Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader (27 page)

In 1955 a book was returned to the Cambridge University library that was 288 years overdue.

How to Win:
Make sure the game isn’t rigged. Ask about the weights of the bottles and the ball and don’t play until you get a satisfactory answer. Ask to examine the bottles. Check whether they’re all the same weight or if the weight is distributed in each bottle unevenly.

• Carnies say the best way to win at Spill the Milk is a direct hit in the triangular area where the three bottles meet.

The Booth:
“High Striker”

The Object:
Using an oversized rubber mallet, hit a cast-iron striker to the top of a 21-foot-high tower to ring the bell.

How It’s Rigged:
Most High Strikers in use today are honest, but, according to one manufacturer, some early models used several “guy wires” that held up the tower. Unknown to players, one of the guy wires led from a stake directly down the front of the tower. The striker traveled along this wire.

• The unscrupulous agent would lean up against the phony guy wire and keep it taut enough so a player could ring the bell on the first and second tries. But on the player’s third swing (the one that could win the prize), the agent would stop leaning on the wire. With the wire slack, the striker brushed against the tower as it traveled skyward, and friction prevented it from reaching the gong. The player had no chance to win the grand prize for three rings.

How to Win:
“The trade secret is to hit the pad squarely, just as if you were splitting wood,” according to the manufacturer.

The Booth:
“Basketball”

The Object:
Toss the basketball into a hoop while standing behind a designated foul line.

How It’s Rigged:
Some operators overinflate the balls, so they have more bounce and are tougher to get through the hoop. Others don’t attach the hoops securely to the backboard, so the rims vibrate when struck by the ball. This keeps rim shots from going in.

How many Bibles are sold or distributed throughout the world every minute? 47.

Have you ever wondered how Las Vegas became the gambling capital of the world? Here’s the story.

N
AME

“Las Vegas” means “the meadows” or “the fertile plains” in Spanish. The city acquired this name in the early 1800s, when it was a peaceful rest stop on the Old Spanish Trail.

HISTORY.
Ironically, the Mormons were the first to settle Las Vegas, in 1855. They built the first church, first fort, and first school in Nevada, only to abandon them three years later. Pioneers were still using the site as a watering hole and, as one missionary noted, few could be induced to attend the church. “Only one man attended,” he wrote. “The rest of them were gambling and swearing at their camps.”

Las Vegas didn’t become a real town until almost 50 years later. Because of its central location and ample water supply, the railroad decided it would make an ideal stop on the transcontinental train line. They bought the land and, one scorching hot day in 1905, auctioned it off to 1,200 eager settlers. A few days later, the town appeared: a haphazard assortment of canvas tent saloons, gambling clubs, and drinking parlors that quickly established the city’s character and reputation.

Despite prohibitionist protests, Las Vegas maintained its early emphasis on night life and continued to flourish throughout the 1920s. “Such places as the Red Rooster, the Blue Goose, the Owl, and Pair-o-Dice were temporarily inconvenienced from time to time by raids from federal agents,” writes one local historian. “But they were, of course, as safe as a church from local interference.”

In 1931 the Nevada state legislature enacted two well-publicized “reforms”: They liberalized divorce laws, changing residency requirements from six months to six weeks, and officially legalized gambling. Now Las Vegas had two unique attractions. While the rest of the country was suffering through the Great Depression, Las Vegas casinos made a killing catering to the workers constructing nearby Boulder Dam, as well as the 230,000 tourists who came to see it. (Las Vegas also became a significant divorce center after movie star Clark Gable’s wife, Rhea, chose it as the place to divorce him.)

Every year, 5% of Americans go on cruises.

The first full-fledged resort, the plush El Rancho Vegas, was built in 1940. Another (the New Frontier) followed, and the notorious Vegas “strip” was established. A military base and a magnesium plant were installed nearby in the early 1940s, and both brought more people to the area and kept the town prosperous through World War II. By 1970 more than half of Nevada’s entire population lived in Las Vegas.

MAIN INDUSTRY.
Las Vegas as we know it today might never have been born if it weren’t for gangster Ben “Bugsy” Siegel. Wanted for murder in New York, Siegel was sent out West to set up a booking service for the mob and became obsessed with the idea of creating a “glittering gambling mecca in the desert.” He borrowed $6 million in mob money and constructed the Flamingo Hotel, a lavish olive-green castle surrounded by a 40-acre garden that was planted literally overnight in imported soil brought in by truck.

Unfortunately for Bugsy, the Flamingo was initially a bust. To top it off, the mob found out he’d been skimming profits. They had him killed in 1947. But business at the Flamingo picked up, and over the next few years Mafia-owned resort casinos sprang up all along Highway 91, the Las Vegas strip.

According to
The Encyclopedia of American Crime
, for example:

Meyer Lansky put up much of the money for the Thunderbird.

The Desert Inn was owned by the head of the Cleveland mob.

The Dunes “was a goldmine” for the New England mob.

The Sahara “was launched by the Chicago mob.”

“Despite the huge profits,” the
Encyclopedia
adds, “by the mid-’50s the mob had started selling off its properties to individuals and corporations. In the 1960s billionaire Howard Hughes started buying one casino after another. In the early 1970s the mob’s interest in Vegas was reportedly at a low point, but by the close of the decade, many observers concluded, mobsters were returning to the scene.”

Fifty-eight percent of Americans believe they have above-average IQ’s.

In 1984, when we were still fighting of the Cold War, Robert Conquest and Jon Manchip White wrote a book called
What to Do When the Russians Come.
We may laugh now, but at one time, the threat of a communist takeover seemed very real to oddballs like these guys. These excerpts give you an idea of what they thought life in the U.S. would look like...after the invasion.

Y
ou will be anxious to know how someone of your particular professional and ethnic and political and temperamental background is likely to fare [under Soviet rule]. In the pages that follow, we look into the special conditions facing a wide variety of these, of a reasonable representative nature, From Academic to Farmer, from Realtor to Industrial Worker, from Homosexual to Feminist...

ACADEMIC.
When universities reopen after the crisis, student numbers will have gone down. Some will be dead, some in prison, some in the partisan movement. Private, religious and racially or ethnically oriented institutions will have been taken over by the state. All departments...will be purged of “incorrect” teachers with great thoroughness. Colleges will be run by Communist-appointed functionaries, including representatives of the secret police, and there will be no “academic freedom.” If you are at the moment an academic with Communist or Marxist leanings, you can expect to become at least a dean or the head of your department.... Sneaking and denunciation will be the order of the day, and since the arrest rate will be one of the highest in any field, you will be hard put to trust your colleagues, for you will not be able to tell which of them have become police informers, either of their own volition or through blackmail....Be generous with your grades, otherwise disgruntled students will denounce you.

BARBER/BEAUTICIAN.
Any but the most orthodox haircuts will be heavily discouraged. You...will become standardized and paid as a public servant, under a new Department of Internal Trade. Most beauty salons will close for lack of patrons with enough money to be able to afford such luxuries. A few will remain open to serve the new Communist elite and the wives of Soviet generals.

Most varieties of nuts can remain fresh in their shells for as long as a year.

DENTIST.
The level of dental care in the population will fall. Dental stocks will dwindle and dental equipment will deteriorate for lack of spare parts. Dental techniques will become basic, with extraction taking precedent over filling. Dentures will be poorly made and ill-fitting when available. Extractions will be performed without anesthesia because of the absence of supply. Many dentists will give up in despair.

ENVIRONMENTALIST.
No public organization, demonstration, or other activity will, of course, be permitted. As for nuclear power stations, they will be developed to the limit. No sort of objection to them will be permitted under any circumstances. However, there will be one area in which improvement will have been made: The shortage of private cars will mean less pollution from gasoline.

FUNERAL DIRECTOR.
Services will be speedy, drab, and uniform. Atheist forms of committal will be encouraged, religious forms banned or perfunctorily performed. Only in rare cases will services be carried out in churches or other religious buildings, the majority of which will be closed. However, Communist burials, while lacking frills, will at least be inexpensive.

GARAGE EMPLOYEE.
There will be very few cars on the roads and consequently no need for a large number of gas stations....Although there are fewer cars, production and servicing standards will be such that motor mechanics’ skills will be saleable on the black market. And you may also try your hand at, and profit by, the repairing and refurbishing of bicycles.

JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY MEMBER.
Your life will, of course, be automatically forfeit.

LAWYER.
Lawyers, will, in general, be regarded as a hostile class element. This will be more so in their case because so many of them are...concerned with rights, balances, constitutionality, and common law—all totally opposed to the Communist principle. Casualties, therefore, will be high.