Memories of Classic Games and Play in Maine in the Twenties
Street games: actually this was the function of our locality; the street into our development (mid-twenties) was into what was a field; and for many of my 5-14 years, the main road after leaving Rte #1, Hutchins Street, a mile from Downtown Saco (probably visible on a GPS map) was more or less asphalted, but the other three sides of the square was at best covered with coal ashes and or just plain mud (we once made a high jump pit in that mud)! And it important how you planned to ford the mud in a car hence as the famous Maine sign said on so many spring roads "CHOOSE YOUR RUTS CAREFULLLY BECAUSE YOU’LL BE IN THEM FOR MILES!"
But on that main branch, we played touch football, we punted the football for distance; drop-kicked ball over the phone wires crossing the street (shades of today’s 3-pointers) the side street was wide enough when we included a garage yard to play kick the can, duck on the rock, every nameable form of tag and hop scotch, baseball catch (not enough space, maybe only half an acre to play softball sans breaking windows). But, we could easily move to a neighboring cow pasture and apple orchard combined so long as we didn’t disturb the apples, play tag … any game that required a little running room.
At the corners of our house we build temporary wooden banks on the lawn at the corners of our house; then we didn’t have to slow down very much in running around the four corners; there was just enough length to the house to make a "track" about 45’-35’ or about 50 yards in one circle. So boys and girls could run distances of 100 or two hundred yards. And to do any of these games and needing lumber as in building the corner banks, my father always pointed to an old pile of wood scraps as well as cans of nails so we were never short of materials to make what we needed. So the fairly open streets enabled us to adapt to almost any game. One of the best features of these arrangements: parents frequently played the less physical games.
When in our early teens, before we encountered required gym in our high school classes, my dad, operating a nearby back-street garage, sometimes came out to time our
running around the square, which we called "the loop." Also, if we as teen agers could not settle an argument about time, or the height of the high or pole jump, he was a very fair-minded and patient judge to settle our disputes. And my boyhood friends respected him enough to accept his judgment about distance in long jump or height in the other two. We had no stop watch, but my friends accepted his judgment most of the time. Too, while he did not "supervise us," he was nearby if we needed him.
Also, playing treasure hunt, capture the flag or pioneering, he or other older brothers and sisters were regarded as pretty fair. Too, we made it a local game to see who got the first wild strawberry or first violet or lady slipper; we were close enough to many wild flower patches to make flower-picking a game, too. Anybody lucky or clever enough to get a lady slipper, jack-in-the-pulpit claimed that "patch" for him or herself. Yes, boys were of course, stronger and more clever than our sisters, but we sometimes had to bow to our sisters!
Nor was it difficult to expand into other nearby woods and fields to play Cowboys and Indians in its various forms, also make bike trails through the woods, fields, etc adjacent to our squared-off street except in the spring when the mud was too deep.
Also adjacent to our area there were a couple of swamps one of which with the name, Bakers Pond, owners of the area where we could get a fairly clear run on which to skate non-stop probably 100 feet; but, the owner let us dig out some of the channels or branches of the swamp so we could skate as much as 2-300 feet in a circle hence, the older guys with racing skates could work up pretty good speed and momentum. Then since several branches of the swampy areas went back into the woods a quarter a mile or so, we worked up distance skating with glee; also, since the brush was fairly thick in those parts, taking girls into those areas was not unheard of;
Board games were fairly common. My sisters and I as well as some of the neighbors always pointed toward Christmas and asked for presents such as Parcheesi, Monopoly, Checkers as well as learning "52-pick-up," as other games played with dice. If we could master Sixty-three well enough to defeat our parents, that was competition enough. Dominoes helped us with our math.
Marbles was a game associated with spring in New England, also where you could dig a slight an inch or two impression in the school or roadside gravel, you could develop your "pooney" skill to knock your competitor’s marbles into one of the "pockets." Then you could carry them back into the classroom or home if you hadn’t had them confiscated by a teacher roiled when you dribbled them from pocket to floor in the middle of a recitation; the object was to "skin" your classmate out of as many as possible and let him (or her) know you were sharper than he or she until you out- skinned or was skinned by your class competitors Then you had might have trouble finding somebody to play with you.
Another indoor game that I enjoyed: Using old Sears, Roebuck or Montgomery Ward catalogues with their onion skin-like paper, to fold them in the correct way to create a dance-like line of 5, 10, 20 paper dolls. Competition in this instance was to cut the tallest and the most in the dance line … and make them dance!
Airplanes. Since I grew up in the early plane era and about the time that Lindbergh flew nonstop across the Atlantic and many other pilots stimulated our imagination by taking off for Europe from Old Orchard. As children we followed these sagas via parents and planes, took the three-mile trip to the ocean in the hope of seeing a take-off. We never did, but we joined the crowds at the ocean surrounding every prospective take-off. Also, we would run out of dad’s garage or our house when we heard a plane approaching.
From a toy viewpoint, however, we made unsophisticated planes by simply nailing two wooden lathes or any two sticks together, a long one for the wing or wings, a short one for the tail and a long one for the wing. We didn’t have the money that some of our friends had to buy kits and fly them. But we did borrow one idea from their efforts; we whittled propellers with properly-shaped blades to catch the wind when we nailed them to the fuselage and ran into the wind on our streets to see that our effort paid off. At one moment in time, I counted 25 of them that I’d made and placed in lines on our front lawn.
Cat’s cradles were also fun. Dad would buy a cord of "stickings" from one or another local lumber dealer. Since the lumber folk made the "stick-in" s when they trimmed their logs (floated down the Saco River, most of which were a multiple of four feet) the "stick-ins" were four feet long and usually 1" thick. Hence, the lumber company could stick them between stacks of green lumber 4 feet wide and 8, 10, 12, etc. long. Since they were full of pitch, even green they made an excellent fire. My folk bought 2 to 4 cords per winter. So we began by laying the widest four, two parallel with two and about 3-1/2 feet apart. Then by building them 2 x 2 atop the"foundation "we could make it to 8 to 10 feet. Then, we could play by climbing down inside, having lemonade and other snacks in own toy house, a "cat’s cradle." I also seem to recollect that we occasional took our cat down in to one. The folk used to worry that we could build them too high because they could get pretty rickety. I recall tipping one or two over but never got seriously hurt.
I could write about an interesting transition from a small toy to a big toy. Briefly, an elderly man crashed his car on Rte No. 1 fairly near our house and garage. After storing the car for a few months, the man decided not to drive again so he gave it to dad to pay the storage bill. It was a 1927 Nash without much mileage or wear and tear except for the body, hardly worth replacing. So dad asked, "Would you like to have; I’ll help you fix it." I was 13, had done many kinds of repair to help dad, so was eager to have it. Briefly, I replaced broken parts in motor or chassis, but replaced the body, using instead, a Chrysler roadster body with a rumble seat. Here was my own big toy when I became 15. And I used it that way when I became manager of my football high school football team; not only did I haul players’ equipment and bags of lime to mix in 10’s of barrels of water, I also learned to tape ankles and other body parts since we had no trainer.
As I think of the distance between making toy boats, sling shots, bows and arrows, track banks for running corners, box traps for catching wild animals, tree platforms to make tree climbing more interesting, a dozen different platforms, shelves, squadrons of toy planes with props, skate hangers, skis (from barrel staves, game tables, fruit pickers for reaching apples beyond easy reach, sawdust & mud pits for high and pole vaulting, cats cradles galore, etc almost adinfinitum; as I reflect, we made most of our toys or adapted them for our use.
I have to thank my most helpful parents for rarely warning me much more than saying "Be careful." Granted, I slit my left thumb badly until I learned that my dad has showed me how not to whittle toward me and have the scars to show it 80+ years later. Granted I grew up in a family of Yankee ingenuity.
The rule was: if you can’t buy it, make it! No matter what kind of material was needed … although wood was the more common material, whatever the toy. I attribute my accomplishments via using my hands to make a crude ski jump at a local hill or a special game board beyond our means or to repair a toy sailboat at 10 or 12 that dad had made me at four or to learn to use an axe for many purposes, long before I drove that 1927 Nash as the big toy whose memory I would long remember when I drove through the Boston suburbs to witness a Red Sox baseball game!
Some seasonal playful activities
Arbor Day: reading poems such as Joyce Kilmer's "Trees" in school and at home as well as planting trees.
Fourth of July before firecrackers many became so many deadly weapons (a 2" one went off as I started to toss it past my ear (I couldn't hear well for a month)!
May Day (first) - picking flowers for our families; winding the May Pole (British tradition) at the Children's May Day Fair at the City Hall - usually mother and children attended
APRIL 1 - April's Fool Day (who could invent the craziest story or event to catch parents; the one I liked best: My mom and dad woke up one April 1st morning (their bed was in an unfinished attic), called mother's attention to the chimney surface that had not been covered over the head of their bed, said, hardly before she was conscious, "Mary, I didn’t know that a brick was falling out of that chimney?" Before she could think about it, she replied, "It is??" They both started the day with laughter.
