My grandfather lied to my grandmother. I guess it runs in the family.
Most families pass fish stories around. In my father’s family, dishonesty seemed to revolve around gambling.
My grandfather had a passion for the ponies. After retirement, he went to the horse races at Hazel Park Race Track in Hazel Park, Michigan. He packed up the sports section from the Detroit Free Press and took the bus, since he had a lifetime pass after retiring as a bus driver for the DSR in Detroit.
His weakness was the daily double. I doubt that we will ever know how much he lost playing the daily double since we only heard about the occasional winners. Often, my grandmother always gave him $2.00 to play the daily double for her. She always played the same horse numbers. She never cared what the horses were called. My grandmother’s horses just never seemed to win.
However, one day Grandpa came home with his usual story about no winners. This time Grandma had been listening to the radio and had heard that horses 3 and 8 had won the daily double. She was ready for Grandpa’s hard luck story and just stood there with her hand out until he gave her the winnings.
My father often played poker at lunch hour. This was the favorite past time of the hourly workers in the commercial art trade. On the day I was born, my father was playing poker. After Mom was in recovery, he came by to see her and the baby, me. After the usual hospital pleasantries, she asked about poker. He said that he had had no luck. From her hospital bed, my mother put out her hand until Dad place a single dollar bill, a silver certificate, in her hand – his winnings from that lunch hour went into my baby book.
In our family, at least when it came to reporting on gambling winnings, you could truly say “Like father, like son”.
