£l1lltlre••'s City Games fttll~lttre by Fred Ferretti The Children's Area is a magnet. Sprinkle The day of the empty lot, of the city block children through the Festival on a scorching unencumbered by parked cars, of the day and they'll gravitate here and it will be stoop, is over. In the cities there is virtually hard to pull them away. In our shady place, no empty space and what there is of it is the Hill and Sand area provides the three given over to asphalt-paved parking lots essential elements of earth, sand and wa­ and to public parks with carefully delineated ter, to transform the landscape with castles fields and playing areas. The automobiles, and forts, quarries and caves, as dreams the delivery trucks, the buses and the taxis emerge from the blank sand canvas. In the pack the streets. What had been empty dirt-floored Marble Ring, parents can teach space is now divided into lots each with its their children, and children can bring their tract house and its lawn. Unbuilt-upon land parents up to date on the ways of aggies, has been turned into ball fields where or­ steelies, puries and cats eyes. The Game ganized teams play, into golf courses and Ring has a tree club-house and materials tennis courts and fenced-in paddle ball and for building on additions; games of all sorts handball courts. Stoops have been reduced are played here too-tug of war, jump rope, to one step up. squirt gun fights, four square~ hop scotch, I told ma My mother'n your mother One might expect that with this constric­ football. Ma told pa Uve across the way tion of open space games peculiar to the In the Crafts Tents in our area, the arti­ Johnny got a licking and Sixteen-nineteen streets of such urban centers as New York, cles useful in play are constructed; we Ha ha ha. South Broadway Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago, games And every night they have a fight and make doll houses and dolls, origami cootie whose forms, rules and rhymes are part of How many lickings did he get? This is what they say catchers, soap box derby cars, wooden 1-2-3-4-5-6- Akka bakka soda cracker America's urban tradition, would become sailboats. The Folk Swap Tent is for the Akka bakka boo constricted as well, would perhaps die of exchange of secret languages and riddles, (near Maine) Akka bakka soda cracker disuse. But this has not happened. City counting out rhymes and ghost stories. Blue bells Out goes you. games, street games, children's games, Here, too, we make costumes and puppets Cockle shells dictated largely by the environment in which Not last night Eeevy ivy o-ver. for the Stage, where children from local But the night before they were created live on, basically un­ schools and clubs share their performance Twenty-four robbers came changed, though altered slightly by new (near California) traditions-clapping games, circuses, Knocking at my door geography and social alterations. stunts and parades. Sometimes grownups Blue bells In cities there are no baseball fields and Taco shells I went out to teach the traditional games and play­ Eevy ivy o-ver. so baseball becomes stickball, with a parties that they remember so lovingly from Let them in sawed-off mop handle replacing the bat, their own childhoods. The best times that They hit me on the head with a with a high-bouncing pink rubber ball­ we have are those when the most Festival Mother, mother Rolling pin. which I called a " Spaldeen" as a visitors join in , so come and play with us. lam ill How many hits did I get? youngster-replacing the baseball, with Send for the doctor manhole covers becoming pitching Over the hill. 1-2-3-4-5-6- mounds and home plates, and with sewers, Fudge, fudge auto bumpers and fire hydrants becoming In comes the doctor Jumprope Rhymes Tell the judge In comes the nurse Mama's got a newborn Fred Ferretti is the author of " The Great In comes the lady with the alligator purse . .. If you stretched a jumprope from Maine to Baby. American Marble Book" and " The Great California-somebody said once-all the Wrap in up in tissue paper American Book of Sidewalk, Stoop, Dirt, Curb, children along that rope would be jumping Measles, said the doctor Throw it down the elevator and Alley Games" both published by Workman to these rhymes: Mumps, said the nurse First floor-miss Publishing Co., New York. Pneumonia said the lady with the alligator purse. Second floor-miss Down by the ocean Third floor Photos are by Jerry Barvin, from " The Great Down by the sea Out goes the doctor Kick it out the door American Book of Sidewalk, Stoop, Dirt, Curb, Johnny broke a bottle and Out goes the nurse Mama's got no newborn and Alley Games " by Fred Ferretti, published by Blamed it on me. Out goes the lady with the alligator purse. Baby. Workman Publishing Company, New York. 30 bases. Or it becomes stoop ball, wherein distance up against the wall, then arch out­ chestnuts, the ones that hardened the best was separated from the street by those the spaldeen is thrown against the point of ward and downward sufficiently long and became the best "killers" for games of strips of packed-down dirt that was ideal for· one of the stoop's steps and each bounce is enough to permit the player to execute the Buckeye came from city trees. Marbles in such things. It was marbles and stickball in counted as one base for the "batter." difficult hand and feet movements required the city were largely gambling games using Spring and punchball and handball and On city streets games such as Skelly, before catching the rebound. concrete curbs, cigar boxes, sidewalks and slap ball in Summer along with jacks and also called Skelsy, are contrived. This is Some games are both city and urban and alleys, but away from the city marbles was jumprope; football in the fall and Buckeyes sort of a billiards game, in which a bottle are unchanged by their location-Pottsy, likely to be Ringer or Old Bowler-Abraham and sleds in the winter. cap, filled with melted wax, is shot with the also called Hopscotch, Jacks, Jump Rope, Lincoln's favorite marbles game-because There is a tendency to believe in our nos­ fingertip at a succession of boxes within a (particularly Double Dutch with its intri­ in the suburbs there is more dirt. talgia that those games don't exist any­ square court-from one to two to three, and cate rhymes,) baseball card flipping, When I was growing up there was no more. We are so taken with those overly so on, up to 13. Skelly courts were in my Mumblety-Peg-others change in form as such distinction as city or country. The explicit pastimes sold to us and our children time drawn with chalk in the street, or for the they move from city to country. Touch foot­ basic unit of existence was the block. A on television that even as we buy them we more affluent, painted on the tar with white ball, city style, has as its gridiron bound­ block might exist in the city or the suburbs rue the purchases and long for games that lead. Skelly is not a suburban game. Nor is aries a pair of curbs and as its goals, tele­ but it was one's personal world. were played with imagination, with rules Box Ball, which must be played within the phone wires strung across the street. Except for school the boundaries of my that changed at whim, with equipment that confines of two or more concrete sidewalk Basketball, city style, is usually played on youth and my activities were defined by one was makeshift. But they are around. Go into squares, with players slapping the spal­ concrete courts, often with steel waste block in the city of New York. The middle of any neighborhood in any American City and deen on a bounce back and forth in a baskets-their bottoms ripped out-as the block our touch football field because you'll see girls jumping rope and playing rudimentary form of tennis. Nor is street hoops, with makeshift backboards made up .there were no trees to interfere with forward jacks, boys flipping and swapping baseball hockey, played on roller skates with a role of discarded wood strips. Basketball in the passes. At my end of the street was the cards, children chasing and tagging and of black electricians' tape used ·for a puck suburbs is more often than not played on basketball court and the stickball field with hiding from each other, balls being hot with and with hockey sticks made out of wood regulation-sized vyooden courts. Handball first base a telephone pole second a man­ mop handles or with palms and fists, field handles nailed and taped to boomerang­ in the city is played in many ways and on hole cover and third a fire hydrant. Red goals being booted over telephone wires. shaped pieces of wood. many courts and often does not exist away Rover was played at the end of the block Stoops still exist in cities and so do curbs One needs a wall, preferably large and from urban areas, except in athletic clubs. where thick trees allowed for no games that and gutters and sidewalks. The kids haven't without windows-like the walls around the But only in the city can one find Johnny required throwing a ball, and Boy Scout changed much either and they play now corner from corner candy stores-to play On A Pony, Ringelevio, or Kick the Can. knife-into-the-dirt games could be played what I remember playing as a boy. The only Russia, because the ball must travel some And it seemed that the best horse anywhere because everybody's sidewalk changes have been in us. 27, 28, 29, 30 ... Chinese Handball-any wall will do. Abe Uncoln's marble game.