Bookie and Make Book

It is Triple Crown time again, so here is my annual celebration of it.

From a very heavy, unabridged, go-to “The Random House Dictionary of the English Language” (1966), the definition of bookmaker, and thence “bookie,” is “one who makes a business of accepting the bets of others on the outcome of sports contests, esp. of horse races.” To “make book” follows directly as “to take bets and give odds.” Not the stuff of traditional Libraries, but how did we get to this usage from the word “book”?

The on-line Oxford English Dictionary says that the earliest usage of the word “bookie” dates to 1787, in the writing of a John Skinner, songwriter and ecclesiastic historian. It is a shortened version of the word “bookmaker.” The bookmaker in this instance keeps a book record of bets made. From there, “make book,” and just another example of how language evolves over time.

Phil did not read books, ever. Not ever, and he could read. He drove a bakery delivery truck beginning at midnight and during the wee hours, and the hours thereafter. He slept in the later daytime and evening hours. He delivered rye bread, handmade hard rolls, iced cakes, fruit-filled and cheese Danish pastries, sugar-powdered twists of crullers, genuine bagels, and babka (especially at Easter time) to grocery stores, 24/7 diners, and other retailers. All in time for breakfast in the morning. He drove a red panel truck custom-fitted with racks to hold the trays of right-out-of-the-oven goodies. The truck had but one seat, officially. No seat belt. But an old wooden milk crate for anyone else to sit who might travel with him as an occasional helper on his rounds.

However, that is not all of what he did. On some nights, he stopped to visit a lady friend along the way, especially when he had a helper to carry on for a while. Who knows what he did there! And, he always carried a thick wad of bills, beyond his needs for making cash payment change at grocery stores. Nobody was up at the grocery stores anyway at such early hours. He also regularly stopped en route at a hidden, windowless, backroom place to play a table game with some of those wad-dollars. A soft knock on the door, enter, and the players spoke in another language. So then did he. They rolled dice.

His mainstay there was that he also took bets in the backroom and paid off the previous day’s winners, from his wad. No credit cards. Bakery truck driver or a bookie? Both, of course, one as “mobile bookie,” or “bookie on wheels.” You probably will not find those expressions in any dictionary. You just had to be there, as maybe a teen helper, to fully know what they mean.

He was a colorful character, not one to be associated with privileged book readers and their Libraries. But there still was the relationship that Phil had with the word “book.” I am reminded of him at Triple Crown time. Phil’s was a gravel road! Not a groomed track.