First, the table. It's a brown folding table with a crack down the middle that has had duct tape on it since the Carter administration. It sits against the wall by the pop machine. It is not our table, officially. Nobody else has sat at it at seven-thirty on a weeknight since 1978.

The four of us: me, Leroy, and my partner Danny, against Leo and Keith. Danny and I came over to second shift the same spring. Leo and Keith were already there and needed somebody to beat. We go through about one deck a month. Leo shuffles like the cards owe him money.

This was in the fall of 1991, and Danny still doesn't want to talk about it, which is why it's first.

Keith dealt and turned up the nine of hearts. Danny, first to speak, looked at the right bower and the left bower in his hand and ordered it up before the card had stopped moving. Leo said "pass" so quiet you could hardly hear it. I should have known right then. Leo is never quiet.

Here are all four hands. Hearts are trump, so the jack of diamonds is the left bower and counts as a heart.

Left in the kitty under the nine of hearts: the jacks of clubs and spades and the queen of spades.

Keith picked up the nine of hearts and threw away his king of clubs. Danny led.

Two tricks. Euchred, holding both bowers. Two points to Leo and Keith.

Now, Danny will tell you there was nothing he could have done once the cards were dealt, and he's right. After he pulled two rounds of trump with the bowers, Leo still had the ace of hearts and two black aces, and I had nothing at all. My hand that day was what the boys call a "no thank you." What Danny could have done was wait. If he passes, Leo orders it up himself, and maybe goes alone, and then maybe Danny's bowers make Leo look silly instead. We'll never know.

Danny's position is that he'd order it up again tomorrow with the same cards. He's right about that too. That's the thing about euchre. You can do the right thing and get euchred.

Hearts were trump. Keith led the ace of diamonds. Leo, his partner, played the jack of diamonds on it, and since the trick was theirs either way, nobody thought twice. Two tricks later Leo played the nine of diamonds.

Now, the jack of diamonds that hand was the left bower. It was a heart. Leo had followed suit with a trump while he was holding a real diamond the whole time. That's a renege. Danny caught it. Danny has never been so happy, before or since, and that includes his wedding.

Two points to us. Leo said a man of his experience doesn't make that kind of mistake, and that it was a test, to see if we were paying attention. For about a year after that, every time Leo played a jack, Danny would ask him real polite what suit it was.

At the Legion last March, fifth round, Hazel F. was sitting across from me. The dealer turned down a heart. Hazel named spades, and then she said "alone," and laid her cards out after the hand so we could see: the jack, ace and king of spades, the ace of hearts and the ace of diamonds.

That's a strong hand, but it's missing the left bower, the jack of clubs, and if either one of the other side has it, with even one more spade to go with it, she loses a trick, and maybe more. She knew that. She went anyway.

She led the right bower. Then the ace. Then the king. Nobody had the left. When we turned over the kitty afterwards, there it was, the jack of clubs, face down the whole time. Four points.

I asked her after how she knew. She said she didn't know. She said she had two aces on the side and a twenty percent feeling, and at her age you play the feeling. Then she went and got a sloppy joe. She won that night.

The rule is the horn ends the hand. When a game doesn't finish, Keith writes the score on the inside of his lunch pail lid in grease pencil. The lid has scores on it going back to about 1990, all crossed out.

The longest game we ever had went three lunches, in the summer of '94. Monday we got to 6 to 5 and the horn went. Tuesday the line went down before lunch and they cut our break short to make it up, and we got two hands in. Wednesday we got to 9 to 9. Next hand, Danny went alone on the first round and took all five. Four points. Thirteen to nine.

Keith put the lid down and said it was the best game of euchre ever played in Genesee County. That's the nicest thing Keith has ever said about a hand he lost.

Some years around here are slow. In the winter of 1982 half the shift was laid off, me and Leo included, and Danny and Keith were still working. For seven months the game moved to my basement on Saturday mornings, because a man who's laid off needs something on the calendar, and those three made sure there was always something on mine. They brought the coffee. They never once let me win on purpose, either, and I appreciated that more than I can say.

When I went back in, the first thing I did after punching in was check that the table was still by the pop machine. It was. Somebody had put new tape on the crack.