To the editor:
“Oh, yes, we played cribbage. Great game,“ says a high school classmate on the phone and I agree with him. Later on I am transported back to the cottage at Nickerson Lake in the 1940s, on the porch at night with all the ceiling lights on, making the large glass windows appear very dark. I am about 10 and know everything, of course. Well, I know that I can beat Porter at cribbage, due to luck, or how the cards come out of the deck.
Porter and I are sitting at the game table he made. Not much larger than a card table, it has a compartment in the center of the top, with a lift-out lid, for a poker-chip holder, cards, a cribbage board, a small tablet, pencils, and a box of dominoes. The poker chips are there for visitors, as Porter would not gamble. Not ever, unless a quarter bet counted.
This particular night he has been winning and we joke about his luck. I ask to cut the cards and he looks at me, says, “That won’t change my winning streak, but go ahead.” I do and it does: I get better cards. He is let down, frustrated, hand after hand. “How about a quarter if I win once more?” I ask. That was what he paid Leonard and me per hour, as his woodworking shop assistants. “Okay, but it’s nearly one o’clock. This has to be the last game.” I win and get the quarter, but I will never ask to cut the cards again.
Back in the present, I recall the cribbage board, now in my living room, with a chess board, chess set up ready to play, two decks of regular cards, a mini deck, and a small fold-up checker-or-chess board with checkers inside. I look at the bottom of the cribbage board, where he wrote, “O.B. Porter, Elks Club -805- Houlton, 1951.” It has never been used since I brought it from home.
I have another board, 3.5 inches long, ivory-like in a black leather fold-over case, embossed in gold with Cribbage Toronto, Canada. I bought it in the ‘70s, when I was traveling a lot to England, France, North Africa and the Mideast. I pictured myself on a train or plane, going up to someone, asking, “Do you play cribbage?” That never happened. Perhaps I was looking for Porter, who died April 8, 1955, aged 70.
How can it be, all of a sudden, 60 years since he died? We were just playing cribbage …
Byrna Porter Weir
Rochester, N.Y.
