1970, Seattle, Washington

By Gregg Kalina

My dad was born a gambler. He loved action. In his heart, I don’t believe he really thought he’d ever come out on top, but the thrill, the gut buzz of risking cash on the outcome of something yet decided was a rush he couldn’t resist.

When I was very young, he’d sometimes play poker with his friends. I’d watch, fascinated, as he’d unfold the legs to the round, black poker table that was usually stored in the closet. Then he’d grab the circular poker chip dispenser, which housed the red, white, and blue markers, and place it in the middle of the table.

I was never allowed to stick around and watch the actual games. Those were at night, while I’d try to fall asleep against the background of loud male voices joking and laughing into hours I didn’t recognize.

My dad loved betting on just about anything. He and his buddies had these wagers they called Either Or. It was a more innocent period prior to when they started in with bookies, before any of them were making big salaries.

Either Or worked this way: One guy would pick a game, say the Redskins versus the Cowboys, and make up his own line (these were the days before the odds appeared in the newspaper). One guy, in effect, would play bookie.

“Redskins by six,” he’d declare, allowing the other guy to choose either the favored Redskins or the underdog Cowboys plus the six points. My dad and his friends bet only $10 or $20 back then, far from the thousands of dollars later bet on individual games.

I grew up watching my dad suffer constant tough beats: goal line fumbles that would have covered the spread; 104-yard interception returns (Joe Lavender of the Eagles once crushed him); four touchdown leads dwindle, then get backdoor-covered on meaningless final plays; or the last team of a three-team round robin loses its star quarterback early in a game.

I saw every possible way to lose imaginable. The funny thing was that I enjoyed it because it was the only thing keeping a dialogue going between my dad and me, especially during my teenage years.

I was a football nut too. I bought all the magazines, watched all the games, and even ran a small bookie service for a while at Roosevelt High. My dad and I discussed all the games in detail.

I remember once giving him a lock on the Iowa State Cyclones versus Kansas. I’d scouted the game for weeks and anxiously awaited its arrival on the schedule. I talked my dad into betting a few hundred dollars on it, and it came in easily. As stupid as it sounds, it made me feel good that I could give some knowledge of my own to my dad. Sports were about all I had to offer back then.

One Saturday night, after my dad had done pretty well gambling on the day games, I went up to my room to see if I could dial in any games on our pseudo shortwave radio. It was this big clunky thing I’d inherited due to my constant searching of its bands for sporting events. So I began twisting the knobs until I found something I couldn’t believe.

LSU.

Back then, the Louisiana State Tigers were a football power, and anyone venturing into Baton Rouge on a frenzied Saturday night seldom came out alive. My dad loved the Bayou Bengals, betting on them all the time. And I knew that he’d put something down on them that night. So I couldn’t believe my luck when I received the signal.

I’d never pulled in anything from so far away. I could get San Francisco, but that was about it. Yet on this particular night, I was reaching LSU football.

My immediate reflex was to call out to my dad. But I wanted to make sure that the reception didn’t fade out; it was so extraordinary that I figured that it was some type of ghost signal that wouldn’t last. I’d confronted lots of those during my days of combing for games. This one, however, seemed to have a little extra zip, and it stayed audible for a couple minutes, sketchy but coherent.

Finally, I got a score, an agreeable one for a LSU bettor, and I rushed downstairs toward the den to find my dad and tell him of the improbable news. Those were the days long before ESPN, the Internet, and other wire services could update you every 10 seconds.

“Dad,” I said in an excited but furtive voice, “I don’t know how it happened, but I got the LSU game on the shortwave upstairs. It’s coming in, so you can hear it. It’s scratchy, but it’s coming in.”

My dad was in his chair, reading. He looked up at me like a kid getting the big present he’d asked for. Then he arose. “Well, c’mon.” He led the way up to my room, bounding the stairs like he’d shed 10 years.

And there we crouched on the floor, taking turns holding the aerial, moving our bodies in the exact positions that affected positive reception. And we listened to football from Baton Rouge while my dad puffed on his Viceroys, his face glowing like the embers to his cigarette, as his beloved LSU Tigers came in like they had eyes.

It was the kind of night none of my other siblings could ever share with my dad, for he and I were each other’s fingerprints in so many ways. And none reflected it as obviously as what took place in my room that night together.

I wonder now if he’d even remember it, so inconsequential when stacked up to the expired decades. It really doesn’t make any difference because all that counts is that at the time, it made me happy.

Gregg Kalina has been writing for 35 years. His book, Tales from a Nearly Normal Childhood, will be published soon. He also coaches basketball at O’dea High School in Seattle.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 | Email This Post

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