TEXAS HOLDEM ONLINE POKER

By late afternoon in the middle of the darkest week of the year, the sun has already dropped below the fir-topped ridge just beyond town.

Outside the old Safari Club, all but two of the 14 parking places along Fourth Avenue are available. It doesn't seem all that long ago that the jungle-themed bar full of African and Alaskan trophy kills was pulling in regular customers from Portland and beyond most nights.

That was back when Estacada had several timber mills and a gaggle of bars sometimes filled with more than a lingering sense of the old wild West. But it's been 20 years since the crowds routinely showed up to dance among the Safari Club's stunning collection of stuffed lions and tigers and bears.

The last time the club made a big splash was one Saturday evening back in the spring of 1989. Just as the Texas Holdem poker tables were filling up in the then-legal cardrooms inside five local bars, a posse of almost 200 cops swooped in and reinstated the justice and morality that local clergymen had been calling for.

Five months earlier the City Council had legalized small-stakes wagering on Texas Holdem games of chance. The idea was that when you stopped in for a cold one, you and your buddies could play Texas Holdem poker and exchange a few dollars.

But it wasn't long, locals say, before the professional dealers started rolling in. With jackpots soon rising into the thousands of dollars, some of the bar owners started taking a house cut, which wasn't allowed.

As the busloads of gamblers started showing up, some residents demanded the sheriff's office step in and clean things up. A few local business owners complained their customers couldn't find parking downtown.

Parking really hasn't been much of a problem in downtown Estacada since. But thanks to mushrooming state-run gambling in bars, not only are games of chance doing well again, it's now legal for the bar owners to take a healthy cut.

These days, the old sign rising some six stories above the rain-slicked street still says Safari Club. But it's not -- hasn't been for some time.

These days it's Hong's Chinese Restaurant. And though the place seems dead on this early Wednesday evening, the flowing neon sign spelling out Lounge is glowing red. So I step inside.

Immediately I'm thinking maybe that neon sign should say, "Texas Holdem Gambling." Or "Casino." Or maybe "Support your local schools and state troopers here."

Bright electronic signs promoting Keno stare down from virtually every angle. On the big-screen TV, ESPN2 is showing a rerun of its popular World Series of Poker. Hidden in a darkened corner room of the bar, lottery machines blink electronic cards at several players who sit silently tapping the screen.

A woman at the bar -- the only patron in the main lounge -- asks me if it's snowing outside.

Just above a sign reminding longtime customers "We no longer offer credit" a Keno screen hovers beside the monstrous mounted head of a bison.

A customer appears from the lottery room and asks for a refill of her drink. Bartender Gary Burke complies and wishes her good luck.

Burke, a lifelong Estacada resident, says slot style games should be up and running in the bar by midsummer.

That's good news, he says. People like to Texas Holdem gamble, so why not? It's a sentiment shared by our governor. So, we're hoping to improve education and law enforcement by motivating more people to Texas Holdem gamble in a state where, per person, we already spend 25 percent more on gambling than the national average.

Burke likes to gamble. He used to make trips to Reno where it wasn't uncommon to run into people from Estacada. But not any more, he says, his eyes darting back to the Keno screen.

"Got another Texas Holdem winner," he says.