Marble season was big in the Sedgwick projects (West Bronx) –usually late summer. Each kid set up his own “carnival-type” game to try to win more marbles. For example, “one-plus-your-own” was typical in which you had to hit a valuable marble like a “beauty” to win it and your own back. I used to go through a whole pack in 2 hours. Not good.
Good games, Red Light Green Light and Red Rover. And I was a hopscotch expert. Remember kickball? We played it at school, especially the girls, who were not as good as the boys at softball. Then when we were at home, in the absence of a team for kickball, my brother and I used to play “Kick the Ball Over the House”. I’m not sure how many windows we broke (at least one, I’m sure), and it was murder on the roof shingles and yard plants. What fun memories.
We had the “No Baby s#@*” rules too. There are alot of rules we used to call at the start of the game too depending on who was playing,it’s just hard trying to recall them. We used to call “no switchies or Changies” in reference to switching tops and a bunch of others I forgot. Untill I read your message I had forgotten all about becoming a killer and having to hit you opponents top 3 times in a row to knock him out of the game. I don’t remember the exact nbr’s in the skully boxes but the way you drew the board is how I remember it……….I guess I’ll have to play a few games to remember again….
In Manayunk we used to play wireball. There were 4 high wires we threw a pimple or tennis ball at. The lowest was a single, next a double, then a triple, top was a homer. If you missed the wires and it was caught by your opponents it was a strike, 3 strikes was an out, 3 outs per side of an inning just like baseball. If you hit the wire it didn’t matter if it was caught, you got whatever the hit was. This could be played individually or with teams. The hardest part, aside from hitting the wires which were fairly high, was keeping track of the men on base and the score which could get quite high. We also played the usual games like stickball,halfball,stepball, etc. but I think wireball was kind of unique.
When I was a kid in Houston, there was a vacant lot in the middle of the next street over. We used to play a game there we called “English Bulldog.” The sidewalk was one boundary and a pair of fig trees at the back of the lot marked the other boundary. One kid would be the “bulldog” and all the rest (there were usually quite a few) would get behind one of the boundaries. The kid that was the bulldog would call “BULLDOG!” and the rest would run from one boundary to the other while the “bulldog” tried to tackle them. Each time someone was tackled, they had to help the original bulldog tackle the others. Eventually the tacklers outnumbered the tackle-ees until there was one left and that was the winner. Then he or she was the bulldog and the game started again.
Hey everyone, This is how the skully board typically looked on Grand Avenue in Da Bronx: http://www.westnet.com/~hmcnally/images/skully.gif Please notice that the numbers in “the skull” (the middle part) are 2-4-6-8. These were the bonus boxes you got for hitting someone out of that region. I realize some people used 1-2-3-4. I am not absolutely sure what numbers occupied which skull boxes, but this seems as good as any. We came up with a cool variant on the bonus box: one was the letter “K” (hit a person out, you become an instant killer). The other was an asterisk, which reversed where you were in the game (if you were going for “5-forwards”, you instantly plopped yourself into the 6 box and went for “5-backwards”). The 13-box is 25% of the size of a normal box. Because it’s small, we’d always hit someone for the one-box bonus instead of actually shooting for 13. The other alternative was to try to “creep up a line” of the skull. I remember the boxes being about 1 foot square, and spaced as in my drawing. I remember seeing other boards with huge boxes and tiny boxes, so I figure we were about average on Grand Ave. I should attempt to draw one now and measure it; the box spacing could be significantly different, and the proof would be in the playing. We ultimately used spray paint to draw the board because we got tired of drawing it in chalk! Did anyone have any other variants? I’d love to know. Cool cinema fact: you can see a skully board in some overhead shots of the Scorsese film “Mean Streets.” -HMM
> You had to see the looks on the other kids faces and the fights when I took one of those out We went through the “bizarre cap phase” too; it got ridiculous (people using incredibly large caps to shoot, switching them to unhittable flat caps while other people shot). We got to the point where we agreed that no cap bigger than the ice-cream pushup could be used (about 2″ diameter), and you could switch a cap only when your turn started (and you had to leave it on the street until your next turn). We came up with a collective term for cap-switching, “rollsies,” and other stuff that took away from the essence of accuately shooting a cap from box to box: “Baby s*&#”. On Grand Ave., a serious game of Skully started out with the proud proclamation: “NO BABY S*#&!” BTW, thanks for mentioning the prescription pill cap. That was a distinct step in Skully cap evolution. I am working on the rules of Skully for this website (in cooperation with the webmaster here) and hope to have something coherent in a few weeks. I had done this codification when I was a freshman in high school, and I sure wish I kept it. I appreciate all input/memories anyone has on the game of Skully; I’m sure that when the “official rules” document hits the fan, I’ll get plenty more material to work on. I realize that the rules to any street game vary from block to block, but I think Skully lends itself to this codification (so many cool rules and terms, like “pipsies,” “rollsies,” “blasters,” etc.). It is my sincere hope that by setting down these rules that more kids will play Skully and stop smoking Kents at the 7-11. -HMM
How about Red Rover? Two groups of about five kids each would line up across from each other, with about 30 feet in between. Each team would stand together with their hands held tight. Each group would take turns calling the other teams members over one by one. “Red Rover, Red Rover, we call Tommy over”. “Tommy” would run as fast as possible toward the other team, and would try to break the chain. If he could not he would be “captured” and placed on the other teams chain.This would go on until there was no one left on a one team, thus declaring the other team the winner.