Streetplay Discussions
In Minnesota in the winter…
The girls in my neighborhood…the…
The girls in my neighborhood…the lower East Side of Manhattan played a game where we put down a penny on the sidewalk. They stood apart from each other, usually using two square cement blocks of sidewalk. One girl would stand on the right of the penny and the other on the left. And you bounced the ball hoping to hit the penny with the ball to get a score. If the penny flipped over, you got a higher score. Don’t remember anymore of the particulars. Does anyone else remember this game.
How about adding a section…
For Butterfly…He swam…
When we played the Alphabet…
When we played the Alphabet Game…bouncing a ball and calling out ‘A my name is Alice, My husband’s name is Albert, we come from Alabama and eat Apples, etc. When you came to each name you had to put your right leg over the ball. That’s where the hard part came in. Usually kicked the ball away. I never got to the end either. We took turns and whoever got to the end of the alphabet…won the game. Gosh, I haven’t thought of this game in years.
Hit and Roll (Real name…
Hit and Roll (Real name is unknown) This is a game all of the neighborhood kids used to play during the 60’s, in the street in San Jose, California. One person was the batter. He had a regular wooden bat and a tennis ball. The batter had to throw the ball up into the air and hit the ball himself. The rest of the players were out into the street, and yards. If the player hitting the ball hit a pop up and someone caught the ball, then the person who caught the ball got to be the batter. If the ball was not caught, then from where the ball was picked up, that person then walked straight out from that spot to the middle of the street. The batter then had to lay the bat down crosswise in the middle of the street. The player with the ball then would have to roll the ball and try and hit the bat., if this was achieved then the only way the batter could keep his postion as batter was for him to catch the ball in the air when it hit the bat and popped up. If he did not catch the ball, then the person who rolled the ball would get to be the batter until someone else caught a pop up or rolled the ball and the ball was caught after it hit the bat. We had as many as 20 or more people in the street playing, and everyone would scramble to get the chance to catch or roll the ball. Never used any mitts. Didn’t need any. Always used a tennis ball. Janet Eeds
The BEST schoolyard in Queens…
The BEST schoolyard in Queens in the late ’60s – early ’70s was PS 108 by the entrance to the Aqueduct racetrack. It was relatively square, fenced all around and had poured cement “boxes” roughly 5′ x 5′. These boxes served as softball basepaths, football yardlines, stickball pitchers’ mounds, handball court short lines, and distance markers for stickball and automatics. Connected to the large square area, there was a perfect sized handball court and wall, and the “little schoolyard” – a blacktopped area surrounded by 3 walls and a fence, perfect for roller hockey. Any afternoon in the summer there could be a softball game (sometimes two), a basketball game, 3 stickball games and a handball game going on at once. Summer nights was Ringoleario and just hanging out. In the fall and winter, it was touch football and basketball. Everyone met at the schoolyard. Just show up and you’ll get in some kind of game. We’ll never forget it.
I remember potsy. In Woodhaven,…
I grew up in Woodhaven,Queens…
I grew up in Woodhaven,Queens during the late 50’s and early 60’s. We used to play a varity of games, including Snake, Redrover, Red Light-Green-Light, but my favorite was Punchinello. Does anyone remeber this game? The person named Punchinello had to come up with some body contortion that no one could copy. The kids that matched the move stayed in and the ones that didn’t were out. Also, do any of the girls out there remember Baby Carraige Racing? My friends and I would find a good hill and let the buggies fly. What fun we had!