Board games are still alive

Today I gave my grandson the only gift he had requested for his birthday, a boxed Monopoly game, but not just any old Monopoly game.  This was the Zelda version. Happily, even though the board was printed with exotic properties and the money (still pink, blue, green, yellow, etc.) looked like foreign currency the game is still played like it always was. The corner squares still offer 200 (rupees?) for passing GO, direct you to jail (still in the opposite corner) and that wonderful Free Parking square where, if you land, you can pick up all of the money accumulated in the middle of the board. We spent a happy hour playing the one hour, speeded up version of the game. Playing Monopoly, any version, sends my thoughts back in time to Christmas days at my Aunt Dora's house. After the big Christmas dinner the adults would sit down at the kitchen table to play Eucre and we cousins would gather around the dining room table for a marathon gme of Monopoly. Those games always went on for huurs. It's fun to see some traditions carry on, even if it is in a version based on an electronic game, an unheard of possibility way back then.