Word: bingo
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...thousands of U.S. clergymen, bingo is a fighting word. Roman Catholic priests generally defend it as an innocent game of chance which helps raise money for many a parish cause; most Protestant ministers condemn it as gambling, and therefore a moral evil. In New Jersey last week, on the eve of a statewide referendum to legalize bingo and raffles for charity and other good causes, both sides fired off loud barrages...
Against the referendum were the Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Lutherans and Episcopalians, as well as the State Federation of Women's Clubs and the New Jersey Congress of Parents and Teachers. Protestant pulpits resounded with anti-bingo sermons. Said Methodist Bishop Fred P. Corson: "Gambling is a destructive force in personal and community life. It is just as evil . . . when disguised under the cloak of charity or religion as when it appears openly in the form of slot machines and numbers rackets...
Then the voters went to the polls and made bingo and raffles respectable by a crashing 3-to-1 vote...
...tense moment at the American Legion's $1,000 bingo game in East Chicago, Ind. As the 25th and final number was called off one night last week, there was a stir of excitement at a corner table. One of the five women there gasped and screamed "Bingo!" On her orange card was the winning combination of numbers, all right. Then an attendant noticed something strange: one of the numbers on the winning card was printed slantwise. Suspicious, he asked the winner to come back next day to collect her check. Then he took the card to the printer...
Next day, when the winner returned with two of her companions, she demurely denied everything. The legion was unwilling to call in the police, for bingo games are illegal in Indiana. Finally the woman made a magnanimous gesture. "Well," she said, "I guess the legion needs the $1,000, so I will forget the prize." Then she and her companions got into a shiny new Cadillac sedan and drove...