Try that now and you'd probably be lynched for all sorts of health and safety breaches and possibly child abuse. We used to play Rummy with the kids on holiday, usually sitting outside a cafe or taverna or somewhere as well as the game where you stretched a paper napkin across a glass, balanced a small coin on it and then took turns to use a lit cigarette end to burn holes in the paper until the looser let the coin fall into the glass. Their favourite games, apart from gambling ones like pontoon and poker which were not allowed, were Switch and Scabby Queen and a painfully vicious game called Swipes which involved being hit across the knuckles with the edge of the cards.
Up till recently, I worked with a bunch of teenage reprobates from many of the least desirable estates in Glasgow and virtually all of them played cards.
