The Incident

Hola Ladies,

For those of you who were unfortunate enough to miss last Friday's Basura Blanca Bingo game, you couldn't have picked a worse time to wash your delicates (or whatever other lame excuse you might have for missing a game). It had to have been the most sizzling time we've had at the VFW No. 61966 since I've been calling, nearly 25 years.

The evening started out just like every other, nothing eventful except Ida Chambers and Cynthia Nelson's usual bickering about who's gonna sit closest to the BingoTron. Ever since Ida's cataract surgery didn't take (more on that later), her O's look like G's and she's always daubing the wrong column. If I had a dime for every time last Summer when we had to stop a game of bingo and order a recount I'd be living in the Taj Mahal! Anyway, we'd just completed a game of Double Postage Stamps (won by Kiki Goldstein...who else?) and getting ready to start a blue-page Blackout. For all you not up on your bingo lingo, a Blackout is when you're the first to cover all 25 spaces on your flimsy (bingo card) and get to holler BINGO! and win a cash prize, of course, so you should all march right down to your nearest VFW hall this weekend to play. I guarantee you'll get hooked, even if you don't win practically every game like Kiki Goldstein (LOL Kiki!). Anyway, Shasta Mobud, that sweet gal who last Spring moved into the west side of town with that quiet black fella, had just come back from the salon with a fresh color job. That's the "Hello, Gorgeous! Hair Salon" on Wild Fern and 11th Street (across from the Tastee Queen), which is owned and operated by the brilliant and talented Jeremy Sanchez, who is my grandson no less. The color job looked fabulous, as expected (Shasta should have been born a true redhead...it just fits), but oh my, the fumes were STRONG and following her like a bridal train.

Even though she'd arrived late, I hadn't started calling Blackout, so she got in on the game just in the nick. Well, the only chair left in the hall was next to the smokers (Shasta doesn't smoke) and since I'm a reformed smoker of 20 years I won't waste my breath discussing what a filthy habit that is, but really all you gals should just quit with the patch (you know who you are). So I'm calling Blackout and we weren't even close to covering half of the BingoTron when all of a sudden I smell something burning. Now Blackout is a serious game and I call it fast so all the girls are just eyes down on their flimsies and no one even noticed that Shasta Mobud's hair had caught fire! So I yell "Fire! Fire! Shasta, you're on fire!" and everyone looked up just as Shasta's color job was turning from copper penny red to coal black before our very eyes! Ruth Cohn was across the table from Shasta and grabbed the closest liquid she could find and threw it at Shasta's head so as to douse the flames. It was a pitcher of Bud. I guess we can all thank our stars (especially Shasta) that Ruth wasn't sitting next to a bowl of Ava Ivy's Skinny Dip Punch (which is over 75% rum) or things could have been a lot worse. Well Shasta was soaking wet and reeking of beer but at least she had her hair, well most of it anyway. I'm sure it's nothing that that hairstylist/genie Jeremy Sanchez can't turn into a pageant-winning 'pageboy', once he gets his hands on it. Needless to say we had to 86 the Blackout but here are the names of the rest of the winners that night.

$5 prizes go to: Ursula Waverly, Gabriella Carrillo
$10 prizes go to: Kiki Goldstein, Jenny Hill
$20 prizes were scratched due to 'the incident' and will be placed in next week's Cookie Jar
And the $25 grand prize goes to Gloria Weiss

Til next time "ladies", eyes down.

"Bingo" Betty Sanchez

Hola Ladies!

Miss Bingo Betty here, signing on. I'm starting my first blog and let me tell you it's so exciting! Some of the "ladies", and I use the term loosely, of the VHW Hall where I call Basura Blanca Bingo every Friday night ---that's the VFW No. 61966 on F.M. 1422 at Bald Oak Drive (if you pass the Gale Force Trailer Park, you've gone too far)---insist on me publishing the names of last week's winners. I'm sure it's mostly Kiki Goldstein's idea since she seems to bingo 4 or 5 games a month and I suspect she just wants to gloat (LOL Kiki!). I thought about listing the winners on the One And Only Savior Baptist Church's website until my grandson Jerermy told me about blogging. At first I thought he might be referring to some new kind of over-the-counter drug abuse that some many young people seem to be into today (re: Skittling). Jeremy and I have a very close relationship and I cherish the fact that he can tell me anything...and often does. Many "older people", and I use the term loosely, have resistance to gadgets and technology or anything with a computer chip inside it, but not me. My dear friend Ruth Cohn was dragged kicking and screaming, figuratively speaking, into the modern age when her daughter Leza bought her a cell phone...Christmas of '05, if you can believe that! Welcome to the 90's, Ruth! Poor Ruthie had that thing in her purse for durn near two weeks and never even turned it on. Last Friday I finally got my hands on it and took it off "silence all". She had 36 voicemails and had been texted 22 times. The TMs were mostly from her grandkids, of course, but the voicemails from her daughter were increasingly panicked. The girls and I had quite a chuckle listening to poor Leza going through the stages of concern, fear, anger, and finally acceptance of the fact that her mother is simply, and will always be, a luddite.

So here are the names of the winners from last Friday's Basura Blanca Bingo. Now ladies, we'll tolerate no high falooting attitudes at the next game just because your name is on the World Wide Web, so check your egos at the door.

$5 prizes go to: Lacy O'Conner, Louise Day, Alma Rodriguez
$10 prizes go to: Kitty Chesnutt, Mimi Owens
$20 prizes go to: Dawn Juarez, Ethel Burns
And the $25 grand prize goes to, who else, Kiki Goldstein

Til next time "ladies", eyes down.

"Bingo" Betty Sanchez