I am looking for the finish to the rhyme that starts: Not last night but the night before, twenty-four robbers came knocking at my door. As I ran out, they ran in. Hit me on the head with a bottle of gin. It hurt, it hurt, it hurt all night I asked them what they wanted and this is what they said! That is as far as I get. Can someone please tell me what they wanted!!!!
Down down baby, down by the rollercoster. Sweet sweet baby, don’t let your honey go. Shimmy shimmy coco puffs, shimmy shimmy rye. Shimmy shimmy coco puffs. I like coffee, I like Tea. I like a boy and he likes me. i remember it something like that. of course please do understand that Typos are free LOL
This site is the greatest. My cousin and all my friends played skully for hours on end all summer in the 1940s in Manhattan. I taught my grandson how to play, my kitchen table became a skully board. I printed out the rules and board for him to share with his friends. Hopefully, skully will be around forever. We didn’t have any material goods in those days, but life was sweet and we were creative and enjoyed life.
Boxball was played with 2 to as many a 6 players (usually 4). Each player got a square on the sidwalk. The object was to bounce the ball with an open hand, into the box of an opponant. The other player do the same till a player misses or fails to put the ball in an opponants box. A miss meant a point and the first to 11 or 21 lost or was eliminated… last one standing wins! That was a great game… hours of fun on a sunny Saturday afternoon around the cornerer from Liona’s Cand Shop (at the time in early 80’s, this was still a fountain shop, unrenovated from the 40’s!!!) they made egg creams there still. this was on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg Brooklyn. Ahhh those were the days!
I played Johhny on the Pony during the early 80’s in Greenpoint/Williamsgurg Brooklyn. Also played Chinesse handball, Boxball, Stoopball, etc; but those are other great stories. Most memorible JOP story is when we actually convinced the girls that hung out with us in a schoolyard over on Havermyer st. to play JOP with us guys!!! Well needless to say, those of you who’ve played the game know the position you take being on the pony. That was the first time I put my arms around Lisa Ninziata’s waist. Wow, I was in heaven… pure bliss… until I turned my head toward the other team, just in time to catch a glimse of her then boyfriend Bobby’s sneaker as it slammed me on the side of the head, almost ripping my ear off. Well, this being perfectly leagal in JOP; I had to wait till my teams turn for retaliation. Later I would throw mu body, with full force at Bobby with elbows leading the way. And, in the end we would laugh ourselves to tears as Anthony’s radio played “The Piano Man”. What days those were… my best memories.
LOVE this site! Found it while looking for info on a game called “Kings”, which I find is also called Ace-King-Queen. Funny how the names mutate…. In Bayonne, NJ in the 60’s, the Pennsy Pinky was considered too soft for almost all uses; we were Spaldeen loyalists to a boy. Also: anyone who knows what a “money bug” was, e-mail me ()
Ok here go’s… there is NOT one mention about all the balls that were split down the seam, right in half. Why is that? How many times can you remember blasting the crap out of either ball & splitting it in half? I also remember before I was old enuff to play with the older guys, I would always pick up the half balls that were laying around the park & squeezing them on my face (cheek), or tricep so that it would form a suction & stay there only to leave quite a red blotch mark, as you can imagine. All in all, there was no better feeling than ripping into a Spaldeen with the whip action of a stickball bat and blasting the ball into orbit over the roof of a building in the GLENWOOD PROJECTS, in Brooklyn NY. PERIOD!!! Ahhhhh, those were the days…………
I remember growin’ up in Jamaica Queens, actually Rochdale village building 11 PLAY GROUND AREA. any way…..summer of 1980 ’til 82 it was popular. If you threw your top and it landed in box 1, that was considered an automatic POP so you got to go to 13 and hit the numbers backwards upon completion you had to complete landing in the trapazoid shapes surrounding the number 13. As you got into each box you would say I – AM-A-KILLER-DILLER. As you became KD you had to ask all the others players for “a corner”. The player had to choose one of those 4 outer corners. This was the corner that the Killer Diller had to put his top in the corner and BLAST your top out of square you were in. And he repeated for the remaining players What a memory…we settled our grievences …in game not violence. A frequently heard popular summertime shout would be “HEY, who wanna getta game?” and it was understood that the game that would get got was Skelly. Well that’s how it went down that sweltering Wednesday late afternoon in summer of ’81…Dellick got an automatic pop and within 7 minutes he called me from my corner and blasted me out of the game. Actually I heard the shout“KILLA DILLA” many times during that sweltering summer.” Hey Gary, Erik, Dellick,Willie, and Kim, where are you now?”And i shoulda known….. ’cause it was just a Jamaica tale!