Games People Played: A Typical Day

 In the mornings, we played with Sharon and Jimmy Fanscki, who lived three doors down from us. One summer we had stilts. We walked back and forth from our house to theirs on stilts. Daddy made my stilts the same height as the porch so I could just walk off onto them.

When we moved over to Grandma's house we played Pitching Washers, Daddy and I against Bobby Joe and Mama. We played in the driveway. You had a hole and stood 'just so far' from it and pitched washers and tried to get them in the hole. We played every evening after supper. 

After lunch we had a siesta and then played outside between the houses in the shade. One day when my school friends came over, we did gymnastics on the quilt between the houses. 

Bobby Joe and Ray Berry, who lived next door and was a few years older than Bobby Joe, made a movie with a camera. They took still shots of westerns and used ketchup as the blood, but the pictures were black and white so they didn't turn out like they expected and they were disappointed.

One morning, Bobby Joe and I had a circus. Our Mama was our most important guest. We had a clown and Bobby Joe did tricks. Bobby Joe thought he was going to get rich selling tickets. Mama was the only paying customer, along with possibly three or four kids. Needless to say, we didn't get rich!

Daddy talked about playing Mumblety Peg when he was young. It was a game boys used to play with pocket knives. It was where they went through a whole series of things, like we did with jacks. I think Daddy thought he must have grown up in the best time to grow up in rural Bandera County. 

Sometimes after supper we got out the croquet set. Some evenings Mama and Daddy would play, along with whatever kids were there. Daddy was notorious for almost winning and then using his club to hit people's balls all over the yard. 

At night we had a street light in front of our house that made our house and the one across the street the gathering place. We played games like Colored Eggs (see previous post about that game) and Button, Button, Who Got the Button? as well as Hide and Seek, and Freeze Tag. In Hide and Seek, we counted by fives to a hundred. I always thought counting by ones was the easy way out. 

Moms would call their kids home to bed, and we often listened to the San Antonio Missions, minor league baseball's Texas league, on the radio. Jim Wiggins was the announcer. Their phenomenal shortstop Brooks Robinson played for them during this time. More about that in this blog post.

Later, we had bicycles and roller skates, and went roller skating downtown at the roller rink and to the movies. We rode the bus for a nickel and went to the movie for nine cents, so for a quarter you could get a Coke and popcorn and everything.