INTRODUCTION
In a
recent book, The Friendship Crisis, Marla Paul evokes
nostalgia for her mother’s weekly bridge club. She remembers
getting out of bed to spy on them, recalls the laughter and
“gossipy whispers floating upstairs like a promise…a glimpse
of my future.” That generation “sank roots into neighborhoods
like an ancient oak…playing bridge…with the same women for
decades.” No friendship crisis then. Bridge Table
is about
the history and pop culture of the kind of bridge played by
Marla Paul’s mom—sociable bridge (as opposed to serious
bridge). That airy title question—What’s Trump Anyway?—reflects
the spirit and the essence of sociable bridge. In a serious
game, the question would be appalling—someone might call the
director. During a sociable bridge game? Not a big thing.
This is informal history, told in fifty-two “cards” and four “hands” (like bridge) of notes, quotes, anecdotes, menus, recipes, trivia, opinion. Bridge & Me is a sub-theme.
Sociable
bridge can be defined as a melding of friendships that last
for decades, food, and a stress-free bridge game symbolized by
the bridge table around which food is shared and a classic
card game played. Its millions of women players are a
subterranean sisterhood—uncounted and uncountable. Bridge Table, far as I know, is the first book to tell the story of sociable bridge. It hopscotches down the paper trail left by the ladies-only bridge club in women’s magazines and cookbooks of the 20s through the 60s, the New York Times, general magazines, and books on popular culture and bridge history. As a cookbook,
Bridge Table is in the “armchair” category—more about old
cookbooks and food history than cooking, more about menus than
recipes—intended to nudge readers to seek out old cookbooks
and recipes, throw a Retro bridge party, and/or revive the
classic menus of ladies-only lunch. You don’t have to play bridge to enjoy Bridge Table—but women of today ought to learn! Science is tellng us these days that for a dementia-free old age, it’s better to have played bridge badly than never to have played at all. The 90s were the
Retro decade and the nostalgia for her mom’s bridge club
reflected in Marla Paul’s Friendship Crisis is part
of that whole Retro trend. By the 90s, those same boomer
students of the 60s who rejected their parents’ pop culture
began
taking up, in Retro, icons of the
50s suburban lifestyle— martinis, steak houses, bridge.
Can a revival of ladies-only
lunch and its gender menus be far behind?
In Robert Parker’s
mystery, Back Story, a college student of the 60s
recalls the prevailing attitude on campus back then. “My
father was in the Rotary Club, for God’s sake. My mother
played f------ bridge!” Anything parents did (and they
certainly played a lot of bridge in the 50s and 60s) “we
couldn’t possibly do.” That hostility era is
all over now and today there is a spurt of 50-plus newcomers
to bridge, both serious and sociable. The time is right for
Bridge Table.
ª©¨§
Historically,
sociable bridge is the unwanted offspring of its serious
bridge parents—the bridge establishment and the ACBL (American
Contract Bridge League). Except for a few golden years in the
30s, there’s always been an unbridgeable chasm between the two
kinds of bridge.
One bridge player back in the
early days described sociable bridge as “kitchen bridge…the
lowest form of bridge life.” That we (sociables) outnumber them (serious
players) by the millions is evidence that sociable bridge
players have never been concerned about what their “betters”
thought of them. The ladies-only bridge club has been despised
by the bridge establishment (for its casual, chatty bridge
game), by the culinary establishment (for its Jell-O salads
and creamy somethings on toast) and by moral critics who took
the women to task for wasting time on bridge. Today bridge is
thought of as a game for older women, retirees, senior
centers. Until the 70s, however, bridge was at the heart of
America’s social life for women of all ages—a middle class
tradition passed on from mother to daughter.
For college-bound daughters,
learning to play bridge was like a rite of passage. If they
didn’t learn to play bridge at home, they learned at college.
Bridge was rampant in dorms and sororities. Then came campus
turmoil, feminism and Betty Friedan. For young women, taking
up mom’s favorite bridge game at college was no longer
politically correct. Their mothers, on the other hand, mostly
went right on playing bridge with their bridge clubs—unto
today. Some were members of three or four
women-only clubs.
Sociable bridge is a
phenomenon of popular culture and women’s history. Serious
bridge, because it has the American Contract Bridge League to
see to it, will survive. The survival of sociable
bridge, on the other hand (along with the ritual gender menus
of ladies lunch) depends upon boomer daughters taking up their
mom’s favorite game so that it doesn’t die off with
my generation of ever-older bridge-playing women. It took two women’s movements of the 19th century merged with a classic card game to create the ladies-only bridge club tradition. It deserves to survive another hundred years.
One is supposed to answer three questions in a book’s introduction—why this book, why now—which I’ve answered. Why me is the third, and why so late in life? What took so long? I first thought to do
a bridge cookbook back in 1960, and actually started to write
one then, and again in 1987.
An anthology of popular culture
writing, Sidesaddle on the Golden Calf, happened upon
at Miami Public Library in 1987, completely sidetracked me
into popular culture and the history of bridge. One thing
leads to another when you like to hang out at libraries and
browse the book stacks! Bridge Table was no longer
just a cookbook project and I was hooked. The problem is, hanging out at the library
is fun, settling down to put all those notes you gather into a
book is hard work. No one was out there waiting for my book
manuscript and so it became my dabbling hobby for two decades.
I
made several serious efforts over the years to organize my
notes into an outline--usually when I came across some new bit
of information that galvanized me for a few months. I did so
in 1995, 1999, 2001—only to quit in frustration.
Then, around 2003, I came upon If You Can Talk You Can Write by Joel Saltzman. His 50-short-chapter format in five sections was a light bulb moment. For my bridge book, 52 short chapters in four sections (like a bridge deck) was the answer. I would, however, call them “cards” and “hands.” Saltzman believes in adapting other writers’ solutions to your own work—so I did. After that, I knew the book was do-able. I have no excuse for
the years after 2004 except
procrastination, thinking I’ll
live forever. Then, in 2007 (by this time I’m 87!), someone
suggested to meI’d probably never finish Bridge Table
because I subconsciously felt I’d die if I finished it.
Well! That led me to
thinking, what would happen to all my books and cookbooks and
fifty-two files and boxes of 3 x 5’s I’d collected over the
years if I died before publishing the book? Like Marley
forcing Scrooge, to witness his own funeral I envisioned my
daughter Maria having to deal with the “stuff”
from years of research—putting it
all into black plastic bags and depositing in the condo
dumpster.
That did it. I
resolved to finish the book manuscript by the end of 2008,
edit and refine in 2009, and have it in print by the end of
that year—or toss it all into the dumpster myself on January
1, 2010.
Despite that generous two-year
schedule, I just barely made my deadline.
ª©¨§ Because Bridge
Table is entirely based on the paper trail found in
libraries, what’s missing are stories of real
women—recollections of those who lived through the 50s and 60s
and hears stories of their mother’s bridge club back to the
20s.
Depending upon
response from readers and the energy of this author, perhaps
with the magic of the internet, Bridge Table or What’s
Trump Anyway?
can
be the catalyst for
making the ladies-only bridge
lunch part of gender food studies by scholars, and bridge club
memories part of women’s history. A way, finally, of
being counted.
Maggy Simony, 2009
Copyright © 2009 Maggy Simony |