I taken every count I seen on the board without worrying about my next play or what I had in my hand.” Mr. I let you do all the heavy thinking and worrying. You just wasn’t all that much better than me.” My father laughed: “Why, Pierce, I never tried to play scientific against you. But for 30 years you beat me three times outta four.” My father grinned and suggested it had been four times outta five. Shackelford said, “Clyde, I’ve always wondered how you beat me so regular. When they had become old men, and my father visited Putnam, Mr. Though Pierce Shackelford was a patient technician, he seldom could beat my father. Long before football taught me of those curious mental tugs and tides that establish winners, I learned in that old Domino Hall something of “team momentum.” Invariably, Pierce Shackelford nipped him at the wire-by five points, ten, rarely more than fifteen. My uncle would begin to sweat his eyes would dull his chatter would become more mechanical and desperate. Shackelford would begin to nickel-and-dime Uncle Claude to death: gimme five, gimme another five, gimme ten, gimme five. “Church ain’t over ’til they sing,” he’d mildly remark while Uncle Claude attempted to blitz and intimidate him he would pause for long cogitations, causing Uncle Claude-who preferred his Dominoes hectic and rapid-fire-to drum the table impatiently. A fat, red-faced, white-haired man who looked like South Boston politicians I later would know, Mr. Uncle Claude, in turn, never could beat unflappable old Franklin Pierce Shackelford, the farm-implement dealer. You reckon you could scrape together enough people to join my beginners’ class?” Old Man Head, furious, would blunder time and again: overlook a count, forget whether aces or deuces had been established as the spinner, miscount the number of blanks or sixes still out. Head, how much is six and fourteen? Why, I do believe I made twenty!” Or, having scored on three successive plays, “There’s a rule-ain’t they-that if you can’t count you got to pass or draw from the boneyard?” Let the slaughter continue and he would drawl, “Mr. Uncle Claude, the town barber and an incurable optimist who ran for county commissioner nine consecutive times despite no overt encouragement from the voters, was a front-runner-one who would talk you to death should he get a 30-point jump: “Say-Mr. Quick of temper, Old Man Head was always an easy mark for my Uncle Claude. The good Domino player learns to shake off crowd noises or heckling the same as the boxer or football player and has much more on his mind. In such ersatz intellectual games as golf or chess, where one must only put one ball in one hole or leap willy-nilly from square to square, silence is required of spectator and competitor alike. He couldn’t stand jawboning, however-a fatal weakness: a good Domino player must keep his cool. Old Man Bob Head, grizzled and unshaven in faded Big Mac overalls, was a long-range plotter once he had you drawing from the boneyard, he would domino for enormous profits and beat you in two hands. Standing barefoot and wide-eyed among other village “sweaters” as we learned their idiosyncrasies or cracking points. Things are not so clear-cut in this jumbled age, but back in the 1930s the World Domino Championship was settled every Saturday afternoon in a small hut behind Loren Everett’s combination filling-station and ice-house in Putnam, Texas. Poor Dad, his fatal weakness was a failure to respect the potential damage of repeater rocks.Įven so, my father several times held the World Domino Championship. I loved the old man, but I am not particularly sorry he squandered his double-five when blank was the spinner and I held the five-blank. This demanding history caused my father to die of a broken heart only 34 years after I beat him. No other King of record ever has lost a championship Domino series, tournament, or challenge once past the age of puberty. I am particularly renowned as the State Domino Champion of Texas, having won the title in 1938-at age nine-from my father it was earned rather than inherited. Even when ill, or playing in the rain.Įvery Domino title or honor available in 47 states and the District of Columbia is mine I here challenge the cowardly other three states, plus all known districts, territories, or possessions and will spot them the shape of the table. I cannot recall ever having lost in Dominoes except for a random game here or there slyly donated to aid personal pity or long-range strategy never, however, have I lost a series. I have been urged to write this dissertation about the Game of Dominoes simply because I am the world’s foremost expert.
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