I arrived shortly after 7 pm. They were on the third question: "What song by Eddie Cochran was a hit when he died in a car crash in London?" I knew the answer: Summertime Blues.
Austin and Alan were there. Rod was not. Rod's job is a delivery driver, and between being busy during the Christmas season, and the snowy icy gravel roads he has to drive on, his day these days are long ones and he never got back to Minot until Trivia Night was more than half over, and therefore did not come.
The bar was near full with most tables taken. This may be the most people I have seen at trivia night. The downside - other than more competitors - is more people smoking. Smoking is still legal in bars in North Dakota. My clothes and I stunk after I left several hours later. The smell was awful. A smoking ban in all indoor public places can't come too soon for me and most other people. Bonnie and Gene no longer attend trivia nights as they can't take the smoke.
Austin and Alan told me that recently one team was caught texting for the answers. I'm not sure if it was the judge and lawyers team that got caught, or whether that team was suspected later. I am not sure if the judge/lawyer team (the usual winners) won the second contest as team names can change each night. I do know they did not win the first contest. That was a team I hadn't seen before. That team was good as they won several of the 'quarter in the bucket for incorrect answers' trivia questions.
I would have won one of the 'quarter in the bucket for incorrect answers' questions if I had a quarter and tried to guess. The Surgeon General released his first report on smoking in 1964. People were all over the place with their answers from the late 1940s to the late 1970s. I guess these smokers didn't hear about the report or it's message that 'smoking is bad for you'.
In the first game Austin, Alan, and I got 14 out of 20 correct, good enough to tie for third place. The winners had 17 correct.
The second contest had about five questions that I remembered from last Spring when I was attending the trivia nights. The problem was that neither Austin, Alan, or I remembered the correct answers. In the second game we only got 11 out of 20 correct. If Rod had attended I am positive we would have gotten more correct each game.
Ed - the questioner - wore a Santa hat all night and between the two contests passed out Christmas cards. After the contests were over he stopped to chat with Austin, Alan, and I. Ed's old, old cat passed away this year and he now has a seven-toed cat.Austin drove Alan - who is blind - home. I walked home as I only lived a little over a half mile away and,
- I would have had to sit in the back seat of Austin's Geo Metro and share it with his Jack Russell terrier's kennel, and
- the weather wasn't too bad. Temperature wise it was near 20 F. The problem I found out later as I was walking home was the wind was NW at 17 mph which made a wind chill near 7 F. With such a bite to the air I ran more than walked home.
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