Authors and Aunts

"Look what I found?"  Ellis had his hands behind his back at the local goodwill store.  He started that extremely annoying trick of "which hand do you want?"  No amount of guessing did any good until Krysta twirled around behind him to peek at the prize he was hiding . . .  an almost brand new game of  Authors.  No more bent cards or ratty, chewed up edges like the old set at home that has seen many a crowd of players.  The design on the back of each card is whole, not faded out from sweaty fingers.  Each set of four is complete, all the way from Louisa May Alcott with her wavy, brown hair  to  Mark Twain with bristling white eyebrows and droopy mustache.  All 44 cards were inside a plastic case with a 55c sticker on it.  There was another sticker scribbled out with magic marker, but I could see through the blue ink that at one time it was marked 39c. 

Where else could you buy a box of memories for so little?  

We used to play this game by the hour with Leah -- my aunt going on a sister.  I can picture us (Ladina, Trenda, Leah and I) strategically seated all around a teensie tiny bedroom in the trailer house near Roosevelt.  We couldn't be too close to each other or we'd accidently see cards we were not supposed to see.  I don't remember why? we always ended up howling with laughter . . .   I just remember laughing our heads off.  Of course this is my aunt Leah I am talking about.  The one who could make up verse after verse of the poem beginning with these words: 

Help! Murder! Police!
My wife fell in the grease!
We laughed so hard
We fell in the lard!
Help! Murder! Police!

I thought at the time we should write them down but we were sure we'd remember them all. 
They are forever gone.

I'm sure sometimes she wished to ship her nieces off to Siberia or deepest, darkest Peru.  Especially when we filled the canisters in her play house with flour and sugar and stirred up cakes and cookies then left sticky paste for her to clean up after we went home.  We raided sugar lumps from Grandma's cupboard - sugar lumps that were meant for the horses.  We begged for gum.  We coaxed her to play her guitar and we listened to her sing all of Dottie Rambo's songs. 

Ellis remembers playing the game of Authors with his mom - and much later - with his students at school recess.  They taught him the nasty trick of asking for a card currently in your own hand.  That puts a whole new twist on the game. 

I think this game helps a person learn to concentrate and listen and memorize.  I love memories that get stirred up of long ago days and love to think about the little people we used to be and the fun days we had together.