Kino, Hair, and War (Published 3/28/22)

 

Not too long after I turned twenty-one, I went to Las Vegas with some friends.  As I recall we were on our way to Zion National Park and stopped there on the way.  I did not have much money, but I had this theory that playing just one Kino number was a sure winner.  There are eighty kino numbers and twenty are picked each game.  The casino should be paying you four times the bet but If your one number comes up you receive three times your bet. Still, the idea of tripling my money was so inviting and such a sure thing.  But sadly, something went array with my calculation of odds.  If you lose one time, you’re almost positive to have that one number come up the next game.  And if you lose again, it’s almost for sure that the number will come up the following time.   I doubled my bet and lost.  Next game, I doubled my best again and lost.  A third time, I lost, a fourth time, I lost.  A fifth time, I lost, each time doubling my bet.  I forget how many times I lost before I give up.

Have you ever seen Kino?  These little ping pong balls with numbers come popping up out of a machine.  The balls are in a glass bubble with a blower making the balls float thru space before being forced out thru the opening, one by one.  Watching them floating around the bubble is hypnotizing.  For me, perhaps a little much so as it turned out.  But I had a special liking for this game. 

There was second memory from this Vegas trip; seeing the musical, Hair.  The musical created quite a stir in Vegas.  The Hilton casino, where it was being performed, wanted the producers to censor the language and remove the nude scene.  Imagine, Vegas, with all its vices concerned about the language and the one brief nude scene.   If you don’t remember Hair or have not seen it, Hair tells the story of the "tribe", a group of politically active long-haired hippies of the Age of Aquarius living a bohemian lifestyle in New York City and fighting against conscription into the Vietnam War.  The group of characters struggles to balance their young lives, loves, and the sexual revolution with their rebellion against the war and society.  Ultimately, the main character must decide whether to resist the draft as his friends have done or to serve in Vietnam, compromising his pacifist principles and risking his life.  Sadly, he chooses to serve and pays the price. 

Las Vegas was not the first time I had played Kino.  I played Keno a year or two earlier with better results.  The first time I played Kino was in the Student Union Building at San Fernando Valley State College, as it was then known.  That first time there were many more ping ball balls, 365 to be exact.  And this Kino Game was not by choice.  I remember being transfixed as the balls whirled thru time and space for what seemed like an eternity before popping up thru the hole and being pegged to a calendar.  When they got my birthday, June 2, a number between one hundred fifty and two hundred popped up, a number that made be feel good, but not jubilant as a number over two hundred would have made me feel, but good just the same.  I felt like a winner.  Maybe that’s why I wanted to play it in Las Vegas. 

Earlier, that very same week I had seen Hair for the first time at the Aquarius theater on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.  I remember being so moved by the show and walking away convinced that I would not end up like the character in the musical.  I would not go to Vietnam.  That Kino game unlike my Vegas experience late was lucky.  It made it so I would not have to make that choice of being drafted or running away. 

My dad knew someone at the local draft board.  He was told the highest draft number would be reached that year.  On December 29 my dad helped me write a letter to the draft board, dropping my student deferment and making myself immediately eligible for the draft.  We hand-carried it to the draft board and had it stamped as received.  We waited, for what seemed like hours in that office for a letter of confirming I had dropped by deferment.  Two days later my year of eligibility for the draft was up, and I no longer had to worry about going to war.