If anyone knows the whereabout of my childhood and young adult friend Kelly Kevin Murphy, who used to live in the Cypress Hills projects of East New York Brooklyn, until a move to Drew St., his childhood best friend Eric Vaughan would love to hear from him before we all pass into shadows. I noticed at Classmates.com many of our small gang of friends have survived. I’d like to think he did as well.
Never forget the first. As a kid, that peck that made your face so hot you could still feel it there when you close your eyes, and remember. Easy, Brooklyn/Queens New York City. 1967. PS214K school yard, first grade lunch recess. Donna Mantos. My cousin crystal had a huge overcoat and she made a cave. It was late fall, and I had the robber’s ski mask, like most kids pulled down so you looked like a 7 year old SWAT sniper. She pulled up the mask, and we’d exchange the pecks. The high lasted all day. Then she’d go back to her girlfriends, and I’d go back to my playing airplane. First heavy kiss was 1974, High School of Art and Design, from Evelyn. Wrigley’s gum and Kool cigarettes. What a memory.
We had several painted Skelly squares in our Cypress Hills projects back in East New York Brooklyn. Skelly, Boxball, HopSkotch, seemed every ten feet. I remember generations of us playing it back in the sixties, and waiting our turn to. It was always the older teens first, then they’d leave to go the the basketball courts, or the top circle. Then we’d get the chance. My favorite cap of use was the coke top or wine cap with wax, but like many, I longed for the cool glass ring of the Coke, Tab, Fresca, or beer bottle ring. Seems I remember the older teens (back in the sixties) used to fish them out of the trash cans, and proceed to skim the necks on the asphalt or stoop until you got the perfect ring.
Spaldeens. I was just telling my wife about Skelly, and how back in East New York Brooklyn Sutter Avenue projects we used to cram the everyday essentials into a pair of Lee or Wrangler jeans: Bazooka gum Baseball cards Wooden metal tipped top with string Skelly top (I preferred the wax filled cap, mostly due to the fact I could never skim the beer bottle neck just right to get the sweet glass cap.) Spaldeen Somewhere, back in NYC there has to be all the Spaldeens that were roofed, hit between building cracks, sewer bound, between the spokes of our old bikes, and those broken ones used by Mom and Dad to cover sharp objects and second as couch leg lifters. When I see a piece of Bazooka gum today, I think of how we used to break it in four, share the comic, chew up the gum, and place it on the end of a broken mop or broom handle and fish out the coins and subway tokens to buy penny candy. Fish enough coins, you got a new Spaldeen. Pensie-Pinkies were foamier, as I recall. When they got chipped, well, there went the homeruns of the punchball team.
I had a dream the other night that reminded me of my childhood days in Greenpoint Brooklyn where we would play this game day after day. What a great time I had. I feel somewhat privileged to have been part of something that defined who I am as a person raised in the streets of New York. Anyway, I decided to Google the game and came across this site. I live in California now, but feel a sense of importance in showing my kids this game. I’m not sure they’ll like it because times have changed and everthing seems to have to require a joystick these days, but I will teach them anyway. Thanks again for such a wonderful site and reminding me of my days of old.
I run a daycare in Ohio, and the kids are ALWAYS BORED…..lol I tell them to play…they just do not get it! I grew up in Kings Park Long Island in the 70’s, so I am teaching them Skully, and how to catch pennies off your elbow. I still have a beloved blue ball from the 80’s. I do not know why we started going to the blue ball, but remember everyone getting them and I still had the pinkie. I was poor…lol Could not afford a new ball! I do not remember what the game “composition A” is but remember the name of it, and that I played it. Can someone remind me how to play it….Also if there are any other kool games to pass on to the kids of 2000 let me know!
I don’t even know if this belongs here, because these weren’t games, exactly – there was a whole group of physical things we used to do as kids in Queens in the 50’s that were fun. ‘Most everyone remembers the trick of leaning the side of your hand against a wall and pressing on it – when you stepped away from the wall, your hand seemed to magically raise all by itself. But the one that I’m really “nostalging” on lately was giving each other “the chills”. There was a whole ritual where you stood behind your subject and recited a sort of pseudo-poem as you traced patterns on their back gently with a finger. At the end of the ritual, your subject shivered with glee. The ritual, as I remember it, went something like this: “X marks the spot” (you’d trace an X from each shoulder to the opposite side of their waist) “A dot, a dot” (two light taps on either side of the X) “A line and a line” (two lines, parallel to the ground, about 6 inches apart) “And a BIG question mark.” (Trace a large question mark, ending with the point just above the hips.) “Trails leading up . . . ” (You’d trace a wiggly line up the person’s spine with two fingers) “Trails leading down.” (Same wiggly lines go back down the back.) “Sea breeze . . .” (You’d blow on the person’s neck.) “. . .and a BIG squeeze.” (You’d put your thumb and forefinger on either side of your subject’s neck and pull back towards the spine with the lightest, most feathery pressure possible.) Does anyone remember this and if so, did I remember the entire ritual (I’m sure it varied from block to block!)
Does anyone remember this game? It was played from curb to curb. Any number of players could play. They would all line up on the street curb and shout “What’s in the icebox”? A caller would shout out items like “eggs”, everyone would run to the other curb. But the caller would also say things like “chair”. If anyone ran after hearing this, they would be “out”. This went on until there was one person left (who did not run or even move on a word that was not found in an icebox). I grew up in South Philly and remember it well. I am finding this site very nostalgic, a trip back to the late 50’S. Thanks.
Of course the spaldeen (especially the much-beloved #4, although #2 was also good) was always better than the pinky, although that pinky could really fly when hit with a bat! Most of you can probably relate, but I wish I could explain to my friends here in the Midwest what it was like growing up on E. 15th St. near Kings Highway in the ’70s. Our street was full of kids and we played all the time: johnny on the pony, stoopball, stickball, hockey on roller skates, scully, red rover, i declare war (losers always “went under the moon”), wiffle ball, ringaleavio. And the games in the schoolyards, like handball, off the wall, paddleball. There’s got to be a million spaldeens on the roof at PS 199 where I went and all the other schools, too. It was like a soap opera, too.