Kid Games 1951

 

PoBoy Views

By

Phil LaMancusa

Fair Play

Or

Time Out

“A. A my name is Alice and my husband’s name is Al; we come from Alabama and we sell Apples! B. B my name is…..” A kid’s ball bouncing game.

        There’s a certain playing ball made by Spalding Company, it’s called the Spalding High Bounce; it looks like a pink bald tennis ball and its bouncing ability is legendary. It’s used primarily by city kids for street games such as stick ball, stoop ball, throwing, catching, hand ball and bouncing ball games like the one mentioned above where the ball is bounced in cadence time and at every capital letter word (“A my name is Alice…”) has to be bounced under the leg until the entire alphabet is sing-songed to its end. Get it? There’s usually only one or two Spaldings to any group of kids so that if a miss occurs the ball is passed to another kid to try to get further, beginning all over again (“A my name is Alice...”).

        Back in the day when mothers were between their husbands coming back from WWII and sons going off to Korea, we as kids played in the streets and courtyards under their watchful eyes while they sat smoking cigarettes and gossiped with each other: “Marcia! Get down from there before I hafta get up from here!”---“Tommy! You better learn to pick on somebody your own size before I tell your father!”

        Girls played with Jacks and jump ropes; boys collected baseball cards, played with tops, yoyos, and anything that resembled mock weaponry. Some played with marbles; others pitched pennies against the wall. We sat on stoops and played card games while the older kids congregated in parks playing older teen games (softball, basketball and showing off).

        Card games by the dozen: War; Old Maid; Casino; Slap-n-Match; Knuckles and the infamous ‘Fifty-two-Pick-Up’. Roller skates were these metal things that strapped to your ankle and were held vice-like on the front of your shoes, tightened by a ‘skate key’; if a skate went missing it was probably because some boy nailed it to a 2x4 to make a scooter of sorts. Pea shooters, sling shots, spit balls and carpet guns rained on the unsuspecting. Chalk games like hop scotch and Skellies; ask your grandparents.

        Choosing sides by throwing finger signals or Rochambeau or ‘one potato-two potato’. Hide and seek; Red Rover-Red Rover; Red Light-Green light; Ringolevio or the dozen kids long ‘Rattlesnake’. There were summertime swimming pools and beach outings. Minimum wage was a dollar an hour. “A my name is Alice…”

        There were playgrounds that we could go to on school-less days with burning metal slides, swings with wooden seats that you could stand on, see-saws that were used as whip lash testing, monkey bars that you could either fall from and break a bone or surreptitiously get a glimpse of Molly’s underwear and that round merry thing where you ran around it to get it going real fast before jumping on for a ride or falling on your face in real gravel. We went home tired, dirty, bruised and happy.

        Mothers called kids in for supper and let them stay out until street lamps came on. Our parents were beer and whiskey drinkers; filter-less cigarette smokers and physical punishment was swift and brutal. Bigger kids stuck up for smaller ones and smaller ones emulated the bigger ones; I got caught smoking when I was eight years old (Mom made me eat a cigarette). It was a rite of passage when someone took you aside to show you how to stick up for yourself by using your fists. You never hit a girl or someone wearing glasses.

        This was the projects; the welfare checks came on the first of the month; few had televisions, but everyone had a radio; you got your phone calls at a neighbor who was lucky enough to get a phone installed; you could smell what everyone was having for dinner in the building’s halls; you knew their music. Gas was .23 a gallon; nobody had a car.

        Food was coin of the realm and as long as your parents had breath in their bodies, you had food on your table. Dinner time was mandatory and at a precise hour. All kids had chores to make it happen: going to the stores; helping with the dinner prep; setting and clearing the table; washing (and drying) the dishes; taking out the trash.

        Kids collected soda bottles for refunds and spent the money on penny candy. Keeping up with the newspaper funnies was de rigueur. Girls taught each other how to dance and then taught their brothers how to lead. There was this new music that kids listened to on transistor radios; the music was called Rock and Roll (which was originally a euphemism for having sex).

        On Saturdays our parents would send us to the movies and it took years to figure out that that was the only time they could get some privacy. Everyone went to church on Sunday and holidays were sacrosanct. We dressed up for Easter; were smug about our school supplies, showed off our Christmas haul and danced in the streets to marching bands. There were no ‘only childs’; everybody had brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents somewhere, and besides them, you had neighbors. Folks were always dropping by or gathering in groups.  Mothers hung out windows watching the world go by; you couldn’t get into mischief unseen. Pops would be home soon from work.

        Growing up in an inner city, you’re are a tribe unto yourselves; the economy is someone else’s concern; there’s rich folk, the ones who make it to the suburbs and you. Poor but proud and gonna be somebody some day. “A my name is Alice…”