Games, Now and Then By Pat Kinsella Herdeg

Christmas, 1970--Dan, Tim, Beth, Pat

During these times of social distancing and staying at home as much as possible, we are learning to play board games and cards with others over Zoom, Skype  or Google Hangouts. As I listen to the loud shaking of Yahtzee dice over the internet echoing through our home, I also remember the board games of my youth. 

‘Just one game, they all said, and started to play. That was yesterday.’ Supposedly a Chinese proverb, but very much what happened in our family!

Christmas, 1971-- Chris, Jim, Beth, Pat

My brothers and sisters and I loved Risk, Monopoly (when it was not being thrown off of the table in frustration), Kerplunk, Sorry, Trivial Pursuit and others. Card games were very popular with us also—all sorts of poker games and betting with chips from a fancy (plastic) carousel holder. Jacks, marbles and Chinese Jump rope were some of our driveway games.

Christmas 1964 -- Dan

Mom aka Grandma/Aunt CB remembers that around 1935 or so, their family got Monopoly. They sat in their front room at the card table, four at a time, and played. As one game ended, another game began, with different players---their seats never got cold as another person jumped into the just vacated chair.

Another game she remembers well was a card game brought to them via Aunt Lil of Center Lisle. Lloyd was away for his annual hunting trip to the Adirondacks, so Lil was visiting her sister and the kids. She taught them the card game ‘Oh SH##’ or ‘Oh Phsaw’ as it is known in more formal circles. Mom and her brothers and sisters LOVED this game, as they knew full well that their Daddy would never let them play the game when he was around.

1966, Christmas_Pat, Tim, Tom, Mom, Beth

For more games from our past, here are some of the games my siblings and cousins remember playing:

From Nancy Taylor Wright:

I remember as a kid on the farm, Sunday night was a big game night for us.   Dad fixed breakfast of fritters or pancakes, sausage or bacon & always eggs from our chickens, Mom fixed our big dinner midday, and then Dad would fix cookies, fudge, cereal & milk, popcorn, (always one batch colored sugar and one batch butter and salt that we would mix together in our bowls) -- and then we would get the games out.  

Canasta was a favorite, as well as Monopoly, Chinese Checkers, Fish, Authors, Scrabble, Chess, Checkers, Uno, Rummy, Yahtzee, Clue, and Parcheesi.   

The rest of the week we spent much of our time playing outside, riding our bikes around the "village" we set up out in the big old apple orchard, or playing in the snow and digging out and building forts in the hard-crusted snow mounds -- but come Sunday night we all relaxed with more leisure-time for the games and eating treats.  

Whenever visiting the Kinsella Clan, we always got into a game of Spoons around their big dining room table-- and found out real quick that one had to really pay attention to the game at hand if you didn't want to be left out -- and be the loser that had to eat whatever concoction they could dream up out of the fridge and  cupboard!! 

Lots of good, good memories!!

From Jim Kinsella:

·        Careers (Chris, Ted Lochner, and I would play this over and over for hours)

·        Spoons (not a board game...but a table game)

·        The Ten Commandments --Oh how I hated the serpent! It was up at our cottage at Otty Lake.  Chris and I played it fairly often. Recently Chris bought it again.  I played it with my girls last year.  They hated it!

·        Twister (didn't play this often though)

·        Mousetrap

Ten Commandments Game

From Dorothy Maffei:

My gram - Lil - used to play Fantan with us. I don’t remember what kind of card game it was. Also spoons.

Editor again: I had never heard of Fantan, so I looked it up, on the appropriately labeled ‘Game Rules for Dummies’. That site told me: ‘The objective of Fan Tan is relatively uncomplicated. You deal out the entire deck of cards among the players, and you spend the game trying to get rid of all your cards before the other players can manage the feat,’

Then it goes into more advice with sections on ‘Wheeling and Dealing’ and ‘Let the Cards Hit the Fan’, so I decided that it definitely sounded like a game we all would have loved playing!

From Diana McCarty:

I always liked Clue and Sorry and loved Chinese Checkers. My Dad made a board that was wooden and very, very shiny.  Rather than holes for marbles he had wood tokens that looked like 2 triangles on top of each other.   He also made amazing jigsaw puzzles.....and of course cribbage.

1976,Tom and Dad, Mastermind

From Tim and Rose Kinsella:

In Syracuse, board games are mostly played with young grandkids who are staying home from daycare or school (and who, despite a fever, never seem the least bit sick!).  These tend to be Candyland, Sorry, or more recently Go - Connor and Aaron seemed addicted to that game, and very good at it.  

At the cottage the "no TV" rule is still enforced.  Favorite games up there are: 

·        Ottyopoly - kids of all ages love the local references, even if the grandkids don't know half of them

·        Risk, especially Cameron

·        Stratego, especially Cameron

·        Dominoes, especially Aaron

·        A new favorite is a National Park game that we just started playing.  You travel around the US to National Parks and learn about them (Editor: this one sounds terrific! We’ll have to try it!)

1964, Christmas_Tim

From Ted Lochner:

In Spencer, MA we play Scrabble, Super Scrabble, Life, Yahtzee, Careers, Patriopoly(Patriots), Sorry, Chinese Checkers, Pictionary, a lot of Chess & Backgammon with Andrew, and a lot of Farkle with Judy & our neighbors.

At Otty Lake, we have had marathon sessions playing Life, Monopoly, and Careers sometimes back-to-back without breaks for even food or drink!

And then there is Uno. Also, Spoons which must be the most popular Men's Weekend game. When playing Spoons, it is recommended to were protective equipment including safety goggles, helmet, elbow pads, gloves, have a first aid kit and furniture repair kit on hand just in case! When playing most games with Kinsellas and Lochners, you have always got to keep your eyes on the game due to inconsistencies pertaining to rules and must make sure you know about "cottage" rules before play begins(which can sometimes change during the game)!! 

Good times for all!!!!!!!!!!

From Julie Lochner Riber: 

Board games I remember were Monopoly and Parcheesi.  Card games included Go Fish, Concentration (both popular when we went hiking and us kids got WAY ahead of parents.  We'd stop and shuffle out the cards for a quick one), Canasta and Euchre.  Of course, Spoons was the biggest, baddest and best!  I agree with Ted that it was more of Blood Sport than a card game, however.  Reminds me of my brother Chuckie because he was always the most vicious...and he cheated and changed the rules often.

From Carol Ann Taylor Hart:

Hope everyone is doing as well as can be considering we are in a period of social distancing, which is hard for the Taylor Clan! We love our get-togethers, especially our reunions.  Here is a list of board games and cards that I played with family and friends:

·        Board Games: Mystery Date, Hide N Seek, Sorry, Snoopy and the Red Baron, Kerplunk, Twister, Monopoly, Carnival, Yahtzee, Don't Spill The Beans, Candyland, Bonkers, Operation.

·        Card Games: Kings in the Corner, Black Jack, Crazy Eights, Rummy, Cribbage, 52 Card Pickup (LOL). Editor here again—The 2846 Kinsellas also LOVED 52 Card Pickup, although our mother did not enjoy it. It usually meant that much more than just cards were thrown all over the living room!

1983, Christmas_Jim, Chris

From Joyce Henderson:

I remember playing Monopoly, Go Fish, Old Maid, and Pitch. Being a farm kid we did so many outdoor games that involved our three large families that lived near each other, seeing as I lived out in the boonies like rural Center Lisle...Center Lisle was considered town ha ha.

From Pat Kinsella Herdeg:

Board games that Glenn and I played with our kids were many—Careers, Life, Clue (even walked by the Salem mansion that inspired the Clue game), Chronology, Sequence, Trivial Pursuit (I remember one TP game when we needed a call out to Ali’s Andy in MN so that he could help our team), Yahtzee and Hide and Seek (the real game AND the board game—one of our favorites).

As we stick close to home for the rest of this spring and possibly summer, let’s remember to pull out some of our old games also. Stretching over little Jimmy’s body to get to the green spot on Twister, trying to take out Dan so that I can get the continent of Australia before he does in Risk. making sure Rose is on my Trivial Pursuit team—all terrific memories from my childhood. Let’s make more! Until we can share a board game together, take care and stay safe.