Language of the Blues - Edmonton Blues Society

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own. The first state lottery was established in New Hampshire in 1964.
Policy and bolita were a cheap gamble. Shops took bets as low as one cent and people
from all walks of life would regularly select a three-digit number, or gig, and place a bet
with a their bookie. Since just spinning a wheel or pulling balls out of a bag left the
bookies open to charges of fraud, the winning numbers came to be selected in a wide
variety of fashions some were based on horse races, some on the Cuban lottery. In New
York during the 1920s, bets were made on the last three numbers of the daily Federal
Reserve Clearing House Report. This offered the further advantage that the bettor did not
need to contact the bookie to learn if he or she had won - because the numbers were
printed in the daily newspapers. 301
-the-
ton Exchange, derived its
winning numbers from the daily spot prices for cotton on the Chicago Board of Trade. 302
In Florida in the 1940s, a game paid off on the last two numbers of the daily Cuban
lottery. The payoff in 1948 for that game was $65 for a $1 bet. 303 Regardless of how the
winning number was selected, the next day winners could collect their winnings from
their bookies.
Aunt Sally's
Policy Players Dream Book to try to predict the winning numbers. Dream books link
dream images, such as a dream of a train, to numbers. The dream images are listed in
alphabetical order, with numbers beside each item. A cat represented the number 14,
for example.
Dream books and policy gaming appear in many blues songs written from the 1920s to
the 1950s. Blues songwriters used the numbers from the dream books as code in some of
their lyrics. A player could decode the song by using a dream book. Blind (Arthur) Blake
I begged my baby to let me in her door
Wanted to put my 25, 50, 75 in her 7, 17, 24
Blues and hoodoo expert Catherine Yronwode noted that 25, 50, and 75 are all numbers
that represent phallic imagery in the dreambooks- a vine, a cucumber, and an elephant
trunk, respectively-
on the
listener, because an entirely different set of ascriptions shows that these numbers are
ale
- and so Blake
might just as well be saying that he would like to put his wash-board in her tub of river-
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