Local
Eight Bay View friends have dealt Sheepshead together since 1968
A group of former classmates meets each month in Milwaukee’s Bay View neighborhood to play Sheepshead, sustaining a friendship that has lasted nearly six decades. The German-origin card game is the centerpiece of a ritual built as much on familiar jokes and stories as on the cards.
For nearly six decades, eight former classmates from Milwaukee’s Bay View neighborhood have kept a monthly date to play Sheepshead, the card game with roots in Germany that became a Wisconsin tradition.
The group began meeting in 1968 and continues to gather regularly. For member Terry Wobick, the routine is about more than the game: The friends can revisit the same stories and jokes month after month and still enjoy one another’s company.
“We stay pretty tight together,” Wobick said.
Their long-running get-togethers offer a simple but enduring kind of community: a regular chance to reconnect with people who have known one another for decades. Sheepshead provides the reason to meet; the friendships, and the shared memories that come with them, have helped keep the tradition going.