In Bottineau during the late 1880s, there emerged an association of men “on the ragged edge of civilization,” as one of them said, in a boom town on the Manitoba Railroad. They determined to have some fun poking fun at the booster spirit and the fraternal lodges that dominated the social scene. They gathered and wrote a constitution for the Ancient Order of Sit Stills and declared themselves the Knights of Leisure. They resolved “to take things easy and never to stand when it is possible to sit.”
What did they do, then? They held mock honorary ceremonies and banquets enlivened by specious toasts. And they played pinochle.
The call went out the last week of 1887 for the Sit-Stills to gather at 2pm January 2 in Captain Thompson’s office; announced “object, Pinochle, or how to shorten up the winter.” Shortly after they organized a pinochle club to meet every other Monday night.
Their game of choice was, in fact, the game of choice on the northern plains frontier. Pinochle emerged from a complex of similar games in central and western Europe and traveled to North America with immigrants, especially Germans. The game is played with 48 cards instead of 52, a deck doubling the cards of all suits from the 9-card up. There were lots of variations in rules for 2-person, 3-person, or 4-person partner games.
The early lineage of pinochle in America was masculine and often involved beer and surreptitious sessions. By mid-twentieth century, however, pinochle had become a more domesticated, household game. It retained certain mildly raucous features: “shooting the moon” on a good hand, rapping the table. Just enough to enliven a domestic evening.
In 1918 an applicant for the US Army Signal Corps in Grand Forks, when asked if he had any experience with signals, replied that he “knew all about signals”—from playing 4-handed pinochle at the Odd Fellows.
In 1919 a case in the federal court in Fargo dragged on too long, and jurors sent out word for pinochle decks to be delivered to their chamber. A courier arrived with three decks, but was denied admission by Bailiff Pat Kennedy. Shortly afterward the jury brought in a verdict, along with protests that only one or two of them were involved in the pinochle gambit.
Still, at the same time, more staid, married couples were beginning to have pinochle parties at home. From rural Beaver Creek, the Jamestown Alert reports in 1919 a pinochle party where Mr. and Mrs. Dick Lippert hosted 45 friends for the card games, a “dainty luncheon,” and after the game, a house dance.
The next stage in the evolution of pinochle on the northern plains was the pinochle tournament, the first report of which I find in Selfridge in 1939. Tournaments returned the game to public venues, such as the Valley City Eagles Club in 1942. That movement flourished, until now, in the twenty-first century, a vast pinochle network invests the taverns, and sometimes the church halls, of the entire region. They are melding and bidding still at the Valley City Eagles, at the Ringneck Bar in Leonard, at Crystal’s Bar in Lincoln, at Earl’s Bar in Leeds, and countless other venues. The 701 Pinochle Facebook group directs traffic to games across the western part of the state. Where, in keeping with the spirit of the Knights of Leisure, they stave off winter doldrums with a game and a glass.
