It's becoming widely known that Peggy Shackleford has a blog - http://www.pegshack.blogspot.com/ - which would be of interest to anyone who has ever known her.
One of her recent posts was devoted to memories of games and puzzles, like "Rook" and "Authors", and she told about being invited to join a bridge club. That shook loose a memory of mine when I was thirteen and learned something about girls.
Steve Scoggin's mother, Dot Scoggins, was a friend of my mother and a serious bridge player. One summer, she got Steve and me jobs at a big bridge tournament that was being held at the Maxwell House Hotel over a weekend.
She tried to impress Steve and me by saying that Goren and Jacoby would be there. We were not impressed. But we each got thirty dollars for being gophers at the event.
Mostly, we just had to hang out in a big room where a hundred and ten tables of bridge were going on. And, every now and then, we had to go get somebody a co-cola. We had to work Saturday and Sunday, so we had an overnight room in the hotel . And we had a lot of time to ourselves.
In that situation, we did what any two thirteen-year-old boys would have done. We made paper airplanes and flew them off the mezzanine to the lobby below. And we dropped water bombs out the seventh-story window of our room. Before the weekend was out, the Hotel Manager knew our names.
Saturday night, Steve and I were on our own for dinner, so we went to the B&W cafeteria, down the street from where we were staying. For some reason, the waiters sat us at a table with two cute girls about our same age. The four of us sat at the table and ate our food, and nobody said a word. The two girls gave each other little looks. I don't know if Steve was giving me looks because I was looking at my fried haddock.
When we left, the girls came out behind us. It was dark outside and a little nippy. Steve and I turned one way and the girls turned the other. At that point, one of the girls looked over her shoulder and gave a long, low whistle.
Steve and I went into emergency conference. Steve was beside himself. He said, "Let's go!" I was terrified. I couldn't make my feet move. I told him to go on without me. He didn't go.
I haven't seen Steve Scoggins in fifty years. My guess is, he's still mad at me.
