Category Archives: Other Games
Grew up at West Fordham Road…
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Grew up at West Fordham Road (Tolentine parrish) in the late fiftes and early sixties. Played outside all day. Skelly was a favorite, also box ball (each player took a box on the sidewalk, a total of four in a square), stoop ball and stick ball. Kept busy all day. No electronics, but plenty of fun. Fond memories!
Growing up in Manhattan,…
As a child I lived in the…
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As a child I lived in the Canarsie area in Brooklyn. We played skully in the street with bottle caps that were filled with melted crayons or candle wax. Some of the fillers in the bottle caps were so cool, we wouldn’t even play with them. Started a collection. I used to put a penny in the bottom of the cap and then cover it with crayon and melt the crayon. It gave more weight to the cap, so it traveled a straight path. It was also helpful when we played games when “Blasties” were allowed, because when they hit the unweighted caps it would cause the lighter cap to go flying off the board. You could become a “killer” even before the other kid got back to the board. Sadly, I now live in Phoenix where it will be 116 degrees today and the ground is so hot it would melt the crayons in the caps…
I grew up in Richmond Hill…
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I grew up in Richmond Hill NY, playing skelly every day, come summer time in Smokey Park in the early 70’s. I remember using crayons and the rim of the glass beer bottle to make a skelly cap, but there was one more way of doing it that was my favorite. We’d take a twist off beer cap, find a plastic soda cap, and some small pieces of glass for weight. I’d dig the plastic insert piece out of the soda cap. The glass went inside the beer bottle cap and the plastic piece was fitted in side the beer bottle cap, over the glass upside down, to hold the glass in place.I remember always giving the new cap a real good rubbing on the ground to roughen it up. I was a good shooter and didnt want it flying anywhere I didnt want it to. I have taught my kids how to play all the street games I can still remember. Their favorites are: I Declare War, Box Ball, Chinese Hand Ball and Stoop ball and Red Rover.
In the Greenville section…
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In the Greenville section of Jersey city we used the word “fins”. We called it “finsey” pronounced fins-ee and crossed our fingers as well. I learned that the word came down word of mouth from generation to generation from jousting. If the champion wanted to take it easy on his losing opponent, the champion would “feign” an injury so that his opponent could take a face saving break to rest and recover. An example of the strong giving deferring to the weak. Calling “fins” was always honored. It was in fact the honorable thing to do because all the players who let us call “fins” became, like the champion jousters, the chivalrous ones. Coming down through word of mouth for over 400 years from older kids to younger kids in street play, a word like “fins” is referred to as a meme.
I grew up in the Linden projects,…
The game described as Hop…
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The game described as Hop Scotch we called Potsie. We played Hop Scotch on a grid of six boxes one above the other. Each box was the width of a sidewalk box. The idea was the same as Hop Scotch, but you had to hop the whole course. (No two feet down at any time). You turned around in the home box still hopping and picked up your “potsie” on the way back.
The skilled knuck-giver was…
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The skilled knuck-giver was the one able to remove the most skin from the recipient’s knuckles! Bloody fun! single rap from flat face of the cards was 1 single rap from the card edge was 2 Hand sandwich applied with a fist was 10 Food sandwich was 25 A guy I work with described the Flying Knuck as applied by jumping off a park bench and slamming the foot into the hand sandwiched between two halfs of the deck. I recall my mother wanting this game outlawed. You knew who lost by the scab that lasted on their hand for a week. great stuff…especially when the kid picked a red card. He went white!