The Thunker, September 1, 2023

It was about 10 in the morning. I was halfway through the Sunday paper. My second cup of coffee was just starting to cool when an unusual urge came zinging at me like a Perseid meteor. This urge kept elbowing me, nagging me. It wouldn’t let up. Out of the blue on a Sunday morning, I had a sudden desire to play a game of Solitaire. Not on the computer but with a real deck of playing cards.

“Why not?” I asked myself, which is one of the greatest questions ever invented. So I left the paper and went to the game cabinet. I pulled open the bottom drawer and was faced with a big decision: play with one of the oldie but goodie decks I’ve had for 40 years or tear the wrapper off a brand new deck.

I looked over the 29 complete decks of cards we had in the drawer (we got rid of the incomplete decks about five years ago. Hopefully some kid was able to use clothespins to attach those cards to their bicycle so the tire spokes would flap against them and sound like a motorcycle coming down the street). I settled on a colorful deck of cards we inherited from Joe’s mom when she stopped playing bridge, from Neiman Marcus (“Needless Markup” to a friend of mine).

At the table, I moved the newspaper off to the side, divided the deck so I had half in each hand, pushed my pointer-finger knuckle into the back of the cards, then shot them swiftly into each other in a riffle shuffle. Ah, the sound of cards quickly cascading against each other was oddly comforting. The feel of the deck in my hand was familiar, the scent the same as cards have always smelled. I arched the cards into a bridge and let them slide together into a single stack. I learned to shuffle like this when I was a girl playing cards on the floor with my sisters and the neighbor kids (usually speed games like Nertz and Spoons). I loved to hear that rapid percussion of cards falling against each other and into a single pile back then, and still like the sound today.

I laid out the cards in their seven stacks, finding pleasure in the *snap* as I placed the cards in their piles. It was as if I had just played yesterday. (I don’t play computer card games and I haven’t played Solitaire with a deck of cards in years.) It took me four games to win, and then I played all the way to the end, so when I finished I had four stacks of cards, divided by suit, with the aces on the bottom and the kings on top. That was all I needed. My mind had calmed, there was no more mental badgering. I put the cards away.

As long as I was in the card drawer, I took inventory of what all was in there. I found various Bridge score pads and tally cards and a Goren 3•IN•1 Bridge Guide (circa 1958), and an According To Hoyle book of game rules, copyright 1956. The first sentence in the book says, “A card room without a Hoyle is like a hotel room without a Bible.” That’s right. I grew up with an According To Hoyle my family referred to if there was a rules dispute while playing cards. Whatever Hoyle said, went.

There were several unopened decks of official America Contract Bridge League cards, a 20-year-old deck of stiff Vegas brand cards marked “THE PROFESSIONAL’S CHOICE,” (no jokers), an unopened deck from United Airlines (they stopped giving out free cards in the mid-’70s), a deck in a box marked “Plastic Coated” with a hair tie wrapped around it, another deck marked “Jumbo Playing Cards,” which means the numbers and letters are supersized, not the cards themselves. These have a “linen finish” that makes them “Easy to Shuffle.” They’re the kind that slip and slide all over the place. They’re easy to deal out but players spend a lot of time picking them up off the floor after they’ve slid across and off the table. I also found a box of Canasta cards with a brown and brittle rule leaflet, “incorporating the Latest Changes Made for 1950.”

Until I started playing Bridge, Canasta was my favorite card game. We played it for hours upon hours on long, hot summer days when it was too hot to play outside, even though there was no air conditioning in our homes back then. When we weren’t playing cards, we sat in front of a fan and entertained ourselves by making a monotone “aaaaaahhhhhh” sound, listening to the vibration in our voices caused by the rotating fan blades.

When I told my affiliate Joe we had 29 decks of cards, he asked if we were going to get rid of any of them. “No,” I said.

“How come?” he asked.

“Because I wouldn’t be able to decide which ones to get rid of,” I said. They’re like old books—each deck has a story to tell, a history, a unique look and feel. They don’t take up much room, and they make me happy. Especially when I play a game of Solitaire.

You may let The Thunker know what you think at her e-mail address, [email protected].

© 2023 Sarah Donohoe

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