The Games we Played

   Well here it is, another Saturday. Why do I always pick Saturdays? It's not that the rest of the week wasn't important, it's just that Saturday is when we got tho do lots of stuff we didn't have time to do during the week.
        As I mentioned elsewhere, in 1955 there wasn't any of the technology we take for granted today. East New York was a working class neighborhood, so most of the kids I knew came from relatively poor families that were more concerned about putting food on the table, than buying their kids all the latest toys and stuff. That doesn't mean we didn't have lots to do. Although I thought we made-up most of the games we played; it turns out that a lot of them date back to our parents and grandparents and even farther back than that.
        The first game I want to talk about is "Skelly". It was a street game (literally) that consisted of a large game board (drawn in chalk on the asphalt), and game piece's that were usually bottle caps. The object of the game as you can see from the diagram is to get your piece to land in each numbered box in number order by "flicking" it with your finger and thumb. Landing on the line didn't count. Here's where it gets tricky. If another player knocks your bottle cap out of the box........you have to start over. In the summer, we would scrape soft tar from the street into the bottle cap to make it heavier so you would be able to blast another players cap out of the game. To win, (center box #13) you first had to go through all four boxes that surrounded it.  A piece of chalk (or a rock) and some bottle caps you could find on the street and a bunch of kids could play this fun game for hours and hours and it didn't cost a dime!
        Here's a list of some other games we played. If anyone is interested in how they were played, please post a comment and I will detail the game in a future posting.

• Stick ball
• Johnny on the pony
• Hit the penny
• Chinese handball
• I declare war
• Three feet over Germany
• May I
• Stoop ball

        This is by no means a complete list. There was a lot of other games we played, probably too numerous to mention here. In the future I may post a separate page with a more complete list of street games.
        As you can see, a lot of games required a ball (rubber ball, "Spaldeen" ((which was actually a "Spalding")), or a "Pensy Pinky") to  play.  So, you say, if we were so poor, how did we get the balls? Easy, we fished them out of the sewers. Raymond (my older brother) and I would find a wire coat hanger, straighten it out, make a circle (smaller than a ball) on one and bend it and lo and behold! a sewer ball retriever. Sometimes we would spend hours finding balls and even sell them for a nickel each. Since we were almost never able to get an allowance, we had to find creative ways of making some change for spending money. In a future posting I hope to detail some of the many creative ways we were able to make money.

        A note to the parents of pre-teen kids: If you're tired of shelling out tons of money to find ways of keeping them busy; Teach them some of these games if you remember them. If not, I would be glad to send you information about them. Just post a comment with your email address. Initially, they may go through a season of technology withdrawals, but believe me, it's worth it.
        Have fun! Games like these are not just for kids, if your 30, 40, 50, 60; try them; you'll have a ball too.

Til next time
Don