The last post sent me spinning around in the old hallowed halls of my memory and the crazy Montana Poker games began to take shape, losing the dusty wrinkles of being packed away for such a long time.  Those were the days when poker was fun, when people had never heard of Facebook and MySpace and cell phones weren’t.  Everyone socialized at the poker table and the table was your audience, you had center stage any time you wanted it. 

That’s what got me more than anything else, that was the hook, along with watching all the antics and insanities and seeing real people with real jobs and real families turn into psychotic loons at the poker table.  I became one of them.  I still worked, I still had kids that went to school, and I couldn’t wait to get into the next poker game.

My very first experience with poker was when I was in the 2nd or 3rd grade.  We lived in Drummond, Montana, 50 miles out of Missoula – man that was a million or so years ago.  My dad was a rounder, jack of all trades, never held a job, never stayed in one place long enough to think about finding a job, but he did like to play poker.  My mom was a God fearing woman that worked at scrimping and saving and scrounging to feed us and followed my dad around the country…she hated poker.  He (as I found out much later) was convinced he could make more in a poker game each week than he could if he held down a job – she was convinced it wasn’t possible because it was gambling.  That part of all of it never came to light when I was at that age, but I do remember her making a trip into Missoula one time and dragging him out of the Oxford poker game. Little did I know that one day I would work at the infamous Oxford and deal and play poker.

There are shades of twilight in the picture that I didn’t get, like we never had more than one car and it was always an old clunker.  So if he took the car to Missoula, she must’ve taken a bus or bummed a ride from someone.  I’m thinking that his answer to all of it was to just light out for parts unknown one more time and then send her news later as to where he was and we moved again – we moved all the time.

We lived in Anaconda, Montana, when I was in the 7th grade. My dad shilled or got staked in a daily backroom game there for awhile.  That was my second experience with hearing about poker.  I never played it or even knew anyone that did other than the sketchy noises I heard as a kid.

Time moved on and so did I.  In 1967 I moved from San Diego CA and a bad marriage (I thought it was bad anyway) to Missoula MT where my mom and dad lived (yah, seems like they never got very far away doesn’t it?  They really did, more moves and more states before they landed back in northwestern Montana), with my young son and nowhere to go but home.  I stayed with them for awhile and got a job.  I had younger brothers still at home and in school, and older brothers and family living at the house, it was a zoo.

My first venture into ‘The OX’ was when my mom and one of my brothers were in a big argument and I knew my dad was downtown at the OX.  I hopped in my car and drove down to ask him to come back and bring some kind of peace to the situation.  My mom…Kee-rist when I think what she put up with from all of us and my dad. When I walked into the OX, you’d have thought I just walked into a guys’ locker room after a homecoming game in high school.  Most everything went to stone – the sound, the men at the bar and food counter – I was out of place being in there, it was a MAN JOINT.

It didn’t stop me though.  I went to the cashier’s cage on the back wall and asked where I could find my dad.  Someone went back through a doorway and a few minutes later my dad came out.  I explained my mission, he went out the door with me and took his car home.  But he didn’t stay long.  I’m sure he went right back to the OX.

More years and more moves passed for me before I got back there.  I was married a few more times – buried a husband, got another one, and had a son from each.

So check back, the tale will continue…