Bumblepuppy Confessions

Recently, I learned a new word, “bumblepuppy.”  Even if you don’t know what it means, you must admit its amusing and suggestive connotations.  I learned that while I most certainly am no longer a bumblepuppy I was one in the past and to this day occasionally encounter one and do my gallant best to weather the event with grace.  Further, and rather interestingly, I probably would have said precisely the same thing at any point in the past, that is after my first time.  You never forget your first time.

Time for definitions; Dictionary.com provides two:  “An indifferent or erratic player” and “A Bridge game played haphazardly.”  According to Julian Laderman, author of “Bumblepuppy Days,” it originally referred to Bridge’s predecessor Whist.  Thus it can refer both to a player and a particular game which is rather unusual dual service for a word.  Everyone who plays Bridge, including Bill Gates, Thom Yorke, and Omar Sharif, even good old Harold Vanderbilt reinventing the game whilst sailing on Lake Michigan (I’m not sure I believe that story) were bumblepuppies at some point, if only for microseconds.

There was a time when Bridge was more pervasive in the culture at large; my sense these days is that those of us who play have become a subculture.  Hence, a few words about what Bridge is are in order.  It is a trick playing game using a standard 52 card deck.  It is not an inherent gambling game, such as Poker, rather it is a game of strategy and as such, more properly associated with Chess, or even better, Go, as unlike Chess, each hand is different, “each venture is a new beginning,” to borrow from MaCavity.  Success in Bridge mandates and exercises perfection of memory, selfless sacrifice to the good of the team, deductive reasoning, strategic planning and, at the highest levels, the clever, sometimes deceptive, management and communication of knowledge and information.

My earliest memories of Bridge, are my grandmother’s Bridge clubs when she’d exile me to play outside and two movies.  In one of the greatest war movies of all time, “The Enemy Below,” a group of officers on a Destroyer in the Pacific play what is definitely bumblepuppy Bridge in the opening scenes, an ironic preface for the clever strategic battle between two ships and two captains that is the heart of the film.  In “The List of Adrian Messenger,” John Huston’s sui generis mystery, it is regularly played by English aristocrats after fox hunting.

I was taught to play at last by an aunt, late one snowy Christmas night, along with two of my cousins.  She didn’t teach us the rules, which are actually not that complex, but rather by playing.  Thus, my first experience was like learning a foreign language, a practical metaphor in this context since so much of Bridge is communication, both with your partner and your adversaries.

Here’s a particularly interesting aspect of Bridge, at least for me: it heightens the experiences and memories with which it’s associated.  I remember that Christmas night clearly.  Then there was the trip Lynn and I took up the upper Amazon, from Manaus, Brazil to Iquitos, Peru from whence we flew over the Andes to Cuzco to explore the Sacred Valley.  The river trip was in an nicely appointed ship which usually saw service crossing the Drake Passage to Antarctica.  After dinner the first night, a bearish, white haired man asked loudly, “Who plays Bridge?”  Lynn and I exchanged skeptical glances, then admitted we did.  “Come on!” he ordered and led us to the game room which turned out to be nicely situated with excellent views.  Thus, began a sadly short but fine friendship with Frank and Babs Massie.  We played every evening after, and the memories I have of wading rivers, Zodiacing to remote villages and dancing with semi-nude women half my height are inflected with our passionate but civil games on board.  I remember over-bidding my hand on one occasion in true bumblepuppy fashion.  As I laid out my hand, Frank turned to Lynn, who was playing as my partner, and demanded  “Divorce him!”  Fortunately, she didn’t.

And there are many other occasions like that.  Lynn and I and her parents took what I think of as a micro packet steamer around several fiords north of Bergen, Norway.  As we sailed, we played Bridge.  Lynn’s mother was a particularly, gracious and intelligent player.  She was also highly competitive.  If you happened to defeat her in a difficult contract she’d order you to put out your hand and then give it a precise rap with the scoring pencil.  Her father, naturally conservative and taciturn when he was playing a contract, would often adopt a dangerous and radical strategy of not drawing trump and, to my chagrin, almost never paid a price for it.  And that leads me to one of the most subtle and interesting rewards of playing recreational Bridge:  revelation of character.  People tell you and teach you who they are.  They reveal themselves and reveal how they reveal themselves.

Lynn and I have been particularly lucky in the Bridge playing friends we’ve had, particularly the Records, the Benders, the Watkins and Jay Behrman and Eric Hanson.  Bridge was particularly important with the Watkins, as both of them are dangerously capable and predatory at Pool.  Bridge remains challenging:  last year a team of European physicists began exploring a way to use entangled quantum particles to improve the odds of winning at Bridge.

(The first image is from the Leonardo | Art Playing Cards Kickstarter Project by Dent-de-Lion du Midi)