Good things come in threes, and forthwith is a celebration of three of my favorite things, in ways I hope you find timely and enjoyable:
Scrabble: I grew up with this game and am glad to see it continue in events such as Wednesday’s Scrabble Night for SMART in Parkdale. SMART Reading is the volunteer literacy program I’m a part of; adults read for an hour a week with kids in local schools and preschools. Community donations go to support book purchases and other costs.
Ten of us gathered at Blue Canoe Café over three game boards, and others got a Boggle game going — future events to be billed as “Game Night,” with another planned for February. Parkdale SMART Coordinator Alison Benzing hosted along with Blue Canoe owner Christina McGhee.
I won one of the two games I played (Alison asked for $2 per game — a bargain), narrowly edging John and Elise Tickner, 194-187-184. I also enjoyed the cross-talk, kibitzing, story-telling, and laughter that connected all the different tables.
As a bonus, Alison treated us all to the amazing crunchy-outside-gooey-inside chocolate chip cookies baked by CJ. Jordon.
(Okay: Chocolate chip cookies. Save that for another Three Favorites column, perhaps.)
Look for more news of Scrabble nights and the possible return of the Scrabble Festivals, we did for SMART, 10 or so years back.
Basketball: I was sick for two weeks in early January and watched televised basketball just about constantly, and just when I thought I had my fill, we saw Blazer Damian Lillard rack up a record 61 points last week. It was inspiring, and proof that no one else is in the Dame-osphere.
In my meager efforts to play basketball three mornings a week, I struggle to score AT ALL, let alone in something approaching triple digits. But the number 61 resonated: It’s my age, and I’d dallied with the idea of hanging up the sneakers one day soon.
I’ll stick with it as long as I can. I’m often the Morning Ball OGC — Oldest Guy on the Court. (I think Ron Merz has me by a couple of years but he’s not only a baller, he can score.) I specialize in setting picks, uttering clever quips about others’ play, and reminding everyone to pay their $3. Hey, we all have our roles.
Postcards: Last month the family moved my father, who is 94 and on Hospice, to brother Brent’s home near Albany, and Dad’s final downsizing meant an emotional stroll, room to room, through plenty of Rea family memories. We did have to give up plenty to an estate sale, but not the true treasures.
I have “inherited” my mother’s copious family albums, an extensive preservation of family history that was just one of many gifts Elizabeth left us.
And from my Dad, Don, I was entrusted with the postcard collection he started when he was about 10 years old. Hundreds of sent and blank postcards, from all over the world, dating to the 1903 St. Louis Exposition up to my sons’ recent cards from Switzerland and Ireland. (I caught the postcard bug from my Dad — I have a few hundred of my own.)
Significantly, among Dad’s is a detailed chronology, through weekly postcards sent and received by my father, of his Navy service from 1943-46.
From this trove I learned he was baptized at 18 in his adoptive North Dakota church during his first duty posting and that two years later he was hospitalized for Scarlet fever. I had never known that he had a love of trains as a boy, but it makes sense given his annual enthusiasm for running a toy train set around the base of our Christmas tree.
For my annual correspondence ritual, in 2020 I am choosing a card a week to send, from Dad’s collection — selectively, of course: Checking Etsy and other places to make sure I don’t part with a true collector’s item.
This is my new regimen: To mail a postcard from the 1940s or ‘60s to that same location today, ask for a contemporary card, and see what response I get. For example, early cards went to St. Olaf’s College in Minnesota, where Dad bivouaced briefly in the Navy, and the visitor center in Boulder, Idaho, a town where he picked up a card in a 1951 western road trip.
Wonderfully, I heard back within a week from the manager of Don CeSar Hotel, Fla., where my father’s Aunt Helen, a travel maven who loved the Sunshine State, had stayed. Helen was the sender of more than 100 postcards to my Dad, the 1930s through the 1960s.
Space and readers’ patience permitting, later this year I’ll report again on what, if any, postcard responses I receive.
I’ll leave you with a description of a personal favorite, from the 1930s: A dapper Colonel hoisting a classic drink, the text reading, “Two Typical Kentuckians/Personality and Mint Julip/Relics almost extinct.”
But not postcards.
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