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AFTER THAT PERFORMANCE on my part, as I knew Aunt Kate was going to level the word at me later, the game dragged on with the score steadily mounting against us and the quarters in the kitty regularly being scooped in by Gerda. It turned out that livening things up a little, as Aunt Kate called it, included many an ante during play as well as the payoff for winning each hand. Natural canastas, without wild cards, brought groans and a forfeit of quarters, as did things Aunt Kate characterized as Manitowoc rules, such as melding all black aces. I watched with apprehension as Aunt Kate’s stake of quarters dwindled. In bunkhouse terms, we were up against sharpies. Gerda was a terrifying player, seeming to know which cards each of the rest of us held as if she had X-ray vision. Herta was no slouch, either. As I desperately tried to keep up with what cards were played and the passel of rules, I was concentrating nearly to the point of oblivion when I heard the word green, followed by stamps.
I snapped to. Herta was going on about a certain lawn chair featured in the window at the Schermerhorn furniture store downtown. “It has the nicest blue plastic weave and is so light, made of aluminum, and you can fold right down flat in it to sun yourself,” she enthused. “It costs something fierce, though. So I’m hoping I can get it if I can build up my Green Stamps before too awfully long, while summer is still going good.”
“Oh, those, I never bother with them,” Aunt Kate pooh-poohed the trading stamps. “They’re so little use, you can’t even trade them in for decent clothes.”
“We all have ravishing clothes, Kitty,” Herta responded with a bland glance at Aunt Kate’s muumuu of many colors. “What I want is that lawn chair. Free and for nothing and with not even a fee, as the saying is.” All three tittered at that. Then Herta sighed and consoled herself with a nibble. “I’ve been saving up and saving up, but it’s a slow process.”
“You watch and see,” Gerda put in, “you’ll be eligible for that lawn chair about the time a foot of snow comes. I’m with Kitty, those silly stamps aren’t worth the trouble. It’s your draw, snicklefritz,” and, bang, we were right back at playing canasta for blood.
I watched and waited for the discard pile to grow, while dipping my hand into my pants pocket to work on the lucky arrowhead. Gerda noticed me at it, as she did everything, and asked none too nicely, “What’s the attraction down your leg there?”
Before I could make up an excuse, Aunt Kate spoke up. “Oh, he insists on carrying some piece of rock he thinks is his secret lucky charm, it’s harmless.”
Luckily enough, that took care of that, and on the next go-round, my ears ringing with Herman’s advice—Hold back, discard one like you don’t got any use for it, and watch for same kind of card to show up on pile in your turn. Bullwhack the hens—I discarded one of the five sevenspots I had built up. Sure enough, two rounds later, Gerda the human card machine operated on memory and tossed onto the pile what should have been an absolutely safe seven of spades. Saying nothing and maintaining a poker face if not a canasta one, I produced my double pair of sevens and swept up the pile.
There was a stunned silence from Gerda and Herta and a tongue-in-cheek one from Aunt Kate as I pulled in the rich haul of cards. Finally Gerda could not stand it and said, in a tone very much as if she had been bushwhacked, “Just as a point of the obvious, you do know you discarded a seven a bit ago.”
“Uh-huh,” I played dumb although I also kept spreading sevens and other melds across the table, “but this way I got it back.” Aunt Kate conspicuously said nothing, merely watching me meld cards right and left as if our good fortune was an accident of luck, which it was, but not in the way she thought.
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THAT AND A few other stunts I came up with that drew me black looks from Gerda and surprised ones from Aunt Kate saved our skin and our stake somewhat, but I was running out of tricks according to Hoyle and Herman, and several hands later Aunt Kate and I still trailed on the score sheet, and worse, in the kitty. Another ridiculous thing about canasta was that the game went on and on until one set of partners had scored a total of five thousand points. The way this was going, Herta and Gerda would reach that in another hand or two and wipe us out good and plenty. My partner across the table wore an expression of resignation tinged with exasperation, and I did not look forward to the ride home with her. Before the next hand was dealt, though, we were temporarily saved by the luck or whatever it was of me sneaking the last cracker-and-cheese and downing it.