cribbage and calk walk

I calmly sat at an open seat several minutes before the games began. This wasn’t an activity that relied on youth, vigor, and strength. In fact, most of the contestants were retired. How else could 30 people take time away from jobs on a Friday afternoon?

Assigned seats? No. A summary of the rules? No. Introductions? No. Simply, “OK, I don’t think anyone else is coming, go ahead and get started.” It was a cribbage tournament.

When I signed up, I asked how many games we would play.
“Depends on how quickly the games go.”
“I mean, how many will I need to win?”
“Depends on how the games go.”
I thought there would be brackets, winners, losers, semi-finals, everything associated with competition. Instead, we all simply played 5 games with different people.

With 121 being the winning score of every game, the maximum points were 605. After and enjoyable 2 hours, I turned my card in with a total of 596. Good enough for 2^nd place and $20—the winner won all five games.

Where were the boys during this two hour festival of brain exercise/luck/skill(ha)? Next door in the library reading and playing with interesting stuff.

While I waited for the totals of the tournament, the boys ran around outside, wrestling on the beautifully green grass. I came out to find Dave Arganbright, the man who put siding on our house, and then lived in it the first year we owned it. They were teasing each other.

Soon, the cake walk began. The boys had never seen a cake walk but they were eager to pay 50 cents for something, and if cake was involved, they were all the more excited. We paid for two ‘tickets’ which were actually not tickets, but simply the knowledge that you had paid--no body was checking. They stood on one of 20 numbers taped to the floor of the gazebo in the center square of town. The music started and 5 seconds later, the song ended. The announcer said, “Oh, wait, that was the end of a song, you can—oh, well, okay, I guess that’s good enough.” At any rate, the boys didn’t win anything that time.

I was afraid we would have to stand there all night until they won something, and I was out 10 dollars or something. I paid $2 more so they each would have the right to enter two more contests. When the music stopped the second time, Oskar was on number 3, and he was not moving. As it turned out, he needed to move one space over to number 4. He was not moving. He had been told to stay on one number and by golly he was going to stay there. After a few moments of indecision, steadfast stickiness, and persuasion from those around him, he did move. The announcer said there would be two winners each round. The first number was 12, and the next number was 4! Someone yelled, “Oskar!” (although they probably yelled “Oscar!” she got her point across.) I was surprised because I didn’t thing anyone knew our names. He won 5 cupcakes. Exactly what we needed. Easy to eat, not messy, and not too much. How lucky we were that the number he HAD been married to did not win.