I've been to town

You ask me do I know the Milky Way?
I do, and furthermore I'd like to say
it isn't milky white it's dirty gray.
Especially when your world breaks down
I know because I've been to town...
     —Rod McKuen

Because I don’t swear, spit, tell dirty jokes or get drunk, a lot of folks seem to think I’m a prude.

I once told an off-color joke to a group of coworkers who were so startled by the fact that I had lowered myself to that level of humor that they paid no attention to the punch line; they just walked away shaking their heads.

But, make no mistake about it. I am a man of the world. I have, as Rod McKuen put it so poetically, “been to town.”

OK, I haven’t been there in the sense that I’ve lived there for any length of time. I’ve just been a visitor and much more a vicarious participant than an active one when it came to the dark and dirty deeds performed there.

All of that said, and again risking being considered puritanical, I believe that society actually does have a filthy underbelly. There are activities and interests that properly can be labeled prurient. There are patterns of behavior that are unproductive at best and self-destructive at worst.

Despite their protestations and their otherwise upstanding lifestyle, I’m inclined to argue that the growing legions of so-called “recreational gamblers” are being (or have already been) captured by the dark side of The Force.

After two days of unrestricted affection for the city of Reno - - based largely on its beauty under a layer of clean, white snow - - I plunged into an abyss occupied by pathetic participants in the something-for-nothing, winning-is-everything, what’s-yours-is-mine, gimme-gimme-gimme crowd that spends hours in dimly lit, foul-smelling dens of ill repute and iniquity.

These venues have no real reason for existing other than to separate the masses from their money and to line the pockets of those who are morally corrupt enough to benefit from the misery of others.

To assign adjectives like “fun” and “exciting” to gambling halls is an insult to the kind of wholesome and productive activities that they have replaced.

Families that might have otherwise been gathered around the fireplace roasting marshmallows, singing and telling stories are divided: Dad in the poker room; Mom playing slots and the kids in a video game room permeated with overflow smoke and inundated by the same clanging, clinking, ringing and beeping background noise only casinos can generate.

The kids may be tired, they may even be bored on many levels, but they’ve never been able to talk their folks out of so much cash - - handed over as the result of guilt and an unrealistic hope that the kids are having “exciting fun” in that tiny corner of the room outside of which state law commands that they not venture.

All right, I admit that the tide is against me. I’ve enjoyed watching Texas Hold ‘Em players who appear regularly on television; and I’ve always been intrigued by the mathematics underlying games of “chance.”

I’m not sure that there’s anything inherently wrong or evil about experimenting with gambling. But it doesn’t take much investigating to uncover the fact that many people aren’t able to stop the experiment. Things go out of control and lives are sometimes ruined.

Doesn’t that sound like fun?

States are sponsoring games of chance; economies depend on ill-gotten gains for their very survival. Senior Citizens are making the rounds of casinos and bingo parlors and star students are leaving school to seek their fortune at the poker tables.

If it seems a bit like the beginning of the end - - as in the rise and fall of an empire - - then maybe it is. Maybe this is part of a decline that will end badly for a nation of individuals that became successful by gambling that hard work and fair play would win the day.

It once did. And that was exciting.