Games - We Played a Lot of Board Games

We played a lot of board games…

Four Square

Tether Ball

String games like Cats in the Cradle

Dodge Ball

Hop Scotch

Jump Rope - jump rope rhymes, Double Dutch "salt" - slow it down, "pepper" speed it up

Tug of War

Basketball games - Horse and Twenty-One

Games you play at school, but never at home:

Ring Around the Rosey

Tag

London Bridge

Mulberry Bush

May Pole

Dodge Ball

Musical Chairs

Tether Ball

Card Games:

Rummy, Gin Rummy

Crazy Eights

Whist

Hearts

Black Jack

Go Fish

Games You Can't Quite Classify:

Hang Man

Hot and Cold

Charades

Stoop Ball

Stick Ball - New York City style

Make That ?

How to Choose Sides:

One potato, two potato, three potato, four ...

Eeenie, mennie, minnie, moe.  Catch a tiger by the toe, my mother told me to choose this very one

What do you do when:

You cross a bridge?  Hold your feet off the car floor.

You enter a tunnel?  Get your dad to honk the horn.

Pass a graveyard?  Whistle

I find it interesting that my sister and I played so many board games, but we never owned Monopoly or Clue, two of the most popular games of the era.  We always played the games at friends’ houses however.

I could shout out Colonel Mustard in the green room with a Monkey wrench as good as anybody.

The streets and railroads on the Monopoly board are as familiar as the streets in my own neighborhood.  I could easily visualize Marvin Gardens, the Boardwalk, Kentucky Avenue, Atlantic Avenue, the Reading and B+D Railroad Depots, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Illinois, the Water Works and the Electric Company.

The rich proprietor on Park Place always resembled Highland Park.

Paying into the Community Chest was the price you paid for good citizenship.  Free Parking was just that.  You could always count on luck and good fortune with a Get Out of Jail Free card.

Parker Brothers game company began selling Monopoly, a real estate trading game, in 1935.

I don't remember playing games with my parents.  I remember playing cards - I think I learned to count with cards by playing all variations of rummy.  I still have a hard time saying 11, 12, 13 and 14 when it should be Jack, Queen, King and Ace!

I found the Hoyle book of Card games, and with my sister or friends we learned to play Hearts, Pinochle, Black Jack, Poker and even Whist, and early form of Bridge.  We always had decks of cards in the house.  My parents played cards when they visited their friends.

We had poker chips - an old set from my parents family, with clay-coated white, red and blue chips in a round dark Walnut holder.  We had a cheap plastic set, but we always had the older ones.

Our rule with board games - once you're through you put everything away, board pieces in one tray, money sorted by denominations in their own specific tray.

My wife was amazed some twenty years later visiting the room I grew up in.  There in the closet were all the board games stacked neatly, all the pieces and money still intact.  She came from a family of three other sisters and a brother - nothing stayed together for long.

We played Pick-up Sticks, Jacks, and Tiddly-Winks.

We had a roulette wheel with board, plus Chinese Checkers.

Early board games included Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders.

We played Chess and Checkers.  On the back of the checkerboard was a Parcheesi layout which we never learned to play.

We had Monopoly and our favorite, the game of Life.

We always played at others houses, so we never felt a need to have the game ourselves.  Clue.  We always knew it was Colonel Mustard in the Green Room with a Monkey Wrench.

I had a dart board on my closet door in my bedroom.  We played darts forever.  Even in high school people would stop by on their way home from classes to shoot darts.  I sharpened their points with a file.  We were more enthusiastic than accurate, and the whole wall became covered with minute dart holes.  My mother never said a thing, preferring us here than hanging out somewhere else getting into trouble.