s “Plate” dinner, then down to the casino for monotonous losing. With just 10 bucks left, I decided to play the triple poker machine at three quarters at a time figuring $10 gets you 40 quarters, so losing 75 cents a clip gets you about 50 chances to win something (according to my math). I went down to about 20 quarters and got tired or pressing the buttons, so I put in the maximum bet of 15 — and hit a straight flush for 500 quarters! I turned to my neighbor, who she said I should keep playing, so I did and got two more rows of straight flushes for a total of $375.
Not pressing my new found luck, I cashed out and went looking for Sharon, who was still losing at her penny machine. I told her to cash-out and I’ll get the car.
Thank you Lady Luck, I hope the next time you visit us sooner — and more often!
Screech at you next week!