You might spend a lifetime trying to get it right, and go to your grave knowing that you’ve fallen short.
Or you might nail it when you’re still just a kid, and not know until much, much later in life that it’s the best you’ll ever do.
I was listening to an old song last night, and the lyrics brought back the time when I was just a kid and I got it all right.
The old song was “City of New Orleans,” by Steve Goodman. In it, he sings: “Dealing card games with the old men in the club car, penny a point, ain’t no one keeping score. Pass the paper bag that holds the bottle, and feel the wheels rumbling ‘neath the floor.”
And just like that, I was transported back to the time when I was that kid, playing card games with old men in the train car, passing the paper bag that holds the bottle, and everything just came out right.
I was 18, riding the rails from Chicago back to Macomb, Illinois, on the CB&Q — the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad — a freshman returning to college at Western Illinois University. It was 1967, and I didn’t have many clear goals at the time other than trying to keep ahead of the draft board that wanted to send me to Viet Nam, or the steel mill that wanted me to punch a time card next to my father.
Because the railroad car was crowded, I sat on the floor. And when someone pulled out a deck of cards and a bottle of bourbon in a brown paper bag, I was in.
The game was hearts, which I knew only vaguely. And because I was the only one on the floor below the table-top, each player had to name the card he was playing, since I was playing by ear rather than by eye.
And so I played with my eyes closed most of the time, except to check which card I was laying down. And when the bottle came around, I pulled a deep swig and passed it along.
And as I sat in the aisle of that CB&Q train car, feeling the wheels rumbling ‘neath the floor, sipping cheap paper-bag bourbon every time the bottle came around, nearly every card I laid down was perfect.
It’s a four-hour train ride from Chicago to Macomb. We played game after game, and game after game I won. It became laughable after a while. Some wondered if I was a hearts professional, playing it cute.
But I wasn’t. I was just a kid, drinking alcohol that was new to me, playing a card game that was new to me.
And for whatever reason, everything just kept going right. If we were playing for a penny a point, then no one was keeping score, because I ended up with no winnings at all. Just a belly full of bourbon, and a memory of a day when all the cards fell right.
But it was a one-off, because I am not a cards player. Never have been. I don’t think I ever played hearts more than a handful of times after that, and each time I played it, I was a loser.
And so, as I said, you might spend a lifetime trying to get it right, and go to your grave knowing that you’ve fallen short. Or you might nail it when you’re still just a kid, and not know until much, much later in life that it’s the best you’ll ever do.
I was the latter of the two.
Steve Goodman didn’t write “The City of New Orleans” until 1972, five years after that train ride when I sat on the floor with my eyes closed and passed perfect cards up to the table above me.
But every time I hear that song, I’m transported back to that one time in my life when the old men in the train car passed the paper bag that held the bottle, and declared me the best hearts player they had ever seen.
But I wasn’t. I was just an 18-year-old kid, and — for that one day — as close to perfect as I ever would be.
Or maybe it wasn’t just that one day. After all, I steered clear of Viet Nam, steered clear of that steel mill, and while at college I met the girl who would spend the rest of her life with me.
Maybe — just maybe — the cards have fallen perfectly for me all along.
Author, musician and storyteller TR Kerth is a retired teacher who has lived in Sun City Huntley since 2003. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Can’t wait for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Then get TR’s book, “Revenge of the Sardines,” available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online book distributors.
