Talk of the Town - Three blind dice February 26 2004

Call the Bunco Squad

No denying. I have taken the last, irrevocable step on the road to total, Do-you-want-Velveeta-with-that-Wonder-bread? middle-class blandness. Buying a grill was bad enough. I thought you couldn’t get any more suburban than that. But it gets worse.

Now I have played Bunco.

The goofy dice game sweeping America’s subdivisions, domain of minivan mamas with 1.9 kids and a husband working on his first cardiac bypass, is a stranger to me no more.

There is something satisfyingly tactile about dice throwing, a touchy-feely quality otherwise utterly lacking in our dry-as-a-mouse-click millennium. It also recalls memories of misspent higher education.

I roistered my entire freshman year of college away, throwing dice in all-night sessions of Risk, the game of world domination that got me kicked out of Asia, Australia and a 9 a.m. seminar on Victorian literature.

The latter required reading reams of paper by Charles Dickens, who never declared in one sentence what he could write in 12 because he got paid by the word. The professor terminated my class contract after I slept through David Copperfield. The novel, not the magician. Although I have dozed through his act, too.

The great thing about rolling dice is that it requires absolutely no skill, yet we have great admiration for the successful dice player. We believe, somehow, that the mug rolling sevens in a crap game knows what he’s doing. What’s more, we believe we could do the same, if only we had the right blend of ability and good fortune.

I came up snake eyes on both counts. I don’t have to explain the particulars of Bunco to make it clear: My trio of dice did not do what dice are supposed to if you want to win.

The agony of defeat was exacerbated by spousal success. We started out together, but the minute she won and I didn’t, rules dictated that Herself move up to the next table. That’s fine, but did she have to breeze past me with such unbridled glee?

True, there was no money at stake. But what is a man’s pride worth? About three Venezuelan Bolivar (total value: 0.000520833 of a dollar at current exchange rates).

By now, some of you are wondering about the game’s antecedents. Is this the same Bunco that was a byword for fraud? Yes and no. Sounds like a corporate CEO testifying before Congress.

As with any great invention, bunco was conceived as a way to separate suckers from their money. Legend has it that the game took root in Gold Rush-era California — where little sacks of yellow dust added up to plenty — and progressed from there.

The pickings were so good that during the post-Civil War gang ravishment of America’s economy known as the Gilded Age — think Bush 43 administration, with side-whiskers — “bunco parlors” sprang up everywhere. (Our historical source is the website of the World Bunco Federation, not to be confused with the United Nations.)

The game became so rampant that cops in every town civilized enough to host vice had a special detail to clamp down on the illicit plague. And what grade-B film noir starring Broderick Crawford would be complete without a flatfoot snarling, “Call the bunco squad”?

If you did that now, three women named Amy would show up at your door in capri pants. Hopefully not the same pair. Which is still a lot better looking than Broderick Crawford. He had jowls that bounced off the floor and looked terrible in capris. Crawford, that is. His jowls preferred a warm cardigan.

Unfortunately, time has taken the joyful larceny out of bunco. The advent of prohibition is cited as a reason for its decline early in the 20th century, but my theory is that the invention of federal income taxes proved the government could do a much better job of glomming onto your cash than any two-bit bunco parlor.

No longer the realm of confidence tricksters who parted their hair in the middle and wore lilac cologne, Bunco as we now define it is primarily a social event. Women who play will tell you that coffee and chat often take precedence over the game.

Try telling that to the contingent of husbands on hand for the session I attended. Although first-time players, there was no stanching their competitive testosterone. We feverishly chucked dice with all the elan of a road company Guys and Dolls, each determined to have luck be a lady and win. ... What?

Prizes in the form of $15 store gift cards — what happened to $20 gold pieces? — were awarded for highest and lowest scores, most wins, most losses, and most Buncos. The latter occur when you get three of the number then in play. My play was consistent all night. I didn’t win anything.

Sometimes luck looks like Broderick Crawford.

glen.slattery@creativeloafing.com

Glen “Snake Eyes” Slattery lives in Alpharetta.