The High Life-Gambling in Western Massachusetts

Below is the column for the February, 2019 issue of the Sturbridge Times Town & Country Living Magazine.

We don't make as much stuff in New England as we used to so some believe a casino is the ticket for jobs and urban revitalization.  We are not so sure.

Betting on Springfield

By Richard Morchoe

The Game, shown on Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre (1965), starred Cliff Robertson and his then wife, Dina Merrill.  He was someone who wandered into the wrong place. Robertson played Quincey Parke who came upon a high stakes game of baccarat at a casino frequented by society.

Parke was a fish out of water in a place of glamour.  Merrill plays Maralise who takes Robertson’s character under her wing.  Parke is on a winning streak, but to stay in the game, must dress the part and wear formal clothing.

Eventually, the high life is too much for him and Parke expires.    It takes a lot to keep up the pretense of being upper class.  Monaco is not for everyone.

During the late 60s when I was pretending to be a college student, a friend and I hitchhiked to Daytona for Spring Week.  Someone told us it was better and cheaper in Nassau and the flight was in our budget.

It was a great time and we were able to stay in a rooming house for $2.50 a night each.   Not the Ritz, it was easier to rough it at that age.

There was a lot going on.  Aristotle Onassis and Jacqueline Kennedy had arrived on his yacht.  Yacht was an understatement.  The vessel was a converted corvette.  No, that was not a Chevy sports car, but a class of small warships used by many navies, though not ours.  Nassau was a place frequented by the wealthy, as well as near derelict collegians on vacation.

Nassau also had a casino in what was known as Paradise Island.  True, it was unlike the grand spots on the Riviera, but it was not without class.  To be admitted, one had to wear at least a jacket and tie.  We put on blazers and our only cravats and went over.

That evening, if we weren’t the least best dressed, it was by accident.  The dealers and croupiers were all formally attired and the guests, though not as well accoutered as Monte Carlo, were making an effort to look good.

We played the slots and I made one pass at roulette.  Even at that age, the realization that all was in favor of the house led us to put a quick end to our participation.  There was enough debauchery going on elsewhere that coming home sunburnt and broke was easily achievable.

Around that time, our nation was still somewhat puritanical.  Here in New England, that is our settlers’ legacy. When New Hampshire instituted its first in the nation lottery in 1964, it was a big break with the past.  Supposedly, our governor, Endicott “Chub” Peabody, had warned the Granite State’s John King not to sign the sweepstakes bill.

Though known as a liberal, Chub was a direct descendant of the stern Puritans who settled the region.  There is only so much one can deviate from ancestry.

Eventually, the Bay State would give over and why not?  In urban areas we already had the lottery. It was just not a government run enterprise.  The logic was inescapable, besides the Commonwealth has never seen a money raising impost it didn’t like and this one would fleece a willing populace.

Still, casinos were nowhere in sight other than in that land of sin, Nevada.  That’s a place anything goes.  The Mustang Ranch, after all, had no wild horses.

That would change.  Tribes of the indigenous nations began fighting back against Caucasian oppressors by taking them to the cleaners at the gaming tables.  Their reservations being at least semi-sovereign, it was difficult to tell them what not to do on their own land.

Tribal nations opening gaming halls were mostly in western states.  Here in Nova Anglia, the descendants of the natives have been much assimilated and in our neighbor, Connecticut, there was no federally recognized tribe.  

The Pequots had been thoroughly defeated in an early colonial war.  Over the centuries they had only held on to their tiny reservation by a thread. Yet, in the 20th Skip Hayward, a one-eighth Pequot would revitalize them, secure federal recognition and, wait for it, get a casino.

That casino, known as Foxwoods, is quite a complex and might compare to those of Europe, except for who they let in.  That would be you and me, folks.  Yup, the great unwashed are welcomed with open arms.  In our family’s only foray into the Southern Connecticut pleasure palace, we encountered a complex to cater to every legal (at least) sybaritic taste imaginable when not gambling.

We had not come to take a flyer on augmenting our meager fortune.  The Peguots have put up a wonderful museum that documents their existence going back to before they arrived and that was our destination.  After, we went to the buffet, traipsing through the gambling areas enroute.  No one was exquisitely attired, but it did look like the tribe was raking it in.

If one New England casino worked, why not more?  That idea had occurred to others.  The Mohegan Tribe, who allied with the Brits to beat up the Pequots in the 17th Century, wanted and got Mohegan Sun.  It looked like the Town of Palmer to the west of Sturbridge would get one, but the voters could not be swayed by the full court public relations press of the backers.

Springfield, though, would succumb.

There is Industrial Revolution history in Springfield.  The famous Armory produced guns for many wars. The gasoline engine was invented there and it was home to the still iconic Indian Motorcycle.  In the prior two centuries it was known as “The City of Progress.”  Less so now.

Would Springfield be nothing without gaming?  The city did work hard to get it.  Maybe there were other businesses that might have served as well.   It would seem a casino is an idea that arises when there is not a better one.

Last spring, with much hoopla, MGM Springfield, opened its doors and has been operating since.  There have been claims that it is meeting expectations while a morning radio commentator said the several gambling dens now available are sharing a market that has not increased.

Though not feeling overly drawn to the experience, my wife and I found ourselves in Springfield on a Sunday afternoon and easily got a parking space on State Street close to the doors.  Upon entering the din of machines was inescapable.  As one got nearer, there were blinking lights to accompany the sound as players poked and prodded buttons.  Everything on the machines that flashed on and off was of bright, garish colors.

Interestingly, for a weekend afternoon, it did not seem even half full.  Among the blackjack tables, not as suffused with the sensory overload elsewhere, there were a few dealers unoccupied and looking bored.

The gamblers at machines were intense.  They seemed to see nothing else other than the banging and ringing going on in front of them.  My wife noticed that none of them, as well as people walking around were smiling.  Unlike Disney World, it was not the “Happiest Place on Earth.”

Of course, there are dining options.  Cal Mare seemed Italian seafood themed, but also had pizza and meat.  It looked appealing and almost empty.  The Chandler Steakhouse was closed up tight.

One spot doing a roaring business was TAP Sports Bar.   The clientele were there to watch football.  Beer, pub food, and sports on TV packed the house.  If there was any deeper meaning than an abiding love for the Patriots, it was beyond us.

The poker room was active, but even there a big table was empty.  As you entered that room, there was a bureau with pamphlets on it.  One read “Anything You Need To Know About Gambling?  The other would tell you to “Know when to step away.”  The positioning was not obtrusive.  No one was looking for the literature anyway, and I was the only customer.

As not to the manor born, it is impossible for me to say why the upper classes would want to while away their time at the tables in Southern France.  Paradise Island was more understandable.  People were away for vacation and escape and would go home remembering that part as well as the beaches and nightlife.

MGM Springfield was no fun.  One supposes it might be, maybe once a year and taking in a show.  The players looked like they were working harder than at a job.  All this despite the management’s efforts to give it some allure. 

In the Twilight Zone Episode, “A Nice Place to Visit,” a man arrives in a casino and wins everything and can have all he wants.  He thinks himself in heaven.  Soon, however, he is bored and tells his guide he would rather go to hell.  The guide tells him he is in hell. 

Review of Reporter: A Memoir By Seymour M. Hersh

Below is my Review of Seymour Hersh's Reporter: A Memoir as submitted to the editor of The Sturbridge Times Town & Country Living Magazine for the October issue.

Enjoy.

Just The Facts

Reporter: A Memoir

By Seymour M. Hersh

He is maybe the most important investigative journalist of the age. Seymour Hersh broke the story of the My Lai massacre, exposed Kissinger’s wiretapping of staff and told the world about the disgrace of Abu Ghraib.

Yet it almost never happened as Hersh notes in his recent book, Reporter: A Memoir .

Just out of the University of Chicago with an English degree and an indifferent academic record, the young man started at the law school and dropped out. Hersh needed work and was not getting offers.

He heard about City News Bureau from a friend. CNB was a service that provided stories, mostly about street crime to the big newspapers. Hersh applied and waited.

The young man had changed apartments and never updated his contact info for the job.

Hersh came back to his old digs for Friday night cards. Poker was not his game, and past midnight, his money was gone and he crashed on a couch. The phone woke him up and it was the news bureau with a job offer.

Next time mom warns you about bad habits such as gambling, tell her about Hersh.

City News Bureau was sort of a boot camp for its new hires. Luckily for Hersh, he was no stranger to hard work. Young Sy had to labor in the family dry cleaning business as he entered his teenage years and when not out of them, take it over upon his father’s death.

His first chores in the news game were routine drudgery, yet he was taken with the job. Hersh tells of what may have been the most important thing he learned at CNB, “check it out.” Before a story was called in to rewrite, the reporter had to be sure. To quote one of the senior men at the bureau, Arnold Dornfeld, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” It would stay with him.

It was not a straight line to the big scoops and fame and fortune. He got to see the corrupt underbelly of Chicago, and quickly realized he was not going to be the guy who cleaned it up. Understanding the parameters of reality is a useful lesson.

He would do a lot of journeyman work in the news trade, before getting to the big leagues.

Hersh was on his own when the My Lai story arrived via a tip, and he followed up with a lot of leg work. If you want a quick course on what it takes to locate the subject of your story, the chapter “Finding Calley” will do. The author kept at it and his sniffing around Fort Benning seemed a bit daring.

He got the story and now needed it published. Look and Life had expressed some interest, but passed on it. The New York Review of Books was willing, but set a condition Hersh could not agree to.

David Obst of Dispatch News Service wanted the story. Dispatch News Service was not a big player, but they took it and got it out into the world and Hersh would get a Pulitzer. The story is renowned to this day.

After that, the reporter’s star continued to rise. It was not always smooth, but he would keep at it and his byline appeared in the nation’s important journals. He had a relationship with the New York Times and editor Abe Rosenthal. Rosenthal was a giant and it could be contentious, but from the book, it’s obvious there was a lot of respect. Hersh hung up on Rosenthal, slamming the phone down twice before he even knew him.

Much of his work has appeared in the New Yorker and the London Review of Books.

For the Times, he covered Washington and with that, Henry Kissinger. Kissinger does not come off well in Reporter. Hersh would say of him, “The man lied the way most people breathed--and worse.”

Kissinger set wiretaps on his own staff and though that might not have said much in the man’s favor, it led to some humor. Morton Halperin was a trusted aide that Kissinger had surveilled. His wife, Ina, suspected that, as she heard beeps and said so on a recorded conversation. “The agent monitoring her phone wrote, “There isn’t any beeping on the line. Ina has a complex her phone is being tapped.””

In the chapter where he discusses the Kennedy administration and research that led to his book about it, he was offered documents that would be important to include. In a too good to be true situation, Hersh kept up trying to be completely sure as to the genuineness of the material.

Finally, the papers were proved fraudulent. It was a blow, and who would want to admit to being duped. Hersh should not have felt too bad as most of us would have been bamboozled.

In the end, his thoroughness led to praise. Tom Powers in the Times Sunday Book Review wrote of TheDark Side of Camelot,“Hersh has done his legwork, he is not trying to smuggle things in from other books. He tells us what he’s found up front, making judgment easier for reviewers and blood enemies alike. The source notes in the back can be a little cumbersome, but compared with investigative reporters who provide no source notes whatever, Hersh is standing in the choir with Edward Gibbon.”

Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published between 1776 and 1788 is one of the most important works in the Western Canon. No accolade could be higher.

Reporter was a pleasure to read as a stroll down memory lane. It is almost a history of the years from before Vietnam to the current “War on Terror.” People who remember the events that Hersh covered will find the refresher useful. Those younger should read it to see the world from the vantage point of a man who did not start out in the era of the 24-hour news cycle. Indeed, it should be taught in colleges. Things are moving fast in media and no matter your politics, it is important to get more depth. It is also valuable to get it from a man who writes without cant or wearing his ideology on his sleeve. This is not to say the author is without a worldview, but it does not color his reporting.

If Seymour Hersh’s book says anything to this generation, it’s “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”

His last chapter is “America’s war on terror” and the author has been reporting on that. As it is still ongoing, expect more as well as a book on Donald Cheney. We have not heard the last of the man.