Wanna Play Marbles?

On the Internet and elsewhere a lot has been made recently over the fact that children don’t play marbles anymore. The fact is, though, today’s kids don’t play hopscotch or jacks or fate (hide-and-go-seek) or jump rope either.

I remember the penny bubblegum baseball cards we used to collect and play games with by pitching them against any and every wall (one-on-top or two-on-top). And we played stick ball with a piece of broom stick for a bat and three-inch pieces of old garden hose. If you were good you could make those pieces of hose spin and zig-zag past a batter who would swing at nothing but air. We played games we invented.

Today’s parents drive their children from music lessons to art class to soccer practice, and the kids sit in a corner pushing buttons on a little hand-held computer for hours. The only time we sat in a corner was when we were punished for playing fate too long and not coming inside when the street lights came on.

We used our ingenuity to figure out how to entertain ourselves. Despite the fact that most moms in the 1940s and 1950s didn’t work, we were sent outside and told to find something to do and we did. The sound of bouncing basketballs never stopped in neighborhoods near schools where there were lots of kids. Pickup games of touch football went on every evening until it got too dark to see the ball.

Every once in a while I have an opportunity to spend a little time alone with my grandchildren and I teach them one of the old games we used to play like dodge ball or kick the can. All it takes is an old tennis ball to get up a fine game of roof ball or wall ball. Or I take them on a bike ride around the subdivision. I show them how much fun it is to ride to the park for a game of two-on-two basketball like their parents used to play in our driveway every afternoon.

And you know what? They take to the old games right away and really have fun. It is like a voyage of discovery for them out of their safe world of riding around in SUVs and playing computer games into a new world of fun outdoors. We play games invented by kids back in a time when parents did not feel it was their responsibility to provide constant entertainment for their children.

My grandfather was always trying to teach me stuff. He taught me how to use a siphon hose to remove water from the soft drink box in his grocery store that got the drinks cold using real ice that the guy delivered in 100 pound blocks. He taught me how to replace and trim the wick on an oil lamp so you could keep the flame adjusted just right so the chimney won’t turn black with soot. See, my Gramps did not have electricity in his home until he was way past 30.

My grandfather taught me to throw a cast net, how to make a kindling fire in a wood stove safely, and how to make a driftwood fire on the beach to boil shrimp and crabs for his restaurant. He gave me a long-handled net and taught me to use it to catch soft shell crabs in the grass in late summer when the water level in Lake Pontchartrain falls and the water is really clear. He taught me how to make money in winter by trapping musk rats, otter and mink, and how to night light (strictly illegal) rabbits.

Of course, it has been a while since I needed any of those skills gramps felt it was so important that he pass on to me, like maybe 50 years.

So, maybe computers and music and art lessons do have more to offer the next generation than my grandfather’s training in muskrat trapping and wood stove tending, or even my grandchildren’s training from their grandfather in marbles and hop scotch. But you had better know there have been times when my knowing how to use a siphon hose and an oil lamp have come in pretty darn handy, and that’s for sure! Wanna’ play marbles?

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