My wife alerted me to a TV commercial that just started running from Revel Casino announcing that for the month of July gamblers who use the Revel Card will be refunded any slot losses greater than $100 (1).

Now that's what I call an aggressive promotional move. When I'm in Atlantic City I either gamble at Harrah's or Bally's and have not considered the Revel because I don't get promotional offers from them. However, with this can't-lose offer I will give them a try in the next few weeks and report back here what happened.

This brings to mind the time in the early 1950s when movie theaters, gas stations, and retail stores gave out dishes, gifts, S&H Green Stamps, and other promotions to drum up business.

In 1952 I was 7 years old, and with seating for 2,736 patrons, the largest and most popular movie house in my hometown (Bayonne, New Jersey) was the DeWitt Theater. Here is how it looked in that summer of 1952:

A few months before that photo was taken, the DeWitt Theater had a special Easter Contest where it gave away a number of prizes, one of which was half a dozen live baby chicks. The theater manager called out the winning ticket and my five-year-old brother announced to me that he won the chicks. I grabbed his ticket and went on stage to retrieve the prize.

I don't know if my town had any laws back then regarding raising chickens in one's home, regardless I took care of them until they turned into large hens a few months later. By then they were making so much noise and raising such an odor that my mother finally couldn't take it any longer and took them to a poultry farm; at least that is what she told me. For all I know she dropped them off at a local chicken shop and I could have been eating my pet hens for a few weeks afterwards.

It's a secret she took to the grave.