[or-roots] Do you remember punch boards?

[Cecil Houk]

Do you remember punch bords?  I do.  They were a a form of gambling I remember in the Sweet Home, OR area in the 1940's.  They were a bit less than a foot square, with a zillion holes drilled through them.  The bottom side was covered by a plain piece of paper.  The holes were filled with rolled up slips of paper with a win/no win message.  The top of the board was covered by a printed sheet that named the board, and indicated where the holes were.  You pay your money; you "punch" out a hole.  Mostly you won nothing, BUT...

One night we stopped at a cafe in Foster (I think the building is still there, but was vacant the last times I saw it 1998 & 2000), located on the NE corner of HWY 20 and Wiley Creek Road.  My dad won a stuffed animal on their punch board.  It was a white horse about a foot long, and not quite as high.  This is one of the few things my dad ever won.

Now why do I remember this?  My mother named the horse Dobbin; why I do not know, but I do know that she would not allow Doug or me to play with it - Dobbin became a part of our Christmas decorations.  He spent 11 months a year carefully packed away.

Long story short: my mother gave Dobbin to Doug's kids, and I kidnapped him from them in 1973.  I still have Dobbin, but he's far from white today.  :-(

The trigger for this memory came from a WW II map of Germany that I saw on the History Channel today (9-26-05), showing the town of Dobbin!

Yes.  My Houks/Haucks came from Germany.

Cecil


Cecil Houk, ET1 USN Ret.
PO Box 530833
San Diego CA 92153
FAX 619-428-6434
mailto:cchouk at cox.net
ANDERSON - BLAKELY - FORD - HOUK - KIMSEY - MOE - RULAFORD - SIMPSON
Searchable GEDCOM: http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/~cchouk
My web page MENU: http://members.cox.net/~cchouk/
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