Con

Apparently it never did occur to me until much later on that there might actually be another chess club in the county. Somewhere.

So one Tuesday evening I found myself walking up the long pathway through the trees toward the RVCC. They had just started up a round-robin tournament on my first visit (which soon enough became the first tourney I was ever in...a nice way to break in to OTB btw).

Since I had arrived a bit late and had no one for an opponent, I wouldn't be able to play. Unless of course I were to take a bye that first round as player #9...

There was one other problem though: I didn't have the 8 bucks you needed to join the chess federation. But an old man spoke up, saying he would lend me the money.

So that was Con. He was my first opponent that next week too. I remember being so nervous about the clock and how it was sure to suddenly and mysteriously fast-forward to 6:00 (and FORFEIT) that I made all of my early moves very quickly. A strange notion indeed: you could actually lose the game by running out of time!

That first one was (believe it or not) adjourned (yes, I'm really that old). We resumed it over in Con's house a few evenings later.

His name was short for Constantine. He had pretty much spent his entire life fleeing communism. He was born sometime during World War I in Russia into an apparently aristocratic family. His dad fought in the White Army a few years, then headed off when all hope there was lost (only in the wrong direction) to China.

Somehow or other Con himself made his way to America. Where he became a CPA (the ultimate capitalist's revenge!). :D

I ended up playing Con more USCF games than anybody else (9). I remember him sitting there at the table at the club with that paper bag which contained his thermos of coffee. Con was nearing 60 and had a bit of a hunchback, I suppose--it's hard to imagine nutrition was too good for him early on. At any rate, he was always a model of decorum and good common sense. A quiet fellow, but the sort of guy where you'd always ask his opinion if the topic were anything at all important.

One time I remember we even got paired at a tourney 50 miles away from home. He could only smile at the sight of me walking up to the table (as he reached out to shake hands).

The last time I saw him was during one more year at the RVCC championships. This time, I'm rather happy to report, the Old Man won. Oh yeah, and the last game we ever played ended in a victory for him as well.

As a geezer myself now, I feel a certain justness in that. :)

PS I was just online and thought I had come upon his obituary, only to find that it was his son (the guy we always called Junior). Time marches on, I guess; anyway, I'd never realized before that Junior was born in Shanghai.