The rumor grist mill: Hellertown’s not-so-secret gambling thing?
“Backroom” gambling in Hellertown and Lower Saucon may happen today more at people’s kitchen tables than in some backroom of the local social club.
Like Hellertown’s fentanyl deaths, it’s a topic that rarely pops up in public life, and unless I missed something, I know of no elected official in Hellertown, Lower Saucon, or Freemansburg who has ever seriously addressed the issue publicly, unless I missed something? (And please let me know if I did!)
Photo by Marco Verch, CC license
You’d think it would garner more attention since we’re literally the backyard of one of the largest casinos in Pennsylvania, and to say Hellertown has an historic rep as a gambler’s den is an understatement of the first order.
Over literally a hundred years, Hellertown earned itself a tidy reputation for petty backroom gambling offenses. There are “gambling device” news reports about Hellertown from the early 20th century. Most of the offenses seemed more pathetic or just … gross … than worrying.
I hear stories, occasionally, and I know there is ongoing concern about so-called “skill game” pseudo-gambling, but in 2022, I think it’s what we don’t hear that may be more insidious.
Lately, what I’m hearing about are isolated people feeding what sounds a hell of a lot like gambling addictions online at home in Hellertown. In this sense, being a “backroom gambler” would seem a big step up in terms of mental health from the addictive behavior in your own house.
A 2014 article about one of many backroom gambling-machine busts in Hellertown. Similar busts go back 100 years. (Image: Newspapers.com)
Have you known a gambling addict? It’s not pretty, and it’s often linked to other kinds of deadly substance-based addictions.
I knew a compulsive gambling addict when I lived overseas in England, and it was heartbreaking. This chap could not keep a “fiver” in his pocket without running to the slots or dog races or fantasy sports matches to throw it at a new hope, and he destroyed his whole life and that of his family many times over. He ended up in a 12-step program the last I heard.
It must be said here, too, that there are good resources in Pennsylvania if you or someone you love needs help with a gambling problem.
It’s been my impression for a long time—and I’ve written about this in the Morning Call—that Hellertown and Lower Saucon have a loneliness problem that we don’t seem to be able to cope with well.
I’m no sociologist, but I still don’t think either place has quite figured out what they’re supposed to be after the Steel. Saucon Valley’s connection to heavy industry was absolutely defining. There are still hundreds of older people who worked at the Steel, or younger people who came from Steel families, who have not quite landed on their feet, even, yes, four decades after most major operations closed.
I think that Long Island outsider, Billy Joel, put it quite accurately:
Every child had a pretty good shot
To get at least as far as their old man got
But something happened
On the way to that place
They threw an American flag in our face …
Of course, gambling was happening in Hellertown long before the Steel closed. What’s new is the darkness of isolated, at-home addiction.
