Tag Archives: crayons

I don’t know what made me…

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I don’t know what made me remember the game of bottle caps and street chalk boards except the fact that my son bought a six pack of Coke in the collectible bottles which have caps on them. I started talking to him about the game I used to play as a child and “poof” my brain retrieved the name skully. My son,(7y.o.), was intrigued by the explanation and couldn’t wait to get started filling the bottle caps with melted crayons. What memories this brings back to me growing up in Canarsie, (in Brooklyn, N.Y..) I hope I can show my son that he can have as much fun as I did. (I took a shot at looking it up on th e internet and here I am). SKULLY LIVES ON! Steve T.

I remember playing “skelly”…

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I remember playing “skelly” in Brooklyn (East NY) during the mid/late 60s. We were fortunate enough to have severaly skelly boards permamently painted in the playground. We also used melted crayons to add the weight. A couple of years ago, I introduced my daughters to the game. I drew a board w/ chalk on the back patio. Although, I found it difficult to get down on my knees for each shot (whew!) – I enjoyed playing the games w/ my kids again.

This site has made my day….

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This site has made my day. I played skully avidly in the early 1950’s in the Amsterdam Housing project near Lincoln Center (which didn’t exist at the time). I played with a passion through second grade and then my family moved to New Jersey where new adventures took over. As I recall my dad filled the bottle caps with melted crayon for me in fear that I’d burn the apartments down. I live in New Mexico now and taught it to my daughter. I still have the caps I modified here in the early 80’s. If only I could find some decent competition! Also in the 1980’s I introduced the game to my nieces and nephews in Managua, Nicaragua. I told them it was called it Matador (killer). I can still remember the joy in my young niece’s voice when she made killer, yelling out “MATADOR!”

Wow this brings back memories….

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Wow this brings back memories. In the 60s I lived in the Pink Houses projects off of Linden Blvd & Crescent St.My building was on Stanley Ave. I remember using chalk to make a Skully Court in the playground. I also remember the smell of melting crayons. I would put crayons in a baby food jar ( it could take the heat) and hold it over the stove to melt the wax. I loved filling bottle caps for Skully. I remember the pride we had in our wax filled caps. Sort of like a badge of honor. I can still smell the melting wax right now! This is a great walk down memory lane. Doubt that anyone in Tampa (home) would know what Skully is.

I lived in Brooklyn in the…

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I lived in Brooklyn in the late 60’s and played lots of skelly/skully on Bay Ridge Avenue between 18th and 19th avenue and West 8th between Bay PArkway and avenue O. I now live upstate and just made some caps with crayons and pennies with my kids. We then found this website and I am seeing that the boards we made back then seem to be atypical…..numbered just 1 through 9 with the area around the 9 called “mud”. Does anyone else recall this board configuration??

We played Skelsies on 174th…

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We played Skelsies on 174th St. Clay Ave. Tops were created out of plastic medicine caps with melted wax (usually crayons), glass tops made by scraping the 7 oz soda bottles (10 cents)against the sewers and also metal tops which were taken from the bottom of school chairs. We created a skelly field by digging out the tar in the street or painting it on. Hit a killer, be a killer!

We called the game “SKULLZIES”…never…

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We called the game “SKULLZIES”…never heard it as “Skully-etc.”. This was circa ’63-74, Bay Ridge…56th St between 6th and 7th ave. We would do the melted crayon, sometimes melted over a coin for weight. I remember running a coke bottle over manhole covers too…if you were lucky, the top lip would come off ala glass ring. PS: How about the 4th of July in Bay Ridge! Literally sounded like the bombing of Hanoi!

Skelsies. Man that was…

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Skelsies. Man that was fun. Growing up on 53rd Street in Bayridge, we played all the time. We would melt crayon in the caps for design and power. Also, we would take a coke bottle and if you ran the top along a manhole cover, just hard enough, the ring ould pop off, you would then rub the cut side down, and voila, it would glide forever. Unfortunately loaded caps could literally smash you. I live in Charlotte, NC now and was amazed to pass a skelsies board in the street recently, I never found out where it came from.

Many things come to mind…

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Many things come to mind when I think of skelly. Here are a few: 1)New Jersey, 1964. We stopped at Tony’s Hot Dogs near lake Hopatcong on a Sunday as I recall. I asked the man behind the counter, actually my dad asked the man, if we could have some bottlecaps. I guess some meant all because he filled up a couple of paper bags full. It was a great ride home as a 7 year old digging out all of the cork and couldn’t wait to show my friends my motherlode of caps. 2)I can still remember the smell of melted crayons in my friend’s garage as we readied our bottlecaps for action. We lived in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn and if it wasn’t stickball or Spud it was all day skelly marathons. 3)About 1970 or thereabouts during my last glory days as a pre-teen and the end of skelly as a pasttime, I pulled one of the biggest miscues of my life, to that point. My dad had just bought me a new pair of Pro Keds and I proceeded to wear out the sides in a matter of days due to several skellythons. Needless to say, it was back to discount sneakers for me. I wish this generation could experience all of the great street games that I grew up with in Brooklyn and Queens.

I remember playing skelly…

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I remember playing skelly with my friends in the Linden houses in ENY Brooklyn. There was a coke-a-cola bottling plant on Linden Blvd, my best friend and I road our bikes there and asked one of the workers for some bottle caps to play skelly. He gave us a whole bag full of new caps, back then it seemed like a bag of gold. We melted lead fishing weights, crayons and anything else that would melt to fill the caps. Skelly was the best game. Kids on Long Island NY are missing out on a great game…. Thanks for the memories…. Rich