I think it started early in the spring, maybe in March, well before we open now.  You can ask Mike Diamond over at the Tiki Bar with TBA.  He was there.

In the beginning, it was just three or four couples, regulars at Papa Boo's, looking for something to do.  They enjoyed Trivia.  They liked coming over to Starner's place.  Why not have a Trivia night?

They made up some rules, Starner hired a little jazz trio to play (older guys, though probably younger than Dan and I are now...I remember they had Cool Cat, Jazz-Guy hats) in the corner, and he pulled questions from a box of Trivial Pursuit cards.  There were probably a dozen people playing.

He invited me up the next week.  "You sit in the kitchen and come up with some questions. I'll buy your dinner."  So I hunkered down with some scraps of paper, that box of Trivial Pursuit questions, and Starner would shuttle back and forth.  The trio wailed away in the corner.

Suddenly, one of the women stood up and put another female patron in a headlock. I thought that odd.  It wasn't until a table overturned that I realized this was not part of the game.  

I do not think the dispute was over the Trivia.  At least not in the same sense as the game we were officially playing.  The band played on.

 Starner stopped the music, cleared the bar, the trio packed up, and we were left sharing a platter of gator bites and rice.  "Why don't you hire us?" I asked him.  "Dan and I do the music, the questions, the whole deal.  We'll have scorecards, some kind of trophy. You tend bar and socialize."

And that's what we did.

Since it was March, hoops junkie me thought the first night should be all NCAA basketball trivia.  It was a disaster.  I remember one disgruntled patron saying, "What are you thinking?  It can't all be about sports!"

Later, they would teach me other things.  Like avoiding, at all costs, politics and religion.  Sex was OK for a topic, in fact, one of the faves.  The bonus questions shouldn't be multiple choice.  The questions needed to be challenging, but not TOO challenging.  As one of my early mentors muttered to me on her way out, "It's a BULLSHIT question if nobody gets it."

We needed help managing the game, a "card girl" to work the room and keep the thing lurching along by managing the scorecards, marking the answers, keeping people engaged.  She had to be honest beyond reproach, someone who could roll with my mistakes, the weather, equipment malfunctions, disgruntled patrons who maybe take the whole thing WAY too seriously...and deal with cheaters.

Trivia started before everyone could come in with all the anwers...on his or her cell phone.  We all learned together that Google makes a lousy opponent. (The most inveterate cheaters ever encountered at Trivia?  The State Sheriff's Association, a great bunch of men and women who were kind enough to bring Trivia to their annual convention and who gleefully, albeit surreptitiously, consulted their cell phones the entire night.  There may have been half a dozen perfect scorecards at the end.  Even Shelli, our best ever partner in keeping order, couldn't lay down the law there). 

We actually had one dishonest card girl, one who fed the answers (and our free bar tab) to a small table of cronies in the corner, (extremely) unlikely "winners" on the last night of the season.  Their victory celebration was not well received by the house, nor was their benefactor hired back.

Certainly, outside of kitchen staff and servers, nobody has a tougher job on Wednesday nights than our card girls (I gotta come up with a more suitable title), especially on big nights.  Especially when storms interrupt the game and we move inside.  Especially when I don't come prepared with an  airtight, correct game.  Especially when perhaps said card girl stops for an afterwork soiree with friends and arrives half in the bag...or in the early days when we had a card girl or two with trouble regulating intake with a comped bar tab.

It happens. They always pull it off, one way or another.  Always.  

Our first professional card girl was Jamie Truex (Mills).  Smart, personable, charismatic, she set the standard for what we needed to make the game work.  When she needed to move on, we had no clue about a replacement...until, from the trivia team the Hornio's, more as a prayer than anything, we asked Shelli Morris, figuring there was no way she'd give up that good Wednesday night party with her friends to go to work with us.  That she did, and that she continues, handling patrons with a nurse's charm and...er...uh...firmness, coaching newbies, and always and forever catching my mistakes before they turn the night into ruin, is a marvel and such a critical part of how we entertain on Wednesdays that sometimes, maybe too many times, we take her deft management of the game, our guests, and, toughest of all, Dan and me, for granted.

Building the game between Wednesdays is the most challenging test writing of my teaching career.  How to write trivia so it's not minutiae. How to write a game that doesn't exclude certain age groups.  How much NASCAR, how little literature, where to sprinkle in the math or science...and the fact that every answer has to be checked and cross-checked...The only "F" word we want to be used in description of Wednesday Night Trivia is "FUN."  That ain't always easy. The actual sitting down and writing part takes three to four hours a week.

The best games still come out of the air, maybe a piece of trivia heard over the radio or caught in a newspaper, or, best of all, a topic suggested by one of the teams or a regular player.  

Trivia Night works at Papa Boo's because of the commitment of management and ownership, the sponsorship from our friends at Budweiser, the team spirit of our Boo Crew, the food and drink product that is Papa Boo's foundation, and, of course, our guests.  Their good humor, perspective, and willingness to play along with us week after week, never ceases to amaze and, honestly, humble Shelli, Dan, and me.

One the eve of another Trivia Season, I'm reminded of the words of that great Singin' Sage of the Sagebrush, Kinky Friedman: "It takes a genius audience to make for a genius performance."  We keep trying to hold up our end.  Our guests had theirs handled long ago.