Nobody climbs a turbine in a lightning storm, which means a wind crew spends more rained-out afternoons sitting around than you’d think for a job that’s mostly outdoors. My first year on the crew, one of those afternoons, Ray reached under the bench seat in the trailer and pulled out a box so beat up I assumed it was trash somebody hadn’t thrown out yet. It was Dominion, missing a couple of cards, sleeves yellowed from however many years of trailer heat.
I didn’t want to play. I’ll say that plainly, I wanted to sit there and stare at my phone until the weather cleared, and I only agreed because there wasn’t much else to do and saying no to Ray on my first year felt like a bad idea for reasons that had nothing to do with cards. Twenty minutes of rules, another forty minutes of an actual game, and I remember specifically the moment it clicked, buying my third silver and realizing I probably shouldn’t have, that there was an actual decision happening and I’d made the wrong one.
That’s a small thing to build seven years of a hobby on, being mildly annoyed at myself for a bad buy in a card game. But it was enough. I bought my own copy within the month, then a few more games over the next year, and at some point reading became part of the same rained-out-afternoon habit, since a book travels better than a board game does when you’re the one loading the truck every Monday.
Ray still has that same battered box in the trailer, missing cards and all, because we’ve never needed a nicer copy for what it’s for. I’ve got my own good condition version at home that never travels. There’s something in that split I haven’t fully worked out, that the copy that actually matters to me is the ugly one that still lives where it started, not the nice one I bought once I could afford better.
Seven years in, most of what I read and play still traces back to that one rained-out afternoon, one way or another. I don’t think Ray remembers pulling that box out that specific day. I remember all of it.