Today, 28 December, is National Card Playing Day.
I was raised in a card-playing family. I learned hearts and spades at an early age, and then pinochle which was probably my favorite. We would play it while we were on vacation up at the lake. I don’t even know anyone who plays pinochle these days.
When I was a child my uncles would get together at my house to play poker, and I would creep out of bed to sit on the stairs in my pajamas, out of sight, to listen to the riff of the shuffling cards and the tinny clatter of the coins. They played penny-ante but created complex betting rules involving wild cards designed to create big pots. When I was older I enjoyed being part of those games, although moving away to college and then living on my own far away limited my playing time.
As a grad student in San Francisco I sometimes played serious poker with a group of filmmakers and artists, and the pots could become significant. I didn’t have a lot of money in those days, but I typically was a mild winner because I stayed sober while everyone else got drunker. I was thrilled one night when I walked away with a pile of winnings that was, for me, a major windfall, earned through several tense, high-stakes hands. But I realized that one or two hands could’ve gone the other way and I could have lost a lot of money, money I couldn’t have afforded to lose. I never participated in those poker games again.
It’s been decades since I played friendly games of cards, and it is something I miss, a remnant from an earlier era, before streaming media and smart phones, when family would pass the evenings in such a simple, timeless way.