For Bridge Players Only

If you don't play bridge, you might want to skip this, as I doubt that it will make much sense to you or be at all entertaining.

In the tournament bridge world there are many professionals who "play for pay." That is, weaker players pay the pros to be their partners, hoping to win club and tournament events. The payment is usually in money, but not always. Years ago the story went around that Oswald Jacoby (R.I.P.), for many years one of the top bridge players, was approached by a sweet young thing who simpered, "Oh, Mr. Jacoby, what does it take to get a good player like you to play with someone like me?" Ozzie is said to have replied, "Money or sex."

(As an aside, many such sweet (and not so sweet) young things wear low cut tops in order to distract male opponents, often succeeding. Jacoby is also supposed to have said that he had played many a hand cross-eyed.)

For those who pay in money, this can involve travel and expenses for the professional (and even for a family or companion) for the duration of a tournament.

One such weak player, a middle-aged/elderly oil widow, consistently paid an expert we'll call Benny to play with her, even at local club games. He had devised a bidding system designed to prevent her from playing no-trump and major suit contracts. She would bid suits other than her strong suits, but indicating those strong suits, so that he could bid those suits first. Thus, if their side played the contract, he would play the hand.

Sounds foolproof, and is almost foolproof. Unfortunately she had played bridge and learned some standard bidding concepts before learning the "new" system, and occasionally got the two sets of concepts mixed up.

Now here is my recollection of one mini-disaster which resulted from that confusion. If the bidding isn't precisely correct, at least the concept will be apparent.

During one session at a club she opend the bidding on a hand with "one diamond," indicating that she had strength in hearts. Benny dutifully bid "one heart" so that if they wound up playing hearts he would play the hand. She bid "three hearts" indicating that she had a very strong hand. Benny wound up declarer at four hearts, down one, while everyone else was playing two hearts, making. He had played it one trick better than the others, but the partnership had overbid by two tricks. When she put down her hand as dummy, he was surprised to see a hand with good hearts but of only ordinary strength.

After the hand he asked her if she didn't think her jump to three hearts was a bit much, and she replied, "Oh, Benny, I wouldn't have done it but when you bid hearts my hand went up so much in value."

Depending on your bridge knowledge, that might be a time joke.

She wasn't the best bridge player around, but she was a very nice person, and my emotions were mixed when I heard a few years later that he had dragged her into first place in the Mixed Pairs event at the Canadian Nationals, an astounding feat. I just feel that there's something not quite right about the weaker player gaining such a title in that fashion, but I confess that I was happy for her.

It's a Small Army

I was a payroll clerk in the Army's Personnel Office in Grafenwoehr, Germany. "My" area, the payroll area, was the smaller of two connected, large, open office areas, the other containing the Personnel Officer, NCOIC, and several personnel clerks.

I heard the door to the Personnel Office open, and looked over. It was winter, and the new arrival was wearing a parka. From the back, very little of him could be seen. I did hear the Personnel Officer ask him, "Who are you?" His reply was, "I'm your new Sergeant Major."

Someone had led him astray, whether intentionally or unintentionally I do not know. The post had a perfectly good Sergeant Major who had no plans or orders to relinquish the position. The new arrival was, in fact, to become the First Sergeant of a company in Hohenfels, Germany, an isolated part of the Seventh Army Training Center.

He was processed by the NCOIC and brought in to payroll. We were introduced - he was First Sergeant Sam Donley - and I took possession of his payroll records, cleared up a couple of items, and that was it.

Perhaps a year later a figure in a parka (this is key because there were no insignia and there was no name tag) appeared in my office saying he had a couple of questions about "my pay."

"Sure thing. And you are . . . ?"

"Why wouldn't you know who I am?"

"Let's turn it around. Why would I? I have the payroll records for more than 500 people. I have met perhaps 100 of them more than once, and many of them I've never met at all."

This seemed to placate him, he reintroduced himself, and we resolved whatever issues were bothering him.

Fast forward to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, five years later. Two companies' "Orderly Rooms" (basically company headquarters, usually containing the Company Commander, First Sergeant, and Company Clerk) shared a building. I was assigned to one of the companies and the First Sergeant of the other was - yup - Sam Donley. I had hardly known him, had only met him the two times described above, and had talked to him on the phone a couple of times about payroll issues regarding soldiers in his company in Hohenfels, but we figured to be in close proximity to each other for perhaps the next year and a half, and it seemed to me that the appropriate thing to do was to stop in and say hello.

I did. He was sitting at his desk and I introduced myself as "your payroll clerk in Grafenwoehr when you were in Hohenfels. Just thought I'd say hello." Although I doubt that he actually remembered me, he smiled, stood up, walked over to me, shook my hand and said, "Oh, yes. How are you?"

We chatted for a couple of minutes and my impression that he was somewhat pedantic was reinforced when we were interrupted by a Sergeant First Class for whom Sam had some instructions. When he finished issuing them the SFC began speaking: "In other words, you want me . . . " - "What's wrong with my words?"

Something made Sam ask me if I played duplicate bridge, and he was very pleased to learn that I did. There was a weekly session held at the Sambo's in Sierra Vista, right outside the post. It was sanctioned by the North American Bridge League and I think I recall learning that Sam had started it. I agreed to show up at the next one, we shook hands, and I exited.

Sam and I became friends, not particularly intimate friends, but at least friendly. We were probably the two best players at the weekly event and we usually won when we played together. But we weren't partners very often, as the attendance was fairly small and we made ourselves available as partners to others in order to encourage attendence.

I guess I'm rambling here, as I don't have any point to make or any particular exit line. Sam popped into my head and I thought I'd write about him. Two more related thoughts:

• This was the first time I had made myself available as a partner to players who were consistently weaker than I, and I learned a lot. One incident springs to mind - I was playing with an Army Captain who was very unsure of himself regarding bridge. In fact, we were partnered as the result of his wife asking me to play with him because she felt that a good result would make him more liable to attend the event frequently.
  
  Early on, he opened a hand's bidding with "One heart." I had great heart support and a wildly distributional hand. I jumped to six hearts and he was visibly shaken. He played the hand as if he were walking the plank and went down one in an ice cold contract. Nearly everyone else bid and made six hearts with the hand. But this was not his fault - it was due to my inexperience. What I should have done was drag him through a series of forcing bids. In other circumstances the sequence of bids would make no sense but in this case it would have given him time to realize that he was going to be playing in a slam contract, however reluctantly. Given that time to adjust, he would probably not have blundered due to a case of nerves.
  
  
• The weekly bridge reinforced my decision to leave the Army. I was about a year and a half away from discharge and had been a GI more than eight years. It wouldn't have been a bad life for me except that there were so many rules regarding personal behavior. I chafed under being told what time to get up, what time to go to bed, what to wear, where I was and was not allowed to go, and - most particularly - with whom I might and might not socialize.
  
  Some of the players at the weekly event were commissioned officers and/or their wives, and I came to know and like some of them. However, this was the only occasion on which I could socialize with them, as I was enlisted, not commissioned. I understood and agreed with the logic behind this, but it still annoyed me.
  
  In the event, I was promoted to Staff Sergeant perhaps a year before my enlistment was up, but I did follow through with my determination to reenter civilian life.
  

She'd Cut Your Throat for an Overtrick

In 1965, preparatory to heading for Vietnam, I was transferred to Corpus Christi, Texas. During the first few days I decided to check out the local duplicate bridge scene. I went to a club on a night that a game was scheduled and introduced myself. As is customary more or less everywhere, the club found a partner for me, and I was paired with a local gentleman who was at loose ends for that game.

We got along well and had a decent game, although not a great one. Early in the session I was declarer in a hand that seemed to have no particularly unusual dangers, but the result was gruesome. I got slaughtered. I made a note of the board number so I could check the results at the end of the night and learn whether my partner and I had made a bidding mistake, or whether I had played the hand badly, or just what the scoop was.

We finished the last round early and I hunted down the board. A sixtyish woman was playing the hand in exactly the same contract, and her opponents were hacking her to death. I stood behind her and watched. She sensed that someone was behind her, turned around, looked up at me, and said, "Hi, sweetie. They've got me by the ying-yang. (Yes, I know it's yin and yang, but that's what she said.) And so I met Dolly, who is turning over in her grave at the thought of being called "Dolly."

It turned out that the slaughters we had undergone were a "normal" result for that hand, which was an aberration if ever there was one. Our bidding and play had been "normal," and no one did any better.

Dolly and I became bridge partners for the next year or so. She was one of the two best bridge players I have ever been partnered with. She would cut your throat for an overtrick, and found overtricks where most players didn't even think to look, and she defended more tenaciously than General McAuliffe at Bastogne (well, Google it then).

She was a widow and used to her independence, and could be crusty but was generally an entertaining person.

We played together for a year, perhaps a little more, and then I was sent to Vietnam. Thirteen months later I was assigned to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, but a couple of stops were necessary prior to reporting. My car was stored in Corpus Christi, and I retrieved that. It was a 1966 Fiat Spider, a convertible with five forward gears on the floor. It got 40 miles per gallon, but had no acceleration and was not the most comfortable car for a long drive, which I was about to undertake as I planned to drive to Massachusetts for a thirty day leave.

Dolly invited me for a home cooked dinner, my first in more than a year, and it was wonderful. She had a brand new Chevy and a sister in Washington, D.C., and I talked her into making the drive across the country with me - in her car. I bribed her with promises to play at local bridge clubs along the way (we had a national bridge club directory). In the event, we only played once as the drive took just a couple of days. We played at a club in Mississippi, where we were surrounded by friendly people (we came in first).

Several trip-related incidents come to mind:

• At some point the eastbound Interstate was under repair and we were shunted over to the westbound side, two lanes, one now temporarily eastbound. After a few minutes we encountered an uphill climb. Halfway up, I saw a truck cresting the hill and coming toward us and a car trying to pass it in our lane. We - and that's pretty much everyone on the road - were doing 65 mph and there was no chance he would get past the truck, get behind the truck, or atomize before we met. I went right over the embankment, driving on grass, dodging construction equipment (I do not recall any workmen being present), and braking a little at a time, and was soon able to get back up to the road. By that time we were well on the other side of the hill and I will never know whether that moron killed himself or anyone else.
  
  Dolly lit a cigarette and never said a word.
  
  
• We needed gas and were on a long stretch of highway with no oases. When it began to look critical I got off the highway and onto the access road, hoping to find a gas station. In a heavily wooded stretch we came across a shack - literally, a shack - with two gas pumps in front of it. I pulled up to the pumps and out came a big, pot-bellied, middle-aged man in overalls. He walked to the front of our car, stopped, looked at the license plate, walked to the back of the car, stopped, looked at the license plate, and walked back to my window.
  
  "You want gas?"
  
  "Yup."
  
  "We don't sell gas."
  
  I speculate that sometime during the preceding hundred years someone from Texas had done something to someone from Mississippi, and it had never been forgotten or forgiven.
  
  Still on the access road, we finally found a gas station that sold gas, even to Texans. I stopped in front of the pumps and Dolly bounded out of the car and headed for the rest rooms. When we were on our way again she said, "That was the filthiest rest room I've ever been in."
  
  "What did you do?"
  
  "Honey, some women are standers and some women are sitters."
  
  
• We stopped briefly in Maryland so I could see my brother Billy, who was in the Navy. I introduced Dolly and Billy, and immediately heard:
  
  Dolly: "You're too fat."
  
  Billy: "You're too old."
  
  That charming exchange ensured that my reacquaintance with my brother was brief, and we were soon on our way again.