OT: Games We Played as Kids

[1960Pats]

"Stratomatic" a real blast from the past.. do not remember that version though. Then there was the game that vibrated and you could little stickies on players to show your favorite team.. the players would then vibrate until another player touched them.

We grew up there were not a lot of public open fields, so we played in a graveyard when very young.. we would stuff old chair stuffing from discarded chairs in out flannel lined jeans and have a great time. We even had the "Graveyard Bowl" on Thanksgiving.. one of the guys I played with suffered a serious hip injury as he hit a gravestone. We would kick the crap out of each other.

When we got older we moved to a field that had about a 15 degree angle, nothing quite like two kids running on a downhill angle full speed and when they hit and smacked the crap out of each other. Great time was had by all.

We all wore "Chucks", no specialty shoes for us..

We were much luckier. From my home as a kid we could get to 10 ball fields in a short time by bike and 7 of them were within a 15 minute walk. There was a complex nearby that we shared with the neighboring city that had 6 ballfields, with 2 full sized baseball fields and 2 sets of 2 little league fields all back to back. In between them there was room to have full football games.

We also lived near a cemetery that was about a third empty and also had a great oval shaped clearing in the center that was perfect for any game. The only problem there was that we'd usually get thrown out after a while.

We've been lucky to be able to grow up during that time. I wouldn't want to be doing it now.

 

[BlueThunder]

 

[BlueThunder]

The above backstop was part of our game. could be played with as few as 2 players or max of 4 ( 2 per side). Each team would get 3 outs. Players would stand on second base and hit a baseball toward the backstop. Grounders making it through defending players in front of backstop were singles as well as line drives not caught and hitting under the first horizontal crossbar...next section up was a double, third section a triple and top section was a HR...Any pop ups caught or grounders fielded cleanly were outs. Any ball hit over the backstop were outs. 3 outs per side. player(s) ahead after 9 innings were winners......played this on many days with my brother.....

Another game was a bit more daring. We lived near an MDC wooded area that was covered with pine trees. Excellent place to go out by the river to shoot our .22 rifles and BB guns when we were younger. The pine trees in this one area were about 30 ft tall and swayed back and forth. A couple of us had the bright idea to climb these trees to the top and sway them back and forth until we could grab a treetop near it...we managed to swing quite a ways from treetop to treetop in that forest. The one getting the furthest was considered Tarzan for the day........Lucky we didn't get someone seriously hurt as quite a few "cracks" were heard as we lunged for the nearest tree !