Peggy, Steve and the Giant Crab
by Mark Blumenthal on
April 22nd, 2009
Steve and Peggy Parker once played in a local Washington club game when they had a contest with two other pairs to see which could have the lowest score. They had fairly strict rules which banned bidding too high or doubling the opponents. Imagine their consternation when a pair of their the opponents got to six hearts holding AQ10xxx opposite his partner’s void in trumps. In addition Peggy had Kjxxx of hearts. She managed to ruff Steve’s winning ace with the king of trumps and was then able to duck declarer’s hearts throughout. When the hand was over, the declarer taking out a handkerchief and,wiping his brow , said, “Whew, I never thought I’d make that, partner.”
One morning Walvick borrowed Steve’s car. There were always a lot of people in Steve and Peggy’s apartment in the evening. When Steve finally got home from work Peggy had everybody face her in a line. She then asked veryone who had a car that was not wrecked by Walt to step forward. As they all stepped forward. She looked at Steve and said, “Not so fast, Steve.” . Walvick had wrecked Steve’s car.
In the sixties Steve and Peggy had two lines on their phone and there was no caller ID. For some reason, noted bridge writer, Fred Karpin, only he had their second number. When that line rang they would always answer, “Hello, Fred.” I don’t know if he ever figured out how they always knew he was the caller without ever making a mistake.
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Oh yes, the 1960’s!
Was it the flower children or the Viet Nam war which caused all that disrespect? Probably both, but one thing is for sure, Peggy Parker had a great sense of humor when she put on a Lou Corso (former football coach of Indiana and now a clever football analyst) act of “Not so fast”.
You’ve made Walt Walvick a cult hero, but would any of us want to be a member of that cult?
I, being from South Texas, knew all those Washington people and played bridge against them many times, but until your blogs never really knew them. Add to them the Haddads, Izzy Cohen, Terry and Mike Michaels, Jo Morse as well as Al Roth and his Dupont Circle bridge club and you have a list of “Monkeys are the craziest people”.
I, during my 2 year Army stint, was stationed at Fort Holabird in Baltimore in 1956 and played bridge several times in their local games. During that time I experienced two of my more exciting moments in life, 1. Went to the movies and saw Orson Wells starring in “Citizen Kane” and witnessed the quarterback of the Baltimore Colts, George Shaw, getting injured and being replaced by an unknown rookie out of Louisville University named Johnny Unitas.
Mark, keep these “get to know others” vignettes coming!
Bobby,
That was Walt’s objective. I know a lot of other stories about Walt, but I can’t publish them here. I knew Terry vaguely, but Izzie had just about quit bridge when I started playing there. As far as that goes, Roth and Jordan played there earlier. I always considered Andy Gabrilovitch, who also was a Roth disciple, my best partner, He wasn’t necessarily best tecchnically, but he was the very easy for me to play with and good..
BTW, wasn’t Unitas playing sandlot football in Pittsburgh when the Colts found him?