Memories of the Fifties

Great story. I remember playing that game too.

One of most remarkable social changes in my lifetime has been the public transformation of cigarette smoking.

They truly were ubiquitous for almost half of my life. Adults who didn't smoke seemed strange and you couldn't go anywhere without the sight of cigarette butts close by. My first white collar job in an office found me on the first day at a desk with the standard issue package of supplies: A phone, a stapler, super heavy scotch tape dispenser and an ashtray.

The amount of second hand smoke we kids endured was amazing and I'm sure it contributed to, if not caused, the chronic bronchitis that dogged me for years and had me out of schools for weeks at a time.

I hated cigarette smoke and never had the urge to join the pack (no pun intended) throughout High School who would hang out in a secluded part of a field adjacent to the building and puff away at as many cigarettes as they could squeeze into the 20 minutes or so provided after lunch. Of course, once pot joined the ritual, I fully partook.

I didn't start smoking until after HS when at about 17 or 18 I was working at a factory and so damned bored that I bummed a cigarette just to break up the monotony. For 10 years thereafter, I was hooked initially on Old Golds, a strong brand that was obscure and therefore cool. Eventually I moved to filterless Camels which was even cooler, but my old friend bronchitis had me sucking on wimpy Ultra Lights around age 25.

When my son came along, I was 28 and that was the end of the filthy habit. At that time the practice was becoming more and more taboo until it's been virtually wiped out of any social interaction except maybe in a biker dive bar. The addicts, that despite how difficult society has made smoking in public. still can be found in the worst of weather looking miserable as they get their fix outside their office buildings, are a pathetic looking lot. Far, far cry from the cool image cigarettes once imparted.

My oldest brother constantly started rock fights with kids and in each instance it was with somebody I did not even know. I stood with him, but don't recall hurling any stones. Fortunately nobody got hurt. Roger liked to put together balsa wood model airplanes. His favorites were Saber Jets and biplanes. He put CO2 cylinders on the bottoms of the jets for motors. Sometimes that worked out, sometimes not.

One toy that stands out in my mind as the best made one I ever had was a caterpillar bulldozer. It had clockwork for a motor, a clockwork as complex as that on an actual clock. I have searched around but never found reference to these toys.

We had lots of games related to citiness--concrete squares on the sidewalk, stoops, moldings on buildings. We girls played lots of games with chalk drawings on the sidewalk--potsy, snail, names.

There was no such thing as a play date. We just went out to play. Other kids were always there.

When the ice cream truck arrived, most of the kids would be yelling up to their mothers. "Hey, ma. Throw me down a nickel." On reflection, I don't know how the mothers were able to distinguish the yell of their kid. It must be a hormonal thing.

A nickel! Now that takes me back.

I grew up in an apartmenthouse with a small green area, a little bigger park and a playground. Kids were always around to play with. We played all kinds of games, ballgames, hopping rope or drawing games on the sidewalk. Mostly we
girls alone, but now and then the boys too. The homes were open for the friends who just rang the doorbell or walked in. Doors were not locked during the daytime.
There was one girl I was not allowed to play with indoors. She was always chewing chewing gum and somehow took it out and put it in again and left gum on the doorhandles.
The endless summers we spent in our summer cabin. Again there were plenty of kids to play with. There were the beach, canoes, badminton, a small house which were used for playing games on rainy days. The small store was about 20 minutes by bike away and we met during the morning and went over with the shoppinglists our mothers had given us.
Relatives came visiting and stayed weeks at the time.
When there was a thunderstorm we all had to get up in case a lightning hit
the wooden house. It was so interesting to sit in the middle of the night,drinking coffee and watch a thunderstorm. All that disappered when everything got more modern.

The girl's games I remember most are jacks and jump rope. I haven't seen a kid play jacks in quite a few years.

One year Sam and I began to acquire lots of marbles. We played our friends and won quite a few more. Between ourselves we played follow the leader, but with other kids we drew a ring. We were allowed to keep the ones we knocked out. My 'favorite shooter' was a bit larger than most marbles. Sam had gotten himself a 'steelie', which appeared to be a ballbearing to myself. One day as I walked down the sidewalk, pocket stuffed with marbles, a larger kid rode up on his bike. "Give me those marbles." So I gave them up. But I soon had lots more. It was in my blood. The following year, none of us had marble one.

I didn't know Potsy was considered a girl's game. Both girls and boys played in on our block. We called it Potsy but it looked a lot like what's called Hopscotch. Is there a difference between the two?

Straight Tag and numerous versions (Freeze, Cigarette, Flashlight, Team etc) were very popular.

Along with baseball and football on the field in my best friend's backyard (Actually it wasn't a field as much as a ruined lawn, but it served our purposes very well) we conducted track meets (handing out colored ribbons to the first three finishers of each event), stick-ball with a broom stick and a red spaldeen in the street, and for a short period of time one Summer, boxing matches, but that's a tale for another time.

Someone's father once tried to get us to play Johnny on the Pony a game from his childhood days in NYC, but while we were more than up for rough and tumble games, right away someone hurt their back and everyone expressed the fear of becoming paralyzed by a stupid game that wasn't even fun.

A couple of kids would always try and get us to play Ring a Levio probably because they had already spent 5 or 6 years living in the City where, apparently it was common, but we never figured out the rules and it was cast on the dustbin of street and yard games.

Giant Steps and Mother May I were good when the gang was limited to four or five kids.

Cowboys & Indians was huge. Early on, at the start of any game play everyone would shout "I'm Roy Rogers!" and then we would argue about who claimed the title first. As we aged and TV Westerns filled the airwaves there was always a wide selection of characters to assume. My brother, much to my undying shame, always chose Tom "Sugarfoot" Brewster. My best friend Finn D (we obviously shared the same first name) always went with Flint McCullough the scout from Wagon Train but once I got past my obsession with Roy Rogers, I didn't have a single go-to cowboy. Despite my relatively small stature, I often chose to play Cheyenne Brody and would rotate through Christopher Colt from Colt .45, Brent Maverick, Wild Bill Hickok (Eventually retired him from the rotation because I felt he needed a Jingles and for some reason none of the other kids would play the Andy Devine role), Jim Bowie, all three of the Disney Western characters: Zorro, Texas John Slaughter and El Fego Baca, Josh Randall, Steve McQueen's character in Wanted Dead or Alive, and frequently Cochise from Broken Arrow.

The keys to a successful game were twofold:

Equipment: In those days most of the Western characters had signature hats and weapons, and just about all of them were replicated by toy companies and available to kids with some money. If you were one of three being raised by a single mother like Finn D, funds were short, but he always managed to find the cheapest and coolest equipment. A beat up black cowboy hat from the Farmer's Market was a near perfect replica of the hat his favorite cowboy wore and his most prized possession was a toy pistol his grandmother bought him and which looked very authentic. The unfortunate economics of his family was probably one of the reasons he never played any cowboy but the one he could replicate so well, Flint McCullough.

Our family was hardly wealthy, but we were upwardly mobile and at the top of the economic ladder in our neighborhood, so if I asked for something reasonable for my birthday or Christmas, I often got it. Plus I had a generous, indulgent paternal grandmother who only had us three grandkids (my maternal grandmother had over 20, and dead husband who had been a lush and left her penniless so if we got a nickel from her we were delighted - it bought a candy bar!) As a result I was much better equipped than most of the other kids and could switch roles with ease.

I had two hats, one light brown and the other black and a collection of weapon sets including Jim Bowie's huge knife, Yancy Derringer's auto-flick derringer (the contraption strapped to your forearm and when the spring was released, flipped the small gun towards your palm. He didn't work well enough to regularly play Yancy but it was very cool for the first couple of days), an entire Zorro getup including hat, mask, cape and sword (the hat was unfortunately cheesy plastic and so Zorro often changed his headgear to a standard black cowboy hat) and an Indian getup including warpaint for Cochise. My most treasured weapon though was Steve McQueen's "Mare's Leg," a shortened Winchester rifle with a properly sized holster so you could wear it at your hip and draw it like a gunslinger.

Storytelling: We made up the plots of our episodes as we went along, sometimes drawing on what we had recently seen on a TV show and sometimes creating original material on the fly. Everyone involved had the opportunity to suggest the scene or series of actions, but it usually fell to three of us: me, Finn D and his older sister Laura who was a tom-boy and the only kid in our gang who could beat-up Finn D. Every kid created a signature sound for his weapon and if you could mimic a convincing richochet sound it garnered status. Johhny Nasty, for some reason, insisted on using the sound "Da da... da da da" I guess it was easy for rapid fire sound effects but we all agreed it made it seem like his gun was retarded (a permitted adjective at the time). The stories we spun never had set endings, we just fought outlaws and Indians, saved homesteaders from floods and bears, and got out of one jam after another until we were tired, hungry or it was time to go home.

It is fun to see that you do remember games you played as children. We also made up games,playing on the beach or in the forrest. We could write plays and put on customs or old sheets. On rainy days we played games, read or used our colour pens.
I happened - do not know why - to ask two friends what they played with as kids. They could not remember and they both were convinced they did not play.
One I believe she really did not. Her mother forbid her to be with other children and she did not have much of toys. It was not necessary her mother thought. The family was not well off. She has become a very nice and kind person, but completely unsecure.

The other one could not remember either that she really played. She can remember a lot from her childhood, but does not like to really talk about it.
Her father was a doctor and on drugs. So the atmosphere in the house was not so nice. She is an artist and express her feelings in her paintings.

So it seems that playing, being a team, learning to be with others, to share things, does mean a lot for later in life.

We couldn't play jacks in the street. I still have my jacks. I was challenged to a game a few years ago. My friend and I had to call the whole thing off. Why? I suspect we could still play. But you have to play on the floor. We wouldn't be able to get up.

When the boys on the block played Johnny of the Pony, I was the final one at the top of the pyramid. I considered this an honor. I never exactly knew what ringolevio was, but I wasn't allowed to play.

We had stick ball and punch ball, with manhole covers (we called them sewers) as bases. One thing I miss is having a fire escape. Boys used to use to bottom part of the ladder as a basketball hoop. The ball hitting the ladder would make a boing noise all the way up the building.

The one game I excelled at was Four Square. Until some kid criticized my stance. My game then suffered because I was self conscious about it.

I don't know if that is anything like a game which we used to play in the school playground. I believe in the US it might have been called "chicken fight" or "shoulder wars". You had two 'teams' opposing each other, composed of boys sitting on other boys' shoulders. They would run at each other and try to knock the other team's 'riders' off their mounts. If a rider was knocked down he and his carrier had to leave the field. When there were only members of one team left standing they were the winners. The headmaster banned it because he said it was "very dangerous'. I seem to remember we called it 'British Bulldog', but I have seen other, different games described under that name.


Likewise in 1950s England. TV was becoming widespread. I remember 'Boots and Saddles' being wildly popular. Someone would be Captain Shanks Adams, and the other boys would form up in a line behind him. Each boy would pretend to be both horse and rider. We would kind of gallop with our legs, making our feet hit the ground like horses hooves, and Shank would raise his right hand and call out 'Whoooooaah!' and we would all rein ourselves in and stop.


I really really wanted a Davy Crockett hat.

The popular sentiments of the time are often taken as fact by the under educated masses. Not you of course. But, who knew the under educated masses could discern what you discern.

And, in my opinion, for our respective intelligences, most of us are under educated. Meaning we stopped our education before we reached that level that we could have achieved. And then there are the over educated. Let's not talk about them.

And, you did Double Dutch?

One Christmas I did get a Davey Crocket hat, a water canteen and a Davey Crocket styled skirt and boots or maybe moccasins, Davey wore pants not skirts. But since I was a girl and have remained one the skirt was the ticket. I was in high cotton with that outfit.....does anybody else remember what a wonderful thing it was to get such treasure? I do remember having a fine collection of marbles and I remember playing the game.....but honestly I found the marbles themselves more magical than the game.

My marbles were not very interesting - coloured clay (?)
My husband´s were glass and very nice. I still have them some place in the house.

I only remember the glass marbles......I'm trying to remember what we called the different types. I think it's time to hit google.

The old barber shops were special. Long before the emergence of the cutely-named unisex "hair styling salons", the old shops with their big mirrors, spiral-striped barber poles, array of sweet-smelling c0lorful hair tonics, super plush reclining barber chairs, and tables covered with old issues of "Argosy" and the "Police Gazette" were one of a young boy's initiations into the adult male world. My mother would drop the three of us boys off at the beginning of the summer and we'd all get "butch" haircuts, basically a few fractions of an inch away from being a skinhead. We usually went to Sal's shop which was in town but if my mother were shopping in Pearl River I'd get to go to the "Rialto", which was my favorite. All that male conversation, the floor beneath each chair collecting the severed locks, and the nervous, rhythmic "click-click-snip" of the barber's scissors — I'm sure an old-fashioned barber shop can still be found somewhere, but around here they're virtually extinct.

Isn´t this the sign for barbershops more or less all over the world

I lived for stuff Disney, by the time Disneyland became a TV show and Davy Crockett was the best thing ever, so I believed. We watched TV at Aunt Appie's house and she agreed about Davy. But, the times it showed cartoons, she would change the channel. "That's all I can stand," she would say. "No wonder they call it Dizzyland."

I remember 'aggies' and 'cat's eye.'