Library Happenings

Henning School

In the past 32 years of my married life, I have prepared each Thanksgiving meal at my home for family and friends. This summer my youngest daughter got married and has requested to host Thanksgiving at her home, my reply was “ yes, yes, yes.”  

Don’t get me wrong, I love the smell of food, the preparation of it,  the eating of it, but I am not a fan of the clean up afterwards.  I am ready to hand the reins over for Thanksgiving and I’ll be glad to bring several dishes and drive 90 miles to enjoy the get together.  

A tradition we have always shared is playing board games.  We are very competitive with each other and we love to play the old Monopoly game.  

In celebration of Thanksgiving and board games our featured book this week is “Monopoly Mastermind” Charles B. Darrow.  Monopoly is the world’s most popular game, played in over 100 countries. Elizabeth Magie was an actress and a secretary that did not care for greedy landlords, whom she felt were ruining the nation. She came up with this board game as a way to teach people about having landowners pay higher taxes than the common laborer. This game was originally called “The Landlord’s” game.  

When Magie first tried to sell her idea to a game company, they  turned her down because they felt her game was too confusing and a game about business was not appealing. This is where Charles Darrow enters the picture. It was the Great Depression and Darrow was out of work.  He played the Landlord’s game often and knew he could make a better version of it. When his better version was presented to Parker Brothers and to Milton Bradley, they both turned him down, as they said the game took too long to play.

After another attempt with Parker Brothers, the company changed their opinion and purchased the rights to Monopoly for $7,000. 

In 1935, Mr. Darrow retired a millionaire.  An interesting fact about the longest Monopoly game played was that it lasted 70 days!  

We hope to see you up at the Henning Public School library on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from 3:30-5:30 p.m. following the school calendar.