Whenever we didn’t have a ball, we would take a wire coat hanger, shape the bottom into a small circle, and fish balls out of the sewer. Somehow, no one got sick. The balls were usually pretty dead, but you couldn’t beat the price. Also, if a new ball went down the sewer, we would fish it right out.
To bfzeiger … YES! My girlfriend and I collected and traded those charms. I remember going to one particular machine over and over again, trying to get the “featured” charm – A worm in a red apple. When you turned the top half of the apple, a worm poked it’s head out. I have the apple and some of of the other charms today … I treasure them … Now, I’ve moved on to bigger and better things … Like talking refrigerator magnets. ; )
The only Seven Up I remember was played on rainy days in our classrooms. First, seven kids were selected.The rest of the class put their heads down on their desks with one thumb stuck up (like the “ok” sign). The seven selected students quietly went around the classroom– each one turned down one thumb. When the rest of the class raised their heads, the ones with thumbs turned down had to guess who did it. If you guessed the right kid, you got to be one of the Seven Up.
This is a great site.I am so happy to see that someone has started to compile the rules and variations of skulley ( what the game was known as in flatbush,B’klyn during the 70’s; friends from bensonsonhurst and e. ny call it skellsey).I do remember the parks dep’t putting in a few skulley boards during the late 70’s ( because we kept carving into the soft tar).And, as for standard size ,I think that usually depended on the playing field ( street, park,sidewalk). You were only allowed to use “cheats” (i.e.-catholic school desk glides,lead, coins, rocks, caps from non beverage bottles i.e.-extra wide cleaning bottle caps) as long as everybody had a tricked out cap. The caps were picked out by how flat and heavy they were ( a cap that was from a hard to find product or a discontinued style wer always prized). The next step was selection of material to be inserted into the cap(tar,crayons,lead,coins,prayer candles).Crayons always were the preferred method because of how cool looking the cap would come out. Next you would melt it ( radiator was my method, Mom wasn’t too happy about the psychedlic patterns it left). Then you would spend an hour grinding it smooth on a sidewalk to make it ready for play.