Cheating people in old-time Phoenix


Cheating people is a very old profession, which didn't start with the internet, or email. It does, however, require a fairly high population to make it work, or people who visit a place, and don't live there. So if you go back far enough in Phoenix history, back to when everybody knew everybody, there really wouldn't have been much of a chance of being cheated. But things changed as Phoenix grew.

There are, of course, people who have no conscience at all, and would steal from friends and relatives. They would lie to these people, and still be able to face them, and be able to sleep at night. But that's a very small percentage of people who can do that, and properly speaking they're psychopaths. Mostly people who do want to cheat and steal from people would rather that they do so from people that don't really know. If you plan on proposing to a man's daughter, you probably don't want to have swindled him out of his life savings. That's just human nature.

Cheating people always starts with an evaluation of the person that is to be cheated. They can be called a mark, a mug, or if you prefer, a sucker. And, as I'm sure you know, the rule is to never give a sucker an even break. That is, don't give them a chance, at all.

Old-time Phoenix didn't have legalized gambling, of course, but that doesn't mean that there wasn't a lot of gambling. And even the type of gambling that's completely above-board and honest, like the kinds played in the casinos nowadays, is heavily weighed towards the house. The gambler has a chance, but not much. But I'm not talking about that.

To really cheat someone, you need to gain their confidence, and then after you've cheated them, to make them too embarrassed to admit it. It's not the same as putting a bet on a roulette wheel, it's more like being smiled at by someone who looks like Robert Redford, and then getting stung.

To me, there's nothing quite like selling someone some worthless land out in the desert. I can just picture someone getting stung back in the 1940s, being sold land at 16th Street and Camelback Road.

Sucker!
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