Rose Napolitano gazed over at the horse barns of Suffolk Downs. “I’m older than that track,” said the woman who’s spent all of her 82 years in Revere.

Should Mohegan Sun succeed in its attempt to build a casino where most of those barns stood yesterday, Rose Napolitano will be nudging 85. Yet, she fully intends to be there with her cup of quarters, tugging on a one-armed bandit a few bus stops from her home.

“Revere’s always been a gambling town, but we’ve never had an opportunity like this,” Rose said, as she stood out on Winthrop Avenue, holding her Friends of Mohegan Sun sign. Rose wants the chance to ride the Beachmont 119 bus across town to gamble, instead of a Peter Pan bus across state lines.

Rose blamed the death of dog racing at Wonderland on all those Greyhound do-gooders who kept whining about how badly the dogs were treated. And as for the gasping and wheezing over at Suffolk Downs?

“No money for the purses,” Rose said.

But not to worry, Rose and her friends, Helen Serino and Rose Mirasolo, are certain that a gleaming “destination resort” will take care of all that.

Somehow, when Mohegan Sun rises over Suffolk Downs it’s supposed to magically transform a threadbare racetrack on the Blue Line into Churchill Downs. Or at least that’s what Rose and her friends hope will happen. And it’s what their Mayor Dan Rizzo, and every city councilor, assures them will happen.

But Joe Catricala, an anesthesia technologist at MGH and native of Revere, kept shaking his head as he stood outside the fire station at Broadway and Central Ave., behind a huge “NO CASINO” sign.

“There’s nothing in the host agreement that says Mohegan Sun has to keep Suffolk Downs afloat,” Joe said.

Linda Aufiero stood beside Joe holding her homemade placard that read “Revere Is Not For Sale.”

“We don’t want our town turning into Mohegan Sun, Massachusetts,” Linda said. “That’s what happens. Mohegan Sun has become the place in people’s minds. Towns get lost. It consumes the surroundings. I don’t want that to happen to us. There is no future for Revere if we become nothing more than a casino town.”

If Charles Dickens happened to be standing out there with Rose Napolitano, or Helen Serino, or Joe Catricala, or Linda Aufiero yesterday, he surely might have said that this was the best of times and worst of times for Revere.

“Sadly, all our politicians are lazy,” said Ellen Decaneas. “They have settled for the path of least resistance, the lure of the so-called quick and easy money. But what they fail to realize is a casino is not a friendly thing. It’s not about helping to build a community. That takes real work and imagination.”

Tuesday’s casino vote in Revere has some of the faithful threatening to fire off angry letters to Cardinal Sean O’Malley.

“I think the clergy should have stayed out of this,” said Rose Mirasolo, as she clutched her “Friends of Mohegan Sun” sign. “I mean they have big bingos at St. Anthony’s and St. Mary’s, who are some of these other priests to tell us a casino is evil?”

Today, many of those anti-casino clergymen will join with a 50-piece brass band in a march to keep Mohegan Sun from invading Revere. The battle is just beginning.