October 5, 2015 (Monday)
I saw an old 1964 episode of the Lawrence Welk Show Saturday and one of the songs featured the Lennon Sisters playing Hop-Scotch. Made me think of the childhood games we used to play when we were kids in the 1930’s and early 1940’s.
There was hop-scotch, a game where a series of boxed areas were drawn in the dirt with a stick or on the sidewalk with chalk, and the participants hopped from one to the other, retrieving a rock or a small object of some kind. Both boys and girls could play.
The two sexes could also jump rope together, with two kids holding each end of a rope and everyone else darting in one at a time (or more sometimes), and later exiting. At times two ropes were used, being swung in opposite directions. Sounds difficult, but most kids could meet the challenge.
Girls played jacks with tiny rubber balls; boys played mumbley peg with their pocket knives. Girls played with dolls; boys with toy guns.
The boys would choose up sides, with as few as one on a side, and play cops and robbers or cowboys and indians. Sometimes it was just the “good guys” and the “bad guys.” We made the sounds of the guns firing with our lips pursed and producing a sneeze-like noise. We knew when we were killed and we died with great style. We were careful not to fall onto the pocket full of marbles.
The girls would dress up in their mothers’ dresses and shoes and serve imaginary tea to each other while minding the baby dolls.
As the sun got lower in the late afternoon, boys and girls together would play, “Hide and Seek,” “May I,” or “Simon Says.” We would top it off with “Leap frog” or “Cartwheels.” We played outside.
Sometimes the boys would crawl inside an old tire and get pushed down the road, or take a ride on a scooter made of old lumber and worn-out roller skates.
At school recess we climbed monkey bars, pushed the merry go round, played catch with balls, threw some hoops, and kept moving, with a lot of running and jumping.
I’m sure there are many more chapters to this story, but after all these years, I probably have forgotten the other games. Without TV, smart phones, online games, and all the other techno marvels of this day, we had a lot of fun. At least, that’s the way I remember it.