The author’s uncle, Elmer, and father, circa 1962. Photo provided.
By David Simmons
NORCROSS, Ga. | My mom and dad ventured west from East Tennessee in the late ’50’s to Indianapolis, and were soon followed by my mother’s older brother Elmer and his family. After we moved to the suburb of Greenfield, we lived about 30 miles apart and Elmer actually bought the house that we used to rent on the southside of Indianapolis.
My dad hired on at the Ford plant, and Elmer found work at the General Motors plant there. Both of them played prodigious amounts of Euchre during their breaks and lunch at work. (Euchre is a trick-taking game with a trump, played by four players in teams of two. The basic play is similar to Whist, i.e., each player plays one card, the highest card of the suit leads to winning the trick,unless someone has played a card of the trump suit.) Dad said that they usually could play three games of Euchre during a 15 minute break. And the games were fierce.
Our families regularly visited back and forth on weekends, and Saturday nights were always card night. We would start off with Oh Hell! which allowed everybody, including us kids to play. Then as it got later in the evening, the adults would switch to Euchre. It was always guys against the girls, Elmer and Dad against Mom and Aunt Teen.
I did a lot of watching, and it was funny how the guys seemed to win at Euchre waaaaaay more than the gals. For a while there, I thought Dad was a psychic, because when he was in the first seat, and the women turned down the trump card, he always seemed to hit Uncle Elmer’s hand. Now, Hoyle says to call next, (i.e, spades if clubs turned down, diamonds if it was hearts, etc.) to hit your partner’s hand. That is supposed to work. But dad might call any suit, and then not have a strong hand in that suit. And that don’t compute. And believe me, I paid attention.
By about 1964, when I was nine, I finally figured it out. Uncle Elmer was a heavy smoker, always had one going, and being a gentleman, he never blew his smoke towards the table and the other people. Then I noticed that when Uncle Elmer would blow his smoke straight up in the air, Dad would call Spades. Blow it off to the left? Boom, Dad would call hearts. Straight down below the table? Clubs. Uncle Elmer was signaling dad what to call with his cigarette smoke!
No wonder they won so much! But I never told, and the women never figured it out. One day a few years after Mom passed away in ’90, I was visiting with Dad and we were talking. We got onto cards and I asked him why Mom and Aunt Teen never caught on to their little tricks with the smoke. He acted shocked that I would even suggest such a thing. Denied it to his dying day. But I was there, and I know what I saw.
Thus we had Uncle Elmer and my Dad, Glenn, the two card shark shysters, circa 1962, from the card games of my youth.
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