Member-only story
Bridge player on call
Is there a story about one of your family members you wish you had known about when they were still alive and you could have asked them about it?
I sometimes listen to the classic radio channel on Sirius XM, and yesterday, as I was driving back from somewhere, I had it on. That channel runs actual paid advertising in between shows, but they also occasionally throw in old ads from the classic radio era, and I heard one of those last night.
The ad was for a chain of gas stations that, as a special premium, was giving away a rule booklet for an exciting new variant on a card game. When I was thinking about it just now, I had pinochle in my head, but looking on line, it may actually have been canasta. Anyway, these were the rules for three-deck Hollywood canasta, which (according to the announcer) was all the rage among Hollywood stars.
That made me think of the days when card games were a lot more common, because there were a lot fewer entertainment options. And that makes me think of a story that I heard from my father, maybe seven or eight years ago.
I knew that his mother, my paternal grandmother (we called her Mamaw), had worked at a department store at one time, but Dad told me about another job she’d held: on-call bridge player.
