And that's when I first saw her. If ever there was such a thing as falling in love at first sight, that's what happened to me. Her name was Louise Carter. She was dark-haired, cute, personable, and vivacious. Louise was a pharmacist at Perkins Drugs, and she was there at this joint only because all her co-workers were there for a party. She didn't ordinarily go to places like that, I quickly learned. I knew one of the girls who worked at the pharmacy and she introduced Louise to Sailor and me. Louise danced with me and listend to my spiel, but she was not at all impressed. She thought I was married and Sailor was single. It was the reverse; Sailor was married though separated, and I was single. Many good-times relationships, yes; marriage, no. Louise had married as a young girl and was divoced and was the mother of a beautiful daughter named Cheryl.
I was totally infatuated.
Once I'd danced with her, I sensed that she was the girl I had been looking for all those years. I loved her smile, her laugh, her bubbly personality. I invited her out for coffee after we left the nightclub, but she wouldn't go. I invited her to dinner. No luck. The next day I went by the drugstore and watched her working. I concluded she was the most efficient person I'd ever seen. She had a phone to each ear; she was talking to two or three different people, filling prescriptions, and still her lively, effervescent personality was so magnetic.
It depressed me that this girl of my dreams was so elusive. Finally, I persuaded her to have a cup of coffee with me on her break, and I tried to get a date with her.
"No," she said firmly, a rejection that all but shattered me. It had been said that country boys were usually pretty shy and never took rejection well, whatever the circumstances. I discovered there was a nugget of truth in that.
At least once or twice a day I'd go into the drugstore under the prestense of looking for something. She sold me toys, vitamines, multivitamiens, aspirin, everything in the store. I bought every contraption she recommended. It didn't fool anyone, particularly Louise. I couldn't get a date with her, but I persisisted.
"No, no, no, no," she would say.
After two or three weeks of rejections, I quit coming by. But I hadn't given up completely.
.....
I always enjoyed seeing what surprise Sailor would bring to Sam's; you just never knew what the plate of the day was. But I had my own female ideas, and that was somehow to get Louise. Not much was working, but while plotting a new strategy to win over Louise, fate intervened. A beautician named Maybelle had run into a Hardin-Simmons graduate who told her all about me, and Maybelle approached Louise on my behalf.
"Louise," she said, "I told you Doyle Brunson was the man for you. He's not married, he's never been married, he has a master's degree from Hardin-Simmons, and he was a star athlete there.
But even then, I don't think Louise was much conerned because I had stopped coming by the pharmacy. She just wasn't interested at the time, so nothing developed. But I do think a seed was planted, and it just needed some time to grow.
A couple of months later, Sailor and I were having dinner at a steakhouse, and I saw Louise with some clown who looked like a prison-camp refugee. That gave me new hope, because I knew I was better looking than he was. When she saw me, I winked at her and she smiled and waved.
"Well," I said to Sailor, "maybe I've still got a shot."
The next day I went to the drugstore. Everything had changed. She was very friendly, and even receptive to going out. We started dating, and it was, as I thought it could be, a match made in heaven or someplace awfully close. I mean, I was in love! It probably took her a bit longer, but she reciprocate pretty fast. She asked me what I did, and for some reason I told her I was a bookmaker. I really wasn't, but I was living with Sailor, and he was still booking sports bets. I was probably trying to impress her.
I sure never 'fessed up to being a gambler or even a poker player. I guess I thought that a bookmaker sounded less onerous than a poker player, and sure enough, she said, "Oh, that's nice."
And I said to myself, "Yeah, this gal's a girl after my own heart."
In reality she thought I was a bookkeeper, an accountant. We dated for a month or so and really hit it off, and started talking marriage. She knew I played poker, but she didn't know quite how serious a pursuit it was for me. Not yet anyway.
But there was trouble brewing.
One day her boss at the pharmacy came running in. "Where's Doyle?" he asked.
"I think he's at the house," she said.
"We gotta get to him! I just got word that they're fixing to get raided."
"What do you mean, raided?"
"My God, Louise, don't you know what Doyle does?"
"Yes, he's a bookmaker," she replied.
He looked at her and started laughing. "Louise, do you know what a bookmaker is?"
"Yeah, he keeps books for people."
Her boss was incredulous. "Do you know what a bookie is?"
She looked at him with this stunned look on her lovely face and said, "Oh my goodness!"
