It’s 6:55 on a Thursday night, and the Moose Lodge is buzzing with anticipation.

Bingo night has arrived, and a lucky few will be leaving with their wallets a little thicker.

“It’s a good luck night,” says Jim Snyder, the caller. “We’ve got a big old rainbow out the back door.”

The Moose Lodge, a family-friendly club and bar, has been hosting bingo on Thursday nights since 1983. Players can win cash prizes that range from $50 to a grand prize of $500. The Lodge averages about 200 attendees and gives away $1,400 a week.

Jack Logue, a bingo caller at the lodge since 1985, estimates that over the past 15 years, Eastern students began to hear about the cash prizes through word of mouth and began attending regularly.

Theresa Coleman, a senior elementary education major, is one such student. Coleman won $50 on what was only her second bingo night.

“My friends come out here, and they tell me it’s a lot of fun,” Coleman said. “So I thought I’d give it a try.”

Today’s bingo crowds are a mix of older, local residents and Eastern students, who tend to let out a collective “Awww” when someone calls bingo.

Logue said students and residents almost never come into conflict with one another. But there are isolated incidents.

“Occasionally the older people get bothered by the bad language more than anything,” Logue said.

Logue occasionally has to remind students that they aren’t at a bar, and that they need to keep their language clean as well as their voices down.

“You can always tell when guys have had enough,” he said.

Mattoon residents and people from as far as Villa Grove often attend bingo night, Logue said.

Villa Grove resident and regular bingo player Joyce Gabbery, who played alongside her friend Martha Clark, enjoys the students’ enthusiasm.

“They’re fun,” Gabbery said. “We like the energy. We like the chatter.”

The fact that bingo night is held at a bar is no doubt an incentive for students, like Steve Courtney, a senior education major, who split $140 with another winner.

When asked what he would do with his newly won cash, Courtney replied: “I’m drinking all night long.”

-For a how-to on bingo click here.

http://www.ehow.com/how_527_play-bingo.html