52 Ancestors: Bridge - Let's play!

My parents and both sets of grandparents loved to play bridge.  I mean, seriously LOVED it!  In fact, with how important it was in their lives and how my dad obsessively took photos, I can't believe there aren't more photos of their bridge groups.  But I did find one!

My mom, in the cute checkered dress, appears to be pregnant so this would have been 1961 when little brother was born.  I have no idea who the lady to her right is but the other couple are Bob and Joey J., our neighbors who lived next door in their first home on Cheryl Way.  Bob and Joey and my parents were life long friends and I've found several pictures of them in the slides we've scanned.  

At one point, my parents tried to teach my sister and me how to play bridge - they must have been desperate to find someone to play with them because we weren't very good.  But we tried.  And after I was married, they tried again to teach my husband and me to play with similar results.

They played in a couple of groups that would meet regularly - monthly? - and would rotate houses so everyone took a turn hosting.  When it was held at our house, my sister and I would be put to work helping with preparations - setting up the card tables and chairs, filling the little silver dishes with candy and nuts, and if they were playing contract bridge (more on that in a minute), getting the cards into the holders.  And then, of course, we helped with clean up the following day - although maybe we didn't but I like to think that we did.

Contract bridge was a game where each group of 4 played the same hands as another table.  The cards would be sorted into holders and it was our job to count the cards out (no peeking) and getting them in the holders, which looked like this.

So, one table would play the game based on these hands and then when they were finished with that game, they'd put all of the original hands back into the board and the next table would play a game with the same hands.  I don't know if there was some sort of scoring based on how each table scored but they sure seemed to have a lot of fun doing it.

After both of my grandfathers passed away, my grandmothers would play as partners in 'ladies only' bridge games.  For all I know they didn't always play as partners but I always thought it was cool that they played in the same group together.  And after my dad passed away, my mom continued to play with other groups and sometimes would play with a widower.  One night when I called her, she told me she'd had the best day ever because she was out at the country club spending the day (yes, the day) playing bridge.

It seems like bridge isn't as popular as it once was but whenever I think of bridge, I think of my parents and grandparents.

And just because I don't have many pictures in this post, I thought I'd throw in some random pictures of bridges from my collection.

Munich, from my dad's photo album from his time in Germany in 1946

Natural Bridge

From my Grandmother's scrapbook, that might be her on the left