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We have the spectacle of Mark Sanford, the governor of South Carolina, who told his staff that he was hiking the Appalachian Trail while he was visiting his paramour in Argentina.
It's always fun when any righteous public official, be it Democratic Gov. Elliot Spitzer of New York or Republican Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, gets caught with his pants down. What business do these people have telling the rest of us how to live when they're incapable of living up to the standards they proclaim and attempt to enforce?
To get a closer perspective on Sanford, I called my brother Tony, who lives in Columbia, S.C., the state capital.
Actually, I called him to wish him a happy birthday, but of course the conversation turned to his beleaguered governor. I figured it had to be the hottest topic since Fort Sumter in the Palmetto State.
From here,
Tony said, it's more of a national
issue than a state issue. It's on network TV, but it's not
what people are talking about at work or in diners. That
would be Michael Jackson and this spell of hot
weather.
Doesn't Sanford come up at all?
I asked.
When he does, usually somebody jokes that we elected
the wrong Sanford, since Jenny is so smart and
dignified.
Sure looks that way from here,
I agreed. And
she had enough sense not to stand next to him, silent and
doe-eyed, while he rambled through his bizarre public
confession.
We moved to other topics; he keeps inviting me to visit
in February some year. That's when they hold a local
festival called Columbia's Longest Day.
It is apparently devoted to cursing the Yankee army,
under the command of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, which
burned the city on Feb. 16, 1865. I just want to see if
you've got enough grit,
my brother said, to wander
around town then and talk about how much you admire
Sherman.
Tony is a serious Civil War buff, a re-enactor, so in the interest of family harmony I forswore arguing that the conflagration was really the fault of retreating Confederate Gen. Wade Hampton.
They take their history quite seriously there. As for Colorado, we have three old mining towns with limited-stakes gambling which was supposed to produce an authentic Old West ambience. In the Old West, you could stroll through the batwing doors, light a stogie, check your hogleg with the barkeep, order up some straight rye, and settle down to a game.
That's not how it has worked out. Or at least, in the many pictures I've seen of Old West saloons and gambling dives, I've yet to find a row of glowing electronic slot machines.
Colorado is expanding this historical travesty. Later this week, the betting limit rises from $5 to $100, the casinos can stay open round-the-clock, and patrons can lose money at craps and roulette, in addition to poker, blackjack and slots.
What's missing in our re-enactment of the games of the Old West? Merely faro, which may have been the most popular card game of the late 19th century.
Faro (or Pharaoh) uses a special table and a mechanical
dealing device called a shoe,
which was supposed to
prevent cheating by the dealer but was often rigged. If you
want to see a faro layout, visit the restored Sumner Saloon
at Fairplay's South Park City museum.
Back when Martha and I were writing Westerns, we wanted the gambling scenes to be authentic. So we tried to figure out faro from a book, but with coppered bets, case-keeping and soda cards, the game looked more complex than the Internal Revenue Code, and so our characters stuck to poker.
But if we're supposed to honor history with gambling, it's hard to belive that we can't support even one working faro table in Colorado. Of course, it's also hard to believe that Keith Richards has outlived Michael Jackson.
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