Leave the politics, but keep the trash talk

I knew before any of it started that last Sunday was going to be a good day. Any day is a good day when it involves a game or eight of cribbage.

Every year on Sunday Funday, the last day of the Iowa State Fair, I compete in the cribbage tournament, joining 200 other Iowans in the solace of the air conditioning inside the Oman Family Youth Inn for an eight-game tournament. God bless our great state.

I wrote around this time last year about my love for cribbage, the card game that involves forming number combinations and playing cards in a sequence to score points tracked on a pegboard. The game is won by the first player whose peg travels the entirety of the board. It is a treasured pastime in my family, one that turns the normally polite Coles into what I described last year as “indecorous braggarts.” Cribbage isn’t cribbage without a little trash talk.

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Ever since I started participating, the cribbage tournament has proved a bit of a respite from the politics that swarm our social landscape and even the state fair itself in places, a respite that becomes more welcome with each passing year.

These last few summers have been particularly wild. A quick recap:

In 2023, it was “Caucus Summer,” the summer before the presidential-year Iowa caucuses when Republican presidential candidates swarmed the state looking for voters to court. That was the year I went on a date after the cribbage tournament — during which my date and I spent the first 10 minutes chatting with a presidential candidate. Good grief.

In the summer of 2024, we had all of that madness that with President Joe Biden soiling his pants (figuratively speaking … hopefully) during a televised debate watched by 51 million viewers, which eventually led to a hasty candidate switcheroo. There were a couple of much hyped national conventions, and somewhere in the midst of all that, an attempt to assassinate then-candidate and then-former President Donald Trump. Wow.

Which brings us to today. The summer of 2025 has showed itself to be the summer of renewed anti-Trump and anti-Republican rage — projected not by the most numerous voices but by the loudest ones.

Your friendly neighborhood conservative opinion columnist has experienced it up close. Some reader emails have become noticeably unkinder; some are even disturbingly personal in nature. Public events in my capacity as columnist, depending on the audience, have become a chore at times. And I certainly didn’t have “be spotted in public and be heckled by a bunch of retirees” on my 2025 bingo card, but here we are.

None of that matters at our humble cribbage tournament. On cribbage day, we are all just a couple hundred goofy Iowans of various ages, backgrounds and affinities, eager to face eight opponents in a game involving a little skill, a lot of chance and plenty of good-natured trash-talking. No one there knows anybody else’s professions or political leanings.

Well, with one exception. Here’s how my day without politics started: I hadn’t yet introduced myself to the man sitting in front of me, the first of my eight opponents, when he looked at me and said, “I read your column!”

So much for anonymity!

It was a neat coincidence. I had driven two hours to play the Lord’s card game with Iowans from all corners of our state — a land that encompasses over 56,000 square miles — and found myself sitting across from one from my own backyard.

And I felt elated. My amiable opponent from Marion, Eric, had read my column from last year about the cribbage tournament. Now, he was one of our players, having brought his late grandfather’s cribbage board, just as I had brought one that had belonged to mine. I was on Cloud Nine.

I’m not so sure Eric was on Cloud Nine at the completion of our game. Despite trailing almost the entire time, I laid my cards late in the game to reveal a 15-eight and a quadruple run of three for 24 — which cribbage enthusiasts will recognize as an extremely good hand — and beat him to the end of his grandfather’s pegboard by two points. (Sorry again about that, Eric.)

I was on a lucky streak that day, winning seven of my eight games. My overall point spread was not enough to place into the top 10, but I wasn’t there to collect a fancy winner’s ribbon and a portion of the game prize. I was there to collect a yellow ribbon with the word “PARTICIPANT” and enjoy amusing banter with other Iowans over random and funny things.

I got exactly what I’d gone for. After my come-from-behind win against Eric from Marion, I got “skunked” in my next game against a gal from Des Moines’ East Side, which is cribbage speak for losing by at least 30 points. (Or in my case, 33.)

“She cheats,” her brother, who sat next to me, said. It’s not a true cribbage game unless someone gets accused of cheating.

My fourth opponent, from Pleasantville, was a rising high school senior named Lincoln.

“Were you named after a president, a school, a town or something else?” I asked as we did the customary handshake.

“Drunk guy in a bar,” the kid replied with a grin.

My sixth opponent, Lincoln’s dad, regaled our table with the story of how the name came to be. They had been eating at a greasy hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant while she was pregnant and heard the server yell at an obviously well-known patron, “LINCOLN, YOU’RE DRUNK!”

“And my wife and I looked at each other, and we both said, ‘Lincoln!’” he said.

Lincoln and his dad were gracious in defeat, as was their family friend, J.P., my fifth opponent. But like good Midwesterners and good cribbage players, they did not pass up a chance for some good-natured whining after each loss. J.P’s reached its apex after he neared what he thought was about to be his first win of the day — before I laid another lucky hand to claim the game by 10 points.

“Without that hand, I would have gotten it!” he moaned.

Also like a good Midwestern cribbage player, I was not going to pass up my chance to trash-talk.

“No, I still had the crib to play!” I replied, referring to the extra hand each player receives in alternating sequence.

“And look at this crib!” I said, showing him another unusually large hand. “I would’ve kicked your ass anyway!”

Lincoln, his dad and J.P. all roared with laughter.

The competition was spirited, but the banter light and humorous — the kind that is there for the enjoying in any conversation until politics gets dragged into it.

My seventh opponent, Christine, warmly shook my hand and we exchanged pleasantries as we progressed through our game.

“So, what do you do, Althea?” she asked.

“I’m a newspaper columnist,” I told her with a chuckle as her eyes lit up.

“I’m loving this,” she chuckled.

Just you wait, I thought.

I met her effervescent smile with a wry one and leaned in to tell her the scandalous part: “I’m a conservative columnist.”

Christine, who told me she was an attorney in Des Moines, was a good sport.

“Blink twice if everything’s OK,” she joked.

I chuckled back, but for the briefest moment, our interaction took on a more somber not as two friendly gals contemplated the reality of political discourse in 2025. There was a lot I could have told her about the ickiness about the vibe shift in the Second Era of Big Orange: how the nastiest emails are sent from people like retired teachers and mainline protestant ministers; how opinions stated in good faith earn boos and shouts at live events; how grown women have started calling me names to my face.

But the only thing I actually said was that even amid the nastiness, it really is this rare and incredible privilege that I have. It was easy to say, because it’s true.

“I mean, I don’t want to start a political conversation, but … ” she said, before trailing off.

And that was as far as our discussion about politics in 2025 got. My friendly opponent’s ideological persuasion didn’t matter any more than mine did at that moment. Our conversation began and ended with something on which we emphatically agreed: there’s no sense in letting politics ruin everything.

If Christine and I truly needed to exchange some sharp words, we would have found them. We’re cribbage players, after all.

“There’s plenty to trash talk without politics!” she quipped — shortly before I laid down my cards and revealed the hand that beat her sorry behind.

Comments: 319-398-8266; althea.cole@thegazette.com