Numerology

Amid the wringing of hands, the Governor of N.J. is convening a meeting to determine the future of Atlantic City which was at its zenith in the 1920s when my parents honeymooned there. But before there were casinos and lotteries there was the "numbers racket" which operated under the radar and thrived in the 1930s depression era (without radar) when for ten cents per day or sixty cents per week, the man in the street or the homemaker in her kitchen could find a little action. There were runners, drop off areas and other middlemen who siphoned off their "share" as odds of 999 to 1 melted down to 400 to 1 to the winner. But forty bucks in the 1930s was a bonanza. The three winning digits daily were the result of a mathematical exercise using the mutuel prices of horse races at a track to be determined by the boys in the back room. It all prompted a jingle of the time: "Now I lay me down to slumber, pray to God I hit the number - If I die before I wake - put a dime on 308!"
tjs