About 24 years ago, one of my sons told me that I could play canasta in Yahoo games. Canasta is one of the card games that I would play with my kids as they were growing up. I hadn’t played it for years, so one night I wandered into the Yahoo games site.
I am not great at being able to find my way into and through websites to find what I need to find, but that night I did. Once I got in there, I discovered I could play Sheepshead. Since that is the card game I grew up playing with my parents and brothers, I thought I should try that instead.
In the beginning I went on the beginner page, as I hadn’t played it much in recent years, and felt safer in that area. Sheepshead is a game that can be played in different ways. Three-handed, four-handed, five-handed.
I was familiar with jack of diamonds being partner with the picker in that form of five-handed, but never one called ace, where the picker chooses a fail ace as a partner, and has to keep that fail in their hand. When I first played that game I was uncertain as to what the correct strategy is, and strategy is all important in Sheepshead.
There were a lot of unreliable players in that site, where when you sit at a table, you commit to complete 10 hands before leaving. Also, since you can talk by typing back and forth to each other, some players had horrible language. Gradually I got to know some players, who knew others, and pretty soon there was a dozen or so players who generally played with each other every night from about 9-10 p.m.
Since we played together quite often, we got to know each other, without ever meeting. So then it was time to meet. I remember the first time was out at the farm, and my farmer husband was not too thrilled about the event. He was a shy man and had trouble greeting people that he had never met.
They began to arrive mid-morning on a sunny Saturday. The grill was lit, and brats were grilled, along with hamburgers. Everyone brought food to eat, and the rest of the day was shared with cards, talking, laughter, food and a wee bit of adult beverages. One of the women knew farmer husband’s sister, and everyone else was talking to him, so he even became comfortable with them being there. However, he was not a Sheepshead player, so after eating, he went back out to do farm work.
After that, we got together pretty well every year at someone’s house, sometimes twice a year. But now, as we have gotten older, and some of the players have changed, it seems we don’t get together very often any longer, other than online.
However, that all changed on March 30. We had gotten a notice a few weeks earlier that those game sites were being taken down, and many of the games would not be offered after the digital sites were launched. Most of the card games are gone, including Sheepshead.
I admit there were nights I didn’t want to sit at my computer during that hour to play cards. After all, some nights there was good stuff on TV, or perhaps I was just tired. We depended on each other, however, and the table would wait until nine before letting a stranger on the table to play in our place.
Now that I no longer can, I will probably miss the gang and that hour we spent playing cards, ragging on each other for our mistakes. I am sure that we might start getting together more regularly again. I know that I can go out most nights of the week to a bar not far away and play Sheepshead. Will it be five-handed called ace? Not likely in this area.
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