The Checker Champion of Lehigh Street

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The brick twin on Lehigh Street in Allentown, Pennsylvania belonged to my nana. I never knew my great grandfather, but my great aunt Elda and my great uncle Earl lived with my nana and stayed in the house after she passed at the age of ninety-two. Nana’s bedroom was on the second floor and faced Lehigh Street. On one of the walls was a family portrait – about a dozen relatives I did not know, all crowded onto a front porch. The photo was very old, and I had always hoped I would acquire it one day. I never did.

The house had a huge front porch and the side of the house had a brick walkway with gardens of rhododendrons, lilac bushes, and hydrangeas The big backyard was lined on one side with red, pink, and white rose bushes, and a gigantic pine tree grew in the middle of the yard. Even though the yard also belonged to their neighbors, we never saw them when we were visiting. At the end of the yard, there was a one-car garage and a private alley behind it. A few houses down, a neighborhood food market provided everyone with the basic necessities, and in the warmer months, freezers were filled with all kinds of ice-cream flavors, orangesicles, and popsicles of every flavor. Borden’s had burgundy cherry and Sealtest had black raspberry, candied apple, and banana strawberry. My sisters and I were allowed to go there by ourselves with the money we earned doing chores for nana like sweeping the porch or pulling Japanese beetles off the rose bushes, or helping her bring laundry up from the basement to the second floor.

My Aunt Elda was about five feet tall. She loved to drink her coffee black and eat sticky buns. She canned peaches, so we had them all year round! Aunt Elda had a parakeet named Petey who would fly to her finger and give her little pecks – kisses – on her cheek when she asked him to. It took me years to figure out that Aunt Elda had had several parakeets, all named Petey, over the many years.

Uncle Earl was six feet tall or more, with shocking white hair, a mustache to match, and gorgeous blue eyes. He was so handsome!  Uncle Earl took photos and movies, and one of our favorite things to do was to watch the movies in the finished basement, the only place he was allowed to smoke his Chesterfields.

My white-haired nana was the head of the family.  Her given name was Mabel, an offbeat, old-fashioned name popular in the 1890s. Like her name, Nana was a little bit old-fashioned, a rule follower, and a strict disciplinarian.  Nana loved to teach her great-granddaughters all kinds of games including Parcheesi, Monopoly, Clue, Chutes-and-Ladders, Candy Land, and Yahtzee,  and card games including  Old Maid, Rook, Go Fish, and Crazy Eights.  Her favorite game, however, was checkers. My nana was the checker champion, and no one ever beat her!

We always played in the kitchen. There was a built-in booth with chrome legs and trim to the table.  The red seats were hard to take in the summer if you were wearing shorts and had to slide into the far end. You always felt like you were sticking to the seat!  This is where the checker competitions would take place unless too many cooks were in the kitchen preparing dinner. Then, nana would bring the checkboard and pieces into the dining room, and we would play there.

Nana would query, “What color?” and I would always answer “Black!”  Nana knew what I would say, but she asked anyway. Once we started, there was no small talk. “Eyes on the board. Concentrate!” Nana would command.  As hard as I tried, Nana always ended up getting “kinged” several times before I could make one lone player reach the final row of the board.

When I knew I was losing, I would always get up to greet anyone who walked into the kitchen. But Nana would say, “Sit down. The game is not finished yet.”  Reluctantly, I would obey. I knew when I was whipped. Nana would say to me, “The next time it will be your turn to win.”  But that never happened. Nana maintained her record. She would not ever play to just let her great-granddaughter win, even if she was the first great-granddaughter and born in the month of May like she was. 

As I look back on it all, I think she did the right thing. Today kids get trophies and awards just for showing up. Nana taught me to keep trying, even when I lost each match.  I improved, too, making it harder for her to win the game. She had to take longer pauses before moves, and I think that even she thought more than once that I was going to beat her.  I think I learned how to stay with something and see it through. That has helped me have a thirty-eight-year career in the classroom and write seven books. Now, I am working on an eighth book now, and I am planning two more. Maybe, in some way, I owe it all to my white-haired nana, the checker champion of Lehigh Street.