Sticky Wickets

 Over the weekend Roku made the unfortunate decision to overlay cable channels with their own streaming live television which as far as I can tell is a bunch of junk. (Though I will note that one of their channels carries Jerry Springer.)  That aside, I spent an unproductive couple of hours last night trying to figure out how to get access to my cable channels. It makes me wonder who makes these decisions. Who at Roku decided this was a good idea? My techy daughter told me no doubt a programmer left out a comma in a line of code, that it wasn't a vast conspiracy to rope me into watching MTV-Yo, but I'm not sure I believe her.

  I do have another television that is non Roku -- but it's in my office, not where I can lounge and eat peeled grapes, watching all my favorite shows. So unless I rearrange my furniture, and rename the office "The Living Room" which seems like a lot of work, my living room viewing consists of what I can grab free off the internet.

  In any case, I woke up this morning still annoyed at my video situation, and went out on my daily early morning walk. As I strolled through the still quiet neighborhood -- read before the neighbor's kids get into the pool and remain there until ten o'clock p.m., their squeals and arguments blowing across the subdivision like air raid sirens -- I noticed that one of the neighbors had set up a croquet set in his front yard.  I paused, not only to let my dogs do a thorough sniff job around his curb, but to take a mental detour down memory lane to the time when my family's yard had a croquet course set up.

  That time was circa 1963 in Austin, Texas. The breath sucking humid weather we are currently experiencing enhanced the memory, as Texas summers are nothing if not disgustingly hot and humid. The only place I've been that boasts worse humidity was Birmingham, Alabama, a location I thought I would have to grow gills to survive -- but I digress. In any case, the activities during the years I was a kid were much more physical than they are now. No screens other than a black and white television which was programmed with content for adults that held no interest for me once the "Uncle Jay" show was over at 6:00 PM.  Now that I think about it Uncle Jay was pretty young for an uncle, all earnest looking with his crew-cut and sock puppets, but maybe the budget at the local televisions station wasn't big enough to attract a bon-fide uncle.

  Evenings in the hazy Texas dusk consisted of outdoor activities. Hide-and-seek until we were called in, or after- dinner games of kickball. All that changed when we acquired croquet set. The acquisition was a long time coming. Our family didn't have much in expendable income in those days. What we did have was Green Stamps.

  For those who don't know what green stamps are -- think grocery brand store points. Rather than getting a discount on subsequent shopping trips, stores gave out green stamps. They resembled postage stamps,  You'd get the stamps -- the quantity based upon the amount of your shopping receipt.  You'd take those stamps and paste them in a folder the size of a small notebook. You also had a catalogue.  Contained inside that catalogue was shopping Nirvana. Only the Sears Wishbook at Christmas exceeded the value of this little book of dreams in consumerism. Pots, pans, appliances, toys, you name it -- the Green Stamp Catalogue contained everything the modern American Home of mid  -- 20th Century living could desire, among them a croquet set.

  I'm not sure who decided we needed one, but one day in early June a croquet set turned up.  Today's families spend time at the ball park watching youth games and other organized sporting events, but in 1963 our disorganized, unruly, make-up-the-rules-as-you-go-along competitions consumed our summer evenings. The chief make- up -the- rules- as- you -go- alonger was my mother.  She never met a rule she didn't deem a candidate for change. And change them she did, on the spot -- especially if they enabled her to win. To say my mother was competitive would be an extreme understatement. She wanted to win at all costs, even if it meant beating the pants off her eight -year -old son and eleven- year- old daughter. (The three-year-old was excluded, not being tall enough to swing a mallet. If she had another inch or so, she'd have been hamburger.) There were no mercy wins in our backyard games.

  My mother's favorite croquet play was tagging another player's ball and rather than taking an the extra shot provided by the rules, her preference was to wack the tagged ball out of the field of play. (Her rule) And she could wack it. Across our yard, through the neighbor's yard and down the hill. If you got rocketed off the field, you weren't winning -- no way -- no how.

  Eliminating the competition was how she approached all our family games. When the games moved inside for the winter we played Hearts. We had assigned seats in our Heart's games. We kids were always lined up on the couch in front of the picture window. I was in high school before I figured out that we sat in front of the window so my mother could see our cards in the reflection in the glass. Yes, I'm slow, but I'm an optimist and like the enabler of an addict always thought my mother would quit the sauce -- in her case, cheating. Screams of "She's cheating, she's cheating," the angst and righteous anger filled the room. It never changed. Needless to say, but I'm saying it anyway,I didn't win too many card games either.

   I never thought to ask why my mother, the former Mennonite cheated at cards, croquet, badminton, and any other sport she took up.  It never seemed important. She was raised to be brutally honest -- the Mennonites didn't spare the rod or spoil the child. Lying wasn't allowed, not even the social lie to spare the feelings kind. When she spoke you got the unvarnished truth as she knew it. But maybe cheating's allowed.

  Mennonites didn't play cards. That was a vice she picked up in college, along with dancing. and an affinity for single malt beverages. But croquet? Do Mennonites play croquet?  In the end, I decided doing jigsaw puzzles with her was more confidence affirming -- unless we were both searching out the same piece. Competitive jig-sawing -- it's a thing.

   I don't remember much about being a kid, but every once in awhile the scent of honey suckle, or the way the light falls across a harvested bean field reminds me of the black dirt of cotton fields, and the blistering summer nights playing badminton with my mother in the Texas twilight. She was almost whole then -- losing much of the rest of her life to mental illness. Maybe my getting beaten in family games was a gift -- to her.

  I wish green stamps still existed. When you have no money it was a nice way to pick up little luxuries doing something you had to do anyway -- buy groceries. I still have the card table we procured with them. The chairs are gone, discarded at some point in the past ten years, but my Green Stamp table comes out for every holiday dinner.

  I don't know if my kids have ever played croquet. They were involved in organized activities which  I don't regret for a minute. But the simplicity of a family croquet game is something I should have given them when they were small -- and using my mother's techniques I bet  could have beaten them --every time!