Good afternoon, and thank you for calling. My name is Rita Jahn. I am seventy-six years old, a widow, a lifelong resident of Davenport, Iowa, and for forty-eight years I have played canasta every Tuesday afternoon with the same group of women. There were eight of us when we started, in February of 1951. There are four of us now. We still play every Tuesday.

My granddaughter Carmen set this page up for me when she was home in May. She is twenty-five and works with computers, and she has a patience with her grandmother that I am not sure I taught her mother. She said, "Grandma, people on the Internet would like to know about the club." I said I doubted that very much. She said I would be surprised. I have been surprised. People have written from Florida, from Arizona, from a town in England, and from a young man in Texas who learned canasta from his grandmother and wanted to know whether we let a player take the pile with one natural card and a deuce. We do, when the pile isn't frozen. See below.

So here we are. The rules the way we learned them, the way we keep score, our customs, a little history, and the coffee cake, which several of you have asked about, and which I will get to.

Young people will not believe this, but around 1950 canasta was the most popular card game in America. It came from Uruguay, by way of Argentina, and by the end of the 1940s it had come up to New York, and from there it went everywhere at once. "Canasta" is the Spanish word for basket. Everyone was playing. Bridge clubs lost half their members over it, and some of the bridge ladies never forgave us. The stores sold special canasta sets with two decks in one box and little revolving trays to hold your cards, and there were canasta columns in the newspaper. I still have my trays. They are a pale green Bakelite and they have outlasted two refrigerators and a husband.

The craze passed, the way crazes do. By the end of the fifties most people had gone back to bridge or on to something else. We didn't. We didn't see any reason to.

These are the rules we learned in 1951, from a little book that came in the box with the cards, and we have not changed them since. People will tell you there are newer rules. There are. We don't play those.

The cards. Two full decks shuffled together, with all four jokers, which makes 108 cards. Four players, partners sitting across from each other. Deal eleven cards to each player, one at a time. Turn the next card face up to start the discard pile, and set the rest face down beside it. That is the stock.

Wild cards. Jokers and deuces are wild. A meld is three or more cards of the same rank, and it must have at least two natural cards in it and not more than three wild cards. You may not meld wild cards by themselves.

Your turn. Draw the top card from the stock, or, if you are allowed, take the whole discard pile. Lay down any melds you like. Discard one card. That is all there is to it, and it takes about fifteen years to get good at.

Red threes. A red three is a bonus card. The moment you get one, lay it face up on the table in front of you and draw a card to replace it. Each red three is worth 100 points to your side, and if your side has all four, they are worth 800. But if the hand ends and your side has not melded anything, your red threes count against you. That has happened to me more often than I would like to say on the Internet.

Black threes. A black three is a stop card. When you discard one, the player after you may not take the pile. You may not meld black threes except when you are going out, and then only three or four of them together, with no wild cards.

The first meld. Your side's first meld of each hand must add up to a certain number of points, counting only the cards in it. How much depends on your side's score so far:

What the cards count.

Canastas. A canasta is a meld of seven cards or more. A natural canasta, with no wild cards in it at all, is worth a bonus of 500. A mixed canasta, with one, two or three wild cards, is worth 300. We stack a finished canasta in a neat pile with a red card on top for a natural and a black card on top for a mixed, so everyone at the table can see at a glance. Johnnie used to say a messy canasta was a sign of a messy mind. Johnnie's canastas were very neat.

Freezing the pile. This is where new players get into trouble. The discard pile is frozen against your side until your side has made its first meld. It is also frozen for everybody once someone throws a wild card on it; we turn the wild card sideways in the pile so no one forgets. When the pile is frozen, the only way to take it is with a natural pair from your hand that matches the top card. No wild cards, no adding to a meld already on the table. When it is not frozen you may take it with a matching pair, or a matching card and a wild card, or by adding the top card to a meld your side already has down. Either way, you take the whole pile, not just the top card. A big pile can win a game. It can also fill your hand with cards you can't use, and I have seen it do both in the same afternoon.

Going out. Your side may not go out until it has at least one canasta. You go out by melding or discarding your last card. Before you go out you may ask your partner, "Partner, may I go out?" and if she says yes, you must. If she says no, you may not. Going out is worth 100. Going out "concealed," all in one turn, without having melded anything before, is worth 200.

Scoring the hand. Each side adds up its bonuses (canastas, red threes, going out), then adds the value of every card it has melded, then subtracts the value of every card still in its hands. Somebody always groans at the subtracting.

Game. The first side to reach 5,000 wins. A game takes us about two hours, more if Lorena has a new grandchild to talk about.

• One o'clock. Coffee and cake at one, cards at half past. The hostess serves. See the hostess rotation.
• We cut for partners every week, high two against low two. No one has a permanent partner. It was decided in 1951 that permanent partners lead to permanent grudges, and nothing in forty-eight years has changed my mind about it.
• The Book. Every game since February 6, 1951 is written down. We are on our tenth composition book. The first one is in Della's cedar chest and is not to be handled with coffee.
• A tenth of a cent a point. We settle up at the end of the afternoon and the money goes straight into a coffee can, which pays for our Christmas lunch. So in forty-eight years nobody has won a dime off anyone, and everyone has had a very nice lunch.
• No table talk during a hand. You may say "Partner, may I go out?" and nothing else useful. Sighing counts as table talk. Della sighs.
• No politics until the last hand is scored. This rule has saved the club at least three times, most recently in 1998.
• We play in any weather. We have missed Tuesdays for funerals, for a few blizzards, and for the summer of 1993 when the river came up, and that is all.

If you have a question about the rules, you are welcome to write. I do not promise to agree with you.