During
this time of year, I often pause and think back on my childhood years and what my family did to celebrate. We didn’t have many traditional holiday customs. My
father was an Army veteran who served in German, Italy, Korea and Vietnam; my mother is a retired missionary who traveled in South America, the
Caribbean, Taiwan, Kenya, Nigeria and the People’s Republic of China.
With the exception of Australia, my parents
have been to and have been influenced by every continent on the planet. When these varying cultures got mixed
together with traditional African-American and Puerto Rican cultures, the
Alvarado house became the unofficial holiday headquarters of the United
Nations.
Of the different things we did, what is most memorable to me is the games we played. As a little boy, I remember playing Sorry, a game where each player tried to get their pieces around the game board and into their “home” spot before the other players. The game came with a deck of cards that allowed you to leave start, advance a specific number of spaces, and even send another player’s piece back to start (we called this “boofing”). We spent hours playing Sorry, laughing, arguing, calling each other names and just having a good time together.
Once I got into my high school years, we played more mature games like Pictionary and Taboo, which was great for us because we’re all very creative. We made some extremely interesting picture and word choices to get our team to guess correctly.
My parents got divorced, my dad moved back to Puerto Rico, my oldest brother joined the Marine Corps and my older brother moved to Atlanta for college at the same time. That left just my mother and me, which meant that I spent more time with my friends than I did at home. It was during these times that I discovered card games.
Oh, I knew about games like Uno and Go Fish, but I was introduced to a whole other world of cards: games like spades, hearts, poker, and the best card game of all time: Euchre.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Euchre is most likely derived from an Alsatian game called Juckerspiel “from the fact that its two top trumps are jucker, meaning jack.” Indeed, the two top trump cards in Euchre are the jacks, but they are referred to as the right bower and the left bower.
According to Parlett’s Historic Card Games, the word “bower” is an English transliteration of the German word “bauern,” which means farmer. This is historically significant because the jack is a card of nobility, just under the king and queen in hierarchy. Calling the jack a farmer “may have been made in order to reflect a consequent rise in the social status of farmers to landlords” (Parlett’s).
Wikipedia states that Euchre is believed to have migrated to the United States during the late 18th century/early 19th century with German immigrants who settled in Wisconsin. During the early 19th century, Euchre rapidly spread throughout the country and was regarded by many as the national card game. Today, Euchre is more of a regional card game played predominately in the Midwest (I learned to play in Ohio), but has started to see a resurgence in popularity because of the transient nature of contemporary society.
Euchre is a trick-taking card game that requires a certain level of acting skills to intimidate your opponents. While there are many variations of the game, Euchre is typically played with four people: two teams of two. Only 24 cards are used (nine through ace), and you play to 10 points. Each player receives five cards and of the remaining cards, the top card is turned to face up and whatever suit appears is the first choice for trump.
Once trump is chosen, the jack of the trump suit is the highest card, the jack of the same color is next in line then going in order from ace, king, queen, 10 and nine. This is what makes Euchre especially difficult for new players (and drunk experienced players): remembering which suit was made trump.
Each hand is worth one, two or four points, based on which team made trump and the number of tricks each team gets. A normal game shouldn’t last more than 20 to 30 minutes, but that will vary depending on the amount of trash talked and alcohol consumed.
