White Owl Social Club

The white Owl social club located on St. Jacques near Desnoyers, required that everyone entering the premises be a member , so everyone had to fill out a membership card form. There were over six thousand membership cards signed. The club had several partners but was mainly managed by Tony Mancini the former guardian of parc Vaillant. The club sold beer and spirits and had outdoor bocce courts. It had a large interior room where people played Italian card games such as tre sette or brisqela . On weekends we used to have tre sette card matches two against two. On many occasions there were twelve or more people playing and the losers of the game had to pay the beer. Winning the game did not automatically qualify the winners to drink the beer because all the beers were accumulated in a pot and then we played for Patrone to determine who would be the boss of all the beers. The person who became the Patrone decided who would drink and who would go dry. The rule was that if you went dry, you had to wait until all the beers in the pot were drunk before ordering a beer to quench your thirst. This created many frictions and the dry card players were very anxious to start a new game and possibly get their revenge. If revenge was not obtained that day, there was always the following week. Memories were long. This method was also used during bocce games. It was great fun.

The Bocce matches were also a lot of fun and leagues consisting of two or three players were organized.

Sometimes, we played pick up Bocce matches and then played for Padrone, with the losers paying for the refreshments.

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