Casino Dealing

Bruce and Cindy Cherry were neighbors and friends of Jimmy and Sherry. Bruce worked for the post office but had a casino party company as a side business.  He was always looking for dealers for his parties. Jimmy and I both dealt for Bruce for several years, and Jason also worked for him. Jason eventually started his own company. 

The way the Casino Parties work.

Bruce has made portable tables for Black Jack, Roulette, Texas Hold’em, and Craps. 

Bruce and a couple of guys would transport the equipment in Bruce’s covered trailer to the event location, set up the tables, stock them with chips, cards, dice, and roulette wheel. Then that evening all the dealers would show up in uniform, black slacks, white tuxedo shirt and bow tie, and deal for the party.  

The busy season was Christmas, New Years, and High School graduations. Yeah, HS graduations.  A lot of high schools have started having lock-ins for graduation so the kids would not be driving late at night, and there was no alcohol.

Not so with the adult Christmas and New Years parties. The booze flowed like wine. Some of the younger single dealers would get lucky with some of the female guests who had too much to drink. Jimmy and I never had that problem.  

We did have a lot of fun joking around, and if you were good at your job, the tips flowed well.

I eventually learned how to deal all of the games, and therefore Bruce called me often. I was always reliable, never flaked out on him. Jimmy on the other hand, only wanted to deal blackjack.  He was happy doing only that.  I enjoyed dealing different games just so I didn’t get bored.  Marty, Heather’s husband at the time, also started dealing for Bruce.  I tried to get Heather involved in dealing, but she was not very interested. The women dealers always seemed to make the most tips, especially if their shirts were open a couple of buttons so the players got a bit of a show.

Marty and I even bought some equipment and tried to market parties on our own.  We even got Heather’s older boys to learn to deal blackjack. Marty learned roulette, and I dealt craps.  Like I said, it never got any traction. We stored the equipment at Kim’s house in Garland and it ended up gathering cobwebs. We eventually sold all the equipment and took the loss.

Back to the Santa Claus story.