Things Players Do On The Road To Survive

[Dead Money]

I know many people don't want to talk about this. But this forum talks about everything else, from knocking players to players finances. I am talking about stuff like Beating the Cherry Masters(This was my favorite because I often made more money doing this than playing pool), to hijacking carwashes or maybe it was legitimate, like working for a week or so. You don't or shouldn't mention any names. I am just curious how some players make it when all options are exhausted. I will be the first to tell you being broke on the road is hell. I went broke once in San Antonio Texas, and painted curb address numbers. I charged $10 a curb and scrapped up several hundred enough to get home. Please don't be offended, just curious.

How do you Hijack car washes? The closest thing I see regularly in the hood is guys that want to hangout at Self-Serve Carwashes and ask customers if they can wash and dry their cars for them for a few dollars in tips.

Funniest thing I've seen lately is a fellow who likes to park his wheel chair right next to the changer and ask people for change. When I showed up to fix things at that location the other day I told him he needed to roll the **** out of there I hated to be a dick to that guy but he does this often and he knows he isn't supposed to be there!

 

[mosconiac]

We have some "bums" in my town that hang at the bottom of our off-ramps and pray on the drivers waiting at the lights.

These "bums" pull their car (usually a nicer one than my daily driver) into a local business and walk over to their "job". They unfold their chair, sit down (yes, they won't even stand anymore), pull out their "work for food" sign, and pull in the cash. The local paper did an exposee on one "bum" that claimed he makes $200-300 a day.

A friend of mine offered to pay one of those "work for food" dudes $50 to help him rake the lawn one afternoon. The dude said, "No thanks, I'll make more money right here".

I plan to dangle a $20 out the window next time and when he gets out of his chair to retrieve it I'll say, "I'll be damned, you can get off your ass to go get a job!" and yank the $20 back.

 

[Darth]

Please Don't Feed The Bums

A few years ago, a friend of mine who is a local artist and sign painter, came up with a great one for the local "Will work for food" scammers working the off ramp on I-95. He made a black and white road sign on a metal post about the size of a speed limit sign that said "PLEASE DON'T FEED THE BUMS".We photographed it and sent it to the local paper. I don't think it ever got published.

 

[corvette1340]

I've seen carwashes hijacked with a ten dollar bill with fishing line attached. I've seen poker machines heisted with slip bills, paddle bills, program keys, shockers, and computer glitches. Back in college we stumbled onto an unbelievable computer glitch. I won't name the machine type, but basically one day someone accidentally kicked the plug out causing the machine to turn off. When it came back up we noticed that it held the numbers from the previous spin (Keno). So basically if we picked ten numbers and it got down to the spot where one bonus number was left, you could jack the bet and spin it then unplug it and when it came back up it always held the previous spins numbers. So you only had to hit 4 or 5 numbers depending on how many you hit the previous time to get paid the jackpot betting the max. Long story short, we made about $100,000 doing this. I kind of feel bad about it now that I'm set financially, but back then we didnt have any money and the people that owned those machines were getting rich off of little old lady's and people that were addicted to those machines. I guess we were like Robin Hood's except we didn't give any to the poor people we just kept it so we wouldn't be poor.

 

[ShootingArts]

I have done the same

I have seriously offered a dozen of these "will work for food" guys work. No takers yet. They occasionally ask what the work is but none have ever taken me up on it although I have offered fair wages.

A couple of panhandler stories: There was a bag lady standing on a street corner all of the time in New Orleans. Local news did a story on her. It turned out that she was a registered nurse that wouldn't work because she made more money panhandling. Another old story I remember is that of a man whose family thought he was an executive. He left home every morning in his Mercedes wearing a three piece suit. Then he parked the Mercedes and climbed into his rags to beg. He made more money than most executives at the time!

Hu

We have some "bums" in my town that hang at the bottom of our off-ramps and pray on the drivers waiting at the lights.

These "bums" pull their car (usually a nicer one than my daily driver) into a local business and walk over to their "job". They unfold their chair, sit down (yes, they won't even stand anymore), pull out their "work for food" sign, and pull in the cash. The local paper did an exposee on one "bum" that claimed he makes $200-300 a day.

A friend of mine offered to pay one of those "work for food" dudes $50 to help him rake the lawn one afternoon. The dude said, "No thanks, I'll make more money right here".

I plan to dangle a $20 out the window next time and when he gets out of his chair to retrieve it I'll say, "I'll be damned, you can get off your ass to go get a job!" and yank the $20 back.

 

[Darth]

Road Story For The Ages

In 1986, I was traveling the country for nine weeks on my touring motorcycle pulling my camper behind me. I stopped in a small town in Kansas and got a motel room as the weather had turned to crap. Next to the motel was a rundown bar with one pool table in it. The felt was torn and stained with booze and the rails had a deadening thud everytime a ball hit them. So being a true trooper, I pulled out my sneakey pete and started hitting balls. This was around two in the afternoon so the bar was pretty empty. After about three racks, a gentleman came over and asked if he could jump in and I said sure. I wasn't looking for a "game", I was just killing time. So he comes with the famous line," Wanna play for a beer?" I told him I didn't drink but would play for the cost of a beer which was $2.00. We played last pocket eight ball and he lost the first game and wanted to doubled down. By game #4, he was about as drunk as a person could get and still maintain reasonable balance. During the match, I questioned the barkeep about the man and he said he owned a cattle ranch and had lots of cash on hand all the time so I wasn't worried about getting paid. By the time we got to game #8 or 9 the bar started filling up with locals getting off work. I noticed they were watching our match with a keen interest. I started getting a strange feeling in my stomach that I didn't like. I couldn't miss anything I shot at and he couldn't get out with a road map and a free pass. By the time game #14 was about 3/4 finished, I saw people whispering to each other and pointing to me with what appeared to be anger directed towards me. Hell, I didn't do anything to pi$$ them off. I just started playing a friendly game that got way out of control. After I cross -banked the eight in the corner which was my last pocket, the crowd of about fifty corn-fed bruisers circled the table with their bar chairs. The place got dead silent. I now had Cow Man $16,384.00 stuck with game #14 in the books. I was in a strange town, thousands of miles from a friendly face in a bar full of people that probably knew each other and their families for generations. So, Cow Dude say's he's gotta go after the next game. Here I am, about to cash the biggest haul of my life and I scared so bad all I wanted to do was go to my motel room to change my underwear. I broke rack #15 and made 3 balls. I had a clear path with stripes and an open shot for the last stripe and the eight only three inches from the same corner pocket. I pictured in my mind as I was plotting the run-out, my photo in the next days newspaper listed as a victim of a brutal beating and robbery. I made up my mind at this point, it wasn't worth taking a chance ending this match as a statistic. I shot a stripe in the side pocket and caromed whitey into the eight sending it slowly rolling into the corner pocket. Cow Dude was now even and all the stress I was suffering over the last few hours had now left me. Cow Dude invited me to dinner and paid for my motel room for the night. I vowed from that day on, never again.

 

[Varney Cues]

I once knew the head of security at a casino in Vegas. He got paid handsomely & lived in a $750k+ home. There was a bum out front of the casino that had a pile of animals with a "help me feed these" sign. The guy had assorted puppies, cats, rabbits, etc. all in one big box. He wore rags and truthfully looked near death. He lived next door to the security guy in the gated community.
As far as being busted...I had a friend in Asheville once who went near completed busted. He walked around a graveyard until he found someone near his age who had died young as in only a year or two old. He then went into the local courthouse and told the lady he was doing a report on infant death and purchased a copy of the childs birth certificate for $1. A bookstore provided a used bible for another $1. He wrote the family names in the bible and then took the bc & bible to the DMV and used that as his 2 forms of ID. He told them he had never had a license, passed the test & got a drivers license with his pic and the kids info with a bogus address. Then he takes the license into a bank and opens up a new checking account with $20. Tells the banker to have his checks shipped back to the bank & hold them because he was going to be out of town for a few days. Goes back to the bank like 4 days later and picks up his checks then goes around writing hot checks for lots of stuff which he sells at the flea market. Went from less than $40 to about $10k in a week. Worked so well for the guy he made a career out of it for awhile. Even bought new sports cars with the fraud ID's getting 1st time buyer deals...never ever making a payment. He once showed me a box of 34-40 Id's from several different states. He even once bought me a brand new 4 into 1 Vance & Hines pipe for my Hurricane & new tires. No sweat to him. Seemed like he had the system beat. I was even temped to try it when I was young. Hard to say no back then to a new Trans Am with no payments. He did this for years with no issues. I did hear several years ago thats he's now serving a long stint in prison...I have no idea if it was because of that or some other unrelated issue.