I grew up in Brooklyn on Atlantic Ave., near Saratoga, (Bed Sty). I went to PS 87. I don’t remember a “Pinky” we all had Spaldeens. I remember the smell of a new one, just thinking about those games; stick ball, stoop ball, punch ball, box ball and hit the penny brings back fond memories. when we moved to Brownsville, all the kids there had Spaldeen’s too.
forgot to add that we didn’t flick the caps with our fingers, but slid them along the tar with our index finger…not fair to cross the line, and a max of six inches displacement was allowed…By the way..ballentine beer bottlecaps wer the best…the beer of the Phillies !
I grew up in northeast phila…in the ’60s we used to melt down solder and fill the bottlecaps to get some really deadly impact into the game. since the twistoff cap didn’t exist, the trick was to get the cap off the bottle without damaging the sides..this let you get the maximum amount of solder into the cap. We ended up making a rule (after some knock down and drag out fist fights) that the solder couldn’t crown over the top of the cap…it had to be flush…to try to equalize the game. My old man was an electrician, though, and the otherkids didn’t know that I was doping the caps with mercury. I would cast the lead around the mercury and my bombers were the B52’s of the block…
We usually played this game on a dead end street in the south Bronx. They’d be five or more players who would line up on the sidewalk of one side of the street. The person chosen to be a responder would take position on the opposite sidewalk. In unison the group would call out, What’s in the Icebox” and the responder would say an item, after some drawn out elaboration, that would either be something found in an icebox or not. If the item was something in the icebox like, “A delicious bottle of, Milk!” everyone would run and the first one to tag the responder was the next one to be up. The real catch to this game was if the responder said something like, “A big juicy shoe!” In this case, whoever took a step forward to run would be out and usually more than one person was out.
Hello to ALL- God This is a great website! I can remember playing Skelly in my great childhood days in the Bayview Projects in Brooklyn. Rainbow Clay from StarValue, pennies in the middle of Sunnydale milk caps, “kicksies” and those cheap little Ballantine Ale caps with the wax melted in. These are all fond memories of a game I will teach my kids to play, as well as other greats like Ring-a-Leevio, Building Tag, Poison Ball and Off the Wall…
How about covering BUCK-BUCK and its rules? (My back is still hurting from hours of playing decades ago!) – Peter
I grew up playing skully on 57th street between 7th and 8th avenue in Brooklyn. My dad taught all the urchins how to play one day in the late 60’s. Stoop and stickball came later in life, I was only 8 at the time. We used chalk for awhile until dad came home with a 1/2″ paintbrush and a gallon of yellow line paint, (This was something special because at the time it was new… It had crushed glass in it for visibility) He worked for hours and routed traffic along the sides of the fresh paint until it was complete. Creating the sliding gems was fun for us but a disater for mom. she would spend hours scraping the wax off the stove after a gas bubble would splatter the liquid everywhere. Even our radiators had wax dribbles from making caps in the winter when we couldn’t wait to lay in the street again. Nickles were used to weigh the caps down, sometimes two were used. Then the polishing, endless circular swirls on the smooth asphalt street would be spent waiting for all steel bottom to show through the budweiser or mountain dew cap. We had poison traps on the field of play. The 13 was surrounded in the middle by a big poison trap that resembled a goofy looking skull. It was great fun and I’m considering putting a field in my basement or pouring a concrete pad out in the driveway so I can show the kids how to play.
I think this site is great.I also think it’s great that you have such an organized collection of rules.I don’t rememberall these.I played this game so much from 1945-1950.I see from the site they are still playing it.Could you tell me where or post it on the site I’d love to watch if not compete.I can still play.and I think i still have my tops or i’ll make some.I neglected to say I played this game in South Philly [Graysferry section] and West Philly.
Igrew up in South Philly Graysferry sectionand we use toplay what you call Skullys. We use to call it street checkers the same as Al politowlski called them.That was back in 1940 and I don’t remember all those rules. We use to use the liquor bottle tops and cut the neck off when we could find them . No body would let you use theirs and you didn’t loose them.The looser of the game first man out had to put the winners name on a shirt with bottle caps and the cork inside the cap. We moved to West Philly they called it the same, street checkers but some rules were different. I’ve been telling my wife about this game, now ican finally show it to her thanks to you. Ihave acouple of liquor tops and i would love to shoot agame.IfIloose I’ll put your name on a shirt for you.
I grew up in downtown Jersey City in the late 50’s around Montgomery and Varick Streets, a block away from Van Vorst Park. This was my favorite game growing up! We called the game “street checkers.” We either used checkers from a checker set, or screw top bottle caps filled with tar that had softened up in the hot summer sun. We didn’t flick the top with a finger, but squeezed it out between the thumb and index finger like a marble. We had a 15 number board, with odd numbers from 1-9 up one side, even numbers from 2-10 down the other, 11 and 13 on top opposite 12-14 at bottom. 15 was a small box in a larger box with four lines connecting the corners of the small box with the corners of the large box. The spaces within were poison but the lines were safe. If you landed in a poison area, you lost a turn. While playing, if you hit an opponent’s cap, you advanced a number. You had to go from 1 to 15, then back down to 1. After that you shot into one of the poison spaces, became “poison,” and could kill off any remaining players. I still have one of my tar filled caps on a little knick knack shelf in my apartment.