On more than one occasion I remember opening manhole covers in the middle of the street to look inside. We would see some water flowing at the bottom and “hope” to see some raw sewage floating by. (Boys will be boys) Of course some parent would happen to look out their window and find us doing it and either call our parents or come outside and tell us to put it back.
I played Skelly as a kid on Long Island NY around 1966-68. I remember that my brother and I would fight for the top to the Skippy peanut butter because it was so heavy and was great for making it all the way across the board from 1 to 2. I think the loser always got the top to the jelly jar which wasnt nearly as heavy. We would play with 6-7 other neighborhood kids in the middle of the street and every now and then a car would run over your top. (ouch) The board was about as wide as the street and was numbered from 1 to 13. You had to “skip” your top across the board and go from box to box. First one to 13 was the winner. Opponents could use their top to knock you out of the box and off the board if they were close enough to you. (another good reason to have the Skippy top) There was some kind of border around 13 in the center of the board but I dont remember what that was for. It might have been a penalty area if you landed inside it.
I’m a 25 year old from Jersey and when I was a kid, I remember my dad teaching me a couple of the games he used to play when he was growing up in NE Philly. He showed us one game called “Halfball” where you would cut a tennis ball or raquet ball in half and play stickball with it. Some of the pitches you could toss with the half ball were more interresting than almost anything you could do with a regular baseball. That’s a game that teaches you how to keep an eye on the ball and how to swing properly to make good contact. Another game was a little simpler. All it required was a (whole) tennis ball and some overhead wires (preferably 3 or 4 running parallel one on top of the other). It played as a type of baseball game. You would allocate bases for each wire (bottom wire was a single, the second wire was a double, etc.) and the “batter” would toss the ball in the air in an attempt to hit one of the wires with the ball. If the “outfielder(s)” caught the ball before it hit the ground, it counted as an out. If the ball hit a wire and then hit the ground without being caught, you were awarded “bases” relative to which wire was hit. You had to get out 3 times before the next person was up. It was a pretty cool game that didn’t take up a lot of room in the street and still had a baseball-type edge to it. I highly suggest giving it a try.
I grew up in a cluster of garden apts in Ridgefield, NJ and recall the ice cream man, the milk man who brought bottled milk with cream on the top to the wooden (and later aluminum boxes) outside our back doors, the Fuller brush men who came by once in a while, the bakery guy (can’t remember the name) who had fantastic cupcakes (you could roll off the top chocolate icing and eat it separately) and also the guy who sharpened knifes and scissors who came by periodically.
I was surprised that in the discussion of “balls” no mention was made of the fact that that wonderful pink ball with the nice script “Spalding” on it, was pronounced, at least where I grew up, as a “Spaldeen.” I also wish that someone would post some of the “girl” games: jump rope along with the chants/songs; hopscotch (lots of different rules), etc.
Well, nowadays, it seems the best way to throw money out the window via the Internet is to go MULTIMEDIA! What is that, you say? Lots of video clips with a side dish of sound bites with an extra heavy serving of graphics. Download times would be outrageous but that old axiom still applies today, even on the Internet, “good things come to those who wait”. The longer the wait, the more desireable it is to see what the hell you’re actually downloading. You could have thousands of people on your site at any given time trying to download a 5 minute clip of you swinging at a ball with a broom stick. Isn’t that great?! Any communications company or Internet Provider would be an absolute fool not to dive head first into this pool. The losses in the first year alone would be enough to bankrupt small countries (and nowadays, even some larger ones). It’s easier and quicker than getting a loan from a bank nowadays and the best part is – YOU DON’T HAVE TO PAY IT BACK! It’s a business loss And A TAX WRITE-OFF! GOD I love this country.