Week 20 of 2012 - Games People Play - Jan

This weeks subject is suppose to be about games that you played as a family. We played mostly board games when I was in elementary school but I do not remember a regularly scheduled game night. Sometimes, Sunday afternoon was a good relaxing time to play and always on Christmas!

Sue, Leah, Lillian and Pam playing a new board game on Christmas 1965

Sharon, Jan, Sue and Lillian playing Racko in 1966

Jake and Jim Patti playing a game on Christmas 1966

 


This was my first sleep over....and maybe my last because we stayed up all night talking and laughing!  I believe that the game called "Life" had just come out came out! We are playing "Life" and little did we know...living it!





I remember that when my Grandpa Anderson (Mom's Dad) visited, he and Dad would play cribbage. I used to like to watch them. I had no idea what they were doing but I thought the cribbage board with the little pegs was just the coolest game. The board had a small slot in the back to store the pegs when you were not playing the game. For a little girl, it was like a secret compartment! SO I loved to watch them play. Before long, a peg would turn up missing and then another... It did not take long for all the pegs to be missing but the board still worked. They would use match sticks or tooth picks for pegs. I still have the old cribbage board. The cover for the secret compartment is also long gone but it holds special memories of my Dad and my Grandpa for me. I have often wondered if cribbage was a game that Grandpa Anderson played as a sailor while at sea.

Grandpa's Cribbage Board

Secret Compartment exposed..

At some point I remember learning to play crazy eights, rummy and fish from my mother. I remember playing cards with the Hughes girls from down the street. Both their Mom and Dad worked so we would go to their house after school. (no parents around...) We would watch Dark Shadows and the Monkeys on television and if we had time before their Dad got home we would play a game of cards at the kitchen table... and eat buttered bread with piles of cinnamon sugar on it!

Looking back we did have regular card games when we went on family camping vacations. We always played cards at the picnic table under the worn green tarp which provided shelter from the rain or the sun. I remember often playing cards using the gas lantern after dark. Nothing drew the bugs in like that camp lantern! You had to learn how to swap bugs when it wasn't your turn play. Some years their were huge June bugs and other years it was big fish flies. And some nights it was better to go sit by the campfire with the adults and hope it was time for marshmallows.

Eating Pop Corn and playing cards - 1970

After the bugs got the best of us. - 1970

Years later card games would sustain us through our teen years. Euchre became our favorite because it was a quick game which you could play if you only had a few minutes. My boyfriend's family played card games every chance they could get. If there were two people, they had a game you could play, if there were three or more, all the better. There was always a deck of card or two in the drawer next to the kitchen table. My younger sister Sharon and I spent countless hours with the Tietz teenagers playing cards at the kitchen table. When the weekends rolled around, often a slew of cousins would come for the weekend from the “city” and they would join in on the card games. We had a birds eye view for when “Howard” came home from work at which time the game would be temporarily halted until a better time.

Leah and Harold playing Pinocle with the Hassingers at Sand Lake - 1970

As a young adult and newly married, I learned to play pinocle with my parents. My first husband,Gary and I, would play with them and later with friends. At about the same time, I was learning to play poker with the Kaake family on Sunday afternoons at Grandma Rose's house. Well, I should say I watched them play for several years before getting into the game myself. They had a variety of games they played from “five card draw, Jacks are better, trips to win”, 7 card “deuces and Jack's, man with the axe”, 7 card straight poker and many more that I can not remember. There would be 8 or 10 of us sitting at the table playing cards most of Sunday afternoon. The poker games were nickle, dime, quarter games which made me feel a bit guilty gambling on Sunday, with my Methodist upbringing and all!

Euchre would become the game of choice for my first husband and I with our friends as young adults. We did not know at the time that it was a mid-western game. When we moved to Arizona, we learned that no one knew how to play. We rectified that pretty quickly by teaching all our new friends how to play.

It's funny I really did not think I had much to write tonight. Hope you enjoyed my card game memories. I know that you all have more to share!

Love, Jan