Razzle-Dazzle

Just outside of Houston, Texas it was time for us to stop, gas up the car and stretch our legs. Truck stops proved to be the best places to stop and get gas along our trip since their facilities offered every convenience in the way of food, drink and more (shower anyone?). 

We pulled into the Keystone Truck stop and immediately noticed that this particular location wasn't quite up to our standards. In addition to the dilapidated appearance of the buildings and pumps, there was a RV showcasing various stuffed animals and electronics parked in front of one entire section of pumps. It then took us three attempts, at different pumps, to finally find one that actually worked. All the while, a shabby looking man kept approaching Jon and offering him a raffle ticket to take over to the RV...no strings attached.

Realizing that we still needed some time to stretch our legs and fed up with being harassed by this shabby fellow, Jon and I made our way over to the RV with the raffle ticket in hand. Oh, if we only thought this move through a little more.

The RV was manned by a carny looking family....mother, son, daughter and possibly an uncle or older cousin. On the ledge of the RV was a wooden box containing numbered holes in the base, each hole in every row was associated with a number 1-6. Next to the box was a cup with 8 red balls/marbles. The fast talking uncle or older cousin told Jon to drop the balls into the box so he could count up his score. And away we went for the ride of our life. 

One dollar turned to ten, ten turned to twenty, twenty turned to forty, and forty turned to eighty as we bet and rolled away trying to get over 100 points and take home the BIG prize. The count was always made quickly after the balls fell into the holes; a few times I found myself coming up with a different total then our guy. Along the way we won a small prize....but we were so close to the big prize, we keep going. And then it just didn't make sense anymore, what the hell were we doing?! 

Reason prevailed and Jon said, "that's it, we're done". Our guy tried to talk us into staying in the game, we were just two points away...but we still decided to walk. And before we stepped away from the twilight zone Jon said,"we'll take our small prize". Gotta give the kid credit, I just wanted to get out of there and forget the entire experience but damn it, we rightfully won that small prize and Jon made sure we were got our due from the game. So we picked out a stuffed animal that would make a nice gift for a little kid and got into the car.

For the next ten minutes the conversation went as follows, either Jon or I uttered, "What the hell happened back there? What the hell was that? I have no idea what just happened?!". 

Then we pulled out our iPad and did some research. Razzle-Dazzle is a carnival game, seldom run honestly,  where the player loses the minute he steps up to the game. And there we had it,  we were officially had. Once the shock wore off, we had a good laugh over the entire experience. Here we were in Las Vegas a few weeks back and had not gambled one dollar, either of us. Anybody can go to Vegas and lose $200 on the slots or table....but not many can say they lost $200 to a carny family with a game of Razzle-Dazzle run from a RV at a truck stop in Texas. 

Picture of a Razzle-Dazzle taken from the Internet.