Start:
End:
Miles: 154 miles
Route taken: Route
61 north
to Route 49 west over
It was hard to leave
Certain cities do that to me;
There is something about these areas that get in your soul
and remains, like you knew you were meant to be there. I have often
tried to
think of what that common thread among these cities is and the only one
I came
up with is that they are all individualistic in nature.
The most interesting character I met however was Pudding
Hatchet.
Pudding is 76 years old, lived in the same house his entire
life and has never worked, making a living playing three-card monte.
This is a game usually performed by street hustlers on big
city corners, taking advantage of a hick fresh off the bus.
There are three cards, two black ones and a red one. You are
supposed to pick the red one after the dealer has moved them around. It
is a
variation on the pea in the shell game.
Usually in three-card monte the game is rigged and you know
Pudding has to have the edge because he is wearing a nice new
panama-style hat,
tropical silk shirt with brown slacks and shiny loafers.
Every day for lunch and every evening when the music begins,
Pudding is at Ground Zero Blues Club, sitting at his table. He brings
his deck
of cards with the torn box and a pair of magic dice.
He is the unofficial greeter of the club. At lunch when
people come in, he meets them with a smile and encourages them to come
in and
sit anywhere.
At night, he always has a crowd around him. There is always a
tourist who believes they can pick the red card.
“A man bet me $3,000 two years ago,” Pudding said. “That’s
the most money I’ve ever won.”
Pudding averages between $800 to $1,000 a week and has made
money at this game for nearly 60 years.
“When I was 18 I didn’t want to work,” Pudding said. “I
didn’t want to steal, didn’t want to deal drugs and I didn’t want to
beg. But I
knew I wanted money.”
A younger teenager was dealing three-card monte one day and
Pudding asked him to teach him. Two months later the two were in
“I knew I was going to do this the minute I saw him do it,”
Pudding said. “I loved it and I got real good at it.”
In those days, travel was necessary because there weren’t
tourists coming into
“When I first met my wife in 1961 I told her what I was
doing,” Pudding said. “She asked if I could make a living doing this.
The next
week I bought her a car. I told her, ‘I aint got no job, but I’ll take
care of
you.”
Pudding also doesn’t have a formal education. Unable to read
and write, but has gotten along just fine.
“There was always enough people to make a living off of,”
Pudding said. “There is always enough people coming by I could knock
off.”
Unlike other hustlers who run the con quickly, throwing cards
around at warp speed, Pudding goes slow, always has. It is his style
and a
trademark he is known by.
He also doesn’t use a red Queen, which a lot of throwers use.
He instead opts for two 5 of clubs and a five of hearts.
One trick he does is he takes the five of hearts, shows it to
you lays it on the table and puts your hand over it. Then he takes the
other
two black fives and moves them around, showing them to you.
When he stops he asks you where the five of hearts is and
since he hasn’t touched it, it must be under your hand. Wrong. There is
a five
of clubs under your hand.
There is a scene in Damon Runyon’s “Guys and Dolls” where the
lead character talks about hustlers.
“My father once said to me, that one day a man would walk up
to me with a deck of cards, upon which the seal has not been broken.
This man
will be willing to bet you that he can make the Jack of Diamonds jump
out of
the deck and spit cider in your ear. Now you do not take this bet, for
this is
a sucker bet, and as sure as you're standing here today, you will get
an earful
of cider.”
Pudding, though, continues to wet the ears of people who come
in, despite knowing the game is rigged.
“It’s like a casino,” Pudding said. “They know they can’t
win, but they keep going up there. I’m a little slower than I used to
be, but I
can still throw cards.”
I left Pudding Hatchet and