All-night poker game

Early on a morning, 1951 or so, my father came home from an all-night poker game. We lived at the house that burned then, a bare wood house with a tin roof. There were two big oak trees, one southeast and the other southwest of the house. Land was open to the north and to the west, sparse woods to the south and long-time fallow fields to the east.

“I got out of the car,” my father said, “and a mockingbird started singing – ‘Deal ‘em, deal ‘em. You loose, you loose.’”