THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 19, 1995 TAG: 9503160048
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By DEBRA GORDON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines
THERE IS SOMETHING soothing about the clicketyclack of dominoes being turned over. Something graceful in the sight of six pairs of brown, wrinkled hands shuffling the black blocks. Something dignified in the first call to play: ``Who has the double nines?''
This is what you do when you've reached your 70s, your 80s. When your children are grown, your husband dead, and your friends scattered. When you don't want to sit anymore in that silent apartment, staring at the walls, listening to echoes from the past.
And so you come every day to the Wesley Community Service Center in Portsmouth. Where the coffee is always hot and a nutritious lunch arrives at noon.
You come to play dominoes.
I got an eight.''
``I got a three.''
``Yeah, I got a three right here.''
Margaret Binion, 77, is the undisputed leader here. She sits at the head of the folding wooden table, dressed all in purple, grim-faced and deep-voiced.
Can't see the tile at the end of the table? Binion's eagle eyes count every white dot, and she'll tell you the score. Didn't notice that five in your hand? Binion did, and she'll reach over, pluck it out of your pile and add it to the growing column on the table if you aren't careful.
But if your attention wanders, if you put down a wrong-numbered domino, or forget to tap a block twice on the table when you're stuck, you reap the wrath of Binion.
``You only get one,'' Binion admonishes sternly as Martha Edwards, who won't tell her age, and who just won the first game, plucks several hard candies from the paper cup that houses the sweet prizes.
``OK, Momma,'' she says.
``And don't call me Momma!''
But Binion's bark is worse than her bite. These are her friends, her family, these women who meet daily to play together.
There is Lallie Alston, also secretive about her age, the self-proclaimed chatterbox of the group; Alice M. Hutcheson, whose job it is to reign Alston in; Thelma Ward, 84, stylish in her lime-green blazer and khaki rain hat, and Sady C. Power, last to arrive, the one with the continually sweet smile.
``It's a family, a place, a home away from home,'' said Emma Shuler, 67, site supervisor at Wesley. Shuler works for SEVAMP, which runs the site as a nutrition center, providing a hot lunch each day for the 20 or so older adults who gather there.
The women don't know exactly how long they've been meeting - Shuler says it's at least five years, ever since she's been there. They do it for the same reason Shuler is still working: to give them something to do every day. ``If you keep your mind busy, it's not going to die on you.''
For nearly three hours a day the women sit in this cavernous room, mixing and choosing their blocks. A bigger-than-life-sized portrait of Jesus Christ watches over them.
They don't talk much, it's too distracting. But occasionally, an item of news, a bit of gossip, pricks up their ears.
Today's topic is a 22-year-old man who allegedly shot and killed another man. ``I feel sorry for his parents,'' says Power.
``Sometimes the devil just moves you, and I feel sorry for him. He's somebody's child,'' says Edwards.
For as long as they've been meeting, the women don't know very much about each other.
They don't know, for instance, that tiny Ward had 10 children. ``Girl, a little thing like you?'' scoffs Hutcheson.
Or that Power has four grandchildren about to graduate from college, and that she's so proud about it she fairly beams.
They didn't know that Binion is the oldest of 10 children; all living, five over 70.
No, their conversation rarely drifts from the number of dots on the lengthening line of dominoes snaking down the table.
``I got a double nine.''
``You don't have to say it, just put it up there.''
And a new game begins. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
BETH BERGMAN/Staff photos
Thelma Ward, right, is a regular domino player at the Wesley center
in Portsmouth.
THE DOPE ON DOMINOES
The game of dominoes is simple.
You draw seven blocks, or bones, as they're called. Each block is
divided into halves, or ends, by a ridge across the center, and each
half is either blank or marked by dots.
You make a play by matching the number of dots on a block to an
adjacent block. The object of the game is to be the first to use up
all your bones.
The score is determined by adding the number of dots remaining in
the other players' piles.
The only skill required is counting. And the strategic move of
ridding yourself of your highest-numbered blocks first.
After that, lady luck plays the biggest role.
by CNB