By Dwight Esau
For the Sun Day
When a journalist covers a game, he usually observes the action, takes notes, interviews participants, and writes a story about who won and how.
Last week at the Sun City Cribbage Charter Club, I took a different approach: I played the game while at the same time gathering information about it and the players. I absorbed the fun, competition, camaraderie, and culture of this nearly 400-year-old card game. I found out that, after over 60 years of playing it off and on, I can still hold my own with veteran players.
In the process I also discovered a fascinating fact about cribbage and the United States Navy.
Cribbage is not the most popular card game in America, even though it is one of the oldest. Bridge, pinochle, euchre, canasta, and triple play have more followers and enjoy more popularity. But cribbage endures.
Cribbage’s name is derived from the word crib, which means, among other things, a structure for storage. It was developed by the English poet Sir John Suckling early in the 17th century. The game’s rules and procedures have not changed since. It is similar to gin rummy in that players score points by forming combinations of cards. Scoring is tracked on boards containing one small hole for each point, and colored pegs are used by players as the game proceeds. A game takes from 15-30 minutes, and players play five games at each session of the club against five different opponents. Games can be two-, three-, or four-handed.
The Sun City Cribbage Club meets every Wednesday in the Prairie Lodge’s card room for about 2 1/2 hours. Club members pay $10 dues annually and contribute 50 cents each time they play.
“We just play to enjoy the game and each other’s company,” Carol Charpentier, current club president, said. “We keep track of all scores and weekly winners, and announce an annual champion each year. Some players have won more than once.”
David Petty, who plays most weeks along with his wife, Yvonne, served in the Navy. “I learned the game from my dad when I was a child, and I played a lot in the Navy,” he said. “My commanding officer and I were about the only guys at our station who didn’t spend time at the bars, so we played cribbage. A lot of guys played the game.”
Some subsequent research revealed a link between the game and one of the Navy’s legendary submarine commanders in World War II. Richard (Dick) O’Kane, captain of the submarines Wahoo and Tang in the Pacific in the 1940s, led crews that sank or damaged more Japanese shipping that any other submarine. After the Tang was sunk because of a flawed torpedo in 1945, O’Kane was imprisoned by the Japanese until war’s end. He earned the Congressional Medal of Honor for his exploits and leadership and became one of the most decorated and honored submariners in the war.
He apparently loved cribbage and played wherever he could during his career. His personal cribbage board today is placed in the oldest commissioned submarine in the Navy and is switched carefully to the next oldest ship at each de-commissioning.
It is said that cribbage today is widely considered the “official” game of the Navy.
(A personal note here. I enjoyed cribbage so much that when I found another player with similar notions in the army, we decided to play between duty shifts in the South Pacific. We couldn’t find a board, so we recorded scores on a piece of paper. It sure whiled the time away.)
But I digress. Back to the club.
“We play two tournaments each year, one in December and the other in June,” Tom Fleming, who has been with the club most of the time since it was formed in early 2000, said. “Winners get cash prizes and their names engraved on a plaque we keep annually. In our weekly game sessions, we drink an enormous amount of coffee. Our biggest problem is usually whether the coffee machine will hold up until the end.”
This writer played four one-on-one games against four different opponents and one three-handed game with Fleming and Glenn Strong. I won three out of the five games. Bob Ferraris and I were tied going into the final stretch, and he came up with a huge 24 hand and won. (A perfect hand in cribbage is a 29, which happens very rarely. Club members said they had one about six months ago, however.) Yvonne Petty outlasted me in the final game.
Thanks, cribbage players, for a great session. Best fun I’ve had in years doing a story.
1 Comment
I loved the story. My father, who was in the U.S. Navy from 1940-1946, played the game for over 75 years. He was a navigator on the U.S.S. Wasp when it was sunk at Guadalcanal. He learned the game after he joined the Navy. He loved cribbage, and taught my mother to play before they were married. He and my mother kept an annual record of who won the most games each year. When he passed away in 2010, those little books of the records he and my mother kept of their cribbage games were among his possessions. I will treasure them always, because I know that it was a part of him.
I taught my two sons to play the game when they were small, and I’ve now taught my grandchildren. It is my eleven year old granddaughter’s favorite card game. We play on an average ten games per week. It’s too bad that more people don’t play it. It’s a great way for kids to practice their math skills! Thank you for the great story!
Kathy Striggow
Cape Coral, Florida