Contrary to received wisdom amongst performing musicians, playing a cruise ship gig is not nirvana. It’s more like routine interspersed with gaping stretches of utter boredom. During my decade as a summertime cruise-ship regular, I read a ton of books and played countless games of Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit. My cruise ship gig was particularly restful, given that I was on a so-called “culture” ship that shunned the usual casinos and glitzy shows in favor of an entertainment package comprising lecturers, a string quartet, an ‘opera’ group that sang mostly musical-comedy excerpts, a cabaret singer, an all-purpose guitarist, and a ‘classical pianist.’ That last was me, needless to say. My responsibilities were light: I played one show a week, an honest-to-Gosh sit-down recital lasting about an hour. I then repeated the recital a half-hour later for the second seating. Beyond a brief cameo on opening and closing nights of the two-week cruise, my time was my own. I had a passenger-level single cabin, a reasonable amount of money from the company, and more or less freedom of the ship save a few sensible restrictions, such as refraining from sitting on a bar stool (there weren’t very many) and waiting until the staff was cleared to go ashore in those ports that required the use of tenders (small boats) to go from ship to shore. As a rule I signed on for two cruises, thus a month total.
The ship also employed a cocktail pianist for a typically deserted little lounge with nice views; he played nightly. Also nightly was the small combo that played in the Commodore Lounge, the ship’s main entertainment room. For all of my summers aboard the band was a husband-and-wife team on piano and bass, Peggy and Al, retired after many years playing Las Vegas, together with three others—lead trumpet, reeds, and drums. They were a sweet group save the drummer, a grump and self-exiled loner. Peggy and Al acted as unofficial chaperons to the company staff, mostly college kids working through their summer vacations and having themselves a fine old time. Sometimes a little too fine of a time, and that’s when Peggy morphed effortlessly into mom-in-residence.
This was the Alaska trade, not known for swinging singles or swarming families with hordes of screaming children. The clientele ran senior citizen, so much so that the midnight buffet was at 10:30 PM, 7:00 AM breakfast was packed, and the full-time staff included two resident nurses plus a doctor in a well-equipped hospital with several crash carts. I remember a particularly sassy nurse who, as we pulled out from Vancouver one Sunday while our new passengers whooped it up on deck, sidled up to me and whispered throatily “wanna bet which one’ll wind up on a slab this time?” I suppose that sounds dreadfully cynical, coming from our onboard angel of healing. So let me point out, in her defense, that she was on about her third bourbon & soda of the afternoon. On second thought, perhaps that isn’t so helpful.
Routine settled in quickly; we regulars knew the ropes and then some, so the entertainment/lecture package flowed along smoothly with only the lightest of supervision from our cruise director. Given that the band went off-duty by about 11:00 PM—there being nobody except staff in the Commodore Lounge by then—penny-ante poker filled the hours between about 11:00 PM and 3:00 AM when your average entertainer-type person toddled or staggered off to bed. None of us worked in the morning, after all, and none of us could afford to be sleepy in the evenings, so we were all a late-rising bunch, just like entertainers everywhere. I made it a point to join my table companions for lunch (1:30 PM) no matter what, even if that meant dragging myself out of bed at 1:00 PM, groggy and likely still half-sloshed from the previous night’s revelry. That poker game was a major source of pleasure for all of us; it was our chance to schmooz, gossip, drink (from our own supplies, of course) and be ourselves away from our nicey-nice onboard personas.
As in all friendly poker games, the deal moved around the table and the dealer chose the game. For some years the reeds guy in the band was a good-hearted, rather dense, and always sloshed guy named Dave. When his turn to deal came up, he always proposed a laundry list of wild cards—which he then promptly forgot about as the hand progressed. So Dave, somebody would ask, what was wild again? Was it sevens and red kings? Or was it red sevens and queens? Boozily befogged as he was, Dave couldn’t remember. Indignant protests immediately erupted around the table. Peggy would enter Queen of the Staff Mode and announce that we’d just play this hand without wild cards since nobody knew what they were anyway, OK, and gaddammit Dave why the hell do you always do this gaddammit.
One night we gave Dave a taste of his own medicine, all carefully planned and orchestrated. When it became my turn to deal I announced that we would be playing a hand of “Oklahoma.” Janey (cabaret singer) chirped in with oh, boy! We haven’t played that one in a couple of nights, have we?? So I started inventing the Oklahoma game on the spot, sort of a blackjack-like affair with impenetrable rules and a rich lore of terminology, all of which I was making up then and there. As I worked my way around the table, somehow Dave always got an ace or some card of interest. (Janey, a former card shark, had stripped the deck to a T.) As Dave sat there contemplating his hand, I would say something like: Now, Dave! Cool hand…you’ve got a Tulsa Gusher starting up there, don’t you, boy? So do you want another card? Dave—totally confused but still gung-ho—would mutter something like well, OK, I guess…and I would respond So??? Dave stared at me. That’s another fifty cents for the card, Dave. Dave would pony up the money. I dealt. Everybody groaned in sympathy on cue. Aw, Dave! Dustbowl. Drat, huh? as Janey swept his money away.
We kept it up a lot longer than you might have thought possible. Dave kept getting more and more confused—that having been the idea—and at one point he said: Wow! I haven’t played this game in YEARS!! which sent Peggy under the table in a fit of hysterics. Fortunately we stopped the whole thing before it went too far and let him in on the joke. Once he realized he’d been had, he just loved it and kept talking about it for, oh, the rest of the cruise. Maybe the rest of his life.
I kept playing the cruise ship gig throughout my thirties; my last summer was at age forty—which I will always remember for the wonderful surprise birthday party the entire ship’s company threw for me. My journey away from the piano was already well under way, so despite some vague talk about my returning for another season, it was time for that particular chapter to end. Those summers have left me with friends, pictures, and lots of fond memories. But no memory is more affectionate than those cheery, family-ish poker games in the wee hours of the morning, while the dumpy old ship chugged along its well-traveled route through the endless Alaskan summertime twilight.