A few weeks ago, at the Coffee and Donuts thing at the Community Center one of the residents told me that they were starting a friendly $5 buy in poker game on Wednesdays and she asked me if I was interested. I think she was trying to mother me a bit, because not long after Donna died, she said maybe I should start a widower club and meet for coffee once a week somewhere. She even had a couple names of fellows that found themselves in my situation recently.
I said maybe I’ll try and make it to her invitation for poker. The following Wednesday I thought about and didn’t think I would be interested, so didn’t go. She asked me again at the next Friday Social and I said I had forgotten, so I asked for the details again and actually put Wednesday, 2:00 PM in my calendar in front of her. And I was going to go play, but the Amazon delivery of my laptop got shifted from Tuesday to Wednesday. It was coming via UPS and a signature was required. So, of course the time frame I got was 12:45PM to 4:45PM. If it arrived early, I’d go. At a little before 2 o’clock I walked up to the Community Center to tell them why I wouldn’t be able to play. Delivery finally happened at 5:45.
So today, I walked up and paid my $5 and spent a little over an hour playing poker. And this was actually the first time I have played. In the Navy it was always Hearts or some form of Rummy. I’m sure there was poker being played somewhere on the ship, but I never got in a game. The $5 thing is just to start you off and you get four denominations of chips, half dollar, quarter, dime and nickel, but if you feel frisky you can pull bills out of your pocket. Nobody ever threw a five spot in as a bet but, they did get used to be thrown in and then 3-4 dollars in chips taken back out. At one point I won a big pot with a portrait of Honest Abe in it, I promptly put it in my pocket.
When I did finally lose all my chips, I said I was done and left the game. So, I broke even for the day and have next week’s buy in all set.