Saturday Game Night

This weekend the world will be ready to overeat chicken wings, guacamole, and sip on a few cocktails. There is a game Sunday as well which you can hear on WRCO. Saturday night during Those Were the Days, I will start the pregame with songs that reference games. Some examples include The Name Game-Shirley Ellis, Game of Love-Mindbenders, The Game-Queen, Play the Game Tonight-Kansas, Queen of Hearts-Juice Newton and many more. We will lead to the big event with lots of groovy classics.

Perhaps you would like to get a classic board game out to play with the fam and friends. I grew up playing many of the great ones. At the farmhouse in Aubrey Corners, we had several to choose from. My parents and friends would play Password. Since it was difficult to see the clue word through the red plastic, they would often ask little Philip to translate the words for them. An obscure game that we loved to play was the called The Last Straw. It involved a plastic camel on wheels. You loaded its saddle bag with sticks. If you were the last one to put one in before he split, you were the loser! Another favorite was called Avalanche. This involved placing marbles at the top and hoping to get the swinging gates to move in your favor to line up all of your marbles. Young Philip had not learned the rules of good sportsmanship yet and the marbles could go flying if his sister snickered when he lost. The game that used to drive me really mad was Sorry. That is not a good game to play for sore losers either! Fortunately, I grew up a bit and graduated from the kids table (I was 21) to the big table in which a Euchre game might break out after Sunday dinner. We had many memorable moments with gravy on the cards. Other popular card games on the old Valley farm were Dirty Clubs, 500, Kings in the Corner, and Wah-Hoo (basically Crazy Eights but the twos are wild cards). You said Wah-Hoo when you played your last card.

I remember watching many of the big NFL championship games. Often times we could watch the first half and then go milk the cows. We did not have a lot of snacks. Mom would buy the cheapest party pack frozen pizza and ‘doctor’ them with toppings so that one piece would weigh eight pounds. School friends and neighbors would stop by if the game was on a UHF station. There was CBS Channel 3 out of Madison on the VHF side, and 15, 21, and 27 from the UHF aerial. The Nee family was very advanced in the 70s because we had two antennas!

Please join us Saturday night for this weekend’s edition of Those Were the Days on WRCO FM 100.9, WRCO.com and the Civic Media app. From six until midnight, I will be taking song requests from the first vinyl record era. Listen for the ‘magic cowbell’ which signals trivia games. Check in by text or phone. I promise that I won’t get mad and throw my marbles.

Big Philip