My wife Dody’s older
sister, Cissy, who passed away three years ago at 82, was a bridge
Life Master. If her husband hadn’t sprained his ankle in Mexico
in 1948, she probably wouldn’t have known a ruff from a revoke.
It’s a long story,
going back even further than 1948. All the way back to 1943, when
I learned how to play bridge myself. When prisoners of war were
moved from Italy by the Germans, my pilot lost his bridge partner.
In German camps we were separated by nationalities, and his bridge
partner was Canadian. In Germany he decided to train me as his
partner. He taught me the rules, but there is one thing you can’t
be taught if you don't already have it, and that’s card sense.
I didn’t have it. So he trained another partner.
But I enjoyed playing
bridge, and there wasn’t a whole lot else to do nights in a POW
camp. Or mornings and afternoons, either, for that matter. For
the rest of my sequestered days I played bridge, partnered either
by a roommate of mine, who played as badly as I, or a fighter
pilot from that famous all-black P51 group that flew cover for
all-white bomber crews, and who played even worse. He became an
upper-bracket executive for a major national distilling firm,
by the way.
When I came home and
got married, I taught Dody how to play bridge. She thought I was
pretty good. We played regularly with friends and never for money.
(I was a better judge of my skills than Dody was.) It didn’t take
her too long to get better than I was, as just about everyone
I’ve played with did except my two partners in the German camp.
After a while she had
to admit that I was never going to come up to her level and gave
up on me just as my pilot had (only as a bridge partner, mind
you; we’re been married 57 years now) and found other partners,
female (who were also better players than I was). She played bridge
often in the afternoons, and sometimes her sister, who didn’t
play the game, looked after our son the agent, then of tender
years. But I am getting ahead of my story.
When we went to Mexico
with my wife’s sister and her husband in 1948, we were still bridge
partners. We drove, intending to spend a few days in Saltillo,
which in those days was inexpensive and un-touristy, and may still
be for all I know. We started out from Houston late and reached
our first stop, Monterrey, in the small hours. We had to settle
for one large room with two large beds.
On the way to Saltillo
the next day, we took a side trip to Horsetail Falls. The last
part of the tour had to be accomplished by burro. The burros were
about the size of German shepherds. My wife’s sister’s husband,
accustomed to riding horses, threw up a leg to mount his steed
and tripped over the animal. We got a large laugh out of that.
Until we discovered he’d suffered a painful ankle sprain.
He gritted his teeth
all the way to Saltillo. As soon as we checked into our hotel,
(I think it was the Arispe-Sainz) we got the proprietor to call
a doctor. The doctor was a youngish man with a mischievous smile
and obviously very competent. However, he could speak no English.
My wife knew some Spanish but her vocabulary did not cover conversations
with a doctor in doctor language. The doctor bound my wife’s sister’s
husband’s ankle tightly, somehow conveyed the information that
he was not to favor the ankle too much but to move around, gave
him something for pain and instructed him to come to his office
in a day or so. (When we got back home, my wife’s sister’s husband’s
own doctor told him that having a patient move around on a sprained
ankle was the latest technique.)
There we were in Saltillo
with my wife’s sister’s husband confined to his room (walking
the streets of Saltillo was a bit too much moving around). Naturally
we stayed in a lot, too, which grew boring even though my wife’s
sister and her husband and I were all old friends from even before
I married my wife. My wife said, “Let’s play bridge.” And my wife’s
sister said, “You know I don’t know how to play bridge.” My wife
said, “We’ll teach you.” My wife’s sister was doubtful, but being
in a foreign town with a husband with a sprained ankle weakened
her resistance.
So, sitting in a hotel
room in Saltillo, Mexico, my wife’s sister learned to play bridge.
We played bridge in the morning. We played bridge in the afternoon.
We played bridge in the evening. I was glad when we left. My wife’s
sister kept playing bridge after we got home, just socially at
first and then in dead earnest. She achieved her Life Master and
played regularly for many years, big-league stuff.
My wife and I? We haven’t
played bridge, together or separately, in more than 50 years.
David Westheimer,
SeniorWomenWeb's resident male, lives with his wife of 57 years,
Dody, in the same Los Angeles apartment they moved into from Houston,
Texas 41 years ago. Their son, Fred, is a Senior Vice-president
at the William Morris Agency and his younger brother, Eric, is
a veterinarian. Succeeding generations include five grandchildren
and two great-grandchildren. As a journalist, David worked for
Oveta Culp Hobby.
At 85, David Westheimer
continues to write, and not just for Senior Women. The Great
Wounded Bird, his recollections of World War II, is winner
of the Texas Review 1999 poetry prize, was published by Texas
Review Press and may be ordered from Amazon Books, where it has
surged to 821,374th on their sales list. It is also listed with
Barnes & Noble and Borders Books. David's latest novel, Delay
En Route, is hovering at 1,485,676th on Amazon's list.
Poet and novelist,
David is a retired Air Force Officer. He can be reached for a
repertoire of feigned curmudgeonly remarks at: DWestheime@aol.com.
