Memories ... like the corner of my card table

My boys have caught the card-playing bug, and the past just comes rushing back.

Photo by Amanda Jones on Unsplash

“Can we play SOME PITCH?!?!?”

These summer nights, that cry comes sometime after the middle boy’s bedtime snack. And his parents, my wife and I, are more than happy to oblige. We grew up playing cards, and our boys now have caught the fever. And for something this summer nondigital that has them using their minds, we are happy to oblige. With that comes a flood of memories.

The game of choice, since spring break, has been pitch, a game that seems second nature to those in Nebraska and Kansas (and elsewhere? Let me know). My boys are gaga to play the 13-point variety, which comes with lots of trump and points and seems very forgiving and action-packed to the new player. And comes in versions for four, five, six, even more players. There is a four-point variety that reminds me a lot of my high school days playing euchre.

So we sit at the dining room table, and that just brings the memories back to me: Playing Uno in my childhood as young kids, where my sister had her own cardholder to manage her hand. Sitting at my dad’s parents and playing blackjack with my grandmother (for pennies?). Playing crazy eights with my mom’s older brother when I was young and he stayed with us after back surgery. That might have started the assorted saying, encapsulated in one-line memories and incorporated even in the hands played my own kids: I’M A LOOOSER! I’M! A! LOOOOSER!

When I was in high school, we had for a time a lake house near the Irish Hills area of Michigan, and we filled those visits with card games. Pinochle was taught, though I’m not sure I could play it now. Visits to my dad’s brother’s family in Ohio came with epic games of gin, a ritual my older cousin would repeat with my dad.

And you can’t talk about playing cards in Michigan or the Midwest without euchre. We’ve found a few players in Minnesota, but Michigan and Ohio and Indiana seem to be the heart of that game. Where kids today all have phones, at my high school, it was decks of cards, broken out even in a small 10-minute window of free time. Euchre is an industrial game, perfect for down times in the mine or line. Heck, after someone leads, the game almost can play itself, with the laydown coming right after the first card laid.

We’d play at family gatherings, too, impromptu tournaments, where another of our collective battle cries was born. In the ‘80s, Detroit was a hotbed of homemade TV commercials to fill the many stations. Among them was a diamond … merchant? Cutter? Those seem too bold of words. “Diamond-cutting factory” was the term used by the advertiser, the Charles Kent Reaver Company, aired endlessly during my youth. It ended with its tagline/phone number: D-I-A-M-O-N-D.

So incorporate it we did. The first time I think it came up was a holiday gathering with my mom’s side of the family. One of her younger sisters, we shared plenty of sensibilities, including a love of cards. And when it came to calling trump? D-I-A-M-O-N-D. (We have one for spades, although it relies on a card-playing bit from the not-so-in-vogue-anymore “Cosby Show”: “I’m going to the garden and getting a spaaaaadddddddee.”)

That cri de card, born out of a 40-plus-year-old Detroit TV ad, resounds over my own table now. We are competitive players, so there is not a lot of ground given to the young players for mistakes, although there is lots of discussion time about how to play a hand. Last week, I had to turn down a few games at the invitation of that middle kid, who most days would invite me only to stick my head into an aircraft engine. But we can find some common ground playing cards. I hope to keep playing for a while.