The mysterious game of "lone nine" is preserved out in Union County
by Matthew T. Everett
Thirty miles north of Knoxville, state Route 33 narrows from four lanes to two as it winds through Union County, past Maynardville and into the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains. After dipping into a broad valley and crossing Norris Lake, where last-chance revelers squeeze as much beer, sun, and water into the Labor Day weekend as they can, the highway climbs back out again, lined on both sides by undeveloped forest land, ramshackle houses, and real estate for-sale signs.
Just past the lake, a wooden sign points west, down another precipitous two-lane road, toward Sharps Chapel, a small, unincorporated town with a population of about 4,000.
A couple of miles down Sharps Chapel Road sits the Sharps Chapel Volunteer Fire Station, a squat, windowless, cinder-block building with a coat of cream-colored paint on the outside. Three fire trucks and a rusty old tanker, barely running, wait behind the station's two aluminum bay doors. A half-dozen cars and trucks, most of them American models, sit in the station's dusty gravel parking lot.
Inside, a group of men is playing a game of cards at one of the four folding tables set up in the station's lounge. They range in age from their teens to their 70s. Most of them are smoking or chewing tobacco; ash trays and spit cups sit on the edge of the table, out of the way of the game but within easy reach. A few other men sit patiently on a pair of old brown couches, watching NASCAR on a color television mounted in a far corner of the narrow, low-ceilinged room as they wait for their chance to get in the game.
The phone rings, and one of the men waiting answers. "We're playing lone nine," he says into the receiver. "Come on down."
A few minutes later, the front door opens and Gary Cole walks in, his wife Kathy behind him, sunglasses and a sly grin on his tanned face. He stops in the doorway.
"Let's play," he announces, his stout arms outstretched in the sunlit square left by the open door. He looks like an evangelical preacher.
The game, as it always is on Sunday afternoons here, is lone nine. It's usually lone nine every other day of the week, too. The game was invented here in Union County, probably some time in the 1930s or early 1940s, though nobody knows exactly when. But they do know how: the game is derived from set back, a once-popular game similar to spades.
"The way my dad explained it, they were tired of playing set back and wanted to add some kick to it," Cole says. The sunglasses are now on the table in front of him, but the grin remains. When he gets into the game later, Cole replaces the glasses.
More than anyone else, he seems as eager to talk about lone nine as he is to play. His family has always had significant ties to the game; his grandfather owned one store where the game was originally popular, and his uncle owned another where it was played more recently. He's convinced that a toy company would pay a fortune for the rules to the game.
In set back, according to an old rummage-sale paperback called Official Rules of Card Games, three to seven players try to amass seven points in a six-card hand, with one point each awarded for holding the highest trump card, the lowest trump card, and for winning the trick on which the jack of the trump suit is played. Another point is awarded for winning the highest number of tricks in a hand. Players bid on the number of points they think they can score with each hand; if they don't meet the contract, they are set back that number from their original score.
In lone nine, the nine of whatever suit the dealer calls trumps is worth nine points instead of just one, like the jack in set back, and the nine's addition also increases the possible point total from seven to 15. Teams of two play repeated hands until one team reaches 50 points.
"It's called lone nine, I guess because the nine is worth everything," said one player. "All your points are held in the nine. It's the weakest point card besides the low card, but you don't want to get caught with it."
Lone nine is a significant enough deviation from the original game that it's not just another of the many versions of set back. It's certainly its own game, with its own strategies for getting the nine card.
Yet the game isn't played anywhere else. Except where it's been exported by former Chapel residents, lone nine has stayed within the borders of Union County. For years it served as a sort of social gathering point, an excuse for gathering around the general store down the road from the fire station on Sunday afternoons. Nearly everyone in town played, or at least showed up at the general store for the regular weekly sessions.
"At 8 a.m. I've seen people standing in line outside to get a chance to play," says Randolph Collins, a lifelong resident widely regarded as one of the game's best players. "They'd play all day, and through the week, too."
Gary Cole says the old days at his grandfather's store were some of the best times of his life. People tossed horseshoes while they waited, and poker games were played up on a hill next to the store. The store was like the spot on the courthouse steps in a William Faulkner novel, or Floyd's barber shop in Mayberry.
But the convivial atmosphere of the gatherings didn't extend to the game itself back then. Lone nine was more solemn in the old days, says Cole. Quiet ceremony surrounded it at his grandfather's store. "There was no talking then. They took the game very seriously," he says. "The youngsters don't take it as seriously."
When he says no talking was allowed, he means it. The slightest utterance was punished by loss of the hand being played. Players adhered to a strict protocol, much like championship chess or high-stakes poker—though gambling, the locals say, was never a part of lone nine. Once a card was down, it was down. The losing team immediately gave up its seats to the next team. And the referee was always right, even if he was wrong. Younger players were allowed to play only enough to keep the chairs warm for veterans, and the new variations of the game that make scoring easier, acceptable here at the fire station, were untenable at the store in the old days.
But those days are over; the game began losing popularity during the 1970s and '80s, until the store no longer supported the same kind of crowded Sunday scenes as it once did, though informal games were still held. When the new fire station was built two years ago, replacing the old headquarters beside the store, the game moved with it.
The fire hall lends itself to a more relaxed version of lone nine. Even though it responds to all emergency calls in the area, since it can reach the site of a traffic accident or medical emergency more quickly than an ambulance from Maynardville, the department still averages less than one call every two days—about 14 a month. Somebody has to be there, because the calls are never predictable and may come bunched together, two or three in one day. But there's still a lot of time to kill.
"Most people come in from work and play a few games. Some retired folks come in here and stay for a while. Some folks are just deadbeats who don't have a job and just stay here all day and play," laughs Terry Brewer, a Kentucky native who moved to Sharps Chapel 16 years ago when his father, Eugene Brewer, retired.
"Now you've gone from preaching to meddlin'," Collins interjects from across the room.
Terry Brewer says a sharp mind is the key to success at lone nine. "Sandy watches every move," he says, referring to Sandy Lay, another of the old-timers looked up to as one of the game's best. He's played lone nine for more than 50 years, longer than just about anyone around. "It's not a game with Sandy. It's a job."
Lay is the most animated of the players this afternoon. He grins like a hyena, a shock of thin white hair spreading out from the back of his head, and slaps his cards down emphatically. He follows through with the stroke of his arm as far as the table will allow.
"You've got to be more lucky than good," Lay claims. "Like Randolph said, I'd rather have luck anytime than skill. But you also have to have a good knowledge of the game. You have to remember what's been played and what's still out there."
Everyone concedes that the real secret to the game is luck. "Nothing's for sure," Cole says. "You're never good enough to always be a winner. There's no science to it."
But experience and concentration can often make luck happen. Brian Ray, a recent graduate of the new Union County High School down the highway in Maynardville, recognizes that.
"There's a lot of strategy to it. You've got to know the deck pretty good, what's been played and what hasn't," he says.
Ray, tall and big, is a looming presence in the small, crowded room. He has been playing lone nine for nearly 10 years, watching Lay and Collins and Eugene Brewer, and is considered one of the best young players.
"I like to play with the older guys," he says. "They're more competition, I guess."
But he's among those who know the fire hall better than the general store and play the game without the old formality. There are others—Jody Dykes, who now lives in Maynardville but comes back to the fire hall frequently, and his older brother Toby, and Terry Brewer. And women, like Kathy Cole, are finally beginning to play, some of them even entering the tournaments held every few months. After the dry period of the 1970s and '80s, the older players are glad to see the game's resurgence.
"I guarantee it'll be around for a while," Gary Cole says.
It's not the same as it used to be. Cole seems to miss the old Sunday rituals, and card games of any sort are hard-pressed to compete with fancy home theater systems and the encroaching cybersprawl of the Internet for entertainment value. But enough young players are still involved that, no matter how the game changes in the future, it's sure to be around for at least a few more years.
Sandy Lay, slapping his cards down on the table, knows as well as anyone how the game has changed. He played it at the general store, and now he's followed the cards to the fire hall. He played under the old rules, but now he'll talk more than anyone during a game, even though he does keep a cold eye on the proceedings even as he brags about his skill. And he knows why he plays, and why he's always played, and why he'll keep playing.
"We do have a lot of fun," he says. Especially when he wins.
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