Old Timers, I mean REALLY old timers....didja ever play mumblety peg?

1955.
Fourth grade.
Every boy(except the sissies) carried a pocket knife.

Come recess, we played "mumbilty peg". That's what
we called it, and there was never an adult around to set us straight.

The only knives I remember using were the basic slip joints of the period.
I recall having a Case stockman and a gen-u-ine "Barlow"
knife just like Tom Sawyer's. I loved that Barlow so much that when I
grew up and it became legal to recall my childhood with fondness;
I went out and bought an identical knife; Tree Brand. I have it to this day and will hand it down to my grandson.

As one of the seasoned citizens on this forum, please indulge me for a moment.

Make it a point to play a round of mumbilty peg-(however you choose to spell it); and play a game or two of marbles while you're at it. There are web sources with instructions.

Both games will provide you an important taste of simpler times.
 
Yep, I played stretch like Sal did as well. Another favorite game was having races around the neighborhood without touching the ground. You would walk along the edge of fences, up trees, and across roofs. Often you had to jump from one to the other of these. It was particularly fun in the dark. It drove dogs crazy if you walked along the top of the fence to their yard. The other part of the game was to see who would jump off the highest roof. If you were a real stud you would jump up and catch the edge of a roof and do a roll-up onto it without touching a wall. You have to start with your back to the building to do this.
 
I look back now and am amazed most of us lived to have kids. Hope they are smarter! But where's the fun in that?
 
I played mumbledy peg all the time as a kid. Stretch too. I remember one time in particular. I was playing it with my brother and I was very close to winning. I let go of the knife and it stuck alright... all the way through my bare right foot! (only dorks wore shoes!) I went and showed my Dad, and he fixed it up proper - monkey blood, a cotton ball and duct tape! (no sh!t) The knife was a folding fishing knife - upswept point, scaler on back and a botte opener near the handle. It was painful as hell. :D

I also remember EVERY BOY in school carrying a knife. In my sociology class, the teacher asked a friend of mine if he could borrow his "pig sticker" which everybody knew was his switchblade! Children these days are being treated like criminals all because of a few bad apples.
 
Even in the good ol' days parents and schools could be careful. I remember one time my best friend in junior high school was called into the office just because his mother wanted to check that he hadn't brought his new Ruger .22 to school for show and tell (well to show and tell me). Now his parents had given him this 10-shot automatic for his 14th birthday and the school was not shocked that he owned a gun. Everybody just thought it was better if he didn't have it with him in school. Mom just got excited when she didn't see it in his room. He had done the responsible thing and hid it where it wouldn't be found by a friend of one of his younger sisters. He was a little put out that she thought he might bring it to school. After all this was the target version with the extra long barrel. Back in those days you might have canvas book bag, but you wouldn't have a back pack to hide the darn thing in.

His mother was not overly trusting. She was known to frisk us when we left the house. I gather that we really weren't supposed to shoot out all of the street lights.
 
Another favorite game was having races around the neighborhood without touching the ground.

You would walk along the edge of fences, up trees, and across roofs. Often you had to jump from one to the other of these. It was particularly fun in the dark.

It drove dogs crazy if you walked along the top of the fence to their yard.

The other part of the game was to see who would jump off the highest roof.
Click to expand...
All this sounds very strange to a city kid. :D
 
AntDog said:
if he could borrow his "pig sticker" which everybody knew was his switchblade!
Click to expand...

Pig Sticker, that's a term you don't hear to often now. My father and uncles always called switchblades and large pocket knives that.

Anyway, you know what I really miss? No cell phones. :barf: You left home after you did your homework, played with your friends, and came home when the street lights came on. Now I see 8 year old kids that talk on the cell phone more then I do, and companies want to use the GPS in phones to allow parents to track their kids location. I can see the good reasons for it, but I think kids loose a lot of the experience they should gain being kids. Instead of figuring out what to do on their own or learning how to be responsible, they learn to call mom or wait for a call from home. What is going to happen when they are on their own at college or after college and mom can't help them?
 
Children these days are being treated like criminals all because of a few bad apples.
Click to expand...

Or....as I believe....to make them very, very "controllable" and amenable to direction from so-called "authorities."

Gonna change the name of that statue in NY harbor to "The Statue of Many Allowable Activities."

And I am completely SERIOUS!

:barf:
 
Lavan said:
"The Statue of Many Allowable Activities."
Click to expand...

WTF?! You're really serious? Geez.

Man that zero tolerance crap gets me riled up every time! I even read about a first grader getting EXPELLED for pointing his finger at a teacher and saying "pow"!

UNBELIEVABLE! And yet it happens every day. It's just sad. :thumbdn:
 
I went to school in Kentwood, Louisiana (the home of Britney Spears, by the way), and we had a game where we would draw a circle on the ground about 4 feet in diameter. Then we would divide it into equal portions, one for each player. Then we would throw our knives at a straight line and the closeness to that line determined the order we would throw in. The first one would throw his knive at someone elses portion of the circle. If he hit in someone elses portion he would draw a line through the hole the blade made all the way across the property in question. Then the owner of the property had his choice as to which part he wanted to keep. The thrower got to add the other part to his own land. As long as the thrower kept sticking his knife into someone elses land he kept throwing. When he missed he had to step down and the next boy would throw. When your land was smaller than some already agreed on part of your body, heel of your hand, side of your hand, etc., then you were out of the game. Last one in the game with property won.

As for guns at school, there were a few boys who would go home with a friend after school and go hunting with him. He would bring his shotgun to school and if he had a vehicle he would leave it in the vehicle. If not he could take it to class and store it in the cloak room (a big closet) till school was over. Lots of things wrong with that now. First, if you set foot in school with a shotgun you would be on the way to jail, and if the teacher let you store it in an unlocked room, it would surely not be there when school was out.

Things have changed. We would throw our knives in front of teachers, principals and coaches. Sometimes the principal would stop to watch. Only thing you could get in trouble doing was playing tackle football at lunch time. Of course that only held true if the principal or football coach was in sight. Then it was touch. If they were out of sight we went back to tackle.
 
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