Retired Couple Betting on Success of New Gambling Club in Fillmore

It has been like old times for Bud and Betty Burton lately: Betty darting around the club taking care of business while Bud sits at a poker table, chain-smoking and chatting with visitors.

After being shut down for five years, the Burtons are remodeling an old Fillmore restaurant that next month will reopen as the Pan Pad Club, with 10 tables set aside for poker and pan, a variety of gin rummy.

The Pan Pad will thus become the second licensed card club in the county where gambling is still allowed.

Although fancy gambling clubs have flourished elsewhere in the state, they have virtually disappeared in Ventura County.

On Ventura Avenue in Ventura, during the card club heyday in the 1950s, nearly a dozen gambling outlets thrived side by side. In Port Hueneme, three more clubs catered to sailors. And in Oxnard, Fillmore and Thousand Oaks, finding a game was never a problem.

But in the 1970s, riding a wave of anti-gambling sentiment, the county outlawed all new gambling clubs, and the cities soon followed suit. As the license owners died off, so did their clubs.

Today, only Pinky Donohoo’s Players Poker Club survives in the city of Ventura.

Five years ago, the Burtons closed down their Pan Pad Club after 15 years when they accepted a city offer to buy their building on Fillmore Street for a senior citizens center.

However, the Burtons were allowed to keep their licenses in case they decided to reopen.

And now, driven partly by the boredom of retirement and partly by the challenge, they are reopening their club in what used to be Perko’s Cafe on Ventura Street in Fillmore.

“We just got tired of lying around the house,” said Bud Burton, 69. “Me and the wife didn’t do much traveling since we retired; we’re both up in years and wanted to be around when things happen to our kids.”

The Burtons have two sons and two daughters.

Betty Burton, 65, says she misses the friendships she developed during a lifetime of hanging around card clubs.

“You get to meet so many people from all walks of life, and you can learn more about their intelligence, integrity and personality in one card game than in years of casual acquaintance.”

And she has a theory on why, despite the county government’s decision to phase them out, card games in Ventura still attract a loyal following:

“When you come here and play, you’re just as important as anybody else on the table. You are in total control of your money and your decisions, and people like to have that total control.”

So Betty is again taking care of business at the soon-to-be-opened club--signing receipts from the gas company man, paying bills and directing the two handymen who are helping with the remodeling.

And Bud spends a good part of his day smoking by the window, conversing quietly with friends, and paying little attention to his wife’s decisions.

For the Burtons, it has been that way for 41 years, ever since Bud walked into the Bachelor Club on Ventura Avenue in Ventura, which Betty managed, and sat down to play a game of poker.

“He was nice and quiet and very friendly,” Betty said. “I always liked to play at his table.”

It took Bud 11 years and hundreds of games to gather the courage to ask Betty out on a date--an afternoon at the races. “We lost but we had a great time,” Betty Burton said. They were married in six months.

Thirty years and two children later, a lot has changed in the gambling world of Bud and Betty Burton. Throughout California, the seedy, smoke-filled back rooms where games were played and fights were commonplace have been replaced by spacious and well-lit luxury salons.

In Ventura County, however, none of these changes have taken root--and Bud Burton, for one, isn’t complaining.

“I’m not sad about it,” he said while looking out the window.

“The gambling life sometimes isn’t what it’s cut out to be. There are good times, and bad times to all of it. . . . It’s what you make of it. And you need some breaks along the way because it’s all a gamble. Everything’s a gamble.”