Holding On to Tradition : Those Who Play Games Say That Sharing a Cultural Pastime Brings People Closer Together

At a senior center in South Los Angeles, where once-spry men sit in rocking chairs, other folks who have worked a lifetime gather to play the card games of their youth.

At a Tarzana country club, four Jewish women continue a tradition born in their mothers’ living rooms, a game of mah-jongg uniting them in friendship.

Games, simple as they may seem, play multiple roles in society. And over time, they have assumed a special place within some ethnic groups that use them not just to pass time but to build relationships and remind people of traditions.

Poker, born a century ago in the United States, seems to have universal appeal. But it is perhaps a manifestation of the so-called American melting pot that a variation of an English game called whist is particularly popular among African-Americans, while Jewish women and Chinese immigrants share a love for the ancient tile game mah-jongg.

China’s influence also has found its way into the playing decks of Vietnamese and Cambodian immigrants, who use Chinese cards to play games called tu sac and ber tong in their new land, Orange County.

And Martha Arevalo, an El Salvador native, speaks fondly of card games like loteria that once kept her inside, out of harm’s way, as a war raged in the streets.

Some believe there is a danger that, like many traditions, these ethnic games will ultimately become casualties of time as generations assimilate, devotees age and video entertainment expands.

“A lot of times we lose rich, important parts of our culture, though we may not realize it,” says Arevalo, 22, communications coordinator for the Central American Refugee Center in Los Angeles.

She believes many games of her youth may continue to thrive in El Salvador but won’t be played to the same extent here: “I think they (may) become extinct.”

But the roles games play--from social to educational--will remain.

“The card game’s a place where a lot of relationships are made,” says Barbara Cadow, a USC psychology professor.

For those nearing, or enjoying, retirement, games are an icebreaker among strangers and a bond for those seeking a sense of family, she says: “Their children have gone off to start families of their own, (so) older people create (new) families. Card playing creates a community.”

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So it goes at the Theresa Lindsay Senior Center on East 42nd Place, where jazz filters from a radio while the pool balls and dominoes tap to their own rhythm.

Ignore that clicking. Move to the side of the room, take a seat at a card table and prepare for schooling in the ways of bid whist.

First, meet some of the players: A man with a cowboy hat, who straddles his chair like a buckaroo. His partner, called “Mitch,” who has more stories than a deck has cards. A retired Pullman porter who reckons he’ll try to make 100 years old. And a woman named Mary who learned to play cards from a preacher’s daughters.

Whap .

The cards crack against the vinyl table. A man dressed in overalls takes a turn and sends a card whirling into the center.

“Hey,” Mitch yells, “Don’t spin the cards.”

“C’mon, play,” says the spinner’s partner, not minding the spinning as long as she’s winning.

“Wolfin’ “--fooling with your opponent’s head--may be the best part of the game. The words whip and whirl (“Who dealt this mess, you?”) and sting and sing (“It’s all over but the shoutin’ ”) until one team boasts sweet victory.

For many retirees who come here, card games have been a constant. Now the games have taken on renewed significance.

“I’ve been playing cards since we had to make them out of pasteboard,” says Mary Wells, 73, a retired factory worker and center volunteer. “If they sold them, we couldn’t buy them. We’d take cardboard, and make us cards. That’s how long I’ve been playing.”

A wide-eyed novice turns to another veteran, 77-year-old Martell Wyrick, and asks who’s the best bid-whist player he ever saw. “Myself,” Wyrick answers, his poker face never flinching.

Whist, an old English card game, was the forerunner of bridge. The “bid” adaptation, researchers say, occurred in the United States some 50 years ago. Though older blacks speak of other card games that were community favorites--such as pitty pat and pinochle--bid whist seems the most popular and enduring.

“I never met a (black) person who didn’t know how to play the game,” says William Trott, 60, a reference librarian for the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. As a student at New York City College, Trott remembers bid whist being so popular that it was eventually forbidden on campus, to prevent players from hogging cafeteria tables.

Nowadays, say Trott and others, the game seems less a pastime of the twentysomething crowd and more a favorite of those over 30.

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Add 20 years to the ages, and something similar could be said of mah-jongg.

On any Saturday afternoon at the El Caballero Country Club in Tarzana, you’ll catch women immersed in the game.

But first, they do the “Charleston”: Hand three domino-like tiles to the person on your right, then three to your left. Pass three tiles across, and it’s time to play.

The centuries-old game made its way to American cities during the 1920s and became a particular favorite of Jewish women.

“I remember when I lived in Brooklyn,” says Paula Berke, 57. “The husbands would come home from work, the wives would stand out on the porches, and someone would raise their hand and say, ‘Where’s the game tonight?’ “That was the only recreation my parents had, playing cards or mah-jongg. I don’t think they could afford to spend money to go out.”

She resented it, then: “It took my parents away from me so often, I felt they were cheating me. . . . I had no interest in playing.”

Times have changed.

Every weekend, Berke plays mah-jongg with Selma Fane, 51, and Irene Abrams, 63. The games are planned a month in advance, so if a regular can’t make it, the others can tap a ready substitute.

This afternoon, with the quartet missing its usual fourth, Muriel Green has stepped in. Each woman brings a mah-jongg card, an all-important piece of cardboard that lists the various combinations of symbols and numbers that constitute a winning hand.

As they discard and pluck tiles, waiting for that critical moment when someone declares “mahj,” the women chat with obvious camaraderie. All are bridge players and say they like the speed of mah-jongg and playing without a partner.

This game is also steeped in tradition. Fane, who was a young mother living in New York when she played her first game, inherited tiles from her mother-in-law. Abrams says her set came from a cousin in New York--her own mother having passed the family set down to Abrams’ twin sister.

Those sets, tucked away at home, reflect a different time--when the popularity of card games such as canasta rivaled that of mah-jongg in many Jewish households. Back then, the mah-jongg tiles were solid ivory. There were chips for those who wanted to bet, and there were no Jokers--flowered tiles were “wild.”

Now, the tiles are plastic and the chips are gone. Even the mah-jongg cards dictating the winning combinations have changed--every year for more than half a century.

But Fane holds onto history. Each April, when the National Mah Jong League puts out a new listing of combinations, Fane stores away the previous year’s card. Her oldest dates to 1966--the card cost two quarters compared to today’s $4.50--and it belonged to her mother-in-law.

The Fane tradition, however, may stop with Selma, as none of her three children play. “I’ll probably give (the mah-jongg set) to my daughter only because I feel that’s where it should go,” she says. “But I don’t know what she’ll do with it. . . . I think it’s a dying art.”

It’s the difference between generations, she believes. Fane had the luxury of staying home with her children and enjoying free time--a privilege her daughter will probably never have.

“They have ‘quality time’ with their children,” she says of those in their 20s and 30s. “And they’re not about to give it up to play (games).”

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But games, often taken for granted, can be an important tradition worthy of being passed down, says Arevalo, the Salvadoran immigrant who lives in Los Angeles:

“It’s fun, it’s unique to our culture, but it’s not always something we recognize as being part of our culture.”

Card games have threaded her life. “In El Salvador, it’s very common to have carnivales , fairs,” she says, “and in every fair you will find loteria .”

Loteria is a game in which players match illustrated cards to pictures on a board.

Though she left the country 12 years ago, Arevalo says she still remembers the winner’s cry: “ Loteria! “

Television in El Salvador is not the same quality as in the United States, Arevalo says, so card games remain an important nexus for socializing there. “And you’ve got to realize the majority of people in El Salvador are poor. The majority will own a card deck because it’s inexpensive and entertaining. But they won’t own a Nintendo.”

For Arevalo, card games are interwoven with memories of El Salvador’s civil war. “One thing I’ll never forget is that when the war started, there were days when we couldn’t leave the house because there would be bombings. There was no electricity so we couldn’t watch television. We’d play cards all day.”

In the United States, Salvadoran immigrants are immersed in a daily struggle for economic survival, which reduces their leisure time, she says.

And there are far more distractions. “There are more things for (your) little brother to play than burro ,” Arevalo says, referring to another childhood game, the rules of which have faded from memory.

Still, her family gets together most Saturday nights for a friendly, low-stakes game of poker--just as in El Salvador. Sometimes, when her mother loses but doesn’t have the money to pay, other relatives let her slide.

“They’ll write it down on a piece of paper,” Arevalo says, laughing, “and she’ll owe it for months.”

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In most Vietnamese families, card-playing privileges come with age.

“If young people play cards too much, we think that is not good,” explains Quang Van Pham, 55, a program coordinator for an Asian community center in Santa Ana. “Many Vietnamese families don’t allow their kids to play cards. We teach them to devote time to studying.”

For older Vietnamese, it is different. “The elderly,” he says, “have earned the right to enjoy themselves.”

And they do--in a room crowded with tables at the Vietnamese Community Center of Orange County. They play with cards very different from a standard, 52-card deck--long, thin, and marked with symbols that illustrate their Chinese origins. Games such as tai ban and chan.

Though players speak a foreign tongue, their intense concentration and victory cries transcend language.

Among the players is 89-year-old Tran Du, who left Vietnam six years ago and speaks no English. Her grandson’s address and phone number are written on a slip of white paper, taped to her purse, in case she loses her way home.

Here, over a game of tam cuc, she finds comfort, says Pham, translating Du’s words: “The communists killed three of her children. She is very sad. Her family has suffered. So she comes here, and feels happy.”

But these games are fading fast here and in her homeland, says Pham: “In one or two more generations, people in Vietnam will not play the complicated games,” although some simpler ones, like tu sac and tam cuc, may survive. “The others belong to the old generation.”

He looks at the loss of those traditions with resignation, rather than sadness: “That’s the way it goes. Children raised in America pick up American games. The young kids in Vietnam like video games. . . . We can’t avoid the changes.”

Even Arevalo, who feels compelled to teach El Salvador’s language and history to her nieces and nephews, admits she has not taken time to make sure they know traditional Salvadoran games.

But even this generation, immersed in Pictionary and video games, may come around.

People spend their 20s, 30s and 40s striving for economic and professional success, says psychologist Cadow. “Then something happens,” she says. “I think it’s because the older we get, the more we realize what’s important. Money isn’t.”

Relationships are.

Fred Hawkins agrees. He sits in a rocking chair at the Theresa Lindsay Center and talks about how he’s played bid whist for 30 of his 65 years.

The young don’t play it, Hawkins says, but in time they will.

“They will,” he says, smiling, “because they’ll run out of things to do.”