My mom and I would go down and check on him and help him with things he was unable to do for himself.ĭid I mention that Andy loved to play cribbage?
When he fell, he broke his ankle, which had to be placed in a cast and laid him up for some time. That all changed one snowy, winter night when Andy slipped on the ice as he was getting out of a cab in front of our apartment building. He and we kept to ourselves, as many people typically do in the city. I was 12 or so when we moved in and Andy was an older, retired guy who lived on the second floor. We lived for many years on the third floor of an apartment building on the corner of Harvard and Arlington streets. Still, I felt like I was missing out on something whenever the “grown-ups” got together and played cribbage. I was pretty young, so all that “fifteen-two, fifteen-four and the right jack is five” stuff seemed awfully confusing to me. The games continued with others every place they visited. Regardless, whenever my grandparents came to Nashua from their farm in tiny Mooers, N.Y., my dad would dust off the cribbage board and a deck of cards, and he and my grandfather would play for hours. Apparently, the game dates back to the early 17th century and an English poet named Sir John Suckling.
