By Georgia Osten
There’s nothing like having a couple dozen people trapped in your beach house for the weekend! Family from Colorado plus my immediate family from League City were down for the weekend. Actually, they were here explicitly for the BBQ Cookoff in our neighborhood. Game players are we all! Their favorite game is a game played with two decks of cards (because we had so many) and spoons. It’s a raucous event to say the least, and can become very violent and NOISY! The number of spoons laid out on the table is one less than the folks gathered around playing the game. You’re dealt 5 cards and the option is to gather 4 of a kind. The person to the left of the dealer begins by taking a card from the deck, either using it or passing it along, discarding if necessary, never to have more than 5 cards in their hand at all times. As soon as someone in the group gets 4 of a kind, they gently and discretely, without saying a word, take a spoon from the middle of the table. As soon as you see what’s going, you’d better reach for a spoon. The person left without a spoon has to sit out for the next game.
I last played this game one Christmas in Denver about 13 years ago. How do I remember this? Because my 1 year old grandson had just received his Thomas Train Set from Santa that year and we had to literally carry him out of the house screaming and crying, “Choo Choo” “Choo Choo,” to go to his Aunt Jane’s house for Christmas Dinner. The game at Jane’s house was quite violent, people I didn’t even know came crashing across the table for a spoon, clawing each other to grab the spoon. I remember yelling fiercely at someone’s son-in-law. I think I locked him out of the house, the bears were really hungry. I haven’t been invited back …
GO’s Sand Bucket is only one beach bum’s journal of life at the beach, probably something each of you can relate to. Please feel free to email me with your thoughts, visions and/or feelings of just exactly what the beach means to you.
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