In an effort to make some sense out of the bottom half of our house, we have been going through some old boxes and other items. One of the boxes that has been neglected for several years, twelve, in fact, was a box of mementos from my dad, the Chief. When the box came to me a few weeks after the Chief died, I wasn't ready to deal with it so I stuck it in a corner and left it be. Yesterday I thought I was ready. Wrong. One of the items I pulled out of the box was an old beat-up Cribbage board. There was a newer, nicer one in there, too, but the old one was the board that he and I spent hours and hours on together. He taught me to play as soon as I could count and add. I watched him play with friends and shipmates all my life and the sounds of the games were familiar to me long before I had any clue what they meant. On some ships and shore assignments, the rules were looser than on others. So many times when the Chief had the "duty", he would smuggle me on board and I would stay all night with him and watch him play the younger sailors or his old friends who stopped by for a game. The Army has "Tonk"...the Air Force must have something...the rest of my family played Canasta every week...but for the Chief and his mates, Cribbage was a passion. It was a good thing that nothing caught fire or got stolen or any crimes got done while those games raged: no one would have noticed.
At ten I could play a respectable game. The Chief was a generous teacher, patient and careful of my feelings. By the time I was a teenager, I could play as well if not better than most of the younger sailors that were on the ships. The better I got, the less allowance the Chief made for "rookie errors" until somewhere around 15 or 16, I got no breaks anymore. It was about that age when, in a one-on-one game in the kitchen, I beat him for the first time...not one he let me have for encouragement's sake, but actually bested him on the Crib Board. His reaction was kinda funny. He was proud of me and at the same time, pissed that I beat him. Of course there was an immediate re-match. I honestly don't remember who won that one; I was still giddy and giggly over the first win. I am not a good winner. I celebrated. We enjoyed many more matches after that. I had arrived at the level of competition that made me worthy to play "all out" and we started sounding like those games from the ships. Accusations of "hauling timber" (deliberately miscounting the holes to get your peg further along) and "loading the Crib" and other various charges flew back and forth between us.
Over the years I haven't met too many Cribbage players in the Army. At one point in Texas, I was pulling overnight duty so often that I taught my whole platoon to play and some of them could give me a pretty good game, sitting up with me to all hours of the night.
But I haven't played in a long time, now. I guess I miss my main opponent.