Childhood Games

One of my earlier memories was when we lived in Houston - we were playing "ball" in my front yard and one of the boys told me it was "my bat" - I couldn't understand why he kept saying it was my bat - because yes, the bat belonged to me. I didn't realize what he was saying is it was my "at bat." Now, why did I have the bat? Probably the same reason I had a train set before I was a year old - my dad wanted a boy? He always said not, but with 3 girls, I was the one most like him and I was the oldest.

Once we moved to Pearland, we lived on a circle that had instead of a grass patch in the middle of circle - it was concrete, and the concrete was poured in quarters. This made a perfect area for playing Four Square - the ball game where you tried to work your way up to the first square - OK so ours wasn't square, but pie shaped. Four Pie just doesn't sound right.

I had a doll that I loved to play with - I had her from when I was almost a baby. When Kathy was old enough to want one of her own, hers was even bigger. The boy down the street bit the hand off the baby - and this was a big doll. When we were older, the doll was donated to the 7th Grade Homemaking class for learning how to tend to a baby. I kept my baby for most of my childhood and may still have her somewhere. I know that I stil have my teddy bear from when I was a baby, but had to put it away because Buddy thought it was his.

We also used the circle for playing jump rope - everyone in the neighborhood would play with us - even some of the boys. I did a lot of turning but I did also get pretty good at doubles and backdoor, but I wasn't always the best at hot peppers. We also played Chinese jump rope with a big circle of elastic.

My best friend had a front porch that we used a lot for playing cards - usually Crazy Eight, Spades, War, Double Solitaire. We also played jacks for hours.

And a lot of the neighborhood kids would get together and play hide and seek - using the whole circle as our hiding grounds - and back then a lot of us didn't have fenced yards so that gave us even more hiding places.