GAME PLAYING

There was a time when nearly every house in America owned a Monopoly game board, as well as Parcheesi, Checkers, both Chinese and the other kind, and if you were somewhat intelligent, a Backgammon board and a chess set. Suffering the lack of visual entertainment, we either passed the evening hours playing games or reading.

When TV knocked on the front door, we forgot how to play games. You might say we forgot how to think. It was so easy to sit in front of a lighted screen and wait to be entertained.

We played all kinds of games while I was growing up. I used the floor as my table for solitary four handed play. I’m sure I wore out at least a couple of Monopoly boards during the 30’s and 40s.

My family were keen on a great number of card games, the names of some are no longer in my memory. Game playing complements our spirit of competiveness as well as polishes our little gray cells. As we grow older we find that fewer people are playing games. Out of a large number of our friends, there are only a few who still like game playing.

I learned to play Bridge many years ago which has given me a great deal of pleasure, both in the game and in the social aspect. Some friends have been social players and some have been eager, go-for-the-throat players. Usually that kind of person likes all games.

My friend Joan was that kind of person. After learning a few tricks from a male client of mine, we entered a local Gin Rummy Tournament, and though we did not win, we didn’t disgrace ourselves.

I grew tired of Monopoly, perhaps because of such close early association, but a number of years ago on New Years Eve, we played the game with close friends at their cabin at Lake Tahoe. The men lost their paper money and went to bed early, which left Joan and I still in competition.

The hours passed, the coffee pot was refilled, and still we battled the game. This became serious stuff. The snow lay thick on the ground as the sun rose on a new year, when the game was finally decided—ten hours later, Joan was the unanimous winner! I have never played Monopoly again, and I do not expect to find another competitor with such determination.

Toward the end of her life, when beset with so many stumbling blocks, Joan continued to test her game playing with all comers.

PUT THE ONION ON

Two or three afternoons  a week, at four or five o’clock, Great-Aunt Helen would announce to her friends over the bridge table ,”Got to run home quickly and put the onion on!” This was a subterfuge she had used for some 45 years to mislead her husband that his dinner was on the way!  (The odor of frying onions is irrisistible to a hungry man.)

She lived in a large old Victorian house which had been built by my Great Grandfather in the 19th century.  My husband and I rented the third floor attic from her for three years for the exhorbitant amount of $35 per month when we first married 65 years ago.

Aunt Helen was a larger than life individual with strong opinions, but a grand sense of fun.  Her colorful conversation was scattered with outrageous observations, many of which dealt with her painful feet.  She wore old-fashioned “sensible” shoes, except on bridge days, when she put on her one pair of dress-up shoes, which she referred to as her “sitting shoes”.  She remained a farm girl who happened to live in the city. 

Upon arriving home from an afternoon of bridge, and before removing her hat, girdle or dress-up shoes, she quickly chopped up an onion and put it on the stove to work its odiferous magic.

Uncle Fred worked in San Francisco and had taken the ferry to and from Alameda each day for 40 years.    Arriving home at precisely 5:30 every day and entering by the front door, at approximately the same time as Aunt Helen was coming in by  the rear door, he was able to smell the delicious and intoxicating odor of onions cooking, and contentedly settled his portly little body into his large comfy chair to read the evening paper.

Misleading, yes, but comforting to a weary husband after a hard day’s work.  Today’s version might be a welcoming glass of wine rather than an onion, and possibly today’s husband might even chop the onion!

Simpicity at its best!