The Tuesday Canasta Club: Our History

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Our History
The Tuesday Canasta Club, 1951 to the present
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How It Began

Johnnie learned canasta from her sister, who lived in Chicago and had come home for Christmas in 1950 with two decks of cards, a box of jokers and a great deal of enthusiasm. By New Year's Johnnie had taught her husband, her mother, and the man who read the gas meter. By the end of January she had taught seven of us.

We were young then. We were all married, all within a few blocks of each other on the west end of town, and between the eight of us we had eleven children under the age of six. Our husbands were at work all day. Our mothers had their own bridge clubs and did not want us. So on Tuesday, February 6, 1951, the eight of us met at Johnnie's kitchen table and the table in her front room, two tables of four, with the babies asleep in a playpen in the back bedroom, and played canasta until it was time to start supper. We agreed to do it again the next week. We have been doing it again the next week ever since.

The eight of us were Johnnie, Margaret, Louise, Bertha, Lorraine, Della, Lorena, and me.

Forty-Eight Years, Briefly

1951	The first Tuesday. Margaret wins the first game ever written in the Book and is insufferable for a month.
1953	Louise brings Samba, which is canasta with three decks and more of everything. We play it exactly once. It takes all afternoon and Louise wins and we never play it again, which Louise maintained for forty years was jealousy.
1958	The craze is over. The bridge ladies at church try to recruit Margaret. Margaret says she'll think about it, and comes to canasta the following Tuesday as usual. She thought about it for twenty-nine years.
1963	Lorraine's husband is transferred to Phoenix. We give her a canasta tray engraved with all eight of our names. Every Christmas since, she has sent a card with a cactus on it, and every Christmas she says she misses the snow, which I don't believe for a minute.
1964	Celia joins us to make eight again. She was Lorena's neighbor, thirty-seven years old, and had learned canasta at a church supper. She is still "the new girl." She has been the new girl for thirty-five years and she takes it very well.
1965	The spring the river came up. The husbands spent a week sandbagging. We played Tuesday as usual and then made sandwiches for everybody, because someone had to.
1976	Our twenty-fifth anniversary, and the country's two hundredth, which we felt was a coincidence in our favor. Luncheon downtown, with corsages. The husbands were invited and had the good sense to decline.
1987	We lose Margaret. Seven of us now. We play a table of four and a table of three, which is a perfectly good game, though nobody likes it as well.
1991	My husband, Leland, passes in October, after forty-nine years of marriage. The Tuesday after the funeral the club comes to my house without asking, brings the cake, and deals. It was the right thing to do. I don't think I ever told them that.
1992	We lose Louise. Two tables of three.
1993	The great flood. The river comes up higher than in 1965, and the riverfront downtown is under water for weeks. We miss two Tuesdays in July, the only Tuesdays we have ever missed except for funerals and snow.
1995	We lose Bertha. Five of us. One table of four, and each week one of us sits out, keeps the Book and pours the coffee. It was a very pleasant arrangement, if you were the one sitting out.
1998	We lose Johnnie, in March, who started it all. Four of us. One table, nobody sits out, and nobody has since.
1999	Carmen puts us on the Internet. Della asks whether the Internet can see the table. I tell her no. Della straightens her cards anyway.

The Four of Us Now

Della is seventy-five. She has won more games in the Book than anyone living, which she will mention if you give her the chance and sometimes if you don't. She sighs at her cards. She keeps the first Book in her cedar chest.

Lorena is seventy-six, the same as me; we were born three weeks apart. She has nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren and will tell you about any of them for as long as you allow. She is the most dangerous player at the table when the pile is big, because she remembers every card that went into it.

Celia is seventy-two and still the new girl. She drives. The rest of us have more or less stopped, so Celia is very important to the continued existence of the club and is treated accordingly.

And me. I'm the one who asks "Partner, may I go out?" too early. Everybody says so.

In Memory

Margaret, 1918–1987. The oldest of us and the best player any of us ever sat across from. She never once asked "Partner, may I go out?" because she always knew the answer. She could tell you what was in your hand by the way you held your coffee cup.

Louise, 1921–1992. The funniest woman in Davenport. She froze the pile at the worst possible moment every single week for forty-one years, and she did it with such a happy face that nobody could stay cross. She brought us Samba. We forgave her.

Bertha, 1924–1995. The coffee cake is hers. She brought it the second Tuesday of the club and for some reason it became the rule. When she was in the hospital at the end, she asked whose turn it was to bake, and when we told her it was Lorena's, she gave Lorena two pieces of advice about the oven. Lorena followed both.

Johnnie, 1923–1998. She started it, in her kitchen, with her sister's cards. She kept the neatest canastas in Iowa and expected the same of everyone else. The last game she played with us was in February 1998, and she won it, and she was very pleased.

We still set out a fifth cup some Tuesdays. Nobody mentions it.

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Last updated September 21, 1999