PERSPECTIVES:Brothers find they're on to a winner - Shuffleboard, pool, darts:
                                Pichenotte has a bit of them all.
                                In truth, though, it is unlike any other game.

Financial Times; Dec 23, 2000
By TOBY SMITH

Dave and Norm Lagasse, two bushy-bearded brothers in their 40s, are sitting across each other at a dining room table in a modest home in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

In front of them lies a beautiful wooden board game covered with round, colorful playing pieces.
As the brothers try to send the pieces across the board, they carry on a dialogue as only two people who have done something together for four decades can.

Dave: "Got the touch of a blacksmith."

Norm: "Into the ditch I go."

Dave: "Can't buy a point."

Norm: "Look out for the hammer."

The brothers are playing pichenotte, a French term meaning "to flick an ear". The game, about 2 feet across, looks vaguely like Chinese chequers and has the feel of shuffleboard. It requires the angles of pool and uses the scoring of darts. In truth, though, it is unlike any other game.

At five or six years of age, the Lagasse brothers started playing pichenotte in their home state of Connecticut. Their grandfather, Lucien Rajotte, a grocer originally from Quebec, brought the game into the US and introduced it to his family. Soon after, on just about every weekend and holiday, the family was flicking pichenotte pucks across a kitchen table.

"And having the best time," remembers Dave.

"Nobody ever got into fights with this game," adds Norm. "There were five kids in our family and we never argued about this game."

Eventually, the family moved to New Mexico. There, they regularly pulled out grandpa's pichenotte board, which he'd skillfully crafted our of food crates from the family grocery store. If visitors dropped by they were often baffled, for the game in the US was as rare as a whistling pig.

One day three years ago, when Dave set up the ancient pichenotte board and realised how cracked and battered it was, he decided to make a new one.

It was a beauty. A relative noticed it and wanted one. Then a friend wanted another. Curious as to how great the interest might be, the brothers one night took one of Dave's new game boards to a Santa Fe saloon.

"People would watch," says Dave, "and say, 'No way I'm gonna play that tiddlywinks game'."

"Then eventually, they'd sit down," says Norm, "and pretty soon you couldn't get 'em up from the table."

When people started asking where the game came from, Dave and Norm did some research. The roots, they discovered, were probably in India, where the game has long been called carroms.

That led to squails, played in British pubs. A century ago the game emigrated to Canada where it became crokinole.

When French-Canadians put their own spin on it, the game turned into pichenotte, and is still quite popular in the north.

Pichenotte can be played by two, three or four people. Each competitor gets 12 pieces, or pucks. The pucks are "flicked" across a wheel-like board using the middle finger or index finger of one hand. Flicking a puck into a small centre hole is worth 20 points. Three concentric rings around that hole are worth 15, 10 and five points, respectively. Eight tiny posts present obstacles. If a puck slides into the "ditch", a trough that runs round the rim of the board, it's out of play. Games usually last only a few minutes.

"Going for 'Hogan's Alley'," says Dave, as he watches his brother line up a shot that will attempt to squeeze between two posts.

When Norm misses, Dave quickly bumps one of Norm's pucks into the ditch and puts his own puck in the centre 20 hole.

"Get a lot of those, don't you?" remarks Norm.

"Sign of a misspent youth," says Dave.

Norm's final puck clears the entire board.

"The hammer," sighs Dave.

When they saw how well the game fared at the Santa Fe saloon, the Lagasses made a couple more boards and took them to flea markets and craft shows. Crowds gathered and interest rose. Leagues soon formed in sports bars in northern New Mexico, and a 3ft tall trophy, the Pichenotte Cup, was inaugurated.

Word spread wider. The boards sold as fast as the brothers could make them. Eventually they reached a decision: they would go into the pichenotte business. Full-time.

Dave quit his job as a landscaper and dipped into his savings. Norm stopped working as a land surveyor and sold his beloved Harley. They set up a shop in Santa Fe and started turning out boards.
They've made more than 450 now. Prices range from 295. to 795. US.

Made of many different fine hardwoods, each board weighs 25lb and is two inches thick at the rail.

Dave: "They're very durable. It's gotta withstand 20 to 30 spilled beers."

Norm: "More like 200 to 300."

They do have a website (www.pichenotte.com) and that has helped business, but as yet there are no professional pichenotte players.

Norm: "It's gonna take time."

Dave: "We can wait."

Until then, the brothers spend their off-duty hours playing you know what.

Copyright: The Financial Times Limited