The Banker Makes the Rules

           Recently Richard purchased the game “Roseburg-opoly”.  

He had wanted to buy “Salt Lake opoly” for a while now – not available in Oregon.  I wonder why.  Or Disneyopoly.  It really does not matter what version, it’s still Monopoly – a long drawn out game with only one winner who diminishes every other player with greed and absolutely no mercy.  I hate it.  Too much like real life in many cases with the business world.  I’m not business minded.  Never have been.  Never will be.

          Richard is a stickler for the rules but will add the luxury of reason the “free parking” space (or in this case “I love Roseburg”) exists: 

to collect all of the money that was thrown in the middles of the board due to paying taxes, hospital bills and so forth.  Also in the Roseburg addition properties can be mortgaged for face value and not just half or partial as the authentic monopoly. And instead of buying houses and hotels players buy blocks and keys to the city.

          When Jaime and I are bankers we will add all kinds of rules more out of convenience and less from a business perspective.  Properties can be bid on once they are landed upon.  Players don’t necessarily have to pay full price.  Players can also stay in jail (or traffic jam) for as many turns as they need before rolling doubles and do not have to fork out 50 dollars (in the Roseburg addition it is 100) automatically after three tries. Most importantly player does NOT have to build evenly.  You want to purchase a hotel without buying houses - go for it.  It doesn't have to be an even build. Neither Jaime nor I often are banker.  Both would prefer playing something else.

MLK Banker, Stubborn Healing and Mormon Deer

            We have not adopted a celebration tradition for Martin Luther King Jr. Day – though Jenna did have a nice suggestion:  watch Tangled because there’s that song “I have a dream” – only we couldn’t seem to find our copy of Tangled and the Myrtle Creek library doesn’t even carry anything that recent. 

            We had three bananas that were somewhere between brown and black.  I planned to purchase some vanilla ice cream to make smoothies or banana ice cream.  This would be in honor of “milk” day as my niece had initially thought MLK to be.  I had told reader’s to refer to her blog in this post, but alas, she has made it private and so no one will have that opportunity anymore (including me).

            Roland suggested we play Monopoly – and though it’s not mine nor Jenna’s favorite game, it is an opportunity to play games with Roland – and at his suggestion no less. 

            Jenna has now decided to set the timer each time monopoly is played with a two hour limit.  It was good for Roland to focus on something other than his pain.  They both dubbed me as banker which is really not a coveted role for me.  In our household, the banker makes the rules whether they really exist in Parker Brothers instruction book or not.

            All tax fees and other expenses go into the middle of the board giving free parking a purpose – to win the pile of cash that each player contributes when paying fees.  I decided that we would deal up half the properties and no other properties could be purchased or housing/hotel expenses until we had each been twice around the board.  Properties could be traded to fulfill an expense – for example, if you land on Boardwalk and have to pay 1400 but do not have that much, player can give up properties as agreed by Boardwalk owner.  Player DOES NOT have to mortgage properties in order to obtain funds.  And you don’t have to build evenly.  If you want to buy one hotel for one property and only one house on the remaining properties, with me as banker, that is allowed.

            I was out of the game after an hour and a half.  I had landed on Boardwalk.  I gave Jenna all of my unmortgaged property plus the less than 100 dollars I had in bills, but the three mortgaged properties I had were returned to the bank – plus all of the housing which is removed when the player loses and has to be repurchased by the new property owner.

            Roland landed on Boardwalk three times during the game and he was finally busted just before Alexa went off.  But Jenna wanted to continue playing forcing Roland to mortgage most of his properties and sell his houses.  But then he landed on Baltic or Mediterranean – both of which had hotels.  So he lost.  That was funny.

            During our game of Monopoly Jenna had played a variety of music on YouTube.  As we listened to Abba, she pointed out “I Have a Dream” and so after our monopoly game and ice cream making, we found some other songs on YouTube to celebrate “having a dream”  We listened to Abba, Tangled, this one, and of course, Martin Luther King, Jr (here)

            As we are down to half a driver and there is a family in my ward short a car and also providing rides for Jenna – we loaned out our second car.  As Roland planned on driving Jenna to the church this morning I wanted to make certain his back was up to it. So I had him help me move the cars so that the one to be borrowed was behind.  He moaned and groaned as he got into the car, but he is stubborn enough to make it work.

            This morning I went along for the ride when he dropped off Jenna.  We were quite near downtown when Roland started honking his horn.  Until we approached closer, I hadn’t even realized there had been a deer in the road (it was still dark and raining).

            Whenever he pulls into the lot, he has a habit of going all the way toward the grassy area before he turns around.  He likes to see how many deer are parked out on the lawn.  I told him we had already seen one deer for the morning and he shouldn’t expect the deer to be camped out in the rain. 

            I don’t know if it was him or Jenna that suggested that there was a difference between the one we saw in the road and those who “go to church”  I think it was Jenna who suggested that some of the deer get made fun of by the other deer because of their desire to be so close to the Mormon Church.  That made me laugh.

Wooden Houses

         Monopoly is still not my favorite game, but it is one of the few that Roland will agree to play with us.  However the rules vary quite drastically depending on whether he or Jenna are banker.  One of the last times we played, each of us had monopolies but Roland was banker hoarding houses and we were not allowed to buy hotels until we slowly built up and then traded in.  When Jenna’s banker, hotels can be purchased without having to first build up a housing empire.  There aren’t enough houses – at least there weren’t.

          Roland found some extra houses at good will and purchased what appears to be vintage pieces.  Not original 1936 pieces but a remake done in 1947. 

We decided to incorporate the extra housing in with our game pieces that were made this century. We played a came the day after Christmas.

The hotel sizes are different and the house colors range in an assortment of greens.

          The color variation for the money is not as obvious between the 20s and 50s as they are today

          And the game pieces were not the cool shapes that they are today,  Wooden pawns and tiny dice.

          The instructions had been creased and torn.  When we taped it back together Roland asked if that wouldn’t ruin its value.  Jenna and I threw puzzled glances at him thinking the creases and tears had probably already disvalued the game.  Also the fact that there was no board included.

          Jenna found a misshaped hotel and thought it funny and purposely used the edge/corner to stand the hotel as she thought it was funny.

          The game came with a booklet to advertise other Parker Brothers games (this one in Salem, Massachusetts – though they also had locations in New York, Chicago and London.  The monopoly game sold for 3.50  A game called Camelot sold for 1.50 and 2. 00 or with a large board and ivoried pieces for 5.00.  Sorry sold for 2.00 and a game called Pollyanna (which suspiciously looks like Parcheesi) sold for 2.00 also.

           Jenna and I laughed as Roland started mortgaging properties in order to buy others – NONE of which gave him a monopoly.  We kept landing on community chest, chance, taxes, and our own properties but rarely our own.  Jenna and I had both purchased hotels for the monopolies we had – but as no one was landing on properties except for the owner, we failed to purchase more because what would be the point.

          We played for two hours and declared Roland the winner just so we could stop.  We played some other games yesterday.  Jenna and I really enjoy playing games.