I discovered that I am a better winner at playing a Cleveland Browns game than Brady Quinn and the rest of the guys wearing brown and orange. This happened when my grandson, Matthew, challenged me to a game of Browns Monopoly when we visited Columbus last weekend.

I don't usually win in playing games with our 10-year-old grandson, as he is very quick to learn and pays attention well. I thought it would be a venture in getting my clock cleaned in short order, and we could go on to something else that he beats me in, namely Uno.

Instead of Boardwalk, Park Place and Vermont Avenue, the blocks on the game board were called Dawg Pound, Brownie the Elf, Otto Graham, Ozzie Newsome, Lou Groza, Paul Warfield and the Dawg Pound End Zone. There were also blocks with the 1946 Browns and 1950 NFL Champions to name a few.

You didn't buy houses and hotels in this Monopoly game, you purchase luxury boxes and stadiums to put on your matching lots.

Of course, there was the "Go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200" square that I would hit every other venture around the board.

The bills were in Browns denominations of $500, $100, $50, $20, $10, $5 and $1.

I was landing on properties and buying everything in sight while Matthew landed on squares where he had to take either an offense or defense card. He gathered up two get-out-of-jail free cards and collected small money amounts for making an interception or had to pay out a bit of cash for tripping or unsportsmanlike conduct.

My purchases paid off as Matthew started landing on my properties and when I put a stadium on some of them, it got costly.

I would let him slip on a few payments but granddaughter Jessie played the banker and was much harder on him. And much to my son, Jay's, objections, we were changing the rules around a bit. There were no referees to rule against it, so why not bend a few restrictions?

After almost three and one-half hours, Matthew had mortgaged all his properties and was down to his last dollar, so we threw in the proverbial towel.

Of course, Matthew wants a rematch, and I know that I won't be as lucky the next time. I won that time by pretending I was Hines Ward going in for the touchdown from a Big Ben pass.

In Columbus, I am in Browns territory big time. Just about everyone in the family is a fan of the brown and orange so it was so nice to see Nick Zanke walk in to Jackson and Maggie's birthday party wearing a gold and black Steelers shirt.

Jackson has changed direction in his toys from a love of Thomas the Train to dinosaurs. He had a birthday cake decorated with a stegosaurus and other creatures with names even harder to spell.

Maggie had a Mickey Mouse cake. She would love Kathy Dombroski's dog, Buffy, who modeled a Minnie Mouse dress with polka dots for the Apple Festival pet parade. She even got a Mickey Mouse robot thato did a jazzy shuffle dance when activated.

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I attended a Kings Daughters and Sons, Serve Others Circle, luncheon meeting this week and found the ladies to be very friendly.

Linda Cooper, president, tells me the international order was started in 1886. The Steubenville chapter is not that old but was formed in 1924. It supports Indian missions, scholarships, literacy and the local Salvation Army and Urban Mission to name a few of their tasks.

I knew one of the members, Martha Brondos, from doing a story on her daughter as one of my first assignments at the Herald-Star. Ruth Ann McLaughlin is my buddy from the Steubenville Woman's Club. Lucille Smith is mother to our former photographer, Ron Smith, and Kate Gardi makes beautiful book markers from real flowers. Other ladies in the group are JoAnn Birney, Donna Grimm, Erdella Hannen, Helen Moore, JoAnn Moore, Marian Renda and the Rev. William Hannen.

Like most organizations these days, the Serve Others group is looking for new members to join in the fellowship.

The YWCA lunch was a treat as I always heat up a Lean Cuisine meal in the microwave for my mid-day meal.

I want to thank Lucille and Ron Smith for the green tomatoes left at the office for me. They are a special treat at this time of year as all our tomatoes have been gone for weeks.

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After Saturday, we will have to take down the Halloween decorations and put up those with Pilgrims and turkeys. The pumpkins will stay until the deer decide to have a healthy meal.

I love to see children dressed up for trick-or-treat. We never had that when I was young. All we did was soap windows and throw shelled corn against a house to make a big noise but my grandmother Kollar caught us once and made our gang wash the windows where we had applied Lifebuoy soap.

(McCoy, a resident of Smithfield, is food editor and a staff columnist for the Herald-Star and The Weirton Daily Times. She can be contacted at emccoy@heraldstaronline.com.)