We Played Outside…All Day Long!
We Played Outside…All Day Long!
We all knew that Summer was coming fast when the street on my corner was closed … a parade was coming and we knew it only meant summer; in the beginning of June, my neighborhood celebrated Brooklyn-Queens day the parade always ended with moms in baby carriages …I always remember that….
We played outside from morning until nighttime
The girls were always playing something, we would play house, each of us had a gate, and that was our house, and our babies and the carriages.
Some days it was Jump Rope
We mostly played single jump rope most of the time; sometimes double-dutch but mainly two girls turning one rope and the rest of us jumping. We all knew how to jump in and how to jump out…
I think I still remember a song … “All, all, all in together now; how do you like the weather now… fine! Fine! January, February, March…” then you jumped out on your birthday month.
http://freevintagedigistamps.blogspot.com/2012/04/free-digital-stamps-retro-jump-rope.html
We always played Hopscotch too
http://blog.webplatform.org/author/eliot-msft/
On days that the boys on the block joined us, we would play games like tag, red light green light, May I, Hide the belt and Manhunt…
Skelly or Scullzies was a sidewalk game that looked like this drawing the only difference was around the 13 were S’s and if you were stuck in an S box you were there until someone knocked you out.
http://arcade.gamesalad.com/p/CulturePlay/games
Both my husband and I played as children and apparently, there’s a certain competitive thing, we both swear our individual neighborhoods were better. In my neighborhood, we would use bottle caps with melted crayons inside; and his neighborhood well those Brooklyn boys were bad-asses and used glass checkers – they made their own with small soda bottles, they would grate the rim of the bottle on the square grating in the street gently until it finally broke off.
This is what ours looks like …. All you need are bottle caps – you need to remove the plastic that is inside it the cap – it takes some time to do it but it can be done. I use a small tiny screwdriver and tweezers- crayons and a warm oven. Place cut crayon pieces inside the caps; any variations, any colors, place on tray put in a warm oven once the crayon is thoroughly melted (less than 2 minutes)remove from oven set aside once cooled they are ready.
Playing in our driveway – it’s a counting game you start at 1 everyone has a turn 1st one that gets to 13 wins.
Another summertime event was going to our house, Upstate New York; the Catskills was our home too.
We would go on the weekends, my parents, my sisters and me would head north at any given time, these weekends also included one of the dad’s brothers and his family. Sometimes it was all five siblings and all my cousins (imagine 12 of us)
At some point during the summer, we would all stay for a few weeks; the dads left on Sunday night, leaving one car for my mom or one of my aunts, then they would come back on Friday night.
It was my family’s home my dad and mom owned the property. My dad and his brothers built the house, so in essence, it was everyone’s home.
A couple of years ago we vacationed in the Catskills at a resort for a week, one day, me, Nick and the kids went to go see the house.
It still stands today…That is where I grew up too, a city girl in the country.
My sisters, my cousins, and I would roam the woods for hours, swim in a creek and just enjoy ourselves.
When I took this picture, I started crying, the house is not ours anymore…but the memories are. It still is beautiful and stands proud!
Country Road by John Denver
Didn’t I start this series saying I was nostalgic?
You were forewarned!
Mangia, Mangia…No Talk!!!
such absolutely wonderful memories!
i'm like you… even though so much older… we played until dark. that's when we KNEW to come in or there was trouble! we rode our bikes for miles. hopscotch and jacks. jump rope… like you say… jumping in and then out… i think it might have prepared us for DRIVING ! think about it… having the timing of knowing when to meld into traffic! LOL.
i never played skelly or scullies… but it sounds fascinating.
as i read this… jump rope rhymes all came back to me. they were wonderful!
i also played a lot with paper dolls.
the view of your summer home made me homesick for upstate new york. summers of my own.
like you say… we have our memories. nothing can change them. even though time changes.
xo
Marisa,
sounds like you had a wonderful childhood. This post brought back some wonderful memories for me as well, I remember jump rope, hopscotch, and jacks.
We also ran around in our neighborhood for hours till the crickets would sing. Life was so much different for us back then no electronics devices or video games.
We had to make up stuff to play with .
I feel so sorry for todays kids they hardly play outside and everywhere they go they must take some sort of device.
I loved my childhood! I wish the same for my daughter. I will encourage her to play outdoors and make life memories
Thanks for sharing…
Loved this post.