Winner Required a Life Jacket in the $2 Million Flood of Nickels
When Marty Levitt decided to go casino camping in the pine-covered mountains of Arizona, he knew he wanted to play the nickel slots. He also knew he would likely stay up all night stuffing nickels down the hungry machine’s throat and then sleep in till noon or so.
When it turned out that a Super Mega $2 Million Blockbuster Nickel Payout tent was available, he jumped at the chance to stay in it. The idea of $2 million was a big pull.
But Marty never dreamed that he might actually hit the jackpot. And who would have the foresight to consider the possibility that the payout would come as a torrent of nickels raining down from a pipe at the top of the tent? Or that he would have to swim upward in the vicious flood of five-cent coins, gasping for air and hoping an air bubble at the tent’s peak might save him?
But we get ahead of ourselves.
Marty arrived at his tent about an hour before dark. He threw open the flap — and there it was. A gleaming red, white and blue beauty sitting on the ground. It had a coin slot and lever low down to provide easy access to someone lying prone in a sleeping bag.
As he unpacked and arrayed $500 in nickels in two-gallon buckets so he could get to them without leaving his sleeping bag, Marty could hear the beeping music of slot machines in other tents coming at him through the pines.
By the time it was totally dark, Marty was reclining in the sleeping bag, far into the spell of manically stuffing nickels down the machine’s gullet as fast as he could. He had worked out an efficient system of moving nickels from the buckets so that not a second was wasted.
By midnight, the sound of slot machines beeping was coming from only a handful of tents, with Marty’s the most insistent, of course. By 2 a.m., it was only Marty, who estimated he was approaching the $400 mark. He wondered if the cashiers were still on duty so he could get more nickels.
Then it came — the Super Mega $2 Million Blockbuster Nickel Payout Jackpot. Bells went off, followed by sirens, horns honking, the sound of F-16s swooping low overhead, and a klaxon like the kind that go off in World War II submarine movies when everyone scrambles down the hatch and someone screams, “Dive! Dive!”
Except that in Marty’s case, someone should have been shouting, “Swim! Swim!”
The torrent quickly covered the tent floor and was about to pin Marty in the sleeping bag before he realized he was in trouble. He fought his way out of the bag and staggered to his feet, only to be driven to his knees by the cascade. As the nickels rose up to his chest, the will to live took over and Marty began to swim, flailing his arms and legs in a swimming motion as best he could in the crush of nickels.
Marty was almost sucked under a couple of times, but still he rose up with frantic swimming until his head jammed into the tent pole at the peak and he found his nose at the vent hole. He could breathe, and –miracle of miracles — the deafening screaming of the slot machine fell silent. The $2 million payout was complete.
All was quiet for a moment, and then a distant loudspeaker announced that someone had won the $2 million jackpot and would that tent please identify itself. Marty tried to call out, but only a ragged croak resulted.
After a few minutes, casino security found him and then an assistant manager was calling up congratulations and asking wouldn’t Marty like to come down and have a free breakfast on the casino.
Then they realized he was trapped, arms and leggs pinned. A pumper truck and three firemen from the Mesa Mojada Volunteer Fire Brigade arrived after 20 minutes. They put a ladder up to the vent hole and Marty sucked a sports drink through a straw. Then he ate a granola bar, which the fireman on the ladder fed him piece by piece.
After some dithering, the fireman and casino security realized that if they slit the sides of the tent with a knife, the nickels would cascade out onto the ground, but that Marty risked drowning in the process. So the Mesa Mojada hook and ladder unit was rousted out of bed.
In the end, two fireman lying prone at the end of the ladder from the hook and ladder truck made small slits in the top of the tent to free Marty’s arms. Then while they grasped Marty’s arms, other fireman made large cuts in the tent walls lower down, causing nickels to flow out on the ground.
Once he was freed, the firemen pulled Marty onto the ladder and carried him down to the ground amid cheers from a crowd of casino campers.
When Marty’s feet were on the ground, the crowd rushed the massive nickel pile seeking a souvenir or two. The four deputies from the Mesa Mojada County Sheriff Department only had to fire a dozen or so rounds from their Glocks into the air to make the crowd retreat.
The rest was mop up. A platoon from an Arizona National Guard unit expecting deployment to Iraq was called out to set up a machine gun perimeter around the nickel pile. At dawn, the casino sent in a backhoe and a dump truck and carted the nickels off to be counted.
The casino offered Marty a free night in another nickel slots tent and a free $500 stake of quarters. But he declined, saying he thought he should “quit while I can still breathe.”