A Friendly Game
I
If men seen their wives play poker previous to the nuptial bonds they’d be a large fallin’ off in marryin’ and givin’ in marriage. Speakin’ for myself personally, the Missus would still be livin’ in her parental mansion o’ concrete buildin’ blocks at Wabash if I’d knew in advance that her and George W. Hoyle was such perfect strangers. And I and all my male friends would be callin’ each other up, from noon on, to decide on the most advantageous location to start gettin’ paralyzed that night.
The best female poker player I know is Mrs. Hatch. She don’t never come into a pot and she never antes without a court order. Say she buys two dollars’ worth o’ dime chips at the beginnin’ o’ the evenin’. Our game generally ’most always runs about four hours. So when it comes time for the lettuce sandwiches she’s still got $1.60 in front of her yet and ain’t mad at nobody.
So Hatch has got it all over the rest of his gentlemen friends. He can generally keep his mind on the game, instead o’ puzzlin’ all evenin’ about the most cuttin’ thing he can say to his wife on the way home.
I’ve often said to the Missus: “If you can’t set over on one corner o’ the lounge and do your mendin’, if you think you must take a hand, why don’t you play like Mrs. Hatch?”
“Play!” she says. “She don’t play! She just sets there like a dummy.”
“Well,” I says, “I’d rather have a dummy wife that costs me forty cents an evenin’ than a female philanthropist that thinks every night is Christmas and the rest o’ the people round the table is the slums.”
“But she don’t have no fun,” the Missus says.
“Who expects to have fun for forty cents?” I ask her.
“But she can’t never win,” says the Missus.
“That’s right!” I says. “I forgot that part of it. It’s the feminine plungers that grabs all the coin. What do you say if I and you take all your winnin’s o’ the last two years and go downtown some evenin’ and buy a fountain-pen filler?”
They’s six of us that usually gets together two or three nights a week at our house or the Hatches’ or Tuttles’. Nothin’s ever said about card playin’ when the invitation’s issued. For instance, Mrs. Tuttle calls up Mrs. Hatch and my wife along in the afternoon and asks ’em to come over that evenin’ and bring their keepers and listen to the new records Joe brought home yesterday. So we go and set round a while, expressin’ admiration o’ “Poor Butterfly” and “Wackie Hickie” and “My Honolulu Hop-Eater,” till Hatch can’t stand it no longer.
“How about a little friendly game?” he says.
“Maybe the rest don’t feel like playin’,” says Mrs. Hatch.
Then I say:
“What’s the use o’ concealin’ the hellish purpose for which this party was got up?”
So then we all beat it to the dinin’ room, where they keep the other table, and Mrs. Tuttle brings along a ten-cent deck o’ the papes, and a box o’ checks, half o’ which is missin’ on account o’ little Joe and Millicent havin’ either bit em’ in two or rolled ’em under the piano.
Then the argument comes up about how much the checks’ll be worth.
“Let’s have ’em a nickel apiece,” says Mrs. Hatch, figurin’ that that way she’ll only lose twenty cents instead o’ forty.
“Oh, that’s a pikers’ game,” her husband’ll say. “Ten-cent chips and twenty-cent limit’s the right dope.”
Then Joe Tuttle passes out stacks o’ twenty chips each and the husbands settle.
Next, it’s whether we’ll play straight poker, with a buck, or straight jacks. That’s Mrs. Tuttle’s cue to horn in.
“Let’s do like we usually do,” she says: “Straight poker except when the dealer’s got the buck; then a jackpot.”
“With deuces wild in the jackpots,” says my Missus.
Now I’ve learned by experience that it’s just wastin’ my breath; but I can’t never resist makin’ a speech at this point.
“If poker’s a rotten game,” I tell ’em, “why don’t we play somethin’ else? The guy that built the first deck o’ cards meant for deuces to be the dregs o’ the game. The guy that invented poker kept deuces in their proper place, somethin’ to be laughed at. I claim poker’s the best game o’ cards, without no garnisheements. You don’t see the American League passin’ a rule to make the infielders play blindfolded so’s to improve baseball. The billiard experts never think o’ stickin’ three more object balls on the table so’s it’ll be easier to score. The colleges ain’t never considered supplyin’ the halfbacks with motorcycles to increase their speed. When you put wild cards in a poker game you blow the brains out of it. It’s an insult to the man that got it up. You might as well add the story o’ the two
