It’s Potato Days 2006! Time for all the fun and excitement that comes with figuring out crazy things to do with potatoes. The morning started off with the Kiddie Parade. In the Kiddie Parade, all the 8 and under kids from town come out so they can walk or ride down main street. In the end, it takes about 40 minutes to set up for what turns out to be a 5 minute parade. It’s not because there aren’t a lot of participants; it’s just because the kids go out in bunches and walk as fast as they can. I’ve uploaded pictures from the event in the Potato Days Album.
Next up came the moment I wait for all year: the Potato Days Whist Tournament. It is a meeting of the greatest Whist minds in the country (ok – not really, it’s just a bunch of senior citizens and my friends and family playing). We had a good turn-out this year with 7 participants including my grandma and my dad. I started on Table 5 playing with Margaret – the 91-year old Grand Marshall of Potato Days. She told me she was on the Ellen DeGeneres show last year to talk about Potato Days, and this year she just finished doing a stint on the local radio station; in other words, I was playing with a celebrity. It was just like when people play with Ben Affleck and Toby Maguire at the World Series of Poker, but with more walking canes.
I didn’t have the best of luck during the games. I had a crazy partner who would go high all the time with only two suits covered. The first two times he went high and I was relatively excited, since I had two good suits each time. We got set both times. So the next round, I got the privilege of playing against him with my friend Kelly. I was very much looking forward to this, because I thought we could cash in double points if this player kept going high. For the four hands, he only went high the first hand, and they ended up beating us 10-0. On the third hand, since we were already down, I decided not to go high even though I normally would’ve, just to see if we could double up. That idea crashed and burned and we lost three more points. The nice thing was, my friend Uggie and my grandma had just won at the lower table, so we were going to have a family game the next time around. I ended up playing with my grandma against Uggie and Kelly. We ended up beating them, as I said I was going high every hand, and it ended up working. I got set once on the best hand I had all day because Uggie had a 7 card Heart run to lead out. I ended the tournament 21 up and 38 down, which is easily my worst showing ever. The good news was Becky ended up tying for 2nd with 45 points. She made $6.
There were 36 people in the tournament and there’s a $1 entry fee, but the prize structure is always $10 for 1st, $8 for 2nd, $6 for 3rd and $4 for fourth (=$28). So every year they decide to hold a drawing to return the $1 entry fee for as many people as money they have left. So thus begins the agonizing process of announcing the names of the winners and Evelyn (age 75?) running around the room to give the dollar back to the lucky 8 winners. This wasn’t too bad this year with 8 people, but 4 years ago, they had to give 28 dollars back, and the process easily took a half an hour. I received more good news though, as I was one of the lucky 8 this year who won his money back.
We had the family and friends over for supper afterwards and we had a great night of socializing, chasing kids and playing some cards. I think I play more cards on this day each year than the rest of the days combined in a year. It’s always one of the best days of the year, regardless of the outcome of the cards, and this year was no different.
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