Story by Ken Boschee (BBO: KenBos)

My interest in cards comes from watching my parents, Art and Phyl, play cribbage, whist, and pinochle. They also played contract bridge, which seemed more cerebral and piqued my interest in the game. With some basic skills from observing them, I played some Goren bridge in college and for a few years during lunch hour at work. Once, on a lark, my friend and I entered a local duplicate bridge session where we accidentally earned 0.3 masterpoints. I was hooked, but rarely played for the next 30 plus years, until I joined the Indianapolis Bridge Center and got retrained in the modern game.

It wasn’t long before I coaxed my older brother Jerr to reengage with the game of bridge. He too had dabbled during his college fraternity years before abandoning the game for many years. His adventure started with the Bridge Academy of North Dallas, and he quickly overtook me in accumulating masterpoints. Occasionally we have gotten together for tournaments, but lately we are both thankful that Bridge Base Online has allowed us to play together, regardless of where we call home.

When my father passed away, I was able to save two things of sentimental value. One was a baseball he always kept in his desk drawer. I don’t really know its significance to him, but it reminded me of his love for baseball and listening to the Minnesota Twins radio broadcasts. The other item was a 21 cent 3” by 6” F.W. Woolworth memo notebook, which he used to pencil in the final scores for every bridge session they played with their close friends, Ed and Margaret.

Every session had the same partnership, each other’s spouse. After 12 years and 219 sessions, on October 17, 1959, the total scores were 878,570 to 878,570! Statistically this must be nearly impossible, and it was featured on the local television station. Altogether, these old Army buddies and their wives played 801 times over 41 years, from September 1947 until October 1988. The final tally was 3,895,290 to 4,058,680.