I’ve only bumped into one other person who remembers playing what we called “Salughterhouse”, back in East NY in the fifties/sixties, and he lived in Queens. Basically, one person played american style handball wil a spaldeen (harder) or pinkie (softer, bouncier). His job, while maintaining the flow of a solitaire handball game, was to strike one of several other players on the fly with the ball. The other players, typically three or four, were lined up against the wall facing the handballer, with on foot on the wall at all times. Their job was to avoid being struck, and/or to catch the ball on the fly, ending the handballer’s serve, and taking the role themselves.

Our games took place along the sidewall of the Biltmore Theater on Wyona St. at New Lotts Ave. It’s long wall was about 20ft high and 75ft long, one of the great handball venues of East NY. It also had a recessed high wall about 20ft wide and 40ft high, with about thirty feet of pavement at the base. It made for the fabulous off-the-wall baseball games (until the theater owners would come out and chase us away).