Recalling the Days of Going Outside to Play
In my days of growing up, 1948 – 1950s, whenever my mom chased me out of the house, she would say “go outside and play.” Now-a-days if you tell that to the youngsters, they might go outside but they have no clue what to do. The only way they know how to amuse themselves is to sit under a shade tree and play games on their “smart phones.” We were never told how or what to play. We made up our own games especially in grade school.
One of my favorite games, we boys played, was a hot game of “You Keep-um Marbles.” It consisted of making a circle in the dirt with a stick. The circle was about two or three feet in diameter. Then as many boys as there were in a game – usually two or three – would drop a handful of marbles into the center and as they lay scattered, we would take turns hitting them with our personal shooter marble. My marble shooter was a special over-sized one that I cherished. I would keep each opponent’s marble that I knocked out of the ring. I had my pockets bulging with my opponents marbles! Of course, the nuns teaching us were opposed to this “keepers” game and considered it a form of gambling so we played out of sight, usually in the soft sand under the school house.
Mention a spin top and string and modern day kids will have no clue what that is. We youngsters spent many an hour spinning these rascals on the school house floor at recess. You wound a long piece of string around a wooden spool type sphere with a sharp nail-like nub on its bottom. Then as you threw it onto the floor, it would unwind and spin on that floor with terrific speed. As it spun for up to a minute or so, it would move about the floor or dance around. Each buddy of mine would spin his at the same time thus making the tops hitting each other get knocked out of commission. The last top to remain spinning was the winner. I was the usual winner cause I doctored up my spin top by whittling or put notches where the string rested upon. This enabled the string to get a better grip on the top to make it spin even faster. These notches also made my top more aggressive when hitting the other tops.
Another fun toy to bring to school and get into trouble with was the “Cricket”. The cricket consisted of a small tin usually in the shape of a cricket or grass hopper. Onto this shape was installed a flat high carbon blade of steel. As one would squeeze this cricket with the thumb, it would emit a sharp chirping sound. One could send Morse code messages with it. Everything was fine except if you happened to chirp these things in the quiet class room full of students! Without taking it out of my pocket I would reach in and sound off with a chirp or two. Then a buddy classmate, a few isles away, would answer with some of his own. Being muffled in the pockets, the nun never knew who the chirping cricket culprit was. So the next thing you know, other than pocket knives, toy crickets were a “nono” and could not be brought to school because they became a nuisance to the teacher!
One of my favorite homemade toys was a “pea shooter.” We had a cane patch on the side of our gravel road at the bottom of our ball diamond. All of my buddies would cut up the hollow tubes and make themselves some really nice pea shooters. As for me, I always had a better idea. In my Dad’s shop, I found a discarded 8 inch tire gauge. I took the guts out of it and it left me with only the stainless steel tube. Now what was I to use for ammunition? Most of the boys used wads of paper rolled up into spit balls. This was OK but their range left something to be desired. One day as I climbed a hackberry tree to look into a dove nest, I stripped off a hand full of red berries. Then I got an idea to try them as ammo for my pea shooter. They had twice the range and whenever we had a “shooters war” my buddies knew whenever they got hit with a berry it would sting a little more than normal spit balls!
All in all, we made up our own ways of having fun at no great expense to us. If we did happen to find a toy or objects to occupy our time, one thing is for sure, it did not require batteries!
Florian Kana writes monthly of his memories of growing up in Fayette County.