Table Legend
Smitty
Detroit — Joy Road, the old shop
Signature move: Naming the card in your hand before you play it
“You been holding that queen three tricks. Go on and play her.”
Fifty years in the same barbershop on Joy Road, and Smitty will tell you he’s had two jobs the whole time: cutting heads and keeping score. The back-room game at the shop is older than some of the men playing in it, and Smitty has presided over every era of it — the Motown years, the lean years, the young boys coming in thinking they invented the game.
His memory is the stuff of neighborhood folklore. Not just cards — though yes, he knows every card you’ve played since you sat down and probably a few from last week. He remembers whose father bid too big in 1988 and whose auntie never led trump in her life. He taught Reggie Carter the game between fades, one hand at a time, over about eleven years.
Play at Smitty’s table and you’re not just playing him. You’re playing everything he’s ever seen. It’s a lot.