"skunked" and "dirty katie"

[John Blower]

At 09:06 AM 3/7/02 -0500, you wrote:
>At 9:16 PM -0500 3/6/02, Alice Faber wrote:
>>Mark A Mandel said:
>>>On Wed, 6 Mar 2002, Clark Whelton wrote:
>>>
>>>#Last summer in Maine, while playing the card game "hearts," two of the
>>>#players referred to being hit with the queen of spades as being "skunked."
>>>#This was a first for me.  I've always heard the queen of spades called
>>>#"dirty katie," a term unknown to these players.  Is "dirty katie" fading
>>>#away?
>>>
>>>Oh, that takes me way back! I remember the queen of spades in Hearts as
>>>"the Black Bitch" (I think) and "Dirty Dora" (I feel more sure of).
>>
>>I remember "the Black Bitch" but not "Dirty Dora".
>>--
>I recall it as "the Bitch" simpliciter.  I'm not sure whether we were
>more comfortable being sexist than racist, or whether the feeling was
>that since the Queen of Clubs was equally black but entirely
>non-bitchy, it wasn't really the color that was to blame.

In Britain in the 1960s, we called the Queen of Spades "Black Maria", which
was also what we called the game of Hearts.


Cheers!

John Blower/FeNiKs Business Communications
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