Gamblers in Paradise

A reader writes, 'Dear Geno. I really enjoy your stories about gambling in the Caribbean. My husband and I live in Key West, FL. and we have taken several cruises to the islands. We gamble on the cruise ships out of Miami but have not gambled in the Caribbean. What is the main difference between gambling on a Caribbean island and gambling in the United States? Joan P., Key West, FL.'

Ah, Key West. Home of Ernest Hemingway, Sloppy Joe's, cats, catamarans, great deep sea fishing, and incredible daiquiris during my drinking days.

I always appreciate hearing from my readers. You can send your letters to my personal email address listed at the end of my columns.

The main difference between gambling in the Caribbean and in the United States can be summed up in a single word.

Fun.

In a nutshell, island people live to enjoy life. While money is important to them, it is not all important.

Some of the islands have a 40 percent unemployment rate. And while I am sure some families go to bed at night hungry, it isn't as widespread as it could be. A neighbor goes fishing and catches more fish than he can eat. So he drops by a neighbor's house, and that night the family enjoys blackened red snapper or broiled triggerfish filet.

Poker in America is a money game. It's insane, but college kids drop out of universities and lose their potential for a college degree to become a 'professional' poker player.

In their case, professional means they don't have to discipline themselves to show up at a job five days a week. They choose their hours and play poker. Sometimes they get lucky, sometimes not. I suppose that is the way they want to spend the rest of their lives.

The games I played in St. Maarten, Aruba, St. Kitts, and San Juan, Puerto Rico had a fun element that is missing in American casinos. It might be because we drank rum, island beer and wine rather than the mineral water and soft drinks an endless number of poker players consume in America.

The casinos also seemed always to have music playing. Calypso, reggae, anything with drums, colorful costumes, and dancing. Most of the people were poor, but they had a new day to show they were happy to be alive and living in an island paradise.

I met an island girl named Lynnette. She lived in a small house near the ocean in Keys Village, St. Kitts with her mother, three sisters, and three brothers.

For privacy, she built a shelter in a tree at the rear of her home. It sat next to the railroad tracks where a train loaded with sugar cane would pass daily on its way to a plant where it was refined into sugar, rum, and other products.

Sometimes I would spend the night with her in the tree house. Drinking wine, rum and enjoying the 'blessed herb,' we would watch the blinking lights of the ships at sea and talk about life. The evenings with Lynette were never dull.

To help pay the bills, she braided the hair of tourists on the nearby beaches. The visitors loved her happy go lucky attitude. On a Saturday I took her on a ride in my company car around St. Kitts. Her younger sister, Natasha, accompanied us.

Suddenly Natasha said, 'Stop!'

I braked the car, thinking she was sick. Instead, she was looking at the ocean at the bare smudge of an island on the blue sea.

'There is my island,' she said softly.

I looked at the island far away and said, 'What is its name?"

'I don't know,' she said. 'But I am going there someday.'

Although the government discourages islanders from going to casinos, one night Lynnette persuaded me to take her to a casino. I have written about this in a previous column, but for members who may have missed it, I taught her how to play video poker, and she won about $80. It doesn't sound like much, but it's big money in an impoverished island like St. Kitts. She fell in love with video poker and went on several trips to the casino with me after that.

But to sum up this column for Joan and her husband in Key West, let me relate a story about something that happened. Lynnette and I were driving to Old Town to a scenic village about six miles from Basseterre, the capital of St. Kitts. It was a Saturday afternoon. Suddenly she burst out laughing.

I asked her why she was laughing, thinking it must be because of a special occasion.

'Because of life,' she said, looking toward the coconut palm trees and the ocean. 'I am so happy.'