We should give some board games a Southern spin

In the corner of my office is a nook with a bunch of wooden crates stacked together to make shelves. A real writer might have such an area filled with classic literature like “A Tale of Two Cities,” “Madame Bovary” or “Justin Bieber: His World.” But not me.

No, my office nook is filled with games. These aren’t video games, mind you, because I haven’t been able to play a video game since they came out with “Pitfall” for my Atari 2600. I’m talking about board games.

Most of them, somewhere around 100 percent, are technically my wife’s. I married into these games, although I’ve owned many of them over the years — stuff like Battleship, Monopoly, Clue and Scrabble.

It’s fun to get the family together and play these games, but I think I’d enjoy them a little more if they had a Southern spin on them. That’s why I’ve put together a list of suggestions for Parker Bros. and their buddies. I’ll expect a very small commission on each, such as:

▪ Basstracker: It’s set up exactly like Battleship, except that your five craft are a party barge, a Sea-Doo, a bass fishing boat, a canoe and an inner tube carrying a cooler full of PBR. In the TV commercial, little Bubba yells, “Dang it — you done sank my beer!”

▪ Alabamaopoly: Marvin Gardens is now Kudzu Patch and Mediterranean Avenue is now Hatchechubbee Creek Avenue, but the biggest differences are that you only collect $184 for passing Go and you put RVs and motels on your properties. The top hat game piece, meanwhile, has been replaced with a Make America Great Again trucker cap.

▪ Hick Life: It’s very similar to the traditional Life game, but the event cards you pull are a little different, such as, “Your daughter gets promoted to prime-time shift at Juggzillas; advance four spaces” and “Meth lab explodes; go back three spaces.”

▪ Georgia Operation: This game is much less stressful than the old game that buzzes and turns the patient’s nose red when you touch the metal while trying to remove organs and bones. In this version, you just look at the patient and tell him to suck it up and deal with the water on the knee because the governor refused to expand Medicaid and he can’t afford insurance.

▪ One: Let’s just say it’s an awful lot like Uno for folks who don’t put up with no Spanish talkin’ folks.

▪ Risky: This varies a good bit from the old Risk objective of trying to conquer the world. In this one, you simply try to move a little plastic liberal survey-taker across Big Jim Tunnamanoor’s front yard without getting him shot.

▪ Jails and Bigfeet: Ain’t no Southerner ever seen Dungeons and Dragons.

▪ Up $#!& Creek: Same as Trouble.

▪ Weejer: “Dagnabbit, Carla Sue! I done told you and Bertha Mae to leave that Weejer Board alone. It ain’t Christian to go conjurin’ up dead folks.”

I’ve got a few more like Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Rednecks, Hungry Hungry Hound Dogs and Rat Trap, and I’m sure you’ll see all of them soon at your local Fred’s or Super Dollar.

Meanwhile I’m trying to find out how to turn my grandma’s favorite games into board versions, but it’s pretty hard to translate “Let’s Play the Quiet Game” and “Go Fetch Me a Switch” into something you can put in the game nook.

This story was originally published January 30, 2017 at 1:53 PM with the headline "We should give some board games a Southern spin."