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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Where is a casino story as promised PP?[/quote]
Atlantic City part 1 
This is taking up way more space than I thought it would.

1992, I’m 19  working at a boatyard during the day and going to school at night. I’d mostly help haul boats out for maintenance, when the boats came out the bottoms were fouled with  barnacles, sea squirts and  algae the hitchhikers would knock a couple miles per hour off top speed and cause way higher fuel burn. The boats were coming out for mechanical or electrical repairs so it made sense to clean the hulls when the opportunity was there. I’d take a steel blade scraper on a 4’ wooden handle and my job was to scrape all this crap off, barnacles would burst, squirts would do their thing and when the hull was clean I’d be covered in mashed sea life- like you opened a thousand oysters with a baseball bat, it sprayed everywhere.

In addition to maintenance and repair the marina provided a launch service, the harbor was tight so there wasn’t room to tie up many boats on the dock but you could keep your boat on a mooring in the harbor and from six am to midnight seven days a week there was a launch available to take you and your friends out your boat and then bring you back to shore when you were done.

In between scraping and cleaning my job was to run people out with a pontoon boat that had seating on three sides.  I’d help them onto their vessels with coolers, steady shaky guests as they crossed onto the owners boats, once they were all on their boat I’d leave them to their day of drinking, fishing and sailing around. Most would come back before dark, once they were tied off to the mooring they’d give three short blasts on the horn or would call me on  VHF. When it was time to pick them up they’d be sunburnt, drunk, sometimes bleeding from foreheads and I’d reverse the process and bring them back to the dock, help them offload and if they were in really rough shape I’d carry all I could back up to the parking lot to load their casualties and coolers into the car. Tips were appreciated but not necessary and usually consisted of warm beers that they could no longer stand the sight of. During the week it was pretty quiet but the weekends were busy and I worked every other till midnight.

The customer that asked me to go to Atlantic City owned a few restaurants, one of them turned into a club at night and didn't check ID if you were dressed well, I was a frequent customer but I didn’t know him from there.  I’d take him out to his boat maybe once during the week and once on the weekend, his was a 65’ ketch and most times  he’d take it out by himself, three sails to manage by one person seemed crazy but he always came back happy. A few times he asked for help and I’d tie the launch off to his boat to help him set up a spinnaker, it’s a sail that’s made from much thinner material than normal and only used when the wind is really light, spinnakers are gigantic- like completely cover a townhouse huge. We’d work together to get it all clipped in, I’d crumple it up at the bow and bear hug to compress it, tie up with a rope so he could let it go when out of the harbor.

I got to know him over about nine months, sometimes he would come down to check on his boat and we’d talk, he was great with a story, an easy laugh and he remembered every single thing I told him no matter how small the detail.  I had another job in addition to the marina and going to school, I think he was sort of impressed by it because every time he’d see me he would say this nickname he gave me along with “don’t stay in bed unless you make money in bed, go get em kid!”.  There was a storm Saturday and he came down to check on his boat on Sunday morning, we got to talking and I told him about how I lost nearly all my weeks pay gambling with my friends the night before. He said, "if you’re up to it would you mind taking a ride down to Atlantic City for me?”.  I told him I had work and school all week but I could go next Saturday, I figured he needed me to pick up a boat part or something.

The following Friday I went to his house, it was beautiful inside and it sat up on a hill overlooking the sound. There was a woman cooking who didn’t even look up at me, he led me to his living room which looked out at the water and sat right next to me which felt weird because there was like 20’ of couch, there was a resin coffee table with a nautical star in it. 
He handed me an envelope and told me to open it, it was all $100’s.  I slid the bills out and counted them into piles of a thousand.
“Five thousand,” I said when I was done.

“Take two and put it in your pocket, put the other three back in the envelope.”
I did what he said. 
“What’s in your pocket is yours, but you’re gonna spend what’s in the envelope exactly how I tell you.”

“Listen to me” He leaned forward and was really serious.

“You need to be at the front desk of the Tropicana Saturday between five and six. You can only check in with the Spanish girl, if she’s not there you wait. You might have to jump out of line, I don’t care. Only the Spanish girl, just her.” (I realize this sounds racist now but its what he said)

He handed me a second thinner envelope.

“Give her this when you check in.” I nodded and tried to seem cool but I was so exited I couldn’t stop smiling.

“Go up to the room, listen to me, relax for half an hour. Then go down to the blackjack twenty-five-dollar tables, sit at the end, when you’re losing, put out a hundred a hand, when you’ve got about a thousand left, take the other thousand and play roulette until it’s gone”.

“When you’re done, go back to your room, order a steak with French fries and a double Tullamore Dew neat with a separate glass of ice and do not leave until the morning.” "Just leave, no breakfast, just get your car from valet and leave".

He looked me dead in the eye for all the instructions and it felt like I was already in trouble, like my mother discovering the vodka that was 90% water.

“This might not seem like it, but it’s a job and I need you to do it exactly and only how I say.”

"This is just you going to AC, no Betty no Veronica, only you, you understand?”

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