Bingo! : For Die-Hard Fans of the Game of Chance, Charities Offer the Lure of a Red-Letter Day

The devotees start staking out their lucky chairs in the Edison High School cafeteria about 3:30 every Monday afternoon. They come with their lucky charms, their snack food and vacation pictures, their cigarettes.

By 5 p.m., chatter and smoke fill the room. Most of the 240 or so people are regulars. They split into their usual cliques and gab about families, or the money they almost won the night before.

The first round of games starts at 6:30. From that point on, no one budges.

Last year, the auditorium suffered a power outage one night and the devotees played on, using their cigarette lighters to illuminate the cards. A few weeks ago, a pregnant woman went into labor during the “Early Bird” set. She stayed until intermission.

Over the ensuing four hours, 26 people (more, when ties occur) yell the magic word:

“ Bingo! “

Barbara Dykes whoops with joy as she rockets from her lucky chair waving her lucky red dauber, which is an oversized felt-tip pen used to mark the calls. The crowd does not exactly share her enthusiasm, although it quickly regains its optimism--there’s always the next game.

Floor manager Dan Campbell, a volunteer for the football team’s booster club, counts the $250 kitty into Dyke’s eager palm: “$20, $40, $60. . . .”

Dykes is one of an estimated 21,000 bingo fans in Orange County and Long Beach, according to the monthly Bingo Bugle. Nearly every city council in the area has voted to allow the game of chance as a fund-raising device for nonprofit organizations. Bingo was legalized in 1976 through an amendment to the state constitution, but it is regulated by local governments.

“I play as often as I can get away with it--three or four nights a week,” Dykes, 53, says. “My husband thinks it’s a game for little old ladies. He doesn’t like bingo; I don’t like golf.”

The Huntington Beach housewife spends $70 to $100 per bingo venture: “Shhh, don’t tell my husband that. I use his money to play, but when I win, it goes into my account.

“I play only because it’s for a worthy cause, yep. I’m being tongue-in-cheek, in case you couldn’t guess,” she adds.

Certainly, however, Dykes’ five-year romance with bingo is not solely for love of money; her occasional $250 bounties have yet to fulfill any champagne wishes and caviar dreams. “I’m still in the red,” she says, “but I’m about to break even any day now.”

The land of opportunity for bingo aficionados was expanded in January when Garden Grove’s City Council finally approved the game--five years after Westminster and Huntington Beach became the county’s first inductees.

Garden Grove Mayor W.E. (Walt) Donovan cast the only dissenting vote, saying, “I don’t think it’s the way to teach our children about how to make money.”

Donovan said he is “philosophically opposed to gambling, including the lottery”--though, he admitted with a chuckle, “I buy tickets.

“Their (the booster clubs’) argument is that you can only sell so much candy and wash so many cars to raise money,” the mayor said. “I’m sympathetic with that. I just wish there were a better way to do it than bingo.”

Newport Beach and Costa Mesa continue to hold out.

“The school board doesn’t think that a form of gambling is an appropriate activity to have on school facilities,” said Tom Godley, assistant superintendent of budget facilities for the Newport-Mesa Unified School District.

But bingo fans need not worry about a shortage of arenas for their sport. On any given night in Orange County, eight to 10 schools, churches and clubs conduct the game.

Bingo mushroomed in the ‘80s when charitable organizations were forced to pursue fund-raising more aggressively due to federal cutbacks, said Roger Snowden, president and founder of the Seattle-based tabloid Bingo Bugle. “The Reagan Administration gave bingo a big shot in the arm,” he noted.

Forty-six states have legalized bingo, and about 58,000 Americans a week partake of it, Snowden said: “About $5 billion a year are wagered on bingo, and about 25% of that is returned to charities.”

John Healy, editor of the Orange County-Long Beach edition of Bingo Bugle, has watched his newspaper’s circulation grow from 15,000 to 21,000 over the past four years. New bingo locations constantly crop up in the county, making organizations increasingly competitive for a slice of the pie.

The Bugle, available free at games, is stuffed with advertisements such as the one for Buena Park High School:

“OVER $16,000 PAID NIGHTLY . . . $1,000 CASH DRAWING . . . FREE COFFEE & SNACKS . . . UNIFORMED POLICE . . . FOUR TV MONITORS. . . .”

Because bingo in California is operated by individual cities rather than by a state board, the total revenue brought into Orange County can only be estimated. “About 2,000 people a night play, and they probably spend about $50 each,” Healy said. That totals about $100,000 a night or $36.5 million a year. After costs, some $9 million goes to the various organizations.

“In five years, we’ve paid out $1 million to the clubs,” said Nancy Wyckoff, Edison High bingo president. The wealth is divided among 26 booster clubs for activities ranging from basketball to the student senate.

By state law, organizations that conduct bingo games must rely on an all-volunteer staff--with the exception of cafeteria workers, security guards and accountants. Each of the booster clubs at Edison drafts one parent per bingo night to sell cards, empty ashtrays and pass out popcorn.

The maximum booty that a single card can reel in is limited by law to $250, though door prizes and drawings can pay up to $1,200. Most organizations keep grand prizes a bit below that amount to forgo paperwork; the IRS requires winners of $1,200 or more to fill out forms on the premises.

One-dollar “pull tabs” produce about half of Orange County schools’ bingo game income. The tabs--which pay from $1 to $250--are similar to lottery tickets, except they can be sold only during bingo games.

On the recent Monday night at Edison High, early arrivals passed pregame down time plucking their way through stacks of pull tabs.

“I won $100 off a pull tab!” enthuses Jan Petrow, a San Diego loan underwriter who was in Orange County on business.

Frequently, avid fans seek out their hobby while traveling through alien territory. “I was sitting in my hotel room and I thought, ‘I’m so bored--I’ll go find a bingo game,’ ” Petrow says.

She plays three or four nights a week in San Diego. “I guess I have the gambler’s spirit,” she shrugs.

Edison High’s basic game package costs $15, which provides a total of 48 cards--six for each of eight games. But rare is the person who stops at $15. Most buy “early bird” and “late bird” packs for another $5 each. Most buy a dozen or so pull tabs. A lot buy two or three game packages.

Nobody concentrates on only one card at a time, like in the old days. Daubers have replaced pinto beans and buttons as card markers. And disposable paper sheets, each illustrated with three to six cards, have replaced the reusable single cards. The two innovations make multiple-card scanning the norm.

With impressive hand-eye coordination, one woman on this particular night simultaneously supervises 18 cards each game--wielding a dauber in each hand.

“I’ve seen people play 24 cards at a time,” Wyckoff says.

Phil and Elena Navarra of Costa Mesa scoff at such tactics. “We don’t play 80 million cards like some people, so that we can visit with our friends,” says Elena, 78. “We come here mostly to socialize.”

Still, such altruism does not preclude the Navarras from bringing along their good-luck doll, Drucilla--nor from claiming the same good-luck table every night. “Nobody better sit down here or else they get killed,” warns Phil Navarra, 76.

“Bingo players are superstitious people,” observes widower Bill Gruble, 75, who religiously attends the Edison games with his best friend, Diana Poundstone. “If you’re on a losing streak, you switch to a different color of dauber or something.”

The Huntington Beach buddies exchange a “lucky handshake” before braving a new set of games. “I always wear the same jewelry,” says Poundstone, 66. She and Gruble sit in Edison’s nonsmoking room, linked by television monitors with the bingo emcee across the hallway. It holds half as many participants as the bustling auditorium where the smokers congregate.

“We’re in the minority,” Gruble says. “But some of the people over there are 80 years old--it’s hard to tell them that smoking is bad for your health.”

Just minutes before winning her $250 bonanza, Barbara Dykes had been cursing the five-letter word soon to become her victory cry.

“Who invented bingo? I’d like to kill him. Or her,” she grouses, puffing another cigarette. “He’s as bad as R.J. Reynolds.”