Happy Harry

A movie I highly recommend to all my fans is The Cooler, which earned a best-actor Academy Award nomination for Alec Baldwin. In case you haven't seen it yet, it's a gripping, realistic film about an old-time Downtown Las Vegas casino (much like the Horseshoe) that employs the services of a loser, played by the terrific character actor William H. Macy. The "cooler" gives off so much bad luck that the casino uses him to stand near players on a hot streak and cool them off.

Moviegoers naturally assume that the cooler is a totally fictitious creation. In fact, he is based on a very real person. His name is Happy Harry and, like so many of the nut cases who populate my stories, I met him at Ralph the Rattler's home game.

Happy Harry was the unhappiest dude I ever knew. He had more negatives than a camera store. He'd walk around muttering how unlucky and how undeserving he was and how meaningless his life was. He had chosen to be a full-time poker player, but he considered the profession beneath contempt. "What am I contributing to society?" he would lament every time he won a pot. "All I do is try to take other people's money." (Oh? I thought that was the whole idea of poker.)

He was a lot like Joe Btfsplk, a character from the "Li'l Abner" comic strip of years ago. Btfsplk, "the world's worst jinx," would walk around with a rain cloud perpetually over his head, bringing disaster to everyone crossing his path.

Like Joe Btfsplk, Happy Harry was not the kind of person you wanted near you. His depression was contagious. He once went to "happy hour" at his neighborhood bar and everyone started crying. His bad luck was catching, too. Nobody invited him to birthday parties after what happened at his niece's party. When the kid blew out the candles on her cake, one of them flew off, set the tablecloth on fire, and the house burnt down. Harry's bad luck might have been genetic. His great grandfather was a scout for Gen. Custer, his grandfather was a lookout on board the Titanic, and his father was a bodyguard for Jimmy Hoffa.

I once tried to cheer him up. I pointed out that he had his health, that there were millions of people worse off than he was, and so on, but the more I talked, the more depressed and morbid he got. Finally I lost my patience. "If you're so unworthy, why don't you just shoot yourself and get it over with?" I shouted.

Happy Harry looked at me with pain in his eyes. "I would, but I'm not worth the price of a bullet."

I realized I was working on a lost cause when, in a last-ditch effort to raise his spirits, I took him to Disneyland, "The Happy Kingdom." That was the day, you may recall, when the amusement park's roller coaster flew off the tracks.

Talking to Big Denny one day, I told him about Happy Harry and how sad it was that he had nothing to contribute to society.

Denny rubbed his chin in thought. "Don't be so sure, Maxie. I been gettin' killed in dat dice game I runs in da back room. Dat's what I get fer buyin' dem cheap loaded dice at da 99-Cent Only store. Maybe I could use yer friend ta cool off dem farmers."

"Why do you need a cooler?" I asked. "I thought you just slipped Mickey Finns to any players who won too much, then dragged them out into the alley."

"Yeah, but I been tryin' to go legit wit' da Barstow Card Casino, ya knows what I mean?"

Big Denny's conception of "legit" would differ slightly from the dictionary definition, but I did not argue the point, and agreed to sound out this real-life cooler.

"What have I got to lose? I'll be no worse off than I am now," was the expected enthusiastic response I got from Happy Harry when I relayed Big Denny's offer.

Well, Big Denny put him to work. Sure enough, everything changed. Suddenly the rustics couldn't make their points to save their lives. Big Denny was raking in the money and couldn't be happier, while Happy Harry was more miserable than ever because he was wreaking so much havoc upon innocent players. And then, remarkably, just as in the movie, a new plot twist emerged.

Love entered Happy Harry's life.

It was in the guise of Aunt Sophie, who was working as a cocktail waitress at the Barstow Card Casino. She was probably the only cocktail waitress in the world who wore a girdle and support hose and kept her hair in curlers, but the main consideration was that she worked cheap. Her standards in men weren't very high, either. After she spotted Happy Harry and determined that he was unattached, she made a bold approach.

"Hello, dollink," she greeted him. "A drink on the house maybe I can buy for you?"

"You're not trying to slip me a Mickey Finn, are you?" Happy Harry asked suspiciously.

"Vot? To a cutie like you?" she said, running her gnarled fingers through his thinning hair.

Aunt Sophie kept plying Happy Harry with drinks until she looked good (or at least acceptable) to him, and then dragged him off to the casino hotel's luxurious bridal suite, the only room boasting its own bathroom. She hadn't had sex since she was 15 and he had never even been with a woman, so the lovemaking session didn't go very well. Still, they found something in each other that had been missing from their lives, and a touching romance began to bloom.

Well, all hell broke loose. Now that he was reasonably happy and no longer a depressed jinx, Happy Harry started to actually bring luck to the farmers at the craps table. Big Denny threatened to kill Aunt Sophie, while her nephew Michael Wiesenberg threatened to kill Happy Harry because he stood to lose the use of his aunt in his columns.

But this story has a happy ending. Fearing for their lives, the two ran off and eloped on a Card Player Cruises vacation, where they were married by Linda Johnson. A now-blissful Harry started his own business, Mortuary Entertainment, where he cheers up mourners with handshakes, slaps on the back, and a few tasteful jokes, while Aunt Sophie serves drinks and croaks show tunes. The tips aren't very big, but they get by. Meanwhile, Big Denny has been beating the Barstow farmers regularly after purchasing some better-quality loaded dice. As for Wiesenberg, he allowed me to hijack and demean his dear aunt in exchange for an autographed copy of my book. That shows you how high his standards are.