Local man takes on 'Old Maid' on her own ground In a few years, if might be said this is the classic story of "small town boy makes good", or that Wayne Cooley is a true Horatio Alger. If Cedar native Cooley's little card game cathces on like, say, Monopoly, well, he is in for a lot of Horatio Alger metaphors. Inspired initially by his father's handicap in playing cards, due to vision and hearing impairment, Cooley devised a card game which not only makes the colors, suits and numbering of cards more legible, but combines the cards used in Poker, Rook, Torak, Pinnocle, Old Maid, Fish, and numerous others. "It is the card game and the deck of the future," Cooley, with hundreds of dollars invested in the card game, said. "The Universal Deck, as I call it, is capable of eliminating the need for different decks for other games. This deck is alphabetical and in other ways different from more familiar decks " Accountant presently Wayne is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Hazen Cooley, 384 South 300 West. He is presently living in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where he is an accountant ac-countant with a textile company. "I was raised on Rook," Cooley remembers. "For two years I mulled this idea around in my head and the past year I have spent getting the thing going." Cooley said he hasn't quit his accountant ac-countant post to peddle his card game full time-"I am not to that point yet. It is still a hobby, though I .. hope to expand." Rather than having the standard spades, hearts and so on, the Universal deck differentiates between bet-ween suits by use of a symbol, the highest having only one side (a circle), cir-cle), the next highest two sides (a quarter moon), the third highest three (a triangle), and the lowest suit a square. Colors are blue, gold, red and black, in descending order. There are also no numbers, but only letters on the cards. "Converting over to the Universal Deck is something like converting to the metric system-it is better if you forget the old rather than try to keep making comparisons," Cooley explained. ex-plained. "The easiest way to get acquainted with the Universal Deck is to play one of the three Universal Games especially designed to acquaint people with the deck." Instructions on Universal I, II, and III are inlcuded with the deck he said. Producing the playing cards turned out to be. a bit of a problem, whereas only two companies produce playing card stock, and one of those is the American Playing Card Company, "and they don't sell to anyone else," Cooley said. The cards had to be sent several hundred miles to receive a plastic coating, also. "And then I had to cut each one out with a die by hand at home in my living room," he added. "It took four months just to punch out the cards by hand. Needless to say, I am designing an automatic system." The cards themselves are metric and a slimmer size than poker cards, slightly taller and wider than a bridge card, Cooley said. A drug store chain in South Carolina has agreed to carry the new deck, Cooley said, along with several local outlets, including Bradshaw Firestone, Hunter Hardware, Cedar Drug, Hobby Lobby, What's New and Southern Utah Office Machines.