Manhattan Beach 2015: Bingo Night

Bingo Night Ladies

The cold weather persisted through yesterday - rain on and off all day. We decided to check out the effects of the Brainerd area July 12 storm, still very evident at Cragun's on Gull Lake. Proximity to  Bar Harbor, established in 1938 like my own BH, called for lunch and a couple of drinks (margarita for Bob, with a huge ice cube; Gull Dam Scotch Ale for me, a nice medium dark beer). Late in the afternoon, I went out for a walk. I seriously wondered if I should have brought gloves and my face was numb from the cold by the time I returned around 5:00 o'clock news time.

One of the lodge employees was watching TV in the breakfast room. She engaged me in conversation and, as my face thawed, I realized my nose was running, so I was eager to get back to our room, but not before listening to a pitch about Wednesday evening bingo with $5 hamburgers. Bob was not enthusiastic, so we bypassed the bingo room and stopped in the bar area, where huge, expensive items on the menu -- for much bigger appetites than ours -- persuaded him to try a little Bingo, sponsored by the Northern Lakes Lightning Youth Hockey Association.

The "Red Room" was full of players of all ages from neighboring cottages in the area, as well as guests at the resort. We filled a couple of spots at a table in front of the large windows facing the outdoors. Turns out we really hit our own jackpot with Mike, his wife, brother Dave and two blonde children, a pretty older middle-school girl and a cute nine-year-old boy.

Mike is a commodities trader with Cargill who recently returned to the US to live after 9 years at Cargill Worldwide in Geneva, Switzerland. We spent a very enjoyable couple of hours with that welcoming family, laughing and talking like old friends. Dave won $13 on the very first pot but our table was unlucky for the rest of the evening, except in the fun department.

The Bingo ladies, all three of them a "certain age", ran the show, selling cards before each game, calling numbers and verifying winners' claims. Each "card" is actually a strip of three torn from a pad. A flyer explains the games played (vertical, horizontal, diagonal, four corners, "kite", full card), and I actually remembered how to play from long ago grade school days. I easily played two strips of three cards each and Bob had no trouble at all. The dauber, a colored marker, made number tracking easy.

We each had one of the good burgers, along with a beer (Bob) and wine (me), all the while enjoying the back and forth banter. We got a dinner tip for later in the week from Mike and his wife, who were heading  to Norway Ridge on a night, while the kids spent the rest of the evening at their cottage with their adored uncle.

By now, dark had fallen and we were looking forward to the promise of a sunny Thursday. Bingo Night was a great success.