jay helfert said:
Cathy Miao I think her name was. Correct me if I'm wrong. :thumbup:
Yes! Though it was Kathy with a K. She was my girlfriend for a while when we both attended the USF. AND, she played a central role in memorable road trip of mine to Lake Tahoe:
Insert flashback music (again)
Many, many moons ago, when I may not have even been legal, but was
getting into the Tahoe and Reno casinos anyway, Jerry and I made one of
our typical late night runs to Tahoe. We would usually depart SF around
midnight, after I got off the swing shift at Wells Fargo and I'd be at
the pool hall and some genius would suggest a 3 1/2 hour drive through
the mountains.
So we get there and we do our usual thing: head straight for the $2
blackjack tables. Now you have to understand, we both go to school,
work part time, and piddle away what little money we have at pool, cards
(tonk games in the back), or these occasional forays to the casinos. If
we had $200 between us, it was considered a well-financed run.
So we're sitting side-by-side, quaffing the free beers, chatting up the
cocktail waitress and playing basic strategy blackjack. We're not
winning much, but neither of us is getting hammered either. Life is good.
And then, I get The Chip.
Somewhere along the line, the dealer has tossed me a red $5 chip and I
notice it has some initials scratched into it. Now this, in and of
itself, is pretty unusual because typically, the casino takes any
defaced chips out of circulation the second they're noticed. But what
made this chip *really* unusual, was that the initials -- four of them
-- exactly matched the initials of my current girlfriend.
At the time, I dating a very tall, slender Chinese woman named Kathy
Miao. Kathy (who later on became a very accomplished pool player on the
West coast women's circuit) had a middle name of Lee and she had a
second middle name, which escapes me now, but started with C.
KLCM, scribed right into the very chip I was now holding in my hand.
What are the odds?
So I go, "Jerry, look at this. It's a chip with Kathy's initials on
it." Jerry, who has just split trip nines and won all three hands is
non-plussed and goes, "Huh. How about that." And I go, "Yeah, how
about that?!" not thinking there's anything unusual about us both
getting 21 on the next round of hands.
So now, we're doing our usual thing, pressing our luck, betting $5 and
the occasional $10, and the dealer goes on a long run of busts. And
after a while of this fortuitous luck, Jerry goes, "Do you still have
The Chip?" "And I go, "Yeah, it's right here, on top of this stack."
And he goes, "Don't lose The Chip."
To make a long story short, Jerry and I go on the greatest blackjack
streak of all time. We cannot lose a hand. It matters not what we need
to make a hand, we get the card. Naturals, we got em. The dealer can't
even remember what dealing a 20 or 21 to herself looks like. They are
bringing in additional racks of $5 chips, because we have them all and
won't let them color them up. The pit boss is scowling at us, but we're
hooting and hollering and flirting with the cocktail waitress so he
knows we're not counting. And we have so many $5 chips in front of us
we can't even see our cards -- they're like some enormous red great
wall of China, made out of $5 chips, right there on our table.
And then it happens. All those $5 chips. Too many of them.
"Jerry, I think I lost The Chip." And Jerry gets frantic and starts
pawing at my stacks of chips. And I'm going through them, one at a time
and can't find The Chip. I look at Jerry and admit, "I lost The Chip.
I must of played it by accident." We both turn and look at the dealer's
tray and then look up at her like there's some remote chance she'll let
us go through all her $5 chips and she smiles at us like a cat checking
out a canary. Of course our luck now takes an immediate dive south. I
mean, we can't buy a hand. If you were to chart it, our run suddenly
looks like a bowling ball falling off your kitchen table.
And that was it. We finally let the dealer color up our chips and it's
several hundred a piece. We take all the blacks and greens, head to the
cage and cash out. Without a word, we head to the parking garage,
knowing that staying any longer would be futile. All because, I lost
The Chip.
Lou Figueroa
