Know when to hold ’em

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Deck of cards

Deck of cards Kenny Rogers hadn’t sung that song when I was introduced to the fun you can have with a deck of cards.

In our neck of the woods, we didn’t have board games. I don’t think I saw a Monopoly Board until I was in High School and by then my thoughts had turned to more lively pastimes.

There were always multiple decks of cards in the house. As far back as  I can remember there were games that kids and parents played together. You learned how to win and lose at an early age. And I don’t mean namby-pamby games like Go Fish. I’m talkin’ go get your penny bank if you want to play in this game junior.

Tough lessons sometimes but you learned how to read people figure out their tells and most importantly who you could trust to deal with you straight up not just as a kid.

We played Rummy Games like Michigan when we had a crowd in residence. I remember games with six of us around the table from 7 or 8 years old up to 70. Canasta was hoot for the adults. They laughed at us trying to hang on to huge fists full of cards in that double deck game.

One of my aunts taught me Gin. Talk about a painful learning curve.

Then in the teen age years Poker became the rage. Real poker like five card draw and seven card stud, although there were a couple of idiots that got into things like Night Baseball with a slew of wild cards. By then it was just the teenagers at the table. Truth be told I think we were afraid our fathers would clean us out because if you came to play you were all treated the same.

Those 52 bits of pasteboard were the entertainment when TV had a screen smaller than an I Pad and was in black and white. There were no computers or digital anything in our corner of the world. So we’d get  out a deck of cards and make a party.

I look back on that as a simpler time but it wasn’t. We were learning about relationships and reality at the same time math skills and manual dexterity were being practiced around the table.

I found an old deck the other day while cleaning out a drawer. Couldn’t resist a couple hands of Solitaire.

Yeah, I kept the deck. You never know when you might want to have some cheap fun.