Streetplay Discussions
My name is Charles Petersil….
My name is Charles Petersil. I grew up in the Bronx, in an area called Highbridge. I was called Husky as a kid. I played stickball on a regular basis on Nelson Avenue, and I used to hit three sewers. I also belonged to a group known as the Satanic Dukes. If anybody remembers me, send an e-mail to me at .
Another ball game. …
Another ball game. We took a pensy pinkie or a spaldeen and put it into a knee-high sock. Then we stood with our back against the wall, and arms and legs spread, grabbing the open end of the sock with the right hand if you were right handed, and reach over and bounce the ball between the left arm and leg and back across to the right side off the wall. You could bounce it between your legs too going up and down between the wall there and back up to the right of you. I think we did this to some kind of rhyme, but I really can’t recall. Perhaps we just counted.
Duchossois, here are the…
Eirene, you might want to…
Eirene, you might want to check out a book called “Anna Banana: 101 Jump-Rope Rhymes” compiled by Joanna Cole. It doesn’t seem to have the rhyme you’re looking for, but it has a list of further sources at the back. Chinese jump rope — I too am racking my brains trying to remember how we played. When I saw one in a toy store it brought back great memories and I bought one for my daughter… unfortunately those memories are very fuzzy. I think I remember playing a game where you stood on one foot and twisted the two sides of the elastic around your other ankle in various configurations (Cat’s Cradle for the feet?) and said a rhyme at the same time. I think one of the rhymes was M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I. By the last “I” in the rhyme you had to have your foot extricated from the elastics. Can anyone else add to this?
As a youth growing up in…
As a youth growing up in South Philly, 6th & Shunk, we played many street games, but the ultimate street game was Halfball. We never played lobs or floaters. We played fast pitch with an umpire calling balls and strikes. We used the four corners of an intersection as our diamond. We threw sidearm, three quarter sidearm and submarine. We could make that ball rise, curve or drop. I could start a riser low and inside and it would finish as a strike. I could go on and on talking about the old halfball days. It is a great game!!!
Hey, Mike. Thanks for livening…
Grown men and women wept….
Grown men and women wept. Children were amazed. About seven years ago, I was a Cub Scout Den Leader, and seeking something dangerous to do with the guys, I had them fill a supply of beer caps with candle wax, colored with a few drops of Crayola (not including “flesh”). I didn’t tell them why. They didn’t care, ’cause it was fun burning eachother with the wax. The following week, I drew a board in my suburban driveway, and introduced the game to the group. The next step was to set up a demo for the whole Cub Pack, but since the meetings were indoors at night, I had the boys make a board on a 4’x4′ piece of masonite, using black paint & stencils for the boxes & numbers. We took the board to the next Pack meeting. The results were as stated at the top. I even brought the board to a company picnic. Imagine Skully & grass coexisting! Best of both worlds.
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When we didn’t have chalk to draw the skully court, we would pull a handful of leaves from a boxwood bush or something and bunch it up into a tight ball and scrape it against the ground to draw the court. It was just as good as chalk for a little while, but it wore off fairly quickly. We had a little technique we would use called “five finger stretch” when the caps got jammed against a curb or some other object. You could stretch your fingers out on one hand to move the cap toward the court away from the object. I had three caps. One was empty for really long shots, the 2nd was half full of wax for medium shots and the third cap was full to the brim for short shots and to make the cap heavy and slower. I replaced one cap for another during the game depending on the shot needed. If you turn the heaviest cap upside down when someone else’s cap was about to “hit” yours, that would prevent the cap from being hit very far. (An opponent could really send you sailing if he wanted to!)