I grew up playing skully on 57th street between 7th and 8th avenue in Brooklyn. My dad taught all the urchins how to play one day in the late 60’s. Stoop and stickball came later in life, I was only 8 at the time. We used chalk for awhile until dad came home with a 1/2″ paintbrush and a gallon of yellow line paint, (This was something special because at the time it was new… It had crushed glass in it for visibility) He worked for hours and routed traffic along the sides of the fresh paint until it was complete. Creating the sliding gems was fun for us but a disater for mom.
she would spend hours scraping the wax off the stove after a gas bubble would splatter the liquid everywhere. Even our radiators had wax dribbles from making caps in the winter when we couldn’t wait to lay in the street again. Nickles were used to weigh the caps down, sometimes two were used. Then the polishing, endless circular swirls on the smooth asphalt street would be spent waiting for all steel bottom to show through the budweiser or mountain dew cap. We had poison traps on the field of play. The 13 was surrounded in the middle by a big poison trap that resembled a goofy looking skull. It was great fun and I’m considering putting a field in my basement or pouring a concrete pad out in the driveway so I can show the kids how to play.