At Grapes, Holt is in charge of all special request orders…”don’t ship ’til the 23rd of Jibroo”… “send one case a month to me on the first Monday after a full moon”… that sort of thing. And in that capacity he has turned our part of the “bullpen” into a mini-cellar. If we take that in combination with the fact that we already use some of this area as a staging location for the wines that we will take to a wine tasting, the result is our part of the room takes on the appearance of the hold of the Mayflower (we are only missing the rats). Last night at the close of business, Barbara, who works at Holt’s desk in the evening, was rummaging about the cartons (or perhaps she was trying to re-gain her balance from an accidental trip) and I asked her, “What are you looking for? Your ring?”
My father’s mother, Lena taught me how to play Rummy. She was called “Bubbie Lena”… Bubbie meaning granny in Yiddish. I have also seen this word transliterated as “bubbeh”, “bubbe” & “bubie”. She also taught me another card game “Casino”.
But it was my father who really taught me how to play Gin Rummy… and of course once you started to play seriously it instantly became just “gin”. And somehow when I played cards with my father I pictured myself with an eyeshade, garters holding back my sleeve cuffs, a watch fob in my vest & a cigarette dangling from my mouth. Perhaps one too many cowboy movies?
He taught me the “mannerisms” of the game… how you scratched your card on the table before discarding it indicating that you weren’t sure if your opponent needed the card. Or the ultimate… if you needed the six of clubs to complete a four card run of four, five, six & seven (and it was the only card that could have given you gin)… you were entitled to slide the six into its appropriate spot in your hand with an elbow. It was the gin equivalent of “hanging on the rim” or doing a “sack dance”.
Dad taught me the intricacies of the game… whether to go for runs, or whether to collect the same cards, and of course the most critical skill was when to “knock”. This latter ploy would drive my kids nuts when I would subsequently teach them the game, as time and time again I would “knock” before they would have a chance to go “gin”.
My father had taught me well. “Knocking” is actually a defensive maneuver… if you have little or no chance of going “gin” than knocking for a few points was far better than taking a 20+ point hit from your opponent going gin.
Also good defensive play requires that you watch the cards your opponent picks up off the discard pile.
And naturally the “discard pile” itself is of key interest. The pile is rarely in a neat stack… rather you can get a glimpse of the cards that lay beneath. So let’s say that you have a five and seven of hearts, and need a six of hearts to complete a three card run. Didn’t the six of hearts already go by? Or was that the six of diamonds?
Well… the instinct is to try and deftly move the discard pile around a bit hoping to see the card in question somewhere in the pile. But looking through the discard pile is a no-no.
And as I am doing this one time, my father looks at me and says, “Jimmy, what are you looking for? Your ring?”
I have never gone looking through the discard pile since…