Carrom - Flash backs to the Farm at Truax

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Today’s Blog Post


Carrom - Flash backs to the Farm at Truax
Last evening we sat around the dinning room table playing games. My Uncle Ben and my Aunt Joyce, along with my Mom, played crokinole first and then carrom.

Whoa – what a flash back!

Many, many years ago I learned to play crokinole with my Grandpa Kirkpatrick. He was amazing to say the least. Could he ever shoot!

He also taught us how to play carrom.

Now Grandpa Kirkpatrick had moved from Iowa with his family to southern Saskatchewan to farm in about 1905. I always knew that everything we did on the farm was pretty much like they did it in Iowa. Although I had never been to Iowa at that stage in my early life… it was that our family had solid American Roots which we had a pride in.

None of my friends at school had that kind of “special” heritage. Their families came from the Ukraine and Poland and maybe Germany… but not the USA! And everybody knew the USA was the best… after all they had defeated the Germans and the Japanese by that stage of my life and to be a G.I. was the best. And you always made the girls and the little brothers be the “Japs” or the “Krauts”… and we Americans would defeat the enemy.

So having a Grandpa that was American was only too cool. And having that Grandpa teach you games that he knew from back home in Iowa was amazing. None of the other kids had that kind of experience. Most of their Grandparents couldn’t speak English and possibly were still in the countries the kids had come from.

So in my mind Crokinole and Carrom were American games.

I would be about 10 years old when the game was played around that table.

My Uncle Ben would have been about 22 (he is 12 years older than me). And he was good at both games… but not quite as good as Grandpa Kirk… not quite.

Last night the old feeling of “family” was there again… just like being down on the farm so many years ago.

My Aunt Joyce and I beat Uncle Ben and his eldest sister(my mom)… and it felt so good! The feeling of family was the good part… beating them was okay… but family feeling was everything.

Ben and I talked about the old way that Grandpa played the game of Carrom… it was different that what I was showing him how to play. Grandpa Kirk had made our Crokinole and Carrom Boards… and provided the wooden rings for the game.

I had made my Carrom Game when I lived in Sacrborough. I had played with my Sri Lankan and my Indian friends. They had taught me that the game was one of their National Games… and everybody back home had played this.

There was a conflict in my mind that I couldn’t tell my Indian and Sri Lankan friends about. Carrom was not their game… it was our Game and it was from America. My Grandpa Kirk had never been to Sri Lanka or India… he was AMERICAN – and Americans played Carrom their way!

I couldn’t find any rings to shoot like my Grandpa had given us… and the Indian Shop Keeper in Little India looked at me as if I was nuts when I asked for rings to shoot in carrom. “You don’t use Rings in carrom, you use “carrommen” which are kind of like checkers for you Westerners… you don’t use Rings!” He looked at me like I was nuts. But I bought the box of Carrommen and went home to have my Indian and Sri Lankan friends teach me the “right way”.

Last night Ben reminded me that Grandpa Kirk’s players were Rings. And he also thought that it was American.

This morning early with the nagging thoughts and distant memories of the farm still there… I looked up on the Internet the whole story… WOW!

Carrom is from Southeast Asia. It is their game. And they do have a few different ways to play it. But they do not use Rings. But there in the last few paragraphs of the article was the reason my Grandpa Kirk knew the game.

Here it is… quoting from the Wikipedia article…
“American Carrom
American carrom is a variant on carrom derived in America by missionaries to the East, around 1890. Believing that the game required restructuring for Western tastes, a Sunday school teacher named Henry Haskell altered the game. Much of the game is the same, but the striker's weight is reduced and the carrom men are smaller. Generally, instead of disks of solid wood, ivory, or acrylic, carrom men (including the striker) are rings, originally of wood but today commercially made of light plastic. In addition, as an alternative to using the fingers to flick the striker, some of the American carrom boards uses miniature cue sticks. American carrom boards also have pockets built into the corners, rather than circular holes in the board, to make pocketing easier. While traditionally made boards vary widely, current commercially produced American carrom boards are 28 inches (710 mm) square, are printed with checkerboard and backgammon patterns, among others, and are sold with checkers, chess pieces, skittles, etc., to allow other games to be played on the same board. Often, these boards are also built to play crokinole.”
End quote.

On my 999th post of this Blog… I have had another one of my family mysteries solved. Wow!

America did play Carrom… but they had stolen it from India and Sri Lanka and Burma and Thailand and China… and it was a Missionary that had done that deed. All I know is that Grandpa Kirk was amazing.

My Uncle Ben last night told us that Grandpa Kirk would ask you to “break” the mass of Rings apart. If you didn’t get one into a hole you then gave him his turn. Grandpa would then systematically clear the board. Grandpa was good at Crokinole and Carrom. Very good.

But the best part is the part of the feelings of family.

These days with my Uncle Ben and Aunt Joyce have been real good. So many memories have flooded back.

Now this Ben that I share about made a difference in my life in a big way… by example and by faithfulness.

44 years ago about now I had called him and asked if he would perform our wedding in September 1967. He agreed and the rest is 44 wonderful years of family… more and more family.

~ Murray Lincoln ~
http://www.murraylincoln.com/

Resource:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrom