The Deli Blog-Trivia

     The old saying is: For every action there is a reaction. You might say that adage was the genesis for Tuesday Night Trivia at The Big Apple Deli. If not that saying, you could also say we were dying on the vine, especially on Tuesdays, and we needed something/anything to at least break even.

     Tuesday Night Trivia began with my boys, Jack and Joe. They were visiting. We were talking. I was telling them that I needed an idea to boost business, especially on Tuesday nights.
      "Trivia!" they both said at practically the same time.
      "Trivia? You mean that type at Buffalo Wild Wings with the boxes and the TV monitors?"
      "No. It's just different categories with about five questions," Jack said.
      "There are teams. They can't use their phones," Joe followed up.
      "Where I go, it's packed every Trivia night."
      "We get there early just to get a table," Joe followed up again.
      "How long does it last?"
      "Usually about an hour," from Jack.
      "Try five categories with five questions," Joe followed up again.
      "What about a tie?"
      "Teams have to predict their scores before hand. Closest to that point total without going over wins!" Joe led this time.
       "Like the Price is Right?"
       "We don't watch the Price is Right Dad," from Jack.

       Thus, the birth of Tuesday Night Trivia at The Big Apple Deli. It started slow with only a few teams but at its peak, we had a standing room only crowd with 10 to 12 teams ranging from two or three members to teams of six, seven or eight. I'd make up the questions. Sometimes my friend "Magic Marvin" would offer a couple of categories. Our friends Toby and Stephanie Duchenaux would help. Stephanie and Teresa would keep score. Toby would bartend.

      The categories and questions ran the gamut. Teresa gave me lots of her fifth grade books like: Presidents of the United States, The Planets of our Solar System and Women in U.S. History. Marvin contributed questions ranging from "Batman" to "Zorro", fun pop culture stuff.  Others topics included: "Who am I?," sports, The Academy Awards, famous movie quotes and more.
       It didn't take us long to get into a groove and push the envelope. Before we knew it, we'd play "name the next line." That's where I'd play a snippet of music, stop the music and ask; "What's the next line."
      One week, I found an old CD of nursery rhyme songs. That proved challenging. Keep in mind most of our crowd was older and drinking beer.
       One of our more techo challenging topics was decipher the beer top. Lone Star Beer puts a puzzle inside each of its bottle top lids. They put them all on their website. So, we configured a way to show the puzzles on our big screen, gave teams about 15 seconds to see each puzzle and then asked: "Can you solve the puzzle"?
       One of my most memorable was on the topic of observation. The idea came to me in the days before trivia. I think one of our employees had come to me  with....
       "Hey Bill. My customers are asking where's our courthouse. Where is it?"
       "Uh, really?"
       "Yeah, they're from out of town and they like to see old courthouses. What should I tell them?"
       "Seriously? You're from Snyder, right?"
       "Yes and YES!"
       "Ok. Turn around and look out our front windows. See that big building across the street?"
       "Yes."
       "That's the Scurry County Courthouse... our courthouse."
       "No way!"
       "Way."

      That lack of observation or absolute stupidity, I'm not sure which, spawned my "Observation" category.
       I asked questions like: "If you're standing at College and 37th street and facing north, what's the building behind Gill's Fried Chicken. But my favorite question was: "Name the price of a Big Mac within 10-cents." Only one team got it correct.
     
       We got to know the teams like regulars, most of them were anyway. But many times, Tuesday Trivia would bring in people we'd never seen and they'd return but only for trivia.
       We had "The Honey Badgers," made of Western Texas College faculty and administrators, "The Snow Monkeys," who were two good guys who gave just about everybody a run for their money and "The Saints and Sinners," led by a local minister who once I had to apologize for the topics. Plus, there were many, many more. By the way, the "Honey Badgers" were the only team to get the correct answer for the Big Mac question.

      A fun game always comes with a prize. For many weeks, we felt obligated to offer gift certificates to the first, second and third place teams. Unfortunately, we found out that was costing us a fortune. So about mid-day in the life of trivia, we, with the help of Mike Thornton from WTC, created the B.A.D. Trivia Trophy. It was a giant question mark outlined in bling. Winner got their picture taken with the trophy and their team name on the trophy till the next week.

     In the end, Tuesday Night Trivia at The Big Apple Deli lasted quite awhile, maybe a year or more. Time took it's toll, but we'll always be thankful for the many folks who took about an hour out of their week to come to B.A.D. and help us out.

Bill Robertson, an old orchestra conductor in Charleston, WVA once told me: "Trivia is just a young person's way of looking at history."