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Lagniappe
Craps
By Larry Edell
My wife Andrea and I were
having brunch in one of those wonderful garden restaurants in the French Quarter
of New Orleans. We were with our friends Al and Teri, and had played craps with
them last night in one of the floating casinos in Lake Pontchartrain, just North
of here. Al and Teri live in Kenner, near the Lake, and, besides craps, they are
also interested in a really weird kind of plant called an epiphyllum, or "Epi."
"An epi," Terri was saying as the waiter brought our crawfish etouffee,
"is a kind of a jungle cactus, and is very easy to propagate. It can
slither up trees, feel at home in a hanging pot, or make a beautiful indoor
house plant as well."
"And the flowers are gorgeous!" my wife Andrea remarked, smiling,
"You have such wonderful flowers!"
Al stopped eating and licked his lips. "No one makes crawfish like New
Orleans restaurants! Yes, we like the flowers too, but we really like the epi
plant itself better. The flower is just a lagniappe!"
He pronounced it LAN-YAP. I am very articulate when I'm eating so I said
"Huh?"
Terri looked up at the wisteria vines above our table. "A lagniappe is what
we call something extra, a bonus, like those sweet smelling flowers overhead, or
a baby's smile, or seeing a deer when you walk in the woods. Everyone likes a
lagniappe, it's like getting something extra, something you weren't expecting
but received anyway."
I always thought Terri should have been a writer, so still eating, I said,
"Oh."
Now my lovely wife piped up. "Kind of like craps, huh."
I said, "Oh?"
"Yes, remember last night when we were playing and Alan made a $10 pass
line bet and the point was six? He wanted to place double odds behind, or $20,
and he would have won $34 ($24 plus $10), but the dealer said he could place $25
odds and win $40 ($30 plus $10)? Then you said to ask the friendly dealer if he
could add $30 odds instead and the dealer said OK? So when the six hit, Alan won
$45 ($35 plus $10) instead of the original $34 - $11 extra?"
"Yes, it's called pushing the house," I said.
"Nope," Terri said smiling, "Lagniappe craps," and it rhymed
the way she said it, lan-YAP-craps.
"Yes!" Alan was excited! "Lagniappe craps! Since the riverboats
only offer 2X odds, we can ask if we can play lagniappe craps, and get something
extra! So, if the point was 5 or 9 and I had $10 on the pass line, normally I
could only add $20 odds. At 3:2 odds I would get back $30 plus $10 for a total
of $40. But if I asked the dealer if I could play lagniappe craps by adding $30
odds instead of $20 I would get back $45 plus $10 or $55! That extra $15 is my
lagniappe!"
I took another bite of the etouffee. "You're right, this crawfish tastes
great! And Lagniappe craps sounds great! Let's see, on a four or ten point with
a $10 passline bet you can normally add $20 odds but if the dealer OK's $30
we'll win a total of $70 instead of $50, that's $20 more! It's always nice to
get something extra - a Lagniappe!"
The waiter came back to take some of our dishes away and just then, a large
bright, green beetle fell down on our table from the wisteria branches
above us. Andrea gasped!
"Oh, don't worry, " the waiter said, "That's just a
lagniappe!"
***************
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