The Almighty Euchre

This evening I have found myself in a major planning session on facebook for a serious game of Euchre. I say serious, because where I come from Euchre is just about as serious as Uncle Joe's cows getting loose. According to Websters Online Dictionary, Euchre is defined as "A card game similar to ecarte; each player is dealt 5 cards and the player making trump must take 3 tricks to win a hand." The definition fails to mention that all players involved must be able to tolerate unimaginable amounts of heckling, use phrases that edge ever so slightly into cheating, and be willing to play almost anywhere, anytime.
Growing up in a small town makes it harder to get into trouble and get away with it. Either everyone knows each other or they know who to tell if they suspect something's up. So for those times when small crime wasn't an option we played euchre. I'm going to guess that I was about 13 or 14 when I learned how to play; so let's say Jr. High. Although I don't remember exactly how, I'm sure my first lesson was on a team bus coming back from a basketball game late one night. It was addicting from the first hand. We played on team busses, free-time in school, weekend camping trips, you name it. I have even played euchre at the county jail with on-duty deputies. In High School while some of the more "cliquey" kids were doing their thing, my crowd was at someone's house with 2-3 tables of euchre going. We'd play to all hours of the night. There were some deep converstaions had and good friendships made over a few hands of euchre. Sadly, way down here in the swamp lands of Louisiana you can find every type of card game imaginable, except euchre. In the 9 years that I've been here I have yet to find a single person who has even heard of the word, let alone played the game.
Here's to meeting up with old friends on my trip back home. Hopefully we'll be able to rekindle those old friendships and engage in deep conversations all while handing a few good old-fashioned ass whippin's!