Don’t take any wooden nickels.
Tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to throw away the 50-cent tickets and bring out the quarter tickets.
Shut up and deal.
OK. Chevrolet coupe on the Alaska highway.
First game is baby’s game.
Take No Prisoners
Life-living lessons
On Sunday, the cashier Donna and I had a lovely conversation about fathers. She misses her father who died in his 90s. She told me that he was her best friend. She also told me to make the most of the time I have with my own father. While I didn’t actually need to be told that, I do appreciate that she cared so much about her relationship with her father that she wanted the same for me. I did, indeed, spend several hours with my 93-year-old father on Sunday.
I delivered the Father’s Day card from Dave, Denise and me and a deck of pinochle cards. Dad and I played several games of cribbage. He skunked me the first game and won another game before I finally won the third game. I was sure to point out after the first game loss that “first game is baby’s game” as Dad always says to us when he loses the first game. He, Rita and I then went out to eat and after that, we played three-handed pinochle where I won the first game and he won the second.
Happy Father’s Day, Dad; I let you skunk me. Ha! Never. He taught us to play the game without mercy and that’s how I always play. Games are war, and we take no prisoners in our family. With that being said, he also taught us to be gracious in winning and in losing. We weren’t allowed to throw fits, throw game pieces or throw the game to our favorite sibling. We were taught to take the game seriously, but not ourselves. We learned to have fun no matter whether we were winning or losing. Who knew card-playing could bring about lessons for life-living?
Family Lore
Shut up and deal.
Here’s a card-playing story from our family lore:
Friend: Hey, what games did you play outside when you were a kid?
Dunlap offspring: Play outside? We weren’t allowed to play outside. When we asked to go out and play with our friends, Dad would say, “Shut up and deal.”
That story is totally not true, but it does illustrate the fact that we were born playing cards. I used to be taken aback when someone said that they didn’t know suits or trump or any other card-based terminology. It is surprising to me that not everyone grows up with a deck of cards in their pocket and a score sheet and pen in their hands.
Cards Weren't the Only Thing
Also a ham
Way back in 1998, I gave Dad a book called Dad: Share Your Life with Me. There is a question for each day of the year. It took him two years to return it to me, but I recently re-read the book and found some interesting tidbits in there. One of which was this: Dad’s favorite hang-out place when he was younger was a gas station where they could play cards.
Cards weren’t the only thing he could play. He also played sports. His May 25 entry describes a proud moment in childhood. He writes, “I was playing baseball – 2nd base – senior in H.S. & a guy hit a ‘hot scorcher’ to my right. I got lucky and made a backhand catch and threw him out – the opposing team oo’d & aahed!” In addition to sports, Dad was the self-proclaimed “ham” in school plays. “Every time we had a play, I was awarded the lead as I could or would learn the lines!! ‘EMOTE’ my middle name,” he writes for the entry on March 1.
Other memories of his include that on Independence Day, he enjoyed the treat of homemade ice cream where “you turned the crank by hand.” He said they also put lit firecrackers under vegetable cans so that they could watch the cans “go up high.” One of the neatest presents he remembers giving his father was “some reflectors for the headlights on our 1930 Model A Ford.”
Don't Take Any Wooden Nickels
Trees make the wind
His life hasn’t been all games and sweets, though. His family was poor. He served in the U.S. Army for four years. His mother died at the age of 64 of a heart attack. His father died at the age of 86 in a car accident. That same year, at the age of 61, Dad had quintuple bypass open-heart surgery. He was a model patient and has survived well beyond the life expectancy of that surgery.
He has memories he shared with me, but he also writes that there were things in his life he wasn’t proud of and wasn’t comfortable sharing. In 2000, on the inside cover of that book, he writes, “Sometimes, I think my life was pretty dull – but – it really wasn’t or isn’t. ... I’ve had a good life and beautiful children – outside and more important inside.”
He has lived another 23 years since sharing these thoughts and memories with me, so I wonder what his answers to some of the questions would be today. Would some of them change? Would he remember today that “as a kid, I thought the trees made the wind”? I could ask him all these questions again, but instead, I will listen to the stories that he wants to tell right now ... like the time he drove his friends home in the friend’s car driving 110 mph after midnight.
Thanks, mon pere! I am grateful for the things you taught me, the stories you tell, and the life you have shared and continue to share with me. Don’t take any wooden nickels, OK?
Sending you the sweet, funny love of fathers,
Angela Jane