video slots kept the doors open. At least that was what we told ourselves. Once we got those going, illegally of course, we made about $500 a week profit.

It works like this. The machines say "for amusement only" on them. When someone racks up enough credits, usually hitting a jackpot, they call the bartender over to clear the machine. The bartender notes the credits and the next day there in an envelope behind the bar for the winner. That way no law enforcement can ever see a payoff. That's great for a club like that, we know everyone and know for sure most times that we don't have a cop in there. Easy enough for many of the smaller bars to pull off too.

Those Arkansas bar owners are just hoping the yokel cops will look the other way. We were on our local state legislators to push bills allowing gaming for all bars. In some ways it was race based. Many hated it that the local tribe could do it legally and make big bucks and we couldn't. I kept telling them to limit the bill to only private clubs like we had. A couple members were bar owners and did not appreciate that from me. I liked it the way it was. It was way safer for us than any of the public bars and we were doing just fine. I knew we had many members just because they could come down there and gamble. Let every "Schmoe" that owned a bar do it legally, and we'd lose a lot of that.

Plus I had no problem with our local tribe owning the road on the gambling. Probably every one of us voted for that in the 80's. They finally had money coming in and were really doing good things with it. If you allow gambling everywhere it dilutes the effect and becomes a total drain. No one would ever get enough of the action to really gain anything.