Columnist John Katsilometes: Down in Dixie: Peanuts, pride, gaming debate

Tuesday, Oct. 5, 1999 | 10:11 a.m.

John Katsilometes' column appears Tuesdays and Sundays. Reach him at 259-2327 or kats@vegas.com.

Some of the finest boiled peanuts in South Carolina can be found at a produce stand just inside the Summerville town limits. It's across the street from the Piggly Wiggly, and the proprietor carries both varieties -- regular-sized and jumbo.

Summerville is just outside Charleston and a hundred or so miles southeast of Aiken, where I spent last week on vacation. A finger food of the South often called "redneck caviar," boiled peanuts are a must for any visitor of Aiken County. They're steamy, soft, moist and look like little mollusks. Sometimes when you pop open the shell of a boiled peanut, warm salty water squirts into your face.

A word of advice: Never leave a bag of boiled peanuts sitting overnight in the back seat of a car, especially on a humid South Carolina evening. The acrid odor is something less than appetizing and the leftover peanuts form an ugly globule of mold and germs. But they're great fresh, and people in Aiken practically grow up on the squishy delicacy.

Like most of South Carolina, Aiken is particularly proud of its Civil War heritage. It was the site of the Battle of Aiken, a stirring victory by the downtrodden and outgunned Confederate forces. A Battle of Aiken statue sits in the middle of downtown, serving as a permanent tribute to the defenders of the Confederacy. Effigies of Civil War heroes of the Confederacy are commonplace throughout South Carolina; Charleston is particularly proud that the South never surrendered Fort Sumter (site of the first battle of the Civil War) persevering despite two years of regular and intensive attack by the North.

Thus, Fort Sumter, graced by a half-dozen flags of the Civil War (including the Confederacy's stars and bars) is a hugely popular tourist attraction. After visiting such locales, you come away with the feeling that a sizable piece of the Southern populace flatly refuses to accept the sobering outcome of the Civil War. Some even seem to think it's still going on.

A battle of a different sort is being waged in today's South Carolina, and it has nothing to do with boiled peanut consumption or Civil War artifacts. The state is fighting it out internally over video poker, and there should be plenty of bloodshed (figuratively speaking) and a war-scarred victor.

The creaky, jingling video poker machines are easy to find anywhere in the state. They've been legal for 10 years, although in the early '90s a dozen of South Carolina's 46 counties voted to outlaw the machines. The decision by the seceding counties (South Carolina is big on seceding) was subsequently ruled unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court, and the state Assembly decided to put the issue to the voters for an up-or-down, winner-take-all special election set for Nov. 2.

As it stands, South Carolina's most prevalent form of legal gaming is exceedingly seedy. Businesses -- including bars, convenience stores and restaurants -- are ostensibly limited to no more than five machines on the premises. But some rinky-dink operations ducked the law by building temporary walls splitting buildings to double the machine count. Some "businesses" are nothing more than double-wide trailers housing video poker machines (we ain't exactly talking Bellagio here).

Except for tourist havens like Myrtle Beach, video poker practitioners in South Carolina are predominantly local residents. The sad sight of a mother placing a bag of groceries on the floor while dumping money into a video poker machine is fairly common in towns like Aiken. Anti-gaming forces claim that for every dollar the state makes off of video poker, three are spent in public assistance for video poker addicts.

Money, naturally, is central to South Carolina's gaming debate. The state's new governor, Democrat Jim Hodges, was backed financially by Fred Collins, who has been painted as a diabolical gaming magnate by anti-gambling voters. Collins' company, Collins Entertainment, is the chief supplier of video poker machines in South Carolina, and his 4,000 coin-gobbling beasts grossed $900 million in 1998. Collins helped buy Hodges an electoral victory over Republican incumbent David Beasley (who waffled on the video poker issue), but Hodges has not campaigned for or against video poker for the upcoming election.

Hodges, holed up in the statehouse in Columbia (also adorned by the stars and bars, incidentally) has done little more than make this statement: His vote (which counts as much as any other South Carolinian's) will be against video poker. I'm sure the governor's courageous and inspired leadership will be fondly remembered by his constituents in the next gubernatorial election.

Those who have followed the race say it's too close to call, while some polls have the anti-gaming forces leading by 10 to 20 percent. Reporters have even reverted to using gaming terms like "a crap shoot" and "a roll of the dice" when writing about the combative campaign. There are rumors of Las Vegas money funding the anti-gaming forces (you knew we'd wind up in this somehow, eh?), but that can't be proven until both sides disclose their campaign contributions following the election.

South Carolina has been reluctant to embrace legalized gambling. There is limited Indian reservation gaming and a couple of offshore casino boats near Myrtle Beach. But even in thoroughbred racehourse country, parimutual betting is illegal. And forget about betting on greyhounds or sports teams.

Which is how it should be. Every region has its identifying characteristics, and South Carolina's is Civil War history and distinctive local traditions. Pull out the machines, people of the South.

But please keep the boiled peanuts.