The real Degenerate Trifecta

Dear Cousin Sal and the “Degenerate” Trifecta,

Love the show, even though my gambling days are now long ago and far away. During my well spent youth, some 40 years ago, I was one of the poker bums hanging around the legal card rooms in Northern California. I would drive any distance in any weather (even during one of Napa’s major floods) to play cards with misfits, losers, drunks, criminals, addicts, and the occasional sharp.  I’m not writing to describe the tedium of 24-hour games of lowball (poker is truly where time goes to die) in nasty roadhouses (where a few signs read, “Liquor in the front, poker in the rear”), but to challenge the notion that Brother Bri, Harry and the Parley Kid are true degenerates—although Harry might just qualify!

I was a weekday regular at a Marin County card room located midway between George Lucas’s estate and San Quentin. Three of the regular players were murdered by other poker players during my dozen year tenure at Elmo’s 666 (a pseudonym—because the club somehow still exists). The other players shrugged off each of these killings with jokes about needing “another live one.” Elmo’s had a legion of degenerates—with handles like Two Dog Andy, Square Head Rick, Gene the Machine, and Mary Pizza, but I’ll focus this note on a veritable trifecta of degenerates.

Hippie Bob eked out a something resembling a living by playing poker 16 hours a day—the hours Elmo’s card room was open. Despite being one of the best players at Elmo’s, he was at times broke and homeless. During one dry California summer, he took up residence on the roof of the card room. If he was asleep when the game started at 10 a.m., I would go into the parking lot behind the club and throw handfuls of gravel in his direction to wake him up. When his luck finally ran out, he suffered the humiliation of working as a dealer for the very game he’d beaten for two decades.

Lowball Dave was the worst loser in the history of poker—well maybe not, as World Series main event winter Puggy Pearson once urinated on a dealer after a bad beat in a big bame. Let’s just say that Lowball’s equanimity would be challenged when he was dealt a cooler or beaten by a one-outer.  His antics included throwing cards, attempting to tip over the table, and screaming at the top of his lungs. His most famous fit occurred when his pat six-four was beaten by a two-card wheel draw. Lowball started screaming and babbling in a language known only to himself, while waving his fists in the air. After about 30 seconds of cacophonous commotion, his right fist collided with his jaw, knocking himself out. I could never figure out if he packed a hell of punch or just had a weak chin.

Kerouac was a successful ad copywriter and family man when he stopped into Elmo’s for a beer. He happened to notice a game of poker in the back room. Two years later, he was unemployed, divorced and broke. In desperation, he went to SoCal to try out for Jeopardy and somehow made the cut. I say “somehow,” not because Kerouac lacked intelligence, but because he didn’t clean-up well. His fingers and teeth were tarred yellow from the six or seven packs of unfiltered “humps” he smoked daily. His shirt and pants looked as if he’d slept in them for weeks, which he had. Gambling everything on a Daily Double and Final Jeopardy, Kerouac won $5,600 on his first day and ended a grand or so in the hole his second day. Having received and gambled away the Jeopardy money by the time the show was on the air, Kerouac proceeded to borrow a few hundreds here and there, based upon his “soon-to-arrive Jeopardy check.” Unfortunately for Kerouac, one of the sources of money was Bruno the Chin, the local loan shark. A couple of weeks later Bruno came looking for Kerouac, who wisely disappeared forever.

Now those guys were degenerates!

Best regards from your fan,

George in Mexico