following suit: east or west (side), home is best


Euchre is a popular card game in Northern Kentucky and greater Cincinnati (and gee, I think they like it in Indiana, too). Euchre is like Hearts or any of those card games where you have trump, tricks and play with partners. I love playing Euchre. I am a competitive player, high-fiving my partner, throwing down trump with a flourish and getting red-faced and upset when I think people are "table talking." What a dork.

I was recently talking to some friends about getting a few tables set up here to start a tourney night. So many people like to play that I have started collecting phone numbers of random people (cab drivers, bartenders, etc.) who all told me they’d like to get in on the game. Euchre is fun, it’s competitive and it’s something to do in the Midwest besides going to a bar on a Saturday night.

Here’s a euchre story:

My friend Katie’s husband (Jay) plays softball on summer Fridays in Sayler Park, a little town on the river on the Ohio side about 15 minutes away from where I live. Sayler Park is pretty, with beautiful old homes, but, from back in the days when the river was a means of industry transport, their beautiful river views are somewhat quashed by the big, hulking factories and river barges that line the river. It’s a bedroom community, whatever you call it, just a really hard working group of people. Sometimes I will go over and watch them play ball.

One night the summer before last I was there and Katie’s father in law (another funny former ladies man who always manages to brush my ass when he hugs me hello) gave me some of his homemade wine. My dad and some of my brothers have always made homemade wine so you think I would know better- but no, I just keep drinking and drinking what is essentially moonshine.

At some point Katie asked me to play euchre with her, Jay's visiting cousin and his friend, both of whom I’d never met. By midnight, Katie, who’s not much of a drinker anyway, has her head on the table- that damn homemade wine. She and Jay head home. I continue playing euchre with the cousin (my partner), his friend and another guy that I can’t stand who plays softball and always sleazes all over me.

We are drinking and talking and playing cards and it’s so funny… I am used to my friends and the conversations that we have. This was markedly different. They discussed politics heatedly, at the city, state and national levels. I have never done that outside of my closest friends, whom I know have similar viewpoints. Earlier in the evening, I had a similar experience when Katie, several of her friends from high school and I had dinner at the Cabana. It was just non-stop talk about politics, from the perspective of several ballsy west-side women. Whew.

So to be playing cards with strangers and to listen while they talk about why they like this guy, that one’s an ass… It was really surreal. My partner was a union guy (whew!) but we were the only two at the table… I love rapping about unions with union guys. It was an excellent conversation, and also really eye-opening.

Meanwhile, we are still drinking the homemade wine and have now started getting into a keg left in the shelter, too (again, it’s a small town, no one’s gonna steal it).

So we’re still talking, and drinking, and playing cards, and then it was 1:30 and everyone else is gone and I’m looking around the ballpark, thinking, what am I doing in this deserted shelter with these three men that I don’t even know? I get up to take my leave and they all looked up at me and in unison said, “You’re really going, Lisa?” “Really?” “Can’t you stay a little longer?” I looked down at them and it was like looking at a table full of fourth graders, who were just told that they can’t get ice cream on the way home.

I stayed until 4 in the morning. My partner and I had been winning all night and that’s hard to walk away from anyway… And it wasn’t like I had anything better to do. ~

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