6th Annual NIRG Lake Geneva Poker Rally

By Ken Bounds

For over 30 years, our group has enjoyed a tour to the Lake Geneva area the last weekend of September; first with the Classic Car Rally, then, after its run concluded, with our annual poker rally.  In all these years, I do not know of one with nicer, warmer weather than what we experienced this year.  What a weekend!  Mostly sunshine with daytime temperatures in the upper 70s and lows in the 50s.

Meeting at the Town and Country Mall in Arlington Heights were Ken & Carolyn Bounds – ‘50 Convertible, Joe & Nell Kozmic - ‘53 Mercury, Stan Stack - ‘53 Tudor, Dan & Diane Pudelek - ‘53 Victoria, Tom & Madeleine O’Donnell. - ‘40 Mercury with their guests (all the way from England!) David & Arlene Lodrick, John & Este Scheve - ‘47 Coupe, and Larry & Jerry Webb, modern.  This was the maiden voyage of the Scheve Coupe – congratulations!  We all donned our rally buttons, provided every year by Joe Novak.  We missed Joey and Milly this year; Joe needed to be home to attend a religious ceremony related to the recent death of his mother.

We had a beautiful, leisurely drive up back roads to one of our old lunch stops from years ago, Local Folks in Slades Corners, Wisconsin.  There we met Tom & Judy Buscaglia – ’51 Tudor and John & Barb Slobodnik – ’54 Fordor.  We went over plans for the weekend and the poker rally and drew our first card.  Three prizes were awarded:  Arlene won local pasta sauce for drawing the highest spade, Tom O’Donnell won a 4-pack of local root beer for being the first man to draw a king, and Este won a ceramic pumpkin for being the first lady to draw a queen.  In addition, we solicited donations for the Corrine Kreissl Memorial Foundation.

After saying goodbye to Stan who was heading home, we took a new and interesting route to our weekend home, the Comfort Suites in Delavan.  After checking in, we all drove to “stop and smell the roses” in a beautiful rose garden north of Delavan at the home of a gentleman named Doug Amon.  Doug tends to his large garden in memory of his wife.  We also got to see his 1924 Model T milk truck.  Here we drew our second card; with the highest diamond, Nell won a jar of garden salsa from the nearby Apple Barn.

The fun for the day was just beginning.  Back in Delavan we stopped at a parking lot near the hotel to play car games.  This year we had time for three games: reverse parking, blindfolded driving, and blind toll booth.  There were plenty of laughs as driver after driver stepped up to play these death-defying games of skill.  John & Robin Emmering arrived on the scene in their ’49 Fordor in time to take part.  After protesting that he did not want to drive one of our vehicles, especially with the steering wheel on the wrong side, David promptly nailed the top result in blindfolded driving, missing the target by only 10 inches.   Este was closest to the cone, coming within 20 inches.  Carolyn and Ken tied in blind toll booth, each with a toss of 3½” from the bucket.  But John Emmering brought down the house in blindfolded driving, finishing half a city block from the target.

You would think with all that excitement the rest of the day would be dull.  It was, until we arrived at our Friday evening restaurant to find that it had gone out of business the day before!  Carolyn and I had just eaten there 6 days earlier to check it out.  We quickly recovered, though.  Harpoon Willie’s, our favorite spot in Williams Bay, just happens to use the same parking lot and was able to accommodate our group of 20.  Because we were split up, we waited until our return to the hotel to draw our third card.  Dan won a jar of local popping corn by drawing the highest club.

Saturday morning we had breakfast at the hotel and drew our fourth card.  This time Arlene won a gift card from Kirwin’s in Lake Geneva.  Unfortunately Diane was not feeling well, so she and Dan left for home; she is now feeling better.  About 9:00 am we left the hotel for a short but scenic indirect route to the Abbey marina in Fontana to spend some time at the antique and classic boat show – often called the wood boat show.  There were really some spectacular craft there.  We also drew card #5; Carolyn was the winner of a package of carmel apple crisp mix from the Apple Barn.  At the boat show, Ron & Colleen Steck joined us in their ’40 Pickup and Scott Gilday arrived in a modern car.

From Fontana we took a leisurely drive around the south side of Geneva Lake to Popeye’s Restaurant in Lake Geneva.  After dropping the ladies off, the guys found parking spots and introduced themselves to the new high-tech Lake Geneva parking stations.  Some of us ordered off the special Oktoberfest menu while others chose the regular menu.  Plenty of Spotted Cow was served.  We drew our sixth card with newcomer Colleen winning a jar of local honey.  After lunch, some enjoyed the Geneva Lake museum, some went shopping, and others went to one of our old watering holes before taking back roads back to Delavan.

We were able to kick a few tires in the parking lot before sprinkles sent us inside.  Saturday evening was the main event.  We drove to nearby Joseph’s Steakhouse for our final dinner.  Before enjoying a super meal, we drew our final card and analyzed the hands for winners.  Judy won raspberry salsa from the Apple Barn for drawing the high club.  The big winners arrived in the same car – seems like an inquiry is in order!  John Scheve took home $20 for the low hand, 2-3-5-6-7.  Este had an incredible full house, aces over queens to take the grand prize of $100.  She also was awarded the coveted Richard Alfini memorial winning hand award.  Congratulations!

Sunday morning, the fun was still not over.  With our perennial breakfast stop of Millie’s now closed, we ate breakfast at the hotel.  Afterwards, we gathered in the lobby for people games for the first time at our rally.  We played the Ford V-8 buzzer game, created and generously donated to our group by Dave Thatcher of the Kansas City Regional Group.  We also had a ’39 Mercury puzzle, again donated by Dave Thatcher.  Finally, we had our stack the lugnuts game which we had debuted at the Spring Fling.

Everyone seemed to get a kick out of the games and the competition was fierce.  During the games we took a break to announce the winners of the car games, each receiving a Culver’s gift card.  Our visiting guest David Lodrick was the overall winner – not bad for someone who had never driven our vintage vehicles and who had to drive from the wrong side!  Second place went to Carolyn.  A very special trophy was presented to John Emmering – the long distance (blindfolded) driving award.

When all the results were tallied, John Scheve had won both the buzzer game and the puzzle game.  Carolyn just edged out Este in lugnut stacking.  We congratulate John and Este for their successful run in their “new” ’47 Coupe.  We heard them mention that they almost needed a truck to haul home all their winnings!

After checking out of the hotel, we proceeded to Greenie’s Clubhouse for lunch.  Everyone said their goodbyes and headed for home after a wonderful weekend of V-8 fun and camaraderie on an incredible early fall weekend.  Importantly, we raised, with the help of the NIRG members, $700 for the Corinne Kreissl Memorial Foundation.  This brings our total donation over the 6 years of our rally to $3,000.  Thanks everyone!  Plans are already being made for our 7^th annual rally next year.