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Bridge was the HBO of its day. In the 1930s and 1940s, 44 percent of American households had at least one Bridge player. Matches were broadcast on radios, and popular movies like Sunset Boulevard and Shadow of the Thin Man featured scenes with Bridge games. Robert Cohn, a character in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, boasted about his winning streak at Bridge.
Charles Goren was a household name, the man who popularized the system of counting points still used today.
His books have sold millions worldwide, clogged the best seller lists, and his Bridge column appeared in nearly two hundred newspapers. The guy was a rock star.
In 2015, after an eighty-year run, the New York Times cut its Bridge column. How long can the game exist?
Facebook may connect us across the world and throughout eternity, but it won’t deliver a pot roast.
But the ladies come from a different stock. In the first place, they accept their lot. They are grateful for it! The concept of loving yourself first is unheard of to them. Who had time,
I started taking Bridge lessons, a game that
Her table is set with linen and china. Napkins are gathered in silver rings, serving pieces are lined up like soldiers, and precut butter pats rest like a row of collapsed dominoes on a pretty dish.
posed the same questions to each of the ladies: Did you always know you would get married? Absolutely. Did you ever consider marrying a non-Jewish man? Never. Did you know you would have children? Absolutely. Did you ever want anything else? No (except for Bette). Why not? It never occurred to us.
heels, skirts, and pearls, their hair teased, curled, straightened, or frosted.
could be a poster child for Jenny Joseph’s famous poem, “When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple,”
issues; if only the Bridge Ladies could be sent to the Middle East.
After
often does,
M&M’s, Mike and Ikes, Oreos, and pretzel logs. Make no mistake: Bridge noshing is serious business.
It sounds like Weight Watchers where, defeated, you periodically return, hoping once again to get it right, hoping something will stick. Some people played when they were young and want to take it up again. Some people have a spouse who plays and they want to get in on the action.
Barbara suddenly looks like a hawk bearing down on us. She is very clear in her message: twenty-six is the number of strength-points needed between you and your partner to hopefully take ten out of the thirteen possible tricks and thus win a bonus score. Bonus score? Now she’s furiously writing more numbers on the chalkboard to show how many tricks are necessary to get a partial score. Partial score? Then the numbers start coming faster; it’s like a conveyor belt that speeds up without warning. I copy them all in my notebook, but they might as well be computer code. Worse, I am too intimidated
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Bridge was a metaphor
for many things.
The only Bridge table murder on record occurred in Kansas City in 1929. A husband and wife were having a bad night. She overbid. He lost the hand as a result. She called him a bum. He slapped her. She shot him dead.
