A gaggle of males in Washougal, Washington, in all probability have a fairly good learn on one another on the poker desk. These eight gamers have been part of a regular poker game on the Orchard Hills Golf & Country Club for nearly six a long time.
The sport started in 1968 when a number of of the gamers had been searching for some enjoyable and located a number of highschool pals to play with.
“My math says that’s 56 years,” 77-year-old Bob Haley informed KGW-8 News. He’s one of many founders of the sport and provides of the low-stakes affair: “It’s about bragging rights!”
Social Game
Playing that lengthy collectively has allowed for a lot of modifications within the males’s lives. Several are navy veterans, together with Marvin Doering, who was shot at whereas flying a U-2 spy airplane in the course of the Cuban Missile Crisis. At 94 years outdated, he’s the oldest member of the group, but additionally some of the latest to hitch, having been added to the sport within the mid-Nineties.
“I’d just like to say there’s hardly anything I’d rather do than play poker with this group right here,” he informed KGW.
The group doesn’t talk about politics on the desk however there are many battle tales to be shared together with laughs, cigar breaks, and extra. The sport’s stakes are irrelevant, with pots filled with spare change, however the motion has grow to be about way more than dealing playing cards and shifting chips. After so many tales, so many pots, and so many laughs, they contemplate their sport a brotherhood.
That is actually true for Jim Kenney, 77, who served in Vietnam and was spared when a bullet hit his M14 rifle journal as an alternative of hitting him. He grew to become a part of the poker group in 1970 after returning house from battle.
“I appreciate these guys,” he stated. “We share the memories. We share the concern.”
