Slot Machines at Jack's Place

 SLOT MACHINES (As told to me by my father)

In the mid-1930s, although slot machines were illegal, they were frequently found in taverns throughout much of the state, including Rensselaer County. The slot machine owners paid local law enforcement to ignore their presence.

Jack's Place had two slot machines.  They sat on a shelf behind two sliding panels behind the bar.  Periodically, the slot machine owners would come and open the machines when the tavern was closed.  The take would be counted and evenly divided by the owners and my father, as was the common practice.  The proceeds were not significant from the nickel machines, although my father said he could make a little more if he played the mechanical "one-arm bandits" early in the morning, as they paid off more when cold.

One evening in mid-March 1938, my father was at a meeting of the Masonic Lodge in Nassau while his brother, Harry, tended the bar for him.  During the meeting, a fellow member who was a Town Justice of the Peace told my father that as a result of some anti-corruption change in the county, the State Police were confiscating the slot machines.  My father rushed back to Jack's Place just as the Troopers were arriving.  Although they were supposed to confiscate the slot machines, my father asked them to wait a day, as he needed his share of the proceeds to pay the hospital bill for my birth. He called the slot machine owners, who came but wanted to take the machines away with them.  My father told them that he had made a promise to the Troopers that the machines would be available to be confiscated, and if they tried to take the machines, he would call them immediately, and they would probably arrest them. They reluctantly left without the machines, which were picked up the next day by the Troopers as agreed.