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Gambling Hall in Concordia Area?

 
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roger.pape
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Joined: 17 Mar 2009
Posts: 414
Location: Liverpool, NY

PostPosted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 5:12 pm    Post subject: Gambling Hall in Concordia Area? Reply with quote

Does anyone have information about a gambling hall in the Concordia area during the 1920s?

Ed James, well known as a Concordia undertaker, was somewhat of a colorful figure in his younger days, more than one would expect from a mortician. Ed ran a gambling hall somewhere in the Concordia area during the Prohibition years and the Roaring '20s. I never found out exactly where it was. Perhaps my dad knew, but he never told me. Ed also claimed that he was a descendant of the Jesse James family.

One day in the mid 1950s, Ed showed up at the lumberyard and told me to come out to his car. He had something in the trunk for me. It turned out to be an old slot machine, the last remaining one from his establishment that he had saved all those years. His wife told him that it was time to get it out of their house.

I took the slot machine back to my parent's home and kept it in the basement. Some years later, when our family was visiting Concordia, my mother asked me to get it out of the house. She was always in fear that some day she would pass away and people would find the machine in her basement.

We hauled the slot machine back to New York in our station wagon. On the way back, one of the kids commented about the strange looking nickels that had fallen out of it. Turns out that some of my nephews had found a coin collection of mine and used the old Liberty V and Buffalo nickels to play with the machine.

So now the slot machine stands in our family room here in Liverpool, still stuffed with old nickels. The grandchildren love to play with it and it gives us a chance to show them what a losing game it is.

The last remnant of a gambling hall in Concordia now resides in upstate NY.
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