Wages were low, doctors cost money, and despite tragedies like the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, working conditions were less than ideal.
Life was hard, especially if you lived in a big, merciless metropolis like New York or Chicago. And of course, me being me, I had to find out more about Billy-Bing and his brethren in bilking the unlucky into plunking down their hard-earned cash to find out how to waste yet more hard-earned cash buying sweepstakes tickets, picking random integers, and similarly enriching the real-life models for Sky Masterson and Nathan Detroit.įor all that we good and kindly folk of the early 21st century tend to view the last century as a simpler, easier, more wholesome time, well, to quote those early 20th century tunesmiths the Gershwin brothers, it ain't necessarily so. I think you can see why I was so enchanted by Billy-Bing, who seems to have made extra money modeling for the Boston Celtics. And despite the constant and (to say the least) disingenuous disclaimers that all of this was solely for amusement value, it was pretty clear that whomever had hidden behind the name and image of a grinning little Irish dude who looked like a reject from the Ant Hill Mob had had something more than simply entertaining his readers in mind. The text was all but unchanged despite the legalization of scratch tickets, electronic Keno, and Powerball, and if there were ads on the back cover for “BIG RED'S LUCK LINE!” and various 800 numbers one could dial for psychic advice at the low, low price of only $1.95 per minute, the interior could have come straight from a Damon Runyon story. Somehow, some way, through what quirk of fate I dare not question, I'd stumbled across a 1990's reprint of a Depression-era guide to playing the old numbers game that used to drive vice cops to despair. Its avowed aim? Help in choosing one's lucky numbers. The name of this educational publication? Billy-Bing's Workout Book. We'd periodically haul it out and peruse its contents for whatever information it could offer, then carefully tuck it back into the upper desk drawer where we kept stamps, letter openers, a fine collection of push pins, my birth certificate, and a couple of plastic Goliath beetles that we'd occasionally leave on each other's computer keyboards. I showed it to Wingding when I got home, and was pleased when he, too, found it of inestimable value.
I glanced about, saw no evidence that anyone had lost this orphaned tome of wisdom, and slipped it into my purse.
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