Phil King, a fine Irvington carpenter/handyman whom we found through an ad in this paper, asked where he could buy a board like ours for the marble game “Aggravation.” (Various stores and Amazon sell them.)
Oh my goodness! This set Bill and me to remembering . . . My brother-in-law, Charlie Latham, made the board for his uncle Edgar who was also my stepfather. The game is aptly named because you’re sure that you’re going to win only to lose at the last minute. Also, some games last so long that I moan, “Please, I’m begging you, let me go to bed.”
Bill and Edgar played partners, and in my mind’s ear I hear still the rattle of the dice and dear Edgar saying to Mom and me, “We-uns is going to clean your clock!” (Edgar came from southern Kentucky in the old days and used the words “we-uns” and “us-uns.”) We inherited his board, and I used his lucky dice that he had marked.
A couple of days after Phil was here, the dynamic duo, identical twin grandsons Chris and Tony, called from Cincinnati. “We’d like to come up on Saturday and play marbles.” “Wonderful, but don’t pout when we beat you.” We treated them to pizza at Jockamo’s in Irvington and then beat them twice after which when offered a third game, Chris said, “I’ve got to go home and run.”
I look back over the years and think about how much time we spent playing games. My earliest memory is of playing Go Fish with my mother. Is there anyone who didn’t play Old Maid when they were kids? I taught it, Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders to Vicki. Then she graduated to Monopoly which I also taught Billy and the twins how to play when they were little. I always felt that it helped the twins develop their phenomenal math skills. We also took a Bingo game and prizes with us to keep them from being bored during trips.
My family played all kinds of cards. Some people considered them the work of the Devil. My minister Grandfather licked my dad and his brothers when he caught them playing cards on Sunday. After World War 2, the adults gathered every Sunday afternoon for penny ante poker. My parents, Uncle Ivan and Aunt Nola and mother’s cousin, Mary Beck and husband Schuler, played Pedro. I would lie in bed and here one of them shout, “Pedro!” or “Shoot the moon!” My parents played bridge, and Daddy played cribbage with my brother. The Nine Nifty Nicitinos, my high school chums and I, became true Hoosiers by learning to play euchre.
During the early fifties, canasta became the rage. My mother, sisters, nieces and I played it until their deaths. My darling mother would miscount her cards and lay them down only to have to pick them back up. “Don’t look, don’t look!” The dialogue consisted of whining, “Oh don’t go out, please don’t go out!” . . . “I’ve seen better hands on a horse. “ interspersed with “Pass me some of those chips!” . . . “Did we eat all the pizza?” . . . I founded the Society of Whiners and Diners with sister Christine as President of Whiners (POW) and sisters Beverly as Secretary (SOW) and Virginia as Chaplain (CHOW).
During a week in Paris with Tony and Chris we bought cards and played Canasta in the hotel lobby in the evening. They learned to play when they were so little that they had to hold their cards in both hands.
Perhaps all of those games were a frivolous use of time, but I hear still in my mind’s ear the riff of cards being shuffled, the rattle of dice and the dear voices of my people. We were together, sharing and savoring precious times that would become the stuff of reminiscence in years to come. wclarke@comcast.net