Gambling takes ghoulish turnc

Reports out of Nova Scotia tell of a gambling casino in Halifax where the main attractions are “Titanic” slot machines. These stunningly sensitive tributes to the doomed ocean-liner celebrate the fact that 150 victims of the great ship’s April 1912 sinking lie buried in Halifax graves. Each machine pays off when three icebergs roll up together in its display window. Business is brisk.

But enough background. I will get right to the point. I am about to invest my life’s savings in a business venture which I am tentatively calling “The Ghoul Gambling Group” or, for short, GGG. Surely, down through time, there have been hundreds of well-known tragedies worthy of memoiralizing in slot machine payoff trios. The “Titanic” machines in Halifax represent only the tip of the iceberg in this promising field.

The preceding pun should not be taken to mean that I am looking lightly on this venture. On the contrary, I feel that there is a real opportunity here for blending the cultural with the commercial in a way that can make all gamblers feel good about themselves. No longer will they have to sneak by dark down the back stairs to church basements for clandestine weekly meetings with acronymic support groups.

Of course, for maximum return on investment, each GGG slot machine must be sited so as to make the most of the relationship between the tragedy being honored and the site itself.

Consider, for example, the atomic bombing in 1945 of the Japanese city of Hiroshima. More than 130,000 citizens perished. (By comparison, an almost laughingly mere 1,513 went down with the Titanic in that alleged tragedy.) Imagine how the present-day citizens of Hiroshima would flock to a casino in their city featuring slot machines paying off whenever three mushrooms appear side by side in the display. I weep to think of it.

Now imagine the same machines being set up in a casino in Fall River, Mass. Who there would feel an excitement anywhere to close in its intensity to that of the Hiroshima native when the three mushrooms roll into line? Understandably, there just wouldn’t be the same sense of history there, the same feeling of kinship with the victims of the tragedy being celebrated.

But there is a universality to this scheme which makes almost every venue open to it. The good people of Fall River, for example, might not understand the historical significance of the three-in-a-line mushrooms, but give them three ax-heads and the machines would know no rest. Civic pride is a great thing.

People everywhere are proud to be connected with a tragedy, so long as the connection is an indirect one, and they can be exploited (in the best sense, of course) by any scheme which plays into that connection.

I would hope to have made my point by now, but maybe there remain a few readers unconvinced that the inventory of tragedies is large enough to sustain a tragic-trio slot-machine business beyond t he short term. That being the possible case, permit me to cite two more tragedies with significant income-producing promise in the slot-machine field.

George Armstrong Cuter and his command were wiped out to a man by Sioux and Cheyenne at the Battle of Little Bighorn in Montana in 1876. Surely a slot machine paying off when three scalps appear side by side in the display window would be an immense money-maker in Montana for gamblers on both sides of the issue. Controversy is especially profitable in the slot-machine business when, as in this case, there is some question as to whether a given event was a tragedy or not.

Finally (but by no means exhausting the available examples), I might cite, as a fertile tragedy for gambling exploitation, the 1889 Johnstown Flood in southwest Pennsylvania on the Conemaugh River which drowned upward of 5,000 people. Pennsylvanians now residing in that area are no doubt itching for some memorial to the folks, some of them ancestors, who perished in that awful, albeit now potentially profitable, tragedy.

Let’s sate their sorrows. Let’s flood, if you will, the region with GGG slot machines which offer big payoffs to gamblers who are lucky enough to match three raindrops in a row. Never mind that such a venture would be a classic demonstration of excessive cash flow to the GGG. Concentrate, instead, on its heartfelt attempt to bring closure to the more than century-old guilt complexes of surviving descendents of the Johnstown victims. Closure, need I say, is a wonderful thing.

This offering can only be made by prospectus.

Charles Packard lives in Camden.