My father was the unluckiest man who ever lived. I know that sounds like a bold statement, but it's true. To this day, there are Nazis who claim the only reason why Germany lost the war was because my old man bet on their side. My father never won a bet. Ever. He bet the Russians would win the Space Race, Kennedy would be a two-term president, and the Beatles would cut their hair and become a lounge act. He once lost twenty bucks to my Uncle Irving betting the sun would come up -- the day before a solar eclipse.

A horse player, my old man was even out-handicapped by Fred: the pet rooster of a local bookie who picked winners by leaving droppings on a copy of the Daily Racing Form. The bird was good. Not only was it an ace handicapper, it also picked Ali over Frazier in the "Thrilla in Manila," and Nixon over McGovern in the '72 presidential race. Never one to be outdone, my father began betting with the rooster. Two weeks later, a couple of the neighborhood cats found their way into Fred's pen and sent him to that big chicken coop in the sky -- another victim of the "Bufogle Curse."

My old man lost money on baseball, football, basketball . . . jai-alai, ice curling, women's volleyball . . . and -- in one particularly bizarre instance -- dog racing, when the greyhound he'd bet on copped a squat mere yards before the finish line. All this pales however, to the summer of my twelfth birthday. It was the summer my father booked a family trip to Las Vegas. He'd spent three months holed up in the basement, pouring over books on how to beat the odds at the casinos: crunching numbers; reviewing stats -- and he was ready. The scientists at the jet propulsion lab at NASA had put less thought into the moon landing, than my old man had into breaking the bank in Sin City. As it turned out, my father would've been better off buying a rooster.

No sooner had we touched down in Vegas than things began to go south. My old man had booked us a stay at the Desert Inn -- the hot property of the day. We arrived: my father dressed smartly in a Hawaiian shirt & Bermuda shorts; mom, sister and yours truly in tow, only to be told our reservation had been lost. Using his expert negotiating skills, my old man persuaded management to spring for two rooms at a nearby fleabag motel: complete with unsupervised swimming pool (in which I nearly drowned) and hot & cold running degenerates. Depositing us at the motel with $50 and four free vouchers for the $1 buffet, my father made a beeline for the Desert Inn casino. There he embarked upon the greatest losing streak in the history of Las Vegas. My old man's losing streak was the stuff of legend -- so much so that until they tore down the Desert Inn, there was a brass plaque next to one of the crap tables commemorating the afternoon he threw snake eyes twenty-two times in a row -- a record that still stands to this day.

Five days later my father returned to the motel: pale despite the 112 degree heat; wearing a haunted look and a shirt which read: "I LOST JUNIOR'S COLLEGE TUITION AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT." With exactly $12.63 in his pocket, he paid our cab fare back to the airport, and lost the remaining $5.63 during the plane ride back to New York; playing gin rummy with me, his twelve-year-old son. I still have the IOU.

And so it is with a lump in my throat and a knot in my colon, that I look out on the Las Vegas skyline and realize that it wasn't Ben Siegel, or Meyer Lansky, or Howard Hughes who built this city. It was men like my old man. Men who couldn't pick a Pygmy out of a lineup of Bavarian haus fraus, yet dared to dream; to believe that armed with little more than an unlimited line of credit, and a completely unjustified sense of self-confidence, they too could be winners. Thanks Dad.