A Reader Asked:
“Where did your obsession with dominos begin? It seems it might have been nurtured by your parents, but maybe not.”
The short story is, we (my family) learned the game from Joe Dickson, an associate of my father’s at the Hanford plant in Washington State. He had learned the game as a duty man riding on freight train cabooses in the Southwest, and he brought it to us. In the 1950s, television was not yet available in that area, so people played games after dinner; Joe and his wife often came over for the evening, and dominoes became our family’s default game.
In addition to the domino game, Joe provided me with some of Lugh’s characteristics, such as the cigarette trick. He is even featured at the end of Chapter 26 in Part II, where Tony has a dream about riding in the back of a limo on the way to a funeral. Tony is accompanied by his father and a man named Joe Harmon, who was based on Joe Dickson. As Tony observes, “He had a vast repertoire of cigarette tricks, with which he entertained the other players as we sat around the table waiting for a slow player to make a move. Joe Harmon was the model for Lugh. Or Lugh had dropped by in my youth disguised as Joe Harmon.”
We still play the game occasionally. The specific game we play is called All Fives, Fives Up, or Muggins. Here is one site that lists the rules. You can search for others.
Next post: how these critters (the dominoes) unexpectedly popped up in my books and became so important.