While attending Corky’s final celebration the other day, I heard two card games mentioned by two different eulogists; the games were Pedro and Yaqui. Now, I am familiar with Pedro because I am from Greenfield where for the Swiss, this card game was close to a religion. I remember serving juice and cookies at the annual 4-H Pedro Party, which was a much calmer atmosphere than down at Oak Park during the Swiss picnic, when at times tempers would flair over a partner’s misplayed card.
There was a group of women who played Bridge; I believe they were called Greenfield Ladies Bridge Club. This game I know little about beyond the occasional movie reference and reading the Salinas Californian’s daily section “Jacoby on Bridge” that illustrated hands held by North, East, South and West and described how the round should be played. I read it but never fully grasped the game; probably because while it was akin to favorite games like Hearts and Spades, it was considered too high-faulootin’ and posh.
There are scads of cards games we played back then, including the early children’s games of Go Fish and War to Blackjack and a couple versions of Poker, while games like Bridge we knew nothing about, others being Whist, Gin Rummy and Faro. And of course, we knew Solitaire; still popular on many tech gadgets.
But this Yaqui game was unknown to me; I say was because apparently it has passed from existence. Until the other day I had only heard about the game, the first time was 35 years ago when working for Harry Casey at the Greenfield News, when I found his nickname came from his prowess as a Yaqui player. Same went for Norn Nuck, he also had a nickname given by other players. Knowing little more than this and being curious I went to the speaker who mentioned the game in his eulogy and got a bit more information. This is from Jim, who at 89 years old is the last remaining King City Yaqui player extant; that means Jim is still kickin’. Apparently, there were some 30-plus guys involved in the game from the 1960s through the 1990s and were organized enough to hold annual tournaments.
Unsure even if the game was a card or dice game, I was informed by Jim it is a pared, or scaled down, version of the board game Yahtzee. That cleared up much as Yahtzee was a favorite game played in my home by kids from four households lined up across two streets: Nita, Pete, and Joey from eastside of ECR, Barbara and John from westside of ECR, me and two brothers from eastside Ninth Street and Ginger and Darold from westside of Ninth. When I heard Jim read off a list of Yaqui players and their given nicknames, I thought it would be good to get them listed in this column just in case anyone wanted a reminder; something they can snip out of the paper and save if a mind to. And I will do just that when I get a more complete list of names. If anyone out there knows a Yaqui player’s nickname, send it along and I’ll add it to the list.
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“The continual jarring and bumping of the ride seemed to the man befitting when he considered the tribulations of his life; yet still he held to the bicyclist’s utopian dream of smooth asphalt.” How’s that for an opening line, catchy, isn’t it? If applied to myself I would say it is only half true as I ride a bicycle for the same reason I did when I was a kid, which is to get someplace, and back then I didn’t consider the roughness or smoothness of the ride had to do with anything beyond the road was just rough. But the second part holds a kernel of truth when I pedal down new or recently reconditioned streets and I dream of a time when all the city is the same; a pipe dream for sure. In relation to the population of King City, there are only a handful of us who ride bikes regularly, but all of us could point out those streets that are hard on the body and the bike.
My location on Seventh Street lies between Reich and Division streets to the north and south and San Lorenzo and Mildred streets to the east and west. Seventh is old and narrow and rough and patched, but it is nothing like San Lorenzo when it comes to roughness. If not the whole condition of the asphalt breaking down over the years until it is mostly the rocky part remaining, there are the dozens of road work patches, usually square in shape, where the asphalt has compressed two or three inches so that some sections are akin to a slalom course.
When I head northeast toward Broadway (a half good and half bad roadway), these roads are tough going, but when going northwest or west toward the shopping center or to the Museum at the park, I can use Mildred and Division where one rolls along smoothly. I was worried about how Bassett Street would fare after all the digging and what all has taken place over the past few weeks, but a recent ride over it shows whomever did the tearing up also did a fine job of smoothing out; provided, again, over time the asphalt does not regress to open pits.
I could go on about other roads, but I know realistically that such infrastructure improvements are held to the constraints of a budget, and so bad streets will become good streets when the money is there and not before. Still, it would be nice if the City were to look into picking up the pace on road repairs and give us riders some smooth riding.
Take care. Peace.
