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SIERRA VISTA — When Dorothy Boatwright plays bingo, she does it with a yellow, fluffy elephant named Elsa looking over her cards.
Elsa, named after the lion in “Born Free,” is her good luck charm, sort of.
“I don’t really believe she’s good luck,” Boatwright said, but she still brings her to every bingo game, just in case.
Elsa came to be Boatwright’s sort-of-good-luck charm after being given to Boatwright as a gift from a group of bingo players who make a point of observing each others birthdays.
  
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“One day I pulled her out and I won,” Boatwright said. “Since then I bring her out.”
The 83-year-old has been playing bingo most of her life, and goes now about three times a week. On this particular Tuesday night, she and Elsa were at the Veterans of Foreign Wars’ Sierra Vista Post bingo.
Boatwright isn’t alone in her superstitious ways. Throughout three of the bingo spots in Sierra Vista — the VFW post, Elks Lodge and Knights of Columbus — many of the bingo aficionados can be seen whipping out trinkets, photos, even Troll Dolls, in hopes of it winning them their next big bingo jackpot.
Ruth Brackhahn has been playing bingo for years. What used to be an everyday affair, though, has dwindled down to a Monday night outing to the VFW game.
Lined up in front of her each Monday as she plays, though, is two Troll Dolls, a star trinket, a Buddha statue and a frog that she hopes will bring her luck.
“It’s all in your head,” she said of good luck charms.
Sue Parizek brings a variety of good luck charms with her twice a week to bingo at the Knights of Columbus.
An armadillo that can hold cards is a given each game, then there’s the bingo nut statue, sometimes a lion statue, sometimes a hummingbird one, depending on how her winning streak is going.
“If it doesn’t win for awhile, then I leave it home,” she said.
There’s also the picture of her granddaughter, Dakota, that she considers to be pretty lucky: she said she won $1,000 on a night where she had the picture out — now it’s a fixture in the good luck charm collection.
Though her charms come in all forms, she draws the line at one thing: religious items.
“I figure there’s more important things to ask for than to win bingo,” she said.
Parizek said she hasn’t really had any particular good luck charm that’s brought her winnings consistently except for one.
“Just my husband,” she said, as they played cards about an hour-and-a-half before the bingo game started. “He’s always there when I win.”
Over at the Elks Lodge, Rose Skupeika has one statue she brings for her and her friends: it’s a statue of a lady holding a sign that says, “Bingo lover. Get out of my way. I’m going to bingo.”
They refer to the statue as “Grandma.”
Grandma feels the pain when things don’t go their way in bingo.
“We beat on Grandma,” Skupeika said. “When she doesn’t let us win, we hit her over the head with a dauber.”
“You know how some people have a damn it doll?” Skupeika continued. “This is my damn it doll, we beat on Grandma.”
Through the years, Skupeika suspects that Grandma has lost some of her hair due to the beatings.
Marie Courneya didn’t have one with her that night at the Elks Lodge, but typically she brings an elephant with her to bingo.
“If the trunk is up, it’s supposed to bring you good luck,” she said.
“And you’re supposed to face it toward the door,” chimed in her friend Minnie Chavez.
Dutch Bowen and Harry Brown, co-managers of bingo at the Elks Lodge, said they have seen some strange things as far as bingo good luck superstitions go.
“They have all these little trinkets sitting out there,” Brown said. “Put a clear marker on the number they’re wanting to have called.”
“A whole line of fuzzy things,” Bowen chimed in. “They’ll line them up almost religiously.”
They said some people have certain numbers that have to be on their bingo cards, while others have to sit in a certain seat, and will get there hours early to ensure they get their spot.
“Some of them will come in and have special containers for their daubers,” Brown said.
Noel “Al” Alcorn, bingo manager for the VFW, said the VFW bingo nights have “some of the most superstitious people you’ve seen in your life.”
The strangest one he recalls is a woman who had a spider crawl across her bingo card one night and then, turns out, she won.
“She started buying spiders (trinkets),” Alcorn said.
Gary Fox is an avid bingo player and bingo caller.
As a player, he said his thing is frogs.
“I’m a frog fanatic,” Fox said. “You’ll see a bunch of frogs lined up for good luck.”
As a caller, Fox said the best part is watching people react as he pulls numbers.
“I’d rather call bingo than play,” he said.
Though there is a bit of pressure to being a bingo caller.
“If you make a mistake, you’re going to get the heat,” he said.
But, for the man who’s been playing bingo for more than 40 years, he said it’s his one vice.
“I don’t smoke, I don’t drink,” he said. “I play bingo.”
Herald/Review reporter Katie Evans can be reached at 515-4611 or by e-mail at katie.evans@svherald.com.
