The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
La Bolita — A childhood link
At the beginning of the 20th century, La Bolita, (little ball in English) was a type of lottery that peaked in popularity in Cuba and Florida. A precursor of American lotto games, it involved little white balls with winning numbers being drawn out of a bag. It morphed into the betting game, also called La Bolita, I came to know in Spanish Harlem. It flourished throughout my youth as a popular subculture of sorts.
The La Bolita I remember consumed everyone, young and old. For many of us, playing the numbers began at an early age and continued into our adult lives. It was as if this game of chance nested in our DNAs.
But instead of picking white balls out of a bag, winning numbers came from daily horse racing results. Every day a winning threedigit number paid 500 to 1, as do today’s lotto drawings in many states. Winners were apt to show off by enthusiastically proclaiming, “Me pegé hoy, Me pegé hoy,” which meant “I won today, I won today.” I never heard anyone scream, “Perdí, Perdí, I lost, I lost.”
It hard to when my brother Peter and I became La Bolita players. Probably in our preteens is my guess. Because of our father’s obsession with it, and because of Cesar, our block’s esteemed bookie, it’s doubtful we could have ever dodged the urge to play. And Cesar’s bodega, a few steps from the stoop of our four-story tenement, took bets from everyone — of any age.
Spanish Harlem was swamped with La Bolita bookies. It was as if they had hung up flashing signs “Bet with Me” on blocks north of 101st Street and Madison Avenue, and across the First Avenue Bridge into the South Bronx. Yet bettors took buses and subways to come play with Cesar.
He had worked diligently to set up his store as one of the most respected numbers centers in the city. His reputation for paying off winners quickly, even with payouts of $5,000, was renowned. How he could get so much cash so fast was an El Barrio mystery. Some thought it might have been from extra income he took in for hosting card and domino games in the back of his store.
My father played La Bolita regularly. He had one favorite three-digit number. Peter remembers it as 329, a number he himself eventually adopted as his own. It’s possible my father could have gotten his 329 from The H.P. Success Dream booklet, which I found in our apartment after he passed away.
First published in 1924 and re-copyrighted in 1954, every one of the booklet’s say 94 pages had a three-digit number for anything and everything a mind could conceive or dream of. If you dreamt of a beggar, you would play 235. If you had a belly ache, you might have hurried to Cesar’s to bet on 210. It had numbers for each state, month and day. Alaska, 207. January, 569. Thursday, 310. And next to the number 712, (my birthday is 7/12) was the word “grief.”
Has the La Bolita culture I grew up in influenced me? I would say no in one respect and yes in another. A gambler I am not. Never was, never will be. During a long consulting project in Las Vegas I never went to a casino. I did lose seven dollars and 50 cents at an airport slot machine.
Race tracks visits? A handful of times. In my college days I went once with Eddie, also a student. On a few business trips going back 40 years I have gone with colleagues. One who lives in Connecticut is still a “horsemeister.” His wife rides them. He bets on them.
For lotto, it’s different. Of the 46 states I have been to, I have bought a lotto ticket wherever they were sold. Especially when the top prize was in the gazillion stratosphere.
As to the three-digit numbers game, I rarely buy a ticket. But once in New Haven my car’s distance gauge showed 359 miles traveled. That was my favorite La Bolita number in Spanish Harlem. I pulled into a gas station, played 359, and the following day collected several thousand dollars from one of the Connecticut lotto paying centers. Was this win random luck or something else in play?
Until now I had not given much thought to the bond between my La Bolita playing in Spanish Harlem and my interest in today’s lotto. Surely the two are linked. It makes me wonder how much of who we are today is rooted in our childhood.
The La Bolita I remember consumed everyone, young and old. For many of us, playing the numbers began at an early age and continued into our adult lives. It was as if this game of chance nested in our DNAs.