Wahoo before Yahoo!

Shirley wrote a wonderful comment about the Wahoo! game the family played and how it was invented by Emil Mellem. I know for certain his board was made of wood and the example shown here is nothing like the one the Anderson kids played on but it shows the direction of the marble moves and how one puts their marbles in the slots, (teepees) marked in blue, red, yellow, and green.

I knew the board and played on it. It was well used and simple. There was no need to color the camp sites and have teepees to store the finished marbles. It was a great table game for any age.

In the house of Rachel, Bud, and Ryen there was a Wahoo board, as was there a board in every household of the children in the neighborhood. That happened because one Christmas, Bob made boards for all the households out a board with a piece of drilled holed paneling on top. The directions were on the back.

Now, Rachel and Bud thought the board was too plain and one snowy day, the three of us sat on the love seat in the living room on 21st Street, and made rivers, trees, and named each camp. I only remember one camp was Standing Bull. I have no idea what happened to the board; I looked when we came home from the lake yesterday but the board in the closet was Chinese Checkers.

The other thought I wanted to address is the kitchen table. Many of the families in the New Solum Township welcomed their guests to the kitchen to visit, rather than a living room or a parlor. It may have all started because they had a table. OR the source of heat was in the kitchen area where the table was.

My grandparents were like that. When you came to visit, that is where you sat. Visiting was cozier than being placed around the livingroom. Another reason may have been that food was always served. If you went in the morning, one had coffee and a cookie or doughnut. It you were there in the afternoon, there was more like a light lunch which may include bread and spread. But when ever you went, something to drink was always offered, often the coffee had to cooked.

The coffee was served right off the stove. We know how hot this coffee is. It is no wonder saucers were under cups. One cooled the coffee by pouring some out of the cup into the saucer. Blow and sip, blow and sip. No, louder sipping. That was the acceptable method of my grandparents, as they sat at the lunch cloth covered table.

I wish blow and sip would have been an option the first time Mrs. Anderson offered me a cup of coffee in 1962. I would not have taken a gulp and not wishing to spit it out, swallowed it. It burned all the way down. Obviously I had no idea how hot coffee made on the stove was.

When the "kids" came home, everyone piled into the kitchen and sat around the table. Lloyd and Ella's kitchen always had enough room. It had nothing to do with the size of the room, it had to do with the size of their hearts.

Shirley also mentioned Grandma Rye and her Parkinson's. She was quite a hostess. I remember her putting her hand into the coffee can and taking the coffee out shaking as she put it on top of the cold water in the stove pot.

Dorothy and Larry live in the county. When the family was going there to visit, the big dining room table was the place to be. When ever we went north to see Ella, the table was the place to be. Even when Tom and I visited her at the house on 13th Street, we sat at the table.

Whether one is playing Wahoo, or nursing a cup of coffee, the family table seems to have magic memories as it multi-tasked throughout the days, weeks, months, and years.

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