Before computers, iPods, video games etc., children would stay out as long as there was daylight (or until bed-time, whichever came first) playing games. Here is a brief list of spring-time favorites from the fifties and early sixties in Edmonton, Alberta. Perhaps today's children could be persuaded to give them a try?
Gutterboat Racing
Spring was time to get on rubber boots (gumboots, wellies, whatever they're called in the reader's country) and race splinters of wood down the gutter streams to see whose would go a set distance the fastest, or to see whose would travel furthest without needing to be poked along. As soon as the water dried up, the season ended.
Marbles
Various games of marbles appear to have been around for centuries and are played around the world. In For those who don't know, marbles are small rounds of glass or clay. The basic goal of any of the zillion variant games was to capture marbles from other players ("keepsies") or to simply have fun ("funsies") by some version of rolling one marble ("shooter") in an attempt to strike an opponent's stationary marble ("duck", as in sitting duck). Always one of the first games played in spring as soon as the ground was dry enough, or sometimes sooner.
Hopscotch
While the boys were playing marbles, the girls were busy chalking hopscotch* grids on the sidewalks. The pattern of the grid seemed to vary from neighborhood to neighborhood (8 and 12 squares, for example, or with and without "splits") and also varied with the mood of the girl setting up the game.
Usually just the girls played in little groups, but occasionally a guy would join in, if there were nothing better to do or his bike had a flat tire or a special girl were in the group.
Where marbles was definitely a spring thing, hopscotch seemed to go on all summer.
*Also called 'potsy' in New York or 'blue sky' in some locales.
Skipping
At about the time the boys started clearing out the marble displays in local stores, the girls began skipping. Again, the girls played in little groups; even if they were skipping singly they often kept time with each other. With longer ropes, two girls would swing and one or two at a time would jump. Sometimes there would be a line of girls taking turns running in and out of the swinging rope. Of course, this was all done to sing-song nonsense rhymes.
As with the hopscotch, the guys would occasionally join the girls at this, and some were pretty good. Guys seldom skipped just by themselves, though; only with the girls.
Pea Shooters
Pea-shooting season followed hard on the heels of marble season. A group of guys would equip themselves with pea-shooters (oversized plastic straws about 1/4" in diameter and 12" long, for a nickel) and pool their allowances to buy a pound bag of white beans. Nobody every wondered why "pea shooters" only shot beans. The ammunition was carefully divided (some even insisted on counting out the beans), teams were drawn, strategy was decided, and the commandos would disperse to games of stalk and attack.
Weapons and ammunition had to be carefully hidden from parents. "Sure, it's fun," they would scold, "until somebody loses an eye." Years of playing, and nobody ever got blinded that anyone every heard for certain, but all parents used that line when they confiscated a shooter or a stash of beans.
The most fun part was noticing the crop of volunteer beans in everybody's lawns later in the summer, and remembering the battles that had generated each stand of bean stalks.
Spud Guns
Google "spud gun" these days and the result will be some monster cannon that can launch a potato into a low-earth orbit.
The spud gun of yore was a little pot-metal pistol that fired a potato pellet. Squeeze the gun and out popped a little slug of potato. The player would hold a potato in one hand and the gun in the other, dig the little barrel into the potato to gouge out a pellet, point and pop!
Picture a bunch of young kids (girls played too) chasing each other around and plastering each other with potato juice. Pellets in clothes, hair, all over the ground....
Spud guns also got confiscated, usually after a complaint such as "Didn't I tell you not to shoot that thing in the house/at your brother/sister/the dog/the cat/me?"
To Everything there is a Season
Each of these activities had a definite season - they were played for a few weeks then they disappeared, only to return the following year. They involved a great deal of social interaction – planning, deciding on rules, playing, arguing, fighting, making up. They involved a great deal of exercise – running, climbing fences and trees, crawling, sneaking up, diving for cover, dodging. They were played for hours – from just after supper until the last possible excuse for staying outside was worn thin.
Compare that with today's childhood, where social interaction consists of text-messaging or interactive video games or sitting and watching a DVD together, and where the exercise consists largely of thumb movements.
Though still, the kids will play them for hours.
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