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Jun.17,2010
I always wanted to be a bookie.
Like most authors, I’m often asked if I always wanted to be a writer. Did I get hooked on mysteries by reading Nancy Drew, or Agatha Christie, or Sherlock Holmes stories?
Not me. As a kid, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as reading outside of schoolwork. My mother was taken out of school at 13; my father claimed he attended for only one day. Ours was not a house with books.
Except for the little black one with a rubber band that the bookie brought every Friday afternoon.
In my neighborhood – 1950’s Revere, Massachusetts – bookies had the best lives. Hair slicked back, they wore cool dress shirts and hung around the corner playing “morte,” the Italian version of “rock, paper, scissors.”
Bookies kept a schedule of house calls to all their clients, picking up and delivering little slips of paper with numbers carefully written on them. Currency would be exchanged. Many clients, like my parents, bet nickels and dimes; others as much as a couple of dollars, so the bookie’s pockets bulged with bills and coins. He was a living, strutting cash box.
Our bookie, Vinnie B., was as regular as the milkman, the iceman, and the insurance man; he was more consistent a presence than the mailman. My mother would pour a cup of coffee for him and set out a shot glass. “Coffee and.”
Vinnie B. would shift his bulk and smile as my mother explained the number she was playing today.
“Josie’s new flat is number 127 and it cost me $1.27 for the bread and mortadella at Rigione’s. Give it to me six ways.”
“Good bet,” Vinnie B. would say.
I’d never seen a female bookie, but that didn’t bother me. I was sure I could do the work. I got As in arithmetic, after all. And at an early age, I’d learned to figure out the winning number for the day. It appeared in the daily newspaper as part of the racetrack returns. I’d pick up the paper at the market and be ready to read the lucky digits to my parents as soon as I entered the kitchen.
I had no desire to follow the path of the grown-up females around me. Their days were filled with nothing but housework, cooking, and grocery shopping, except for boring coffee klatches where they grumbled about housework, cooking, and grocery shopping.
My choices as I saw them: lug fussy kids and bags of produce around the streets of Revere, or whip out a wad of bills and laugh your head off with the cool guys on the corner. I knew those guys could have walked right into Guido’s, slapped him on the back, and ordered the biggest pizza with extra cheese. They could have treated the whole city to the tallest Dairy Queen on the menu and bought shirts in every color if they wanted to.
While my mother and aunts were bent over pushing an old vacuum cleaner across a thin carpet, the bookies stood tall with money and power. And it all stemmed from those rows of numbers.
With some regret, I report that I never did get to be a bookie. But those guys on the corner unwittingly influenced me a great deal. I got into a different numbers racket. I left Revere, went to college and majored in math.
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What a great blog! This could be the inspiration for a whole new series for you – female bookie who solves mysteries.
I was so excited to discover your mysteries. It’s a treat to get to know the “real” you!
When I grew up on the south side of Milwaukee Wisconsin I wasn’t aware of any bookies (maybe my parents didn’t hang around with the right people). But we did have a tavern on just about every other corner in my neighborhood.
P.S. You were a num? I’d like to hear the story behind that one.
I so enjoyed reading this – brought back memories of my childhood – also in Boston – and my grandfather and my mother discussing the numbers to be played. My mother’s was 908. I observed it all as if it were a fantasy world. And it also brings back my love of numbers – number games, number tricks. Remember when we used numbers as a more unique identity? .6 repeat!
I really enjoyed reading that you wanted to be a Bookie. I loved that as a child, you thought it glamorous, it shows how a childs mind works. Of course as a reader of your books I’m glad you didn’t become a Bookie..
Love your new blog! This could certainly be a “new series in the making” but since I love your miniaturist series so much, I certainly hope it continues for a long time. The series has made me want to pick up the craft …
WOW, another blog. Way to go Camille. I promise to visit often.
Camille,
Very interesting. Just like you to be full of surprises. I try to keep uop on all your activites
God Bless you,
Joyce
Back in those days, there weren’t many options for women’s occupations, and once a woman was married, she stayed home. But being a bookie is a really unusual choice for a girl, then or now, but I’m glad you never reached your dream job. My dream in the early 50s was to grow up to be an Indian — not one with a squaw dress, but one with a full headdress on a horse. I never had that job either. But I did have a career that included adventure and sometimes sneaky investigations — I was a litigation paralegal; Nancy Drew was when she helped Carson Drew acted as one of the first known paralegals..
You were a cotton candy twirler?
What a treat to have all your responses. Yes, future blogs will include all my other careers, from cotton candy to a full black wool serge habit!
It’s great hearing about all your fantasy career choices! And here we all are, Internet buddies, readers and writers, whatever else.
Love your stuff, esp the Periodic Table murders. So glad you published #9 as an e-book. Got any more?
You are such a wonderful storyteller.
You are an inspiration, Camille. God bless you for sharing your many talents with the world.
Camille, you are a wonder. I’m so glad to call you a blog sister.
And all the time I thought you were using your Rosary Beads for prayer, you were actually memorizing numbers!
Mary Donovan (response above) remembers when I numbered all my students! I called myself 0.3. More on that on another Thursday!
Love your story, Camille. When I was a kid, up in Canada, I listened to the horse races on the radio every day during the season, made my own race cards and got to know the horses so, more often than not, I picked the winners. Serious business – but no money,,,
Then, when I worked with horses in England, my boss was a bookie. I never thought it cool – but it was secretive. Something we never talked about – now I wonder why.
By the way, that first line of your book I bought Saturday is one of the best ever!!
Well, I missed my chance to be one of the first six comments, but that’s okay. Your post is so much fun and the entertainment provided is my prize! Now I’m trying to picture you as a bookie…
At last, we get to see the “real-deal Camille”! Love the “bookie” post.
Think black shirt, white tie … maybe that’s why I went for a black and white habit!
Thanks for the headsup about the new site; I’ve bookmarked it and will be back for more. It’s nice to meet the *real* you!
Camille, you never cease to amaze me!!
What fun! Love hearing about the past lives / careers. What about the next?
This is a great story, Camille. I’ll be back to visit your new blog often.
Camille, you are sure multi-faceted! I think you could be anything your heart desired….even a bookie!
Jonesy
This is a beautifully told story, Camille. Can hardly wait for more installments.
Camille, thank you for this blog. You’ve had a varied career. I was drawn to your Periodic Table series as a chemist working in Winthrop (next to Revere). I like science inspired mysteries, and have read just about all of Robin Cook, Michael Crichton, Kathy Reichs and even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger stories. I hope you make it all the way through the periodic table!
Mike
What a fun story. I play in a weekly football pool myself every season. I think I do well, but in the end it’s just my money that does well for somebody else.
Hi Camille,
Great story that reminded me of the regular visits of the Insurance man who sat at the kitchen table and shared coffee and … at each visit. This became a social time for us. We also entertained the furnace man who cleaned the jet on the oil furnace with coffee and ….. to keep him warm on those cold, wintery afternoons.
Don’t remember the bookie coming to the house. I feel deprived of that colorful character who I’m sure was well known in other circles to members of the family. Wonder what the next story will bring to mind.
Here’s link to music by The Numbers Racket!
http://www.thenumbersracket.com/
No bookie, Nina? You must have lived on the other side of town!
Yes! That is exactly how my mind worked too, as a child. Making connections in the oddest ways and inspired by the strangest people.
Maybe you can start a “bookie operation” for one of your books. That way, you’ll get practice at the job…
This is great! I really enjoyed this peak into your childhood. Mom is in Washington DC with the twins this week. I will have to tell her about this. I will look forward to Thursdays now.
Camille, you never cease to amaze me!! I know part of your versatility is in your Gemini nature, but between cotton-candy twirling, time in a habit and wanting to be a bookie, you stretch the boundaries of even that most adaptive of signs!
I’m just thankful that you settled on writing … and am happy to get to read more of your wonderful prose and stories in this fabulous new blog!!!
xoxo
Kelli, you’re too young to have accumulated all those careers! Just wait …
It’s never too late! I think Bookie is just about the only thing you haven’t done! Great read!
I can just see you moving quietly and briskly from brownstone to brownstone (don’t tell me they didn’t have brownstones in Revere, I don’t want to know!), keeping the neighborhood in good running order.
In Las Vegas, all that action was at the casinos (well, probably not ALL that action), it was about as romantic as welding. I decided when I grew up I wanted to be anything but a keno runner or casino waitress — being a pit boss would be totally cool. Luckily we left before I found out how wrong I was
Compared to you, I’ve led a very boring professional life (and I worked during the dotcom crazy days…who knew 80 million could be spent in 3 years?). You’ve inspired me to start my job search in new directions!
So that is how we should be motivating students to major in math! Thanks for the tip.
Very nice job describing our childhood Bookie…I hope you don’t have to go into Witsec now.
Love love love
A great blog and very fun read!
Camille, a memoir blog written by someone with the biography and the writing chops to keep us enthralled. What more could your friends and fans ask for? Wonderful!
I have a family confession. My father’s older sister decided when her son was two years old that she had made a mistake by marrying his father. One day, after he left for work, she gathered my cousin and her belongings, got on a train in NJ, and moved back to Philadelphia. This was in the mid 1930’s. She lived with my grandparents and when the war broke out, got a job in a factory. Of course, she never saw a penny from her ex-husband and father of her child. The war came and went, neither of my grandparents lived past those years, and my aunt decided that she liked working and needed to take care of her family, as small at it was. She stayed at her factory job until she retired. One day years later, I mentioned how lucky my cousin had it since he got to go to college without having a job. My mother dropped the bombshell then by saying that he had it lucky because of his mother and how “she ran numbers from her factory job and the neighborhood.” She also rented out the back room to the local bookie where he sat and counted money on Friday evenings. I never got to talk about this with my aunt. I would have loved to hear her tell me the story.
At last, a real-life female bookie story! And she underwrote a college education for her son. What’s not to like? Thanks, Maggie!
Camille, this is really great stuff! Can’t wait for more. You are not only a swell writer, but are inspiring so many others to tell their own tales in deathless prose. I adore you. But you already knew that.
CAMILLE,
YOU ARE JUST SUPER! MS WILEY AND MS WYMAN THOUGHT SO, PETER PARASOLI THOUGHT SO AND I THOUGHT SO. YOU HAVE ACCOMPOLISHED AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT WITH YOUR LIFE. KUDOS.
LOU
PS IF YOU WANT TO STILL PLACE A NUMBER, TRY THE CORNER OF SHIRLEY AVE AND NORTH SHORE RD. LARRY CHATE, A “SOLDIER” WILL BE GLAD TO HANDLE THE TRANSACTION.
It’s wonderful when old and new friends appear here!
And Lou – - whew, I can still place a number with Larry! Thanks!
Jean just turned me on to your website. Just read one story and laughed so hard…..must run in the family! So many jobs, so much travel!
Nan
Camille,You are one in million.I can see where Gloria’s first boyfriend came from.I too am a lot different then my family.My nephew was onced asked which one his Mom or his Aunt Suzie,did your Aunt Pat take after,he laughed and said neither one.Aunt Pat is an outlaw!I guess that does describe me.They are still great Catholics and of course I am not.Keep up with this terrific blog.I love hearing about you and your full life! Pat Kobeck