I was born and raised in the little town of Roadville. The only reason the town of Roadville existed was that we were half way between a lot of other important places. Thus, there was need for gas stations, vehicle repair services, low-end restaurants, bars and girlie places.
There was also a need for people to staff the various dead end jobs available in Roadville. Thus Roadville High churned out a lot of mindless drudges who could convince themselves that being a grease monkey or waiting tables was some sort of reasonable existence.
At an early age I looked the situation over and decided that I wanted a ticket out. Roadville High did not have ticket out education. Thus, I majored in dice, cards, sports bets, etc. They call me Gambler. After I graduated and got my diploma, I would split for 'Vegas.
Just before I graduated, the highway bridges on either side of town were found to be structurally defective. Traffic would have to be re-routed around Roadville. The impact on the local economy was about the same as the aftermath of a hydrogen bomb.
If you owned a business, the state would pay you enough to survive, providing you shut down the business and waited for the bridge repairs. If you worked in one of the businesses, you were out of luck. Those who had saleable skills began to drift elsewhere. Most of the residents of Roadville did not have really saleable skills.
There was no money and thus no high school prom. The boys and girls who had just been screwed over by fate instead gathered at Benny's, the local teenage hangout. I went, only because Janelle picked me up. Janelle was the hottest babe in Roadville and the daughter of the man who had been one of the richest men in town. Unfortunately, Janelle's father did not own one of the highway businesses. Thus Janelle's father did not get the government handout. Janelle's father was bankrupt, although it would take a few months for the last of the money to run out.
I found myself at a table with half a dozen dynamite girls. I figured maybe I could get laid before I stole a car and split for 'Vegas. However, that was not why I had been invited.
After everybody said hello, Janelle got to work. "Gambler, the town is dying. None of the kids can get jobs here and anything they get elsewhere will barely pay the rent if they can get a roommate or two. However, Juanita has an idea."
Juanita was a tall, slim girl who was half Amerind. Nice looking babe, but she hung with the Amerind guys outside town. If we were poor, the Amerinds were destitute.
Juanita lectured: "The last two years, for my school project, I got all of the local Amerinds inventoried and we set up a tribe. We have no money, but we have the old airbase as our tribal lands. We want to set up a casino."
I said, "Nice try. However, there are other tribal casinos not all that far from here. They are already set up and fancier than anything we could throw together. Why would anyone drive back roads to maybe play a little bingo?"
Juanita asked, "Couldn't we have dice and roulette and like that? "
I told her, "It takes training and talent to run a table game like craps or roulette. Roadville does not have talent like that. Also, most of the income from a casino comes from slot machines. There is no way we could buy, lease or rent enough slot machines to carry a casino, even if we could get customers in here."
Juanita then asked, "If we could get customers in here, could we make it work?"
I thought a few moments and said: "It would depend upon the demographics of the customers, the disposable wealth of the customers and the rules under which the operation would be run. If you could get the right mix of high rollers with the right rules, it might work. I would need to work up a spreadsheet."
Janelle took over. "We are gonna have several highway repair crews working in the area for the next couple of years. Young guys with a lot of money to burn. What if we could get them in here night after night?"
I said, "Nice try. A hard, young crowd in here would need policing; not fat local cops, hard boys."
Juanita pounced, "Gregorio and his guys quit the service 'cause they wiped out their Special Forces operation. They are coming back and they need jobs."
I said, "Let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that you could get the road repair guys in here, night after night. That will run some sort of night operation for at least a while. Gregorio and his boys could keep the lid on. You would also need some daytime operations, so that people would not just wander through here days. You would also need to work the new, temporary highway. There are several other things that would need to be done. Some of them I can see, some I cannot. What you would need would be a King to run the whole operation. The people who used to run this town have given up. The people who are now running the town, or at least trying to run the town are no-talents who will run what is left into the ground. For what you want, decisions would have to be made on a right now basis, by one guy with absolute, unquestioned authority. You don't have anybody like that."
Juanita and Janelle looked at each other in triumph. They turned back to me. "We do now!"
I was jolted. I looked around the circle of girls. They wanted me, for what reason I could not imagine. But why?
Janelle suddenly looked very embarrassed. "You have to understand, there is no real choice for the girls here. The economy is in the toilet. For most of the girls in this town the road out leads to the city and work as a low paid waitress for the very lucky and as a whore for most. If we have to whore, why not do it here for big money?"
What the girls planned hit me like a hammer. I said, "It is easy to sit here and discuss whoring, but could you girls really do it?"