ROUSES_MayJun2019_Magazine-Print

Cajun Card Games by David W. Brown, photos by Channing Candies

Ali Rouse Royster, a third-generation owner of Rouses Mar- kets, pulls out a printed notebook with ROUSES OFFICIAL PEDRO SCORE PAD printed across the top. There are two columns, each with a heading for team names, and grids for tallying scores. “When you start the score sheet, the only proper way to have team names is to write ‘Winners’ for the name of your team, and ‘Losers’ for the other,” she says. “Those are the only acceptable names.” “I don’t know why they didn’t just print that on the sheet,” says Chris Acosta, a category manager of Rouses and another third-generation team member. “Because your dad prefers to write it in!” says Rob Barrilleaux, a de- signer and the company’s print manager, referring to his boss, Chris’s dad, Tim Acosta. Rob is Uncle Rob. His brother-in-law is Tommy Rouse. If there is one constancy for the Rouse family during gatherings, holidays and vacations, it is the presence of good food made from old family recipes. But if there are two things a guest can pretty much count on, it’s a deck of cards and an inevitable game of Pedro. “If you wake up at the camp and there’s whitecaps in the ditch, you’re not going fishing. This is what you are going to be doing,” Rob says. If you have never played it before, it is a staple card game in the Houma-Thibodaux area, and is pronounced PEE-dro. It is a follow- suit, trump card game. It is a little like Spades in that you play with a partner, but cannot communicate your hand of cards or how you intend to play them. I recently spent a day with members of the Rouse family when they had time to play their card game of choice. I watched them sit across from one another, handling cards like Vegas magicians, calculating hands and scores and the motivations of partners and rivals, and blasting through entire rounds with the speed of a cashier on a 10- key. I witnessed the finest taunts and trash-talk this side of professional wrestling, all hurled about like javelins. And to quote the Book of Job, “I only am escaped alone to tell thee.” Members of the Rouse family endeavored earnestly to explain the rules of Pedro to me, and I took copious notes and recorded audio and played hands with them and brought back score sheets and had them explain things repeatedly, as though I were a small child — but reader, the game remains a mystery to me. Maybe you just had to be born in Terrebonne or Lafourche parish. Maybe it is part of a secret ceremony or cultural initiation that you experience when you buy land there, or a superpower acquired after drinking the water of Bayou Lafourche. “Look, we taught this game to people in Texas,” jokes Rob. “Surely you can learn this.” ‘Winners’ for the name of your team, and ‘Losers’ for the other. Those are the only acceptable names. —Ali Rouse Royster, 3 rd Generation When you start the score sheet, the only proper way to have team names is to write

All I can say for sure is that if you are an outsider, you basically have to be a psychic accountant to understand this game. The rules as described here are reported here to the best of my abilities. Just typing them out caused my computer to run slow, because not even its multicore microprocessors could handle Pedro in principles and practice. The point is, I’m counting on my editor to make sure I get the rules correct. We play Spades in Gonzales. THE RULES OF THE GAME “If you find somebody in Houma or Thibodaux who doesn’t know how to play Pedro,” says Rob, “they are the exception.” (He was one of many who tried to explain the rules to me.) The two towns have a sort of Hatfields-and-McCoys antithesis toward one another with respect to Pedro rules, as was repeatedly explained. The Houma way, according to the Thibodaux players, is bedlam, chaos — a grim, lingering look into the mouth of madness. Talking with players from Houma, the feeling is apparently mutual. “My wife is from Houma,” says Lee Veillon, the human resources director of Rouses Markets, “and I got transplanted from Thibodaux, so I’ve had to adapt to the rules depending on whom I’m playing with. We have to decide in advance which way we’re going to play. It’s a big deal. If you talk to anybody on my wife’s side of the family, we’re all wrong.” “Well, it’s because they have a slightly different set of rules,” says Tim Acosta, the Rouses director of marketing and advertising. Pedro is a four-player game with partners sitting across from one another. Each player is dealt nine cards, three at a time. (The dealer rotates each round.) Only five cards in the game have any value: aces, jacks, 10s, and twos are each worth one point; fives are worth five points. Based on the cards dealt, players bid the number of points their team hopes to earn.

62 MAY•JUNE 2019

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