LOYAL BINGO FANS CAN FIND GAMES NEARLY EVERY NIGHT

Picture this: A room full of about 350 people, a smoke haze steadily filling the air and it's so quiet that the only sounds you hear are the voice of the man on the stage and the popcorn machine popping in the background.

That is until someone yells out "Bingo!" -- prompting the groans and murmurs of the other 349 people in the room, followed by the wadding up of the bingo cards and their disposal in the bags at the end of the table.

"I've been playing bingo for 30 or 35 years, I don't even remember how long it's been," said Georgia Cauble of Cape Girardeau.

"When I first started, I played for a box of corn flakes or a loaf of bread," she said. "Now, I'm playing for money."

Cauble plays three cards at a time.

"You really get good at it. You learn how to scan the cards and look for the number that is called," she said. "Some people can play up to 12 boards at a time, but that's just too much for me."

One of the reasons she visits the bingo halls religiously is to see the people, many of whom show up to play each week.

"I win every once and awhile; I haven't won big since May when I took home $750 in one month," she said. "In all the years I've been doing this, that was the luckiest month I ever had.

"It's also the thrill you get when you win that keeps me coming back," Cauble continued. "It makes you feel wonderful."

She not only comes to the A.C. Brase Arena Building every Monday to play bingo, but she insists on having the same seat -- at the end of a table near the center of the room.

"Sometimes I get here too late and someone else is already sitting here," she said. "I never win on those nights -- call it superstition, but it's a fact."

Cauble carries with her three good-luck charms she sets out when she plays: A four-leaf clover, a St. Christopher's medal and a blue paper circle, her "dot" which has been blessed by "some bishop or something," she said.

"Once I thought I had lost my medal and I just went to pieces over it," she said. "But then one night at bingo, the caller asked if someone had lost a medal and it was mine. I was so glad to get it back."

Cauble said she likes to play everywhere, any night of the week she can get in on a game. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday she can play locally, but after that she has to find someone to drive her to out-of-town games.

She said that the games at the Arena Building on Mondays are the least expensive, with a set of bingo cards costing $15. Other places range from $21 to $30 for the cards alone. Then the organizers have "pull tab" chances to win instant money for 50 cents to a dollar a piece and "daubers" people can buy to mark off their cards.

Unlike Cauble, Rhonda Kline of Cape Girardeau is not a big bingo player.

But she recently showed up at the Arena Building to visit with her mother and play bingo.

"I play about once a year, only when my mom talks me into it," Kline said. "I was off work tonight so I decided to come here to see her."

Kline said that the thought of "easy money" has always been alluring to her, but she does not wish to get caught up in the bingo frenzy.

"I won about $100 the last time I was here -- that was sometime last year," she said. "But I don't go places like my mom does just to play bingo. I just don't see the point in it."

Besides, Kline said she hates the smoke that ends up clogging the air in the building by the end of the night. On this particular Monday night, she was worried that her white sweater would be stained by the haze.

"I guess another reason I don't play much is I get so frustrated when I don't win," she said. "I got so mad one time I played that I didn't come back for almost a year and a half.

"What gets me is I've seen people come in here with oxygen masks on just to play bingo -- that's how dedicated they are to this," she said.

Another person who gets frustrated with the games but continues to put himself through the agony of defeat is Chaffee resident Chub Conrad, a semi-retired mechanic.

"One of the first times I ever went to bingo, I won $200," he said. "Then I went about a year when I won nothing at all.

"So I quit for about a year and then came back and I won again," he said. "Now, I just like to play."

Conrad chalks the cost of playing bingo up to "entertainment" in his personal budget. He said, on average, he spends $18 to $30 every night he goes to play bingo.

"I don't drink and I don't party, so I guess you've got to do something; I play bingo," he said. "It just gets in your blood, I guess."

For some, bingo offers a chance for friends to get together and chat.

"I got interested in bingo through friends," said Judy Crader of Jackson. "When my husband was in the Navy years ago I started going, but when he got back, I quit for several years.

"I don't play every Monday; my family comes first," she said. "I just come when it's convenient, and sometimes when I know my friends will be here."

Her friend, Dorothy Brown, said that bingo is "just recreation -- a chance to get out of the house."

Brown said that her mother is so addicted to bingo that the family has to plan get-togethers around her mother's habit.

But as you walk through the rows and rows of tables, one can see the telltale signs of people who do take bingo seriously.

Some have trinkets lined up across the table, others have designed their own "bingo bags," with chips, daubers and good luck charms neatly packed inside.

Others must sit in the same seat every week, fearing the taboo of a break from normalcy.

Bingo players don't talk while the numbers are being called; few speak between games.

Terry Crowell, president of a local service organization which hosts bingo every Monday night from 6:30-9:30 at the Arena Building, calls bingo "one heck of a fund raiser."

His club donated more than $100,000 to local charities last year strictly from monies raised on bingo nights.

"Our members do all the work involved with bingo night," said Crowell. "The state will only allow a not-for-profit organization to run bingo; therefore, we can only let our members participate."

The Cape Girardeau club has been holding bingo for a little more than nine years now.

Narvol A. Randol said nearly all monies raised by bingo are filtered right back into the community.

"This year we pledged $100,000 for the construction of the new Salvation Army building," said Randol. "In the past, we've built shelters at local parks, given away dozens of scholarships and have built and rebuilt the stands at the baseball field in Capaha Park."

The club also donates $8,000-$10,000 per year for coats and shoes for needy children.

"We got the idea for bingo nights in 1984 when a few of us went to a state convention and learned that other service organizations were doing it," said Randol. "We had to get a license from the state -- which we have to renew every year -- and make monthly reports to the state Bingo Commission.

"This has been good for us," said Randol. "And what's good for us turns out to be good for this community."