NOT JUST POKER

It’s not that I was weaned on a poker table, but it seems, that  ever since I was a toddler, there were always poker games at our house or at my aunts’ or uncles’ houses.  That’s what my folks did for entertainment, they played poker.  Aunts, uncles, a few of their close friends–women, men all at the same table.   There did not seem to be any collusion between husbands and wives, but who knows.  I was just a kid, sometimes just sleeping on a nearby couch.  I do remember they played Five-Card Stud and that most players went out almost as soon as they looked at their hole card.

Sometime during the 40’s (Do I need to specify 1940’s? Perhaps, I do. Oh my!) my father and a few of his friends starting playing a new game, Seven-Card Stud.  I’m not sure whether the game was played exclusively.   I do remember there was no dealer’s choice. They either played Seven-Stud or Five-Stud.  It seems, as I now think back, the mixed gender (family) games remained Five-Stud. 

I am trying to remember the stakes at which these games were played.  I know there were no pennies involved.   Certainly no chips were used. There were coins, lots of coins.  Perhaps, some of the games (family style) were nickel-dime. I believe some of the games my father played with friends and business associates  [Somewhere, sometime , I need to expand on this, since some of my dad’s friends were his business associates, who in fact, were ripping him off–not at poker (At least I don’t think they were.)–but in business.] were higher stake–maybe quarter-half-dollar.  I do remember there was paper money on the tables as well. I assume that was just to be changed, not to be bet.

As I try to recall all this, having given no thought to this for more than half a century, since my folks played exclusively high-only games, they did not have to worry about splitting pots.  The winner just scooped it all.

During summers of my youth, maybe from when I was nine to about thirteen, my family would  leave Washington Heights, Inwood Section, where we lived until I was twelve or thirteen, to spend summers in Far Rockaway (Was that Queens or Long Island?) We stayed on Beach 27th Street (I think). We would rent a house from a family who lived there year-round and would move-out for the summer and rent the house to us.  We always seemed to have  rented one of the nicer houses, as opposed to one of the many summer-only bungalows,  on the block.

It was sometime during one of these summers that I first started playing poker, Gin Rummy, and Michigan Rummy.  Stakes?  I cannot recall, but definitely for money.  Interesting, at least to me, is that all my friends in Far Rockaway were from Brooklyn.  I guess I was the only non-Brooklyn Dodger fan. My favoring the New York Giants was the cause of many fights.   So many, in fact, that my father bought me boxing gloves and insisted I learn to box.

The poker we played then was strictly Seven Stud.