When I talk with friends about life’s experiences and what we remember about family and growing up, I hear plenty about Uncles. “My Uncle taught me how to whittle wood.” “My Uncle took me fly fishing.” “My Uncle took me snow-shoeing.” “My Uncle taught me how to start a camp fire.”
At this point, I have to offer, “My Uncle taught me how to play Gin.”
Well… it’s true. Uncle Saul taught me how to play Gin. When other kids were learning the early lessons of casting or how to carve away from your hand, I was being instructed in the finer points of “four-of-a-kind” and “straight runs.” My hands were so small that it took both of them to hold all 10 cards.
The basics of the game aren’t hard. You have to accumulate cards in groups of no less than three. They can be all the same card – like 3 or 4 jacks, for example. Or in runs in the same suit – a 4,5,6 & 7 of Clubs, for example. You start with ten cards, arrange your hand appropriately into like cards or runs… and then begin drawing cards and discarding cards ’til your hand has 2 groups of three and 1 group of four before your opponent can do the same… upon completing this you say “Gin!” and you win the hand.
There’s more… “knocking” and “trash talking” among other things; but we’ll get to that in due course as my story unfolds.
My Father worked on Saturdays (except for the Summer), and sometimes for a change of pace Mom would take me up to Woodbury for the day to visit my Aunt and Uncle. Once Mom and Aunt Meggie went off for an afternoon of shopping and left me in the care of my Uncle Saul. We spent an hour or so outside the house raking leaves. I loved to rake leaves… trying to create a pile worthy to jump into. When Saul deemed that we had accomplished the task at hand we returned to the inside. The outdoor activity was merely a prelude for the more important activity to be pursued inside.
Uncle Saul cleared the table in the kitchen nook, took out a fresh legal pad, two sharpened pencils (one for keeping score, the other for doodling), and a deck of cards. He poured me a glass of milk and a glass of white birch beer for himself.
“OK, let’s see here.” He drew a line down the middle of the paper, “Jimmy. Uncle Saul. 25 points for gin, 10 points for under knocking. 200 points to win. I’ll deal, and it will be your first pick.”
It took me longer to organize my hand. Uncle Saul knew this, he took a sip of his birch beer and began his doodle. Uncle Saul was a doodler. Aunt Meggie said, “a major doodler.”
“The knock card is seven.”
I was looking at a bad hand. Nothing is solid, no threes of a kind to begin, no runs of three. I do have the 3 and 4 of clubs, and the 6 and the 7 of clubs. Getting the 5 of clubs would be sweet.
“How’s school Jimmy?”
“OK.” Actually I hate school. This is an old story, and Uncle Saul knew this. Uncle Saul discarded a 5 of spades and I blinked.
“Don’t blink Jimmy. It tells me that you needed the 5 of clubs. You have a club run because you passed on the 5 of diamonds.”
Nuts. I had a crummy hand. Saul knew I’m in a club run. And he reminded me how much I hated school. He had taken the advantage. He picked up my Queen of Diamonds discard. “Uncle Saul, I think I have a stomach ache.”
“Stomach ache? Nah! Maybe a little queasy because you have an open club run, you just gave me a present of the Queen of diamonds… you probably have other unattached face cards, I’m a card away from Gin… that’s why you have an ache.”
The stomach ache maneuver didn’t work as I had hoped. Saul had given me no sympathy. He picked up my Queen; but I thought he was speculating off the deck. I bet he was hunting for the Jack. I bet he had unattached face cards! If I could only draw the 5 of clubs off the deck!
“Uncle Saul… I bet Aunt Meggie is out spending a lot of money with my Mom.” Thinking back on it now… that was a low shot. But this was Gin, and Saul had taught me that you had to get an edge in the talk… particularly if you had a bad hand. He drew a card. No blink. He discarded a Jack of diamonds! OK, he wasn’t collecting a diamond run.
I drew a 10 of diamonds, scratch the card on the table and discarded it. Saul’s eyes lit up, picked up the 10, “Gin!!”
He was collecting Queens and 10s! “Let’s see… that’s 15, 21, 28, 34… and 25 for Gin! 59 for Uncle Saul! That’s a good start! I deal again!”
59, geeze… I just got killed on the first hand. I had better cards on hand #2 and got some good draws off the deck. I got antsy waiting for my Gin card to appear… and Uncle Saul kept drawing cards off the deck, re-arranging his cards with every draw. I couldn’t wait any longer. “I’m knocking with four.”
“Let’s see… I get to lay off my King of Hearts on to your Kings, the 9 of Spades goes to your Spade run… the 6 goes to your Diamond run. There, four for the knock… that leaves 11. Jimmy, 11. You should have waited to go Gin, I had gornisht, you would have killed me! You deal.”
Don’t ask me how. I have always been a good shuffler of cards. Not like I’m a shark or anything… but I could always shuffle a deck, even with small hands. Other kids could run faster, smarter in school, handy with tools… I could shuffle cards.
“The knock card is 3. Your pick Uncle Saul. Ahhhh. Uncle Saul picks up the lovely 3 of Hearts. You always pick up low cards on the first pick. Uncle Saul has 3s.”
“Just play, Jimmy.”
“That’s a good doodle Uncle Saul. It looks like a Napoleon Cannon. I like the Civil War. Uncle Saul doesn’t pick up the 4 of Hearts. I knew he was collecting 3s!”
“It’s a 24 pound cannon. You learn a lot in school. Not into Kings this time?”
“I like books on the Civil War. That and Dinosaurs. If we learned good stuff like that in School maybe I wouldn’t hate it as much.” I drew the deuce of spades to complete my Ace, 2, 3, 4 run. I took the card, put it into my hand using my elbow to fit it snuggly into its proper place. Saul taught me that… “Gin!! Ha-hoo!”
“You didn’t blink this time. You’re learning. You have my deuce! Ach! OK, you get five… hardly worth the trouble. And watch the ‘ha-hoos.‘”
“Plus 25 for going ‘Gin.'”
“Plus 25 for Gin! 30… you’re getting closer! OK, time for a snack.”
I would learn later that this ploy was meant to alter the momentum. It’s like calling a time-out after your opponent goes on a 15-2 tear in basketball. Saul felt I was getting a little too lucky. Uncle Saul brought a greasy brown bag from the fridge and two small plates. He poured me another glass of milk, and poured himself a glass of milk, too. From the brown bag he took out a white block of something. He took out a sharp knife and cut off a healthy slab, divided that into two pieces, and placed one on each of our plates.
“What’s this Uncle Saul?”
“This Jimmy, is the staff of life. It’s the perfect food!”
I smelled it. “It’s doesn’t smell great.” I touched it, “I doesn’t feel too good either, sorta oily. What is it?”
“Jimmy, this is halvah. Nothing better.”
“What’s in it?”
“You don’t want to know. This is the food of Kings! Try some!”
“It’s sort of dry. It’s sticking to the top of my mouth… like peanut butter.”
“That’s what the milk is for! Have another bite… and have a good gulp of milk.”
I nodded, “Pretty good.”
“I bet they don’t give you this in school!”
Well, he got that right. School lunches were the worst. On that basis alone I would have to concentrate on this halvah stuff. It had a strange fiberous consistency that I was getting used to (Ellen would say that it was like eating soap)… there was sweetness; but not an obvious sweetness. And it made sense with the milk. Filling, too. “This is good, Uncle Saul.”
“Would I steer you wrong? Jimmy, if you get trapped on a desert island and only had two foods, you could live well with only milk and halvah. The New England Journal of Medicine wrote about it… it constitutes a perfect diet! Now… let’s get back to the matter at hand… it’s your turn to deal.”
If you are curious… I didn’t beat Uncle Saul at Gin that afternoon. He made a recovery after our snack break and took the next five hands and I went down to a sharp defeat. I lost the next two games, too. After the game he gave me his drawing of the 24 pound Napoleon. I came across that drawing in a bunch of old papers a few years ago.
I don’t eat halvah all that much… but when I do I think of Saul. I am not so sure about its health value. Of this I am sure… that if you smear some halvah on your face, you can actually hear pimples growing. And I tell you another thing: when I looked at Saul on the afternoon when he told me that stuff about the New England Journal of Medicine, he didn’t blink once.