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Orki
“I’ll get you, Stanley!”
I can still hear my grandpa retelling his favorite tale, his laughter so genuine I feared he’d forget to breathe. I’ve dreamt of him these past few weeks. I imagine him on his porch waving once alongside my grandmother, then alone, and then growing faint as we drove away past fall leaves and dried-up corn fields. I can still hear his booming voice fill the dining room with tales of the Navy and his tool shop. His eyes would squint through weathered skin as he recalled stories decades past. His contagious laugh is scarred in memory. I never knew the richness of his life – just glimpses into eighty-five years. If only I’d listened more. If only I had taken the trip to see him again.
A couple weeks ago, I cleaned out his basement. I recklessly sorted a lifetime of items into ‘trash’ and ‘to sell.’ I priced items precious to my grandparents for people who would laugh and bargain for his memories. I packed away a few items that I couldn’t bear to see get sold. I dusted off an old weathered box marked “Cribbage Board.”
When I was a teenager, Grandpa introduced me to a game of cards, pegs and point counting. “Cribbage, Gregory?” he asked. I was at that age where I preferred cartoons to card games. However, he pulled that board out and a page of black and white instructions tumbled out with it. It was a simple game: 120 holes and a handful of brightly-colored pegs slipped away in a compartment. He started shuffling the cards. Clearly, playing Cribbage wasn’t an option. Because my grandparents lived in another state, I saw them only a handful of times each year. Then it became twice a year; finally, about once a year. My time with them each year was brief, so when Grandpa said, “We are going to play Cribbage,” that meant that I was going to play. So there I reluctantly sat, imprisoned by an old man with his cards and a crib board. And he was ruthless. Even as an unskilled youth, he gloated when he double-skunked me and mercilessly taught me to count my own points. If I’d miss a point, he’d challenge, “Don’t make me play cutthroat! If I catch your points, I’m taking them for myself!”
I was thirteen years old.
I think it was the only way to learn that game – cutthroat. Cribbage was a rite of passage for me with Grandpa. Despite my age, this was the one arena that he treated me as an adult. If I beat him, he’d admit defeat. If he beat me, he’d admit my defeat. When we first started playing, I didn’t win many games, but I learned a lot about Cribbage. He taught me how to count my cards, the strategy, and understanding one’s opponent. We’d open up his Hoyle Card Book and look at the top winning hands and then count them out ourselves. “15-2, 15-4, 15-6 and a double run…” I can still hear him counting. In the moments we’d shuffle the cards, he’d talk about the techniques to growing a prized tomato in between sips of his favorite beer. He drank Natural Light or some discount clone of Milwaukee’s Best. To this day, when I see a tomato plant I can still hear him say, “Tomatoes love beer too, Gregory.”
I had a garden in Phoenix when I was a teen. It was a terrible mess of desert, dried-up dirt and weeds. The prized tomatoes of my garden couldn’t pass as cherry tomatoes. But I wasn’t discouraged; they just looked thirsty. When my dad wasn’t home, I’d sneak a few of his beers for their parched roots.
Years progressed and upon every visit, Grandpa would have that Cribbage board sitting out waiting for me. Some nights we played cards until one or two in the morning. By the time I was 18, I was Grandpa’s match. Gone were the days where he’d trounce me five games to one. We’d split most of our series, and I’d leave his house with the score tied up. He’d met his match, and he knew it. It was at this point that I’d threaten him, “Don’t make me play cutthroat!” When I beat him, he’d put up a fuss then make me run down to the basement and grab him a warm beer. Consolation, I suppose.
The conversations while we shuffled cards changed over the years. His hands were crippled by arthritis, and he’d pass me the cards and tell stories. No longer did we share discussions of gardening and tomatoes. He now spoke about his own life. He talked proudly of his Polish heritage. He told tales of making beer with his father in the basement during the Prohibition era. He’d even slip in a few dirty jokes that I was too naïve to understand. I laughed only because he laughed. There was one joke that he told me for three years until I finally understood it. And every game he taught me a bit of Polish. Rather, he would repeat “Today not tomorrow” in Polish. I was always a bit slow counting my cards.
When I turned 21, I had a landmark moment. I had just arrived from Arizona, walked into the house, ran down to his basement, grabbed two warm Natural Lights, cracked them open, and handed the cribbage board to him. Never had a beer so dreadful been so sacred.
But something had changed. I started beating him in Cribbage. It started with one or two hands. Then I’d take a game. Then a few games. I assumed age had claimed his edge, but that wasn’t the case. Even to the end, my Grandpa was as sharp as they came. It was because the things we’d talk about while shuffling the cards changed. It was no longer conversations of Poland or gardening. He started to tell me about his experiences in the war. He told me about his Navy buddies, the pranks he pulled on ship, and the card game “Bulldog” that he and his buddy would play in the barracks. By “play” I mean that he and his shipmate cheated to take several hundred dollars from unsuspecting shipmates. “I was never dishonest! I’ll tell you why…” That was just like my Grandpa – never wrong. He talked proudly about his plane, the TBM Avenger and how scared he was in bombing runs. He’d nervously recall how he’d jerk his legs to his chest as anti-aircraft guns sprayed the belly of his plane. He proudly spoke of his accuracy in combat training. The stories of the war were no longer confined to the time we’d shuffle the cards. They now spilled over into the game itself. And when he spoke, his expression changed because it was a topic he was clearly proud of. At times he’d lay down his cards so that he could make hand gestures and draw visuals on napkins. Some stories he’d laugh so hard tears would come to his eyes. His war memories were precious to him. Sometimes I’d have to remind him to count his cards.
Cribbage wasn’t just a game. It was how I met my Grandfather. I can’t explain what it is like to open that weathered box and stare at a board so plain and rich and beautiful. The smell of dust drifts into a flood of memories of those late nights at his kitchen table. I can hear his heckling as the pegs bounce around the wooden compartment inside the board. I recall the precious days where I had to count the pegs for my Grandpa as his eyesight faded. I run my fingers over the holes of the board, and for a moment, I’m back at the kitchen table.
“Your crib,” I offer.
But it’s too late. I close the box and can only hope he knows.