Somewhere out there, possibly in Rockaway, N.J., is a person who enjoys making senior citizens suffer.
This hater of the aged decided to rain on their parade by reporting their 10-cent bingo game to the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs this past May, according to the Asbury Park Press.
But don’t place all the blame on that Grinch. For instead of laughing off the complaint — because come on, it’s 10-cent bingo at a senior home — New Jersey’s Legalized Games of Chance Control Commission made the decision to drop the hammer.
In happier days, participants in the government-funded Meals-on-Wheels nutrition program would come to Pleasant View Village to receive a free hot lunch, and some would come early to play bingo. Not any more. Residents of Pleasant View Village can no longer play their beloved 10-cent games with non-residents, and they cannot play at all when the Meals on Wheels program is in the building three days a week. In fact, the Meals on Wheels program now requires a permit to allow bingo games while they are in the building.
“Everything was fine all these years,” Pleasant View resident Pauline Dademo told the APP. “Then one person had an argument with a nutrition employee that no longer works there, and he told the gaming commission.”
That former employee — nicknamed by me just now as the Elder Skelter — told New Jersey’s gaming commission that “illegal activity” was going down at Pleasant View — an underground bingo game with a 10-cent per card buy-in and a three-card maximum.
NJ.com was able to contact Neal Buccino, a spokesman for New Jersey’s Division of Consumer Affairs, who assured them the agency took no “action preventing the residents from enjoying their bingo games.”
Buccino said the agency just contacted Pleasant View to “clarify” the state’s laws regulating games of chance. He said the senior living facility was not investigated or issued violations by the DCA.
“Without bingo to look forward to, what do we have?” Dademo asked.
Hopefully, swift action from the DCA to apply some common sense to its restrictions — as well as the public tarring and feathering of the original complainant.
