Roger’s Roundup
I’ve loved boardgames since I was a very small tyke.
My dad’s parents had a stash of old boardgames at their home in Texline (look it up — it’s about as far north and west as you can go in the Texas panhandle). They had a big wooden Wahoo board. This was basically Pachisi but with marbles on a wooden board. They had several commercial boardgames from a bygone era.
The only one I can remember the name of was called Park and Shop. You got several cards detailing things you had to purchase (your “shopping list”). You had to drive your car down the road, find a parking space, and then walk to various stores to make your purchases before returning to your car and driving home.
There were other various culturally inappropriate games, like one in which a gang of red-skinned Indians attacked a band of pioneer scouts in a log fort.
Of course one of my cherished experiences as a young child was playing games with my parents and grandparents, and top of the list was learning chess with my dad at around the age of seven or eight. I had seen my dad and grandfather play chess before.
Like probably every boy in the history of chess, I was fascinated by the shapes of the pieces and wanted to play with them like army men, much to the chagrin of the adults who were actually trying to carry on a game in the presence of a toddler.
But when dad actually showed me how the pieces moved, and patiently endured my lack of comprehension, calmly correcting me when I moved something wrong — and then my even longer lack of insight into how the pieces worked together as a unit, protecting each other and controlling their portions of the board — I was hooked.
Of course I never won. For a couple of years I begged my dad to play game after game, losing every time and getting upset at every loss.
Have I mentioned before what my dad did for a living? My dad was a librarian. He worked at the public library in my home town, Port Arthur. I often spent hours hanging out in the stacks, reading books, exploring nooks and crannies.
Eventually, I discovered that there were actual books about chess. And not just boring adult books where the only pictures were musty little chessboard diagrams. There were actual picture books about chess. One of these introduced me to a little thing I (and presumably millions of people throughout history) like to call the “Scholar’s Mate.”
e4 e5
Bc4 (Bc5 or whatever)
Qf3 (Nc6 or whatever)
Qxf7#
For those who don’t play or don’t know chess notation, this is basically a four-move win. It’s not the absolute fastest possible checkmate.There’s a two-move mate that requires both you and your opponent to make some ridiculous moves to set up. The beauty of the Scholar’s Mate is that the moves to set it up aren’t that outlandish. Of course, it’s easy to avoid if you know about it and see it coming.
But on one fateful day — I must have been about 10 — my dad either didn’t know about it or didn’t see it coming. And I managed to sneak in my first win against the old man. Although it was many more years before I won another game, that one experience taught me more than anything the value of knowing a vital piece of information that the other guy doesn’t know.
Today, my dad’s almost 80 and still lives in Port Arthur. When all this Coronavirus garbage has died down, I need to head down there for a visit. And I’m bringing my chess set.
Roger Cline is a staff writer for the Snyder Daily News. Any comments about this article can be made to roger@snyderdailynews.com