Card games of Vermont

Canasta

Gigi used to play this with her cocktail buddies: a coterie of old ladies who would dress up (hats and sparkly purses and all) and march back and forth to one another's houses 3 or 4 times a week. I have no idea how to play.

Bridge

The Game Most Likely To Kick Grandkids Out of the Living Room. Heaven forbid we should come downstairs and interrupt a bridge game: that always resulted in heavy sighs. If enough relatives were there, they'd set up 2 or more foursomes around various card tables. My sister and I recently decided to have Mom & Dad teach us to play. It is a dang hard game. I barely understand bidding, and scoring not at all. What the heck is a rubber?

Solitaire

Gigi played endless games of solitaire. Gogo cut a piece of plywood for her, and Mimi covered it in batting and then in silvery blue cloth. Gigi would lay this board across the arms of her chair and play solitaire for long afternoons. She taught me clock solitaire when I was very young, and I remember lying on the floor playing that over and over while Gigi played on her board. Very rarely, Gigi would have other things to do, and I would be allowed to sit in her chair, with her board tucked under my chin, to play like she did.

Dad tells stories of Uncle Bev playing solitaire, and he would only turn over one card at a time. If he couldn't use a card, Uncle Bev would reshuffle and start over. Dad actually saw him win a game once.

(I cheat at solitaire. It's freaking solitaire: who cares?)

Cribbage

Constant games of cribbage: this was the game of the pre-dinner cocktail hour, and I was shocked to recently discover that my sister never learned. I remember Gogo teaching me and Liz together. He had a very effective method of teaching the rules: if we missed a point, he would take it. He had a whole series of Cribbage Sayings: "cut 'em deep, sleep in the street," "15-2, 15-4, and there ain't no more."

I taught my friend Lara how to play cribbage, and we would play constantly when we were on debate trips---it was on one trip that I lost Dad's cribbage board and had to buy him a new one. There was a man who would go with us as chaperone and judge (he was not a parent, so I don't remember why he was interested) who had an old travel-size cribbage board that had been given to him by his grandfather, and he gave it to me because she and I were the only people he had known since his grandfather to play the game. I still have it.

I would love to teach my Wicked Stepchildren how to play: I think 2 of them might even be interested.

Spoons

Mimi taught us to play spoons. And really, there's no better place than Innisfree to play, because then you can do so with battered antique spoons. My cousin Jane told me that the two female Whelihan cousins of my generation remember me mostly from a raucous game of spoons on the sleeping porch. What did I do??? I'm a little afraid to ask.

Bonanza

The Ultimate Vermont Game: a card game with elements of poker, canasta, casino, and rummy, involving chips made of old milk-bottle tops, hand-embroidered blankets (serving the function of game boards), and rampant cheating. Gogo taught me the best cheat technique: sit on the side of the table opposite the windows and look at everyone's hands in the reflection. And every time I got up for another cup of tea? I took a nice long look.

There are people who refuse to play cards with me.

I have the last of Mimi's bonanza blankets. She didn't finish it: it says "po" instead of poker and has no "S" in the sequence section. We used to go to this wool outlet (please, someone comment and tell me what it was), maybe in Queechee? I wore a cloak as my winter coat in high school made out of a blanket Mom bought there, and I remember when Mimi bought the pile of old army blankets to make into bonanza blankets.

I'm not a skilled embroidress by anyone's reckoning, but I was not about to let this tradition end. The first two bonanza blankets I made were also out of old army blankets (and egregious embroidery). Way to make a girl itch. Since then, I've made two out of fleece blankets (I buy them in army green whenever I see them), which are not only less itchy but also machine washable. It's a time-consuming project, but so satisfying. The friends for whom I've made blankets actually play the game (which I taught them). They teach other people and pass it on. It's a huge thing to me, a gift.

My sister said she'd murderize me if I made any more blankets before hers. I've been about halfway through it for ... er, 6 months now. I should probably finish that.

In spring of 2007, I was stuck in Chicago for work, and my sister came to visit. My friends Anthony and Dana received the first of the fleece blankets, and they are true bonanza evangelists. The friends with whom I was staying kindly had a little bbq and party for me and my sister, and we played bonanza. W. is a serious poker player, and about 10 minutes into the game he said, "What is the POINT of this game?" Our haphazard dipping into the bank for loans and ridiculous poker rules drove him crazy. After a late, fun night, Lissa and I tottered upstairs in the morning to find W. sitting at the dining room table. "I've figured out how to fix bonanza," he said, and launched into a 45-minute speech about all the ways to make bonanza more competetive and more codified, so that there would be an actual winner and not just a bunch of people BSing around the dinner table until all hours of the night.

We are polite ladies, my sister and I. We waited until we were well out of hearing before we howled with laughter. Fix bonanza! That cute man. We will always love him for it, even though he is WRONG. Bonanza is perfect just how it is.