From the New York Times, December 4, 1951:
> Sometimes surprise attacks from completely unsuspected quarters briefly
> embarrassed the syndicate ... On the night of July 2, 1943, operatives of the
> Office of Defense Transportation in New York trailed a fleet of cars to a
> syndicate dice house in Fort Lee [New Jersey], two blocks north of the New
> Jersey end of the [George Washington] bridge.
>
> The Defense Transportation men were not concerned with the dice playing at
> all. They had just followed the cars in a routine check on gasoline rationing,
> and were a little astonished when it developed that they had joined a caravan
> of New York dice players being conveyed to Bergen [County, New Jersey] as
> syndicate guests. Since the wartime regulation provided no extra gas ration
> for sporting gentlemen, they picked up the drivers.
>
> Before this story got into the papers, the syndicate quietly folded its dice
> equipment and reopened next night in adjoining Cliffside [New Jersey].
> The Prosecutor and his staff were in a spot because they had not been
> warned. All they found in the place was fifteen empty milk bottles and
> some gaming slips. Dice players incline to ulcers because the game
> induces tension, and the understanding syndicate always supplied milk
> and buttermilk for them.
I came across that while doing Political Graveyard research on the
trouble and disgrace some New Jersey mayors got into during that era.
Larry
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Lawrence Kestenbaum, [log in to unmask]
Washtenaw County Clerk & Register of Deeds, http://ewashtenaw.org
The Political Graveyard, http://politicalgraveyard.com
Weblog: Polygon, the Dancing Bear, http://potifos.com/polygon
P.O. Box 2563, Ann Arbor, MI 48106
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