The Wolf Point herald. (Wolf Point, Mont.) 1913-1940, 1921-10-27

Not many of the Old-time gamblers
of Montana who flourished in those
times when gambling was a licensed
business and ran wide open, settled
down to be farmers. Missoula has a
resident who did this, however, and
after years of the come-easy, go-easy
life of the green table, the faro lay
out and the clicking roulette wheel,
where fortune smiled and frowned on
the devotees of the palaces of chance,
he spent thirty years filling the soil.
Now he has retired with a comfort
able fortune, won from the fertile
soil of the Bitter Root valley, and
with his wife, whom he says has been
a mighty good partner" expects to
spend the evening of life in ease and
comfort.
L. Young is the name of this old
timer, who in the long ago was one
of the best known faro dealers of
western Montana and who then be-
anne one of the states successful
farmers. Last week he paid a visit
to Anaconda, which he knew as a
frontier town SO years 6 and had
not seen for that many years.
Dealt Big Games
II have dealt some of the biggest
poker and faro games that were ever
played in Montana" Young asserted
when asked about the early day in
door sport. Gambling was as COM
mon in those days with the mining
and smelter pioneers as the very air
they breathed. Nobody stopped to
discuss it. They just gambled, the
men on the outside, because they
loved it, the men on the inside be-
cause they had the surest money
making proposition hal has ever
been attempted"
Standing out in his memory of
those arduous days are names of
many of the men who were especially
proficient at the green table. French
Levy OF Butte, a man named Grandis
OF Deer Lodge, are two of those with
whom he has held encounters with
the cards for long hours. Johnnie
Crockett, who ran the first drug store
in Anaconda, was another of the IA
nous plungers of his day.
Three times in a brief space of
years Crockett was $1,000 ahead of
the game, but each time he continued
to play to his ruin. 1t was the limit
of his luck. He not only lost his
winnings, but the wealth which rep
resented his business. Finally he
became a county charge and to the
almshouse one day came the news
that he had inherited a good, round
sum of money. This time he did not
return to the gambling table but used
his substance to take him to his old
home and friends in the east, where
he spent his declining years. j
In Days Saloon
1t was in 1888 that Young began
dealing faro and poker in Tom Daly's
saloon, third door from the depot,
west side of Main street. There is
no use to look for the saloon by these
directions now. The saloon was
housed in a low frame structure, one
of a row that lined Main street in
1888. These have long since been ,
replaced with substantial brick struc- +,
lures and the block has changed from
one ~typically western to that of the F,
common American business street. :
The old wooden buildings burned
many years ago. i,
To-day it is not uncommon to hear :
some one kicking because a legiti- ;
storekeeper is making from Is 6
to 20 per cen profit on his goods" :
unused the story teller. when Ana :
conda was young the professional :,
there was no kick. 1t was truly a !
mint. 1t was not uncommon for one
1ealer, who understood his business
and had even luck, to make $3.50 in