This is such a coooooool site! I’m not getting any work done! My sister and I used to play skully in the Woodside Housing Projects in Queens in the late 50’s. To this day, the smell of Crayola Crayons brings back floods of memories — both because I used to draw with them, but mostly because of their aroma when melted for my skully shooters! On the radiator — I had forgotten that! Wow…… Jan
I attended PS6, Herman Ridder JHS 98, Frank Whalen JHS 135, Columbus High School (class Of 67) It was great growing up in the Bronx. The things we experienced in the 50’s & 60’s could never be duplicated in todays world. I haven’t been back since I left for college in ’67 (Arizona State University) I used to love playing all these games. This is a great page. Keep those memories alive!!
I grew up on 181st between Vyse and Bryant in the Bronx. (right around the corner from the Bronx Zoo-South enterance “West Farms Square”) We called it skully. Had to go 1-13 and around the center and back down to become a killer. If you ended up in the sections around 13 you were stuck till someone hit you out. We all had different size caps filled with wax. When it rained we played on the linoleum in my bedroom (6 story walk up) that had flowers located in the in the shape of the “skully”. I am now a Phys Ed teacher in Phoenix and we play skully, stickball, one wall handball, off the curb, punch ball and Johnny on the Pony. The kids love thses games and I really enjoy the memories while playing with them.
When I was a young boy from the ages of about 9 years old until 13 I lived in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, PA. Our neighborhood was full of young boys around the same age. While we played a lot of basketball on the street, football in the empty lot, and soccer in my back yard (until we broke a window the third time), my favorite activity was playing in the woods. In particular, the best was building a tree fort. I call it a fort, not a house, as we were there to protect our turf from the imaginary bad guys and the real ones, our older brothers! We of course, had a pad lock to secure the entry and a password was necessary if someone was already in it. We built the fort out of extra wood we gathered from the lumber yard in the area. Actually, thinking back on it this was quite a feat for 6 young men. We were probably 400 yards deep into the woods behind the nearest street and daily lugged our tools and supplies. We eventually got electricity by running the longest set of connected extension cords one may imagine. Don’t tell anyone, but we connected the line into an outside plug of the nearest home. We would stay in the woods all day long. We fished for salemanders in the creek, ate green apples from the tree of a little old lady who lived deep in the woods at the end of a dirt road. Well, actually we ate the apples until she scared us off with a shotgun full of rock salt – no foolin’! Ouch! We also slept in the fort after much begging to our parents. We eventually became friendly to the old woman by picking and giving her wild flowers. From then on, she gave us lemonade all summer long!!!
I can definitely relate to the “search for the roller skate key” scenario! There were five of us at home (not counting my mother), so we never knew who had it last or where they put it. I loved skating so much on the Lower East Side that I did it well into my adult years when I moved to Brooklyn at the Empire Roller Skating Rink and the Park Circle Roller Skating Rink, dancing to the music on my skates! I think I stopped going when I was around 35. Don’t ask me about roller blades — I put those things on once a few years ago — one ankle went in, the other went out — I took them off and haven’t been skating since. – webdiva
Thanks to all who posted — NOW I know what this game was about! Kids who were a little older (faster? smarter?) played this game on the Lower East Side when I was about 8 or 9 (36 years ago), and I remember mostly the guys yelling, “Ringolevio, caught, caught, caught, caught!!” I wondered what the heck was going on, but they thought I was too young to play so I never knew much about this game — until now. – webdiva
I played skully in cypress Hills, brooklyn. My son would like to play it now but I can’t remember exactly how you played or the rules. I do remember using bottle caps filled with melted crayons. I played it on the street. can’t remember how to draw the box. Please post the rules and instructions or email them to me. thank you. Sure does bring back nice memories.
SORRY it took me so long to get back here! I lived in the projects in a building right near the corner of Houston Street and FDR Drive. The thing I loved most about the Essex Street Market was that there were so many buildings and so many different sections selling everything from soup to nuts. When I was in high school (Seward Park on Grand Street), I used to buy vanilla sandwich cookies from one of the vendors at Essex Street almost every day on my way home from school… – webdiva
My brothers John and Tim and I always played stickball in our native Canarsie, the center of Brooklyn and the world, to us. Charlie Stella always bragged about his ability to consistently whack a two sewer hit and was usually willing to back up the brag with a bet in which the loser had to spring for a slice of pizza and an Italian Ices at Joe’s Pizzeria. Now and then errant balls would hit cars and windows which would lead to the local beat cop ambling along. He’d collect our sticks and break them in half in the very sewer in which Charlie’s best shots would bounce off of. We would then resort to stoop ball, until we got our hands on more broomsticks and black tape. There wasn’t a house on our block that contained a broom that was more than two feet long!