← Harold's Old Time Radio
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Now the rest of the story. World War II, South Pacific, green Island. If you were to round up the navy officers who served there and if you were to ask them to recount the losses they endured, the figures that they would quote would be an American currency because they lost a lot of money. They lost it to a lieutenant named Nick. In poker games. You see, Nick was the ace poker player of Green Island. His navy buddies, in mournful retrospect, can never recall an incident when Nick lost at poker. He just seemed unbeatable. Even more remarkable, before his assignment to Green island, he had never played poker in his life. Again, It's World War II were in the Pacific theater and the Japanese had evacuated Green Island. The Navy had taken over. Nick was a ground officer, a lieutenant in his job job was to supervise the arrival and the distribution of cargo brought by Navy transports. Despite occasional Japanese bombing raids, there was not a lot of action on Green island. Unless you count those nightly poker games. The games were held in a recreation tent. Bamboo furnishings, pin up pictures to enliven its otherwise dreary interior. Now remember, Nick had never played poker before. Yet such was the significance of poker to the Navy man at Green island that Nick knew that he just had to learn how to play. Early in his tour of duty, he asked a scout officer if there was any sure way to win at poker. The officer confessed that there was no sure way, no foolproof technique. But there were many theories. And he said if Nick had the patience, he, the scat officer, would teach him the game. They played two handed rounds, no stakes for four or five days. Nick's patience was rewarded with a solid knowledge of the basics. But something beyond the basics, something more than what he could be taught. It just seemed there was a card playing genius lying dormant in Nick. And that genius soon gained him a reputation throughout the South Pacific. I mean in the big games under the recreation tent, when the stakes went up from pennies to something more than that, Nick played for keeps. The losers credited his consistency to his unparalleled poker face. It was a splendidly non committal expression which remained unvaried before the best and the worst of hands. You just couldn't tell. Give you an example, he once bluffed a lieutenant commander out of fifteen hundred dollars with a pair of deuces. With a pair of deuces. You have forgotten the notorious Navy card shark of Green island unless you were there. But anybody there will remember the poker face. And you may remember that. You see, Nick declined to spend his considerable wartime winnings somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 $500. Instead, he invested in himself and in his future. Nick, as you may have guessed, was his Navy nickname. The young lieutenant remembered by his comrades as the unbeatable poker player who, so far as anybody can remember, never lost a cent in a game. The poker wise Navy officer who saved his winnings to invest in himself and in a political career. Nick was Richard Nixon. Richard Nixon. And now you know the rest of the story.