DIY History | Transcribe | Campus Culture | Reuben Gaines' memoir, undated

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Page 23

PAGE 23. Buxton
They could have saved time by just giving their money to the operator for they were all rip off games wherein they had no chance to win and every chance to loose. The most fair and honest games played were: Draw Poker; stud poker; dice Pitch; Black jack and conquain - (pronounced) coon can. This last game could be played in three to five minutes and was a scientific game of memory; Sometimes I played two days non stop and I was challenged by people in the state and people out of the state but never lost a setting in 20 years; but I was as bad at Black Jack as I was good at Conqquain. Daddy Red was also a conquain player so he challenged me to a duel and I agreed if he would let me shake hands with him when I thought it was necessary for he had a hand of unusual size and he in all games could hold out a card in his hand with nobody suspecting anything. 
He rented a building known at the Blue Goose and stocked it with a small supply of liquor. Our game started in the Blue Goose and lasted about six or seven settings which took about three weeks. I would win about $150.00 dollars at each setting until the last time I won $200.00 dollars and that was the last of his bank roll. On this morning about nine o'clock with the sun shining brightly I passed my own Club Room with my $200.00 dollar winnings and was on my way home to lie down and get some much needed rest. I was not in bed twenty minutes wnen somebody came to inform me that my club had been burnt to the ground; I said that is impossible for I passed there less than half an hour ago. He said you remember how the wind blew all of the waste paper against the cooler that was attached to the club. Someone inadvertently or on purpose must have dropped a lighted match in all that paper. My pardner always thought it was asa Williams, one of my clost friends so he could cut down the opposition against his pool hall. Since my Club Room had been destroyed by fire My father bought the Pool Hall in the rear of the Cooper Dance Hall. It containe several pool tables and a round table in the rear of the pool hall which was being used as a Poker Table. We played poker until 5 o'clock in the morning when some one in the near vicinity was getting ready to go to work and stopped by and ask us if we had heard a couple explosions a short time ago. "We had not heard anything". So he explained that you should have heard the noise because it was just across the County Line from here and only about 100 yards from the Swede Couple that lived in the Company house. They were having trouble most of the night; so early this morning the husband shot his wife and then put the muzzle of the gun in his mouth and used his toe to push the trigger and their little girl that was orphaned was around six or seven years old. 
On a Sunday morning with the sun shining brightly at eleven o'clock with a comfortable warm temperature with people moving about; with some sitting on the Hotel Porch and others across the street on the Barber shop porch talking across the street to each other when Fred Foggy a small man of 135 pounds

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PAGE 23. Buxton They could have saved time by just giving their money to the operator for they were all rip off games wherein they had no chance to win and every chance to loose. The most fair and honest games played were: Draw Poker; stud poker; dice Pitch; Black jack and conquain - (pronounced) coon can. This last game could be played in three to five minutes and was a scientific game of memory; Sometimes I played two days non stop and I was challenged by people in the state and people out of the state but never lost a setting in 20 years; but I was as bad at Black Jack as I was good at Conqquain. Daddy Red was also a conquain player so he challenged me to a duel and I agreed if he would let me shake hands with him when I thought it was necessary for he had a hand of unusual size and he in all games could hold out a card in his hand with nobody suspecting anything. He rented a building known at the Blue Goose and stocked it with a small supply of liquor. Our game started in the Blue Goose and lasted about six or seven settings which took about three weeks. I would win about $150.00 dollars at each setting until the last time I won $200.00 dollars and that was the last of his bank roll. On this morning about nine o'clock with the sun shining brightly I passed my own Club Room with my $200.00 dollar winnings and was on my way home to lie down and get some much needed rest. I was not in bed twenty minutes wnen somebody came to inform me that my club had been burnt to the ground; I said that is impossible for I passed there less than half an hour ago. He said you remember how the wind blew all of the waste paper against the cooler that was attached to the club. Someone inadvertently or on purpose must have dropped a lighted match in all that paper. My pardner always thought it was asa Williams, one of my clost friends so he could cut down the opposition against his pool hall. Since my Club Room had been destroyed by fire My father bought the Pool Hall in the rear of the Cooper Dance Hall. It containe several pool tables and a round table in the rear of the pool hall which was being used as a Poker Table. We played poker until 5 o'clock in the morning when some one in the near vicinity was getting ready to go to work and stopped by and ask us if we had heard a couple explosions a short time ago. "We had not heard anything". So he explained that you should have heard the noise because it was just across the County Line from here and only about 100 yards from the Swede Couple that lived in the Company house. They were having trouble most of the night; so early this morning the husband shot his wife and then put the muzzle of the gun in his mouth and used his toe to push the trigger and their little girl that was orphaned was around six or seven years old. On a Sunday morning with the sun shining brightly at eleven o'clock with a comfortable warm temperature with people moving about; with some sitting on the Hotel Porch and others across the street on the Barber shop porch talking across the street to each other when Fred Foggy a small man of 135 pounds