I know I promised to talk about my beer can collection this week. That will have to wait a bit because I'm still stoked about my weekend activity: the 2014 State Championship "42" Domino Tournament in Hallettsville, Texas.
A little bit of background for the uninitiated: Texas 42 is a trick-taking domino game that, according to the New York Times, was invented in the late-19th century by two boys west of Fort Worth to evade the Baptist prohibition against cardplaying (which did not extend to dominoes).
A variation of spades, the game takes the 28 dominoes in a double-six set, deals them out to four players who are playing as two teams, who then bid on the number of points they will win. There are seven tricks, each worth one point, plus bonuses for the dominoes with factors of five: the double-five, the 6-4, the 5-0, the 4-1, and the 3-2. Thus: seven trick points plus thirty-five bonus points equals Texas 42.
The winner of the bid declares the trump suit (blanks, ones, twos, threes, fours, fives, sixes, doubles as trump, or no trump) and gets to lead the first domino. The other players follow suit if they can, strategically trump in when they don't have to follow suit, and either try to help their partner make his point bid, or try to set the opposing team.
I first heard about this game in the early Nineties at a prosecutors' convention in South Padre Island. Before then, I had played other kinds of domino games - chickenfoot mostly - in chambers with judges and defense attorneys, but I had never heard of 42. My friend Keno told me about the tournament and, assuming they were playing chickenfoot, I told him that I wanted to play.
"You know how to play 42?" he asked.
"What's 42?"
He ran through the rules with me. I didn't get it, so I told him I'd watch and try to learn. I watched, but still did not get it. I did notice that the players were mostly older and rural Texas prosecutors who did not take kindly to my questions about the game while it was being played. Still, as a card game lover, I was intrigued and wanted to figure it out.
When we returned to Houston, I told my buddy Gary about the game. Gary and I have been pretty close friends for about twenty-five years because we have very similar perspectives on life: we're outwardly nice guys and inwardly nice as well, except that we both hate to lose at anything. I've played basketball, poker, touch football, and dominoes with Gary, and in all of these competitions, he (like me) is the kind of guy who is a humble winner and a gracious loser, but mostly a humble winner because it drives him (like me) nuts to be a gracious loser.
Gary and I got Keno to show us how to play. Others joined the game over time, including a pretty healthy contingent of our office's investigative staff, and in due course, a regular game ensued. We played two to four times a week for about ten years and, like these things usually do, became something that transcended the game itself. For an hour a day, we played and talked and razzed and enjoyed each others' company. Our fill-in players would come and go, but the core group of regulars would show up around noon wherever we were playing that day, and shake the rocks one more time.
Gary and I had a guru in 42 - the Pasadena Legend (if I used even his first name, you'd know who he was and I am trying to keep this blog mostly anonymous out of respect to my friends, so the Pasadena Legend he will be). We loved playing with him because he was so committed to playing the game right, and because he was entertaining as hell, win or lose.
Example: I'd bid 36, which means I could lose one of the nickels (the 5-0, the 4-1, or the 3-2) and a trick to the other team and still make my bid. The other players would pass to the Legend.
"Seven," he'd drawl through a mouth full of chaw and then spit into a cup.
"You bidding 37?" I'd say, looking incredulously at the five powerful doubles I'd been dealt.
"Uh-huh," he would say and then, looking at the other three guys at the table, he'd grin, saying, "As my daddy always said, 'You can't score if you don't have the ball!'" The Legend would then look down at his dominoes, a fleeting moment of doubt crossing his face, then gather himself and declare the trump suit with supreme confidence - "Deuces!" - and slam a domino down in the middle of the table.
And sometimes he actually would make his bid.
This game broke up a few years ago when some of the players (including the Legend) left the office and when the atmosphere for lunchtime game-playing at the office became much less hospitable.
I see the Legend every now and then - he's working someplace else now - and he always asks me and Gary to come to his house and play with his neighborhood cronies. Unfortunately, we never seem to have time to take a Friday afternoon off to join him.
So, if I can change one thing in my schedule this year, it will be to carve out a few hours once a month to relive the old game and the old camaraderie. Thomas Wolfe said, "You can't go home again," and I am just now really beginning to understand what he meant, but sometimes it's okay to visit a close approximation of the real thing.
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Played in the Knights of Columbus hall on Route 77 about twenty miles south of Schulenburg, the Hallettsville 42 tournament is about as old-school Texas as such things get. When Gary and I arrived on Friday night for the warm-up round-robin tournament, I was still wearing my work suit, having raced down I-10 to get there before the 6:30 start.
As I got out of my car, two guys getting out of a Ford F-150 sized me up.
"You're a little overdressed for this, ain't you?" one of them said. I didn't think he was being unfriendly; I think he really didn't understand why I was wearing a suit.
I took my tie off and threw it into the car. "Just got off work. I'm from Houston."
He nodded, the mystery now solved.
As they started the warm-up tournament, Gary and I settled in. We played five matches, won four of them, feeling the old rhythm kick in as I tipped a cold Shiner in a can (my obligatory beer reference for this story). Much of what makes 42 so much fun is the partnership - you are playing his dominoes along with yours - and when you are simpatico with your partner, you can beat anyone. As we left for our hotel, we felt good about our chances in the real tournament on Saturday.
The next morning, we got up early, had a nice breakfast at the Hotel Texas (the best hotel in Hallettsville, no complaints), and headed to the hall. I decided not to wear my suit.We played some games for fun while they set up the tournament. The guys we played with were about as excited as we were (this was their first time at the tournament), although they had gotten up early that morning and driven to Hallettsville, so they were dragging a little, waiting for their caffeine to kick in. We split two matches and neither of our teams lost any confidence.
About 8:30 a.m., the tournament director assigned us to our morning round-robin groups. The teams with the best records out of each group would qualify for the afternoon single-elimination championship tournament.
We played six matches over the next three hours. We first played two old guys in cowboy hats to start the tournament. (This was a recurring theme.) We beat them pretty handily.We played a nice couple of retired ladies, one of whom was using a walker. They were sharp as tacks and tough opponents, but we beat them too. (The lady with the walker told me afterwards that her daughter is a county attorney in north central Texas, so I promised to look her up at the next convention.)
We played a husband and wife from Friendswood. I found out that they play regularly in their senior center. (I was glad to hear this because my retirement plan is pretty much going to be golf in the morning, 42 at lunch, and poker at night. I might see my wife on the weekends.) We beat them too.
We played two guys from Houston next, both wearing cowboy hats. These were the first non-retiree players we had faced. One guy was garrulous, talking a mile a minute, particularly after finding out where I worked. He talked about a mutual friend of ours - a buddy of the Pasadena Legend - who is married to a state senator and who loves dominoes as much as we do. We lost to these guys, mainly because the other hatted guy (who was as quiet as his partner was loud) insisted on invalidating a hand we'd won because Gary had asked what the bid was midway through the hand. It turns out this is not a rule violation, but we didn't know that and agreed to replay the hand and lost it. It was the difference in the game. We lost to them, 7-6.
We played a couple from Houston who wore matching theme t-shirts and who were deeply involved in Texas 42 leagues. Gary and I noticed a lot of deference to them from other players in the hall. We lost to them, 7-6.
We played a couple of retired men from southwest Texas, one of whom told me that he had been his county's water official for thirty years. (He warned me that a water crisis in Texas is imminent and no one wants to deal with it.) We beat them.
We got a bye on the next game and then beat two young guys, recent graduates of Texas A&M, and came out of the round-robin 5-2, with our two losses only by one point.
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| My buddy Gary and the chicken lunch |
As we awaited our opponents, I dared to dream. We didn't need to be the state champs - any trophy, including a runner-up consolation trophy, would be a capstone to over a decade of playing. Gary and I had proven we could play with anyone that morning, and we had made it to the third round of the championship round two years ago. We could only get better.
But it wasn't meant to be. We ran into a team from the Dallas area (sporting Cowboys colors) and they kicked our butts pretty solidly and ruthlessly. About thirty or forty minutes after we started that round, we were done, out of the tournament. Gary and I replayed our hands, but it didn't seem we'd done anything wrong - the other team had just played their dominoes better than we had. They shook our hands and went looking for the next team. We drove back to Houston and planned our return for next year.
With some practice, I think we can do better. And even losing (and I hate losing), we had great fun: I still played more 42 in a single day than I ever had in my life, and we played with some of the nicest people anyone could hope to meet.
I say this often, even to my poker playing buddies, and I mean it: Texas 42 is the Greatest Game Ever Devised. I will preach that to my dying day, which will be when I drop dead, face-first into a domino table, after having made a two-mark bid by walking a naked ace-blank.
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This week's beer is the Cedar Creek Brewery's Elliott's Phoned Home Pale Ale. Brewed by Jim Elliott in Seven Points, Texas (part of the Greater Cedar Creek Lake area an hour south of Dallas), the sixteen ounce can is kind of gimmicky:
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| (c) JDurfee 2014 |
It really doesn't need the gimmick. It's a good beer with a super-detailed tasting note on the can:
White Pale Ale is one of our favorite styles. Creating a nice blend of American hops and malts that can offset the German Alt yeast is a little tougher than it sounds. Our goal is a moderate level of hop bitterness that carries over to a soft hop aroma. We are trying some new American hops - primarily Apollo and Bravo - that give some interesting notes to flavor and aroma. Bravo gives a blend of lemon, pear, and grapefruit notes. Apollo is mostly used as a bittering hop, but because of the great aroma we get from it, we also used it in the whirlpool. As a result, the aroma comes across as a strong grapefruit note. We think it's out of this world - A Pale Ale to phone home about!
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| (c) JDurfee 2014 |
I liked this beer, but didn't love it enough to dethrone the Buried Hatchet Stout, which seems to have some staying power in my personal championship series.
Having lost my own bid for a championship, I feel for Elliott's Phoned Home Pale Ale. But it's a process, and I'm confident that in time, the Cedar Creek Brewery is going to make some remarkable beers, and, in time, Gary and I will bring home the Texas 42 gold.
See you next week! (And to my three aunts in New York: I love you very much and I'm glad you're reading this blog. You are each very special to me and my family, something I don't tell you as much as you deserve to hear it.)
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