Tag Archives: crayons

Hey, seems like I am in…

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Hey, seems like I am in good company with you guys…I am a displaced ex-tomboy from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn living in “Jersey”– my 11 year old son is hopelessly bored–so are his friends–Today I made a Skully Board in the street, melted crayons, and dazzled them with my skill—A guy in a truck came by and saw us–he screamed, “Skullies–you from Brooklyn?” Tomorrow, I look for a Spaldeen. The Stoop is going to be the hard part.

In Bensonhurst Brooklyn…

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In Bensonhurst Brooklyn in the late 60s and early 70s we evolved our bottle caps from the traditional wax(or crayon) and penny filled ones to using medicine caps (pre childproof)filled with pennies and clay. We found that you could get a much faster smoother slide with better accuracy for longer shots. Has anyone used this type of cap?

I used to play skully in…

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I used to play skully in Staten Island during the 70s. It was the perfect game to play on a hot summer’s day. Every neighborhood had it’s own skully board either chalked or painted on the street. I can still hear someone yelling, “Car!” That would make us grab our skully caps and run to the sidewalk for safety. We made our skully caps by melting Crayola crayons with matches…

There must be an old 9 box…

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There must be an old 9 box (with 4 trapezoid) skully board still around somewhere. If anyone finds one, please get exact dimensions. A photo would be great. “Thegrape”‘s diagram above is pretty close to what I remember. The dimensions of the boxes, the distance between them and the starting point are all key. Perhaps after we get the game layed out, we can work on finding some old bottle caps to melt crayons in. Hopefully then the rules will come back to us.

I remember putting a small…

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I remember putting a small piece of crayon in the bottle cap and sitting it on the radiator overnight. The crayon would melt and fill the cap giving you a little more control. Man, that memory came out of nowhere. I hadn’t thought about skully in close to 40 years.

Hi, I remember…

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Hi, I remember skully (or wasn’t it skelly?) as the 9 box scenario described above. On Union St., in Crown Heights where I grew up in the 50’s, we used the grooves of the cement pavement boxes as edges of the total skully box. Then we chalked in the smaller numbered boxes. We also used to ‘load’ our bottle caps with melted crayon wax and smooth down the underside of the cap so it would slide true.

We made our skully caps…

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We made our skully caps in the early 60s in Flatbush both from crayon wax and the actual corks that were inside certain soda bottles. We would carefully pry out the cork lining (sometimes topped with silver foil – a treat!) and add it to another bottle cap, creating the “double corker.” A wax-filled cap was illogically (or not if you are 12) called a “wax corker.” We even occasionally made a “lead corker,” as described by a previous discussant. Our skully board was nine boxes (9 in the middle, surrounded by the trapezoids which were numbered 1-4).

I used to play Skully as…

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I used to play Skully as a kid in Queens; there was a board painted on the schoolyard blacktop, but I don’t remember exactly how it was laid out. What I remember most about skully was making the pieces. We used to tie washer magnets onto the end of a piece of string to fish the bottle caps out of old coke bottle vending machines, and then melt broken Crayola crayons into them under high intensity lamps and let them harden in order to give them some weight. A good color pattern was considered cool. :^)

I grew up in Ridgewood,…

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I grew up in Ridgewood, Brooklyn during the late sixties and we used to play Skellsy amidst the street traffic. We never filled our caps with any kind of substance, but my buddy Joe, who grew up in Howard Beach tells me he used to melt crayon wax into his caps for added weight. He and I have debated for years the correct name of this beloved game. He called it skullys and I called it Skellsy. I guess we were both right.

Let’s not forget about shining…

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Let’s not forget about shining up those bottlecaps by scraping them on the cement sidewalk till the name was erased. Then we’d choose our favorite crayon colors and melt the crayons in the caps over the stove. (What a mess for Mom!) The crayons really made the caps soar smoothly down the cement. Between handball and “skelly” I went through a pair of sneakers a month. And our fingers bled too until they became calloused from the caps. Winners kept the looser’s caps! Woodhaven rules!