Memories: Pt.2: Child's Play

 

PART TWO

CHILD'S PLAY

On Saturdays and throughout the summer, most of the daytime noise was that of children at play. We generated plenty of it, with cap pistols, metal roller skate wheels on the sidewalk, and kids yelling at each other.

"Bang! I got you! You're dead!

"No, you missed! Bang! Bang!"

"You're not playing fair!"

We played in groups of two, three, and a dozen or more. If we wanted to play with someone, you might expect that we would go knock on his door and ask if he could come out to play - but we didn't do that. We would stand in front of his house and call him.

"Billy! Billee! Bill-eeee!"

Soon he would come to the door and tell us that he would come out as soon as he put on his shoes, or perhaps his mother would come and tell us that he had to finish his cereal before he could play. None of the children called me by my given name. Betty had nicknamed me "Brother Boy" when I was born, and the name caught on with everybody including my aunts and uncles, although it was eventually shortened to just "Brother". It must have seemed strange to the many door-to-door salesmen and deliverymen that visited the neighborhood that I had such a variety of siblings.

The girls played dolls and jack-rocks. We played marbles and fantasy games like "cops-and-robbers", "cowboys-and-Indians", "war", and "Superman". I think that the attraction of playing marbles was not so much the game as the marbles themselves. A boy's first bag of marbles is not just an assortment of “aggies” and “glassies”, but a small sack of colorful jewels. As for the fantasy games, it is hard to describe the reality that our vivid imaginations projected into our simulations of horses, guns, airplanes, and tanks. An empty cardboard box became the cockpit of a World War I vintage airplane, and an old broomstick was transformed into a machine gun locking its sights onto a German Fokker zooming in at ten o'clock high. Every movie that we saw and every comic book that we read was reenacted with variations and embellishments in our backyards and in vacant lots. We could be an awesome trio: Billy as Superman, Foo as Batman, I as the Flash, zipping along at speeds that rendered me undetectable except for the breeze left by my wake. We played "Robin Hood" for weeks, making bows of twine and sassafras shoots, and arrows from the reed-like stems of a native weed.

Most of the neighborhood boys were too old to play fantasy games, but sometimes we would get together, boys and girls, little and big, for one of the many games that had been passed down from who-knows-where. On a mild evening, it was often tag, or one-legged hop-tag, or hide-and-seek, which was more fun after dark because you could hide in any shadow.

I'm not sure why, but guessing games had a special appeal. One of them was "Draw a Semi-Symi Circle", in which the one that was "it" would cover his eyes while the rest of us stood behind his back, and one child would trace a circle on his back with his index finger while chanting the alliterative game words. Then another child would dot the circle in the middle with his index finger. "It" would turn around and try to guess, by the expressions on our faces which one dotted him. If he guessed right, the guilty one would try to run away, but if caught he became "It". Otherwise, the game was repeated with the original "It".

Another of the guessing games was "Bum-Bum-Bum", which was a team game. Two chalk lines were drawn on the sidewalk about six feet apart. One team, the workers, would huddle and secretly choose an "occupation". Then the teams would line up and march toward their respective chalk lines, as the worker team chanted, "Bum-bum-bum, here we come".

The other team responds, "Where ya' from?"

Reply: "Pretty girl station."

Response: "What's yer occupation?" (Nonsensical answer) "Get to work!"

Then the worker team would act out the motions of their occupation in pantomime, while the other team tried to guess it. As soon as the correct answer was shouted, the workers would flee, but those that were caught had to go over to the other side, which now became the worker team. The game continued until one of the teams was depleted. Some of the pantomime portrayals were hilarious. Perhaps you can imagine a half dozen kids simultaneously trying to mimic the actions of a preacher.

The sidewalk was also ideal for playing games like "Simon Says" and "May I?", also known as "Giant Step, Baby Step".

When it was too hot for active games, we played a guessing game that we called "Class". The "class" would sit in rows on the porch steps, with the "teacher" standing facing them, and holding a thimble filled with water. The teacher would call on the pupils, in random order, to guess the color that he, or she, was thinking of. The pupil that guessed correctly was rewarded with a thimble of water thrown in his face, and was promoted to teacher.

The vacant lot behind our house was too uneven, rocky, and overgrown with scrub brush to be a good playground; but there was a nice level vacant lot on the avenue that connected Eighth and Ninth Streets at the upper end of our block. We would gather there to play "Red Rover" and "Crack the Whip". I liked playing Red Rover because I was a bit heavy for my age and could usually break through the chain - but not always. Once when I was "invited" over, I picked out what I thought was the weakest link, between two girls, and charged as fast as I could. But the girls were older and bigger than I, and I found myself draped over their arms with my legs dangling in the air - and I was captured. I later discovered that the secret to breaking the chain is to do something silly, like running spindley-legged, that makes the opponents laugh, and consequently lose their strength.

To "crack-the-whip" we would form a line by grasping hands, with one of the older boys at the head end. He would start to run, slowly at first but gradually accelerating, and then begin to turn. The fun and action was near the end of the line, because when the wave generated by the turning motion traveled down the line, it became harder and harder to hold on.

Eighth Street sloped downward for two and a half blocks, beginning at the top of Belmont Hill, and terminating at Buena Vista Avenue, which was still well above the bottom of the hill and the railroad track there. Living on a hill had both advantages and disadvantages. When there was snow on the street, it was wonderful for sledding. At other times we would ride our wagons and scooters down the sidewalk, or come clattering down on skates. The tricky part was to find a way to come to a gradual stop at the end of the block without tumbling off the curb. It wasn't easy, and there were lots of tearful endings to these trips, along with the resulting scars and bruises. Sometimes we would tie a half-dozen wagons together to make a "train". It was a dangerous business because, once the train reached its top downhill speed, if the engineer in the locomotive made the slightest change in direction, the line of wagons would start fishtailing, and often one or two would flip over.

Sometimes we would get together in the street for a game of "long ball", a kind of one-base version of softball. Here, the slope of the hill was a real problem, because if the batter missed the pitch and the catcher somehow failed to stop it, he might have to chase it a hundred yards or more. We tried to solve this problem by using a "pig tail", or backup, catcher.

Hot days called for games of a more sedentary nature. We would find a shady place on a porch and play Monopoly - or a variation of it called Finance - for hours, or card games like Rook and Old Maid. We were not allowed to play with a standard deck of cards for religious reasons.

On rainy days we were sometimes permitted to play the games indoors, or work a jigsaw puzzle, or even gather around the player piano at Billy's house for a sing-along. However, our parents always preferred that we play outside, for obvious reasons.

About a half mile from our house was a city park that had once been a small estate. An old colonial house still stood on top of a hill where it was heavily shaded by a grove of oak trees. It had been taken over by the city as a recreation building, which we termed "the big house". One of its rooms had become a small branch of the public library, and another contained recreation equipment. The building had a large back porch, where we played a game called "caroms", which involved sliding wooden discs down a table-top "alley" so that as many discs as possible would go through the slots at the end of the alley. Occasionally we would check out a set of horseshoes for a game in the shade of the oak trees. But whenever it wasn't too hot, we preferred a game of basketball, which we played on an asphalt area that had been fenced in to serve as both a tennis court and a basketball court.

There was another kind of occasion when the boys and girls played together: birthday parties. A party invitation was bad news for my mother. It meant a streetcar trip downtown to buy a present, wrapping it, and making sure that I was bathed, dressed appropriately, and looking decent right up to party time. The parties did not have helium balloons or special entertainment, but they featured appropriate party games, followed by cake and ice cream. Then, while the parents were busy washing the dishes, we got to the part everyone had been waiting for: playing "post office".

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