What’s trump again?

 

          In my many ramblings about snow and winter I’ll eventually steer the conversation to cards. Particularly Euchre , a game  so ensconced in my life that I make it a point to teach it to whomever can stand to have me teach it to them. I love every thing about it, the actual play, the subtexture it lends to a room full of merry makers and dammit, just the way the deck feels in your hand. These things keep it in the back of my mind whenever I see four people together I know can play. 

“The snow?”, you say. “How does winter allow for a segue into cards?”, is your query. Probably ’cause you’ve never been ’snowed in’ or anything close, never had to stay inside because outside might take a finger. Huddled together, tired of being inside, tired of being so close to people but so bored outta your mind that too many of you are cramped together, in an over warm room, drinking cheep booze and playing Euchre.

The game plays like ‘hearts’ or ’spades’ except that trump changes every hand. You’re playing teams, with your partner seated across the table, bar, counter, desk, tree stump, floor, car hood, hay bail, or the dealer’s knee, with a ’short deck’ of 24 cards (9 to the Ace). You’re team is trying to be the first to score ten points by collecting the ‘tricks’ available each ‘hand’. That coupled with some interesting rules about dealing and “which came first the chicken or the bower” and new players often find themselves just trying to keep up, let alone compete. Did I mention the cheep booze and the keg tapped in the garage to stay cold.

The Wikipedia entry is a great source for actual rules and variations. Especially, for those of us always looking for the rules to ‘three-handed’. Euchre ex patriots, living out here on the fringe, trying to find four people to sit for a game.

So the stars align, or you live in po-dunk Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania or parts of Minnesota where one out of four girls, between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five, have a Euchre deck in their purse, tied up in a colored hair elastic. But your playing, anyway, and when it’s right you barley notice it’s going on. The cards turn and hands scoop up tricks, the ‘deal’ is passed around the table (mostly unhindered), the score is tracked. And all the while, the conversation never lets up, around the table with those your playing with, with friends waiting to play…or those not even interested in the cards in your hand. A ‘hand’ that you guard from players eyes, but that you will surrender to anybody else- to see how your doing, or maybe to play a hand while you pee. There’s drinks to be drunk, cigarettes to be smoked, passes on the new girl to be made. All done with five or so cards in your hand and faultless in calls of, “What’s trump, again?”.

Or the table is deathly serious. And you’ve found yourself amongst sharks. Or factory rats that want to get two whole games in on their 15 minute break. But serious, plotting even, looking to not only win but humiliate. It becomes a head game. To get out alive you may have to play their way. You steal the deal. You count cards. While table talking is strictly forbidden, everybody’s got a partner they do particularly well with, should the need arise. I do not condone out right cheating but there’s always been an argument for meeting fire with fire. And it may take several games, or nights even, before you notice the heavies in a room. The cruel card sharps that giggle as they wipe up tricks, smiling, kissy faces, thanks Gram’ma.

But the evening passes, it may even seem less cold out. You’re certainly warmer, with the keg nearly empty. You’ve played half a dozen games, the last of which take an hour to win, with focus lagging and rants to be finished. ‘Hands’ are analyzed and re-hashed while the next one is dealt. Happy dances, sometimes only in your chair, are started when you get “In the barn”, which is slang for one more point ’til victory. And maybe it’s o.k. that it’s January, it’s alright the new girl wanted more attention than the game left you with, your allowed to be more than a little sloppy. These are your friends and they love you. These are your friends and they need to play this silly game as much as you do.

I used to want to get together a whole bunch of Euchre decks. Complete with rules and wrapped up in a colored hair elastic. And just leave them around; here and there, bus stop and bar, all the random locations I could find in the S.F. Bay area. I thought I could get a movement going, a tide of fledgling players falling in love with the idea of playing in trendy night spots. Coffee house patrons clumped into fours trying to wrap their minds around “ If you have the jack of hearts in your hand, and diamonds are trump, then your Jack becomes a diamond and is the second highest card for this ‘hand’”, “yes, higher than the Ace of diamonds”. But then I realized that the whole point should be to learn the culture of it. To see why the gobble-de-gook rules seem to make sense in the social flavor it becomes. The way time is spent while playing. And the only way, I think, is to learn to play with me and mine. Did I mention we’re always looking for a fourth.