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Longtime Slots Lover Doesn’t Like the Action in Md.
Slots have been very good to William “Whitey” Roberts. Back in the 1950s and ‘60s, when Route 301 in Charles County was the Vegas of the East, when Sinatra and Dolly Parton and Guy Lombardo performed at places such as the Stardust, the Wigwam and the Waldorf, Roberts was the guy who knew and nursed the machines, the engine of the Sin Strip.
He’s at it still today, at 75, in retirement at home in Waldorf. His basement is a showcase of vintage mechanical slot machines, each lovingly restored to one-armed-bandit glory by one of the last craftsmen in the country who can re-create the sweet whirrs and clanks of three cherries spinning into the display window, that magical moment when the coins shower into the waiting palms of a lucky gambler.
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But much as he loves those machines, and much as he believes slots brought little but good to the people of Southern Maryland until government stepped in to kill the fun, Roberts has decided that he cannot support Gov. Martin O’Malley’s push for legalized slots gambling.
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