I played for hours on the corner of 85th St and 21st Ave in Brooklyn, with the rumble of the B train as background music.

We had our court on the sidewalk, because there was just too much traffic from 86th Street… there was no way to play a game on the asphalt.

We played 13-box, in two versions. If there were a lot of players it was 1-13, for a more leisurely game it was 1-13,13-1 before you could start knocking other players out of the game.

In the dark ages before twist off caps, the most prized cap was one with only a slight indentation from a bottle opener. We would rub the caps back and forth, back and forth on the sidewalk to get a smooth silver matte look on the bottom. Pop in a penny over the cork, and melt a candle (“wasting” a crayon that way would have made my mother berserk, “Whaddya think, we get them free from somewhere?”).

When the wax was just about firm, if you pulled a piece of paper towel over the cap it put a pattern in the top of the wax.

With box ball, tops, yo-yo, skelly, and chinese handball, who needed camp?