Ginger, the game you’re describing was called “Spud(d)”, at least in my Neighborhood of Kensington, Brooklyn. It was as you described, and if you hit a player, they got a letter, S, then P, then then U, etc, and sometimes we played it with double D if we wanted it to go on longer. First player to get Spud(d), lost, last one who survived won. We also played it with a volleyball/soccer ball.
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 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!
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.
In Chicago in the 40’s we played a game called “Russia,” bouncing a tennis ball against a wall. I think #1 was to throw the ball onto the wall and catch it, #2 was to throw the ball and let it drop and then catch it, and #3 was to throw the ball and clap once. Beyond that, I’m not sure. Other tricks were throwing the wall and clapping twice, putting a hand on the wall and throwing the ball over the arm and catching one-handed (both arms?), and slamming the ball onto the ground in front of the wall to let it carom off and then catch it, and throwing the ball under a leg (both) and catching it. Can anyone help?
I have been searching for Spaldeens on the web since I got on the web. Today I find they are back! Yippie! I don’t remember the Pensie Pinkie unless they were the solid foam rubber balls that would get gouges taken out of them and you see the spongy inside. I hated them. We played stick ball all over the dead ends of Sutton Place in Manhattan. We hated loosing the Spaldeens in the East River. I remember a teacher in High School that always carried a Spaldeen. He had huge forearms. All day long he would squeeze his Spaldeen. I am heading for a sporting goods store now to find my first spaldeen in 30 years