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On Water Gamboling, Casino Gambling, And A Fond Farewell

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By STEVE OTTO

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 30, 2008

Red Hogan e-mailed a letter commenting on a recent column and suggested another way of saving gas he hadn't seen much written about. I've known Hogan for about 30 years. I don't think Red is his real name but it is all I've ever heard.

"Fifty-eight years ago last month, at 16 years old, I made my first trip on a tug boat. On the Erie Canal. It stayed in my blood for 10 years and another three years on the Great Lakes, before working on a grain ship south to Tampa, where I made a lot of runs to Cuba until Fidel Castro took over.

"I told my wife a couple of weeks ago that the reason for the decline of commerce on the waterways was that trucks could do the job faster. Then just today I saw a story about traffic being up again on the Erie Canal because it was cheaper than using the New York Thruway."

I called Red up and met him for coffee. He is a regular with a bunch of guys over at Tony's restaurant in Ybor. He has been hanging around there so long that his neat little ponytail has gone white.

Red believes that water traffic everywhere is going to be on the upswing. He told me a few stories about his trips to Cuba that a couple of his coffee friends think seem to get better with every telling, but he does believe that it won't be that much longer before the water route between Tampa and Havana is again going at full steam, so to speak. I hope so. Red needs some new stories.

Casinos: A Sure Bet?

A different take on the economy and how we all feel about it comes from Mal Greenberg, who tells this story:

"Today's column 6/27 was right on. National gloom and doom don't exist as long as your family's finances are intact, much like the proverbial ostrich. Try what I did.

"Take the Frau out to Orient Road and check out the casino at the Indian reservation.

"I'm not much of a gambler myself. My nickel and dime poker game every two weeks is about the extent of it.

"We have been to Las Vegas and I was curious about what Tampa's version is. As we approached the casino I was really more interested in looking at it than gambling, but I did have my nickels.

"We went on a Monday, actually it was Memorial Day. The parking garage was jammed. I never imagined there would be so many people gambling on a day when you would think everyone was home barbecuing. Through some doors and up an elevator to an enormous casino floor, where, I believe they had an amplified recording of what it sounds like in Las Vegas casinos. We walked through what seemed like hundreds of rows of what they used to call one-arm bandits, only now the arms have been replaced by an internal computer.

"The place was mobbed. It required some special skills just to find an available machine and beat out all the old ladies that were running for it. What's worse in my mind, Steve, is that most of them had a card, some kind of special credit card they bought at the cashier's cage.

"From what I could deduce they would insert the card in the machine, which in turn would deduct or add money as they won or lost. Most of them had strings around the cards and wore them around their necks.

"Trying to stick to my limit, my wife and I searched for a nickel machine and by golly we found one. The few nickel machines were fairly empty. I lost 45 cents. I could go on, the price of food at the food court, the huge poker room. I don't know.

"I would be willing to place a bet that most of the patrons must have real concerns about paying for gas, food and rent bills every month. Still they tether themselves to those machines and keep on smiling until they leave and realize what they have. I urge you to try it Steve. Grab the Frau and take her on over."

I don't think so, Mark. The Frau is a school teacher and we both make only solid investments in our future. Besides, those lottery tickets are still only a buck.

A Gracious Thanks To Louise

A newspaper is made up of so many things, not the least of which is what we used to call the morgue, where every story was clipped and filed. Later on it became the less-interesting sounding "library;" now it is the more lofty sounding "Archives and Research." For many years our head librarian was Louise Lagette, who passed away two weeks ago in Charleston, S.C., where she had been the Courier and Post's librarian before coming to Tampa.

In her field, Louise was nationally known and helped set the standard for libraries as one technology after another revolutionized the field. She did all of this despite fighting breathing difficulties all her life after developing TB in her early 20s. I remember going into the library at night where she would be sitting, trying to catch her breath before going back to whatever she was doing.

A remarkable person, Louise Lagette, with an accent that dripped of the Old South.

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