Does He Figure the Odds Are in His Favor? You Bet

I spent several days in Las Vegas last week and came home with my usual loathing for that place.

The feeling has very little to do with whether I’ve won or lost. Although when I’m there, that isn’t true--I can feel pretty good about the place if I’m winning. But once I’m home, I hate Las Vegas. I also know that feeling will pass and I’ll go back.

I’ll go back because I’ve loved gambling most of my life.

This time I was in Vegas with my two grown daughters. My younger had a birthday (I dare not say which one), and the trip was a present from her sister and me. One of the traits I passed along to my daughters is taking pleasure in gambling. I used to think that was a considerable disservice, even though they play within their means. Now I’m not so sure.

I started playing cards as an adolescent growing up in the Midwest. My brother and I would play bridge with my parents, and I have warm memories of those games. In high school, one of the principal recreations for the boys I ran with was poker. We even played the morning before our high school graduation ceremony, and when a guy we didn’t like very much won, we paid him with 300 pennies in a sack as we were waiting in line to get our diplomas. He knew he had to take it or lose it, and I’ll never forget the sight of him marching down the steps with his diploma and a quite obvious 300 pennies bouncing in his pocket.

In the military during World War II, gambling was a way of life. In preflight school, where church attendance was mandatory, I remember betting with the cadet next to me on whether the next hymn would be an odd or even number. We played hearts and poker for high stakes, and while I was overseas, I played bridge for a half-cent a point (which can get expensive). We used to prey on Pan-Am pilots when they came through our bases because they made a lot more money than we did and therefore tended to play recklessly.

Naturally, I carried this love of gambling into my later life. I suppose it could have been a serious problem--for a time it threatened to be--but I’ve learned how to stay within my limits.

All of this has a great deal to do with my outlook on life, and I became very much aware of that this month when a plane flying out of John Wayne Airport crashed onto a tennis court near my home. The day after the crash, The Times carried interviews with people living in the area, most of whom expressed fear of its happening again.

One said: “We’re always nervous, and this confirms our fears.”

Another said: “The noise is a problem, but the other thing you know is that one of them is going to drop one day.”

And a third said: “Every day I see these planes take off. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought of what might happen.”

We live in Santa Ana Heights, directly under the flight pattern for the airport and close enough, I suppose, to be in maximum danger of being victimized in a similar accident. I can honestly say, though, that the thought has never occurred to me. I’m sure that is partly because I have lived on military air bases, but I think that it is mostly because my lifelong association with gambling has made me very conscious of odds.

Since I don’t believe that God causes airplane crashes, I look at the chances of one’s happening in my back yard as pretty remote. To worry about it would be rather like worrying about whether a tidal wave will hit Newport Beach. You would unquestionably be safer from a tidal wave in Des Moines, Iowa, but that probably isn’t keeping very many people from living in Newport Beach.

Fear should not keep very many people from living near the airport, either. (The matter of noise is something else entirely.) According to airport manager George Rebella, there have been 19 aircraft “incidents” at John Wayne in the past 6 years. Ten took place within 200 feet of a runway and did not involve fatalities or injuries. Of the remainder, five were accidents that involved a total of 12 fatalities. During that same period, there have been more than 3 million individual takeoffs and landings. All that adds up to some pretty good odds.

Although I believe in odds, I also believe in taking every edge you can get. You don’t push the odds by neglecting the maintenance of a car or a plane, just as you don’t try to jaywalk across the traffic on Coast Highway. I take normal precautions; from there on, I figure, the odds are all on my side. Should I end up on a plane carrying a bomb or being shot at by a lunatic on the freeway or under a plane falling into my back yard, then I was only in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But the odds against any of that happening are astronomical, and to worry about such catastrophes--assuming I’ve taken reasonable precautions--would be a terrible waste of energy better devoted to something positive.

That approach may not work for everyone. You’ve got to believe-- really believe--that the odds very much favor your coming out of this day whole and sound, whether you’re taking an airplane trip, driving on the freeway or just sitting in your own back yard. It does work for me. And maybe it has helped my daughters reach some sort of accommodation with the uncertainties of life.