I’m from the Southwest Schuykill section of S/W Philly until we left in 1971. Back in the day we called “Handball” >> “Socket it out” A couple of street games not mentioned are: Ring up, hide the belt, “Buck Buck” ,2 hand touch street football (Not flag football) as well as schoolyard softball (Special ball because of the concrete field) in Mitchell school yard.
We played a variant of Deadbox in Feltonville (4500 Hurley near D & Whitaker) where the numbered boxes went from 1 to 16. The 14,14,15,16 boxes were long and narrow, and arranged along the four sides of the deadbox. I’ve got the board memorized and can supply a diagram. Jim – dtvjho-dead [at] emailias [dot] com
I remember playing suicide,you throw a pimple ball against the wall if it was caught in the air you have to run and touch the wall,the person who caught it tried to hit you with the ball before you touch the wall.If the person catching the ball dropped it then he would have to tag the wall.Aso a game called ass ball.It was like chink but you spell ASS if you did you had to lean against the wall while the other players got one throw at you.
Grew up in Kensington in Philly, great neighborhood, Stickball was the best. Pimple Balls were the best to play with, We’d play like 10 games a day in the summer time. They made the blue pimple balls before they stopped making them, would be nice to have one of each. We also played Freedom for hours on end. Freedom was a game where you had at least 5 or more on two teams and you set boundaries of the neighborhood, usual 2 or 3 block radius. The goal was to catch all the members of the opposite team and bring them back to base. The other members would have to touch base and say “Freedom!” and the ones that were caught would run and the whole game would begin again. Hours and hours played at Elkin School in Kensington. Oh yeah, when you caught a person you’d have to say “1-2-3 your my man no breaksies, no locksies, and throw away the key”.
We had a basketball team in the early 60’s that played in the Saturday AM league (inside) at Feltonville Rec. We were “coerced and challanged to field a team by some of the girls we met that attended Dougherty and told us how great the b-ball players were from that area. We were called “Amber” (from Port Richmond area) and we tied the locals for 1st place but lost in the playoffs. Sometimes we had to thumb our way on Sat AM to get there, but it was a lot of fun. Had to pay for our own jerseys and ref fees too. One year when I was about 11, I played for a team at The Salvation Army on Allegheny Ave. We couldn’t afford jerseys so the Director went into the “Grab Bag” and pulled out 12 yellow, unmatching jerseys, but all yellow. Years later, when My daughter looked at the team picture, she commented, “Gee Dad, you made the All-Star Team!!” She still thinks her Dad was on the All Star Team but I wonder if she thought that every team in the league wore yellow jerseys (even though the pic was B/W)???
I played ball at Feltonville Recreation Center-the “rec” until the age of 21. This was until 1972. I actually grew up across the street. We had very competitive teams which played within the rec., leagues in that part of the city and some in other sections of the city. Our girl teams were also excellent in softball and basketball. There were many street games of which were kick the wicket, steal the bacon, pig and 21. Is there anybody who played ball at Feltonville Recreation Center.
Does anyone remember “PUSH-O’S”? A wooden milk crate with a 2X4 nailed as a “runner” with the front end of roller skates on the front and the back half was nailed to the rear of the 2X4. Then you would customize it by carefully nailing bottle caps that could spell your initials, or your street. Sometimes you could get the speed up and crawl inside the milk crate givig the imression that no one was on the PUSH-O. No brakes, no helmet, no elbow pads…just lotsa fun!!
Our wireball rules were a little different. Single, Double, etc were determined by the height of the wire hit either on the way up or on the way down. The highest wire being a home run. Same applied for halfies ansd hosies…you had to find a 4 story warehouse or school and then a aingle would be off (uncaught) the 1st floor and a double off the 2nd. Now a Homer got interesting because there were 4 stories, a ball could come down and get caught therby negating the HR…but naturally when you “roofed” it, it was “Outta’ Here”!!
National Children’s Folksong Repository The Historic Electronic Online Archive of Children’s Folksongs, and indigenous playground poetry. A Public Folklore Project built by the children of the United States. Integrate Literacy, Music, and Technology into the classroom. If you have a little time and the phone you can call toll free 1-877-220-0262 between 10 am – 6 pm eastern time and sing or chant the folksong, playground chant, song, circle game, game shout you remember and we will add it into the archive. Remember to tell us the name of it where you learned it: ex: philly, pa and when you learned it 1950 or perhaps 1970 or 1990 or yesterday 🙂 http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/NCFRD/ thanks!