Before Nintendo, before smart phones, and even before computers, marbles and pocket knives fascinated young minds. I remember these two readily available items making a splash on the school playgrounds of my youth. Just about every kid was “into” marbles and every boy carried a pocket knife … yes, carried a knife to school and often times in plain sight of teachers during recess.
Marbles
Cat's eyes, peeweees, milkies, crystals, bumblebees, steelies, boulders – all of these are types of beautiful marbles and once upon a time, they were sought-after treasures of grade school kids. When I was growing up, marbles were inexpensive toys that became a staple for play everywhere – especially at school – both a fad and affordable status symbols.
Rob Lammle of Mental Floss provides a brief history of the colorful orbs:
“Believe it or not, but no one really knows where marbles originated. They've been found in the ashes of Pompeii and in the tombs of ancient Egyptians, and they were played with by Native American tribes, so it's impossible to pin down a precise country of origin. The earliest examples were simply stones that had been polished smooth by a running river, but for centuries artisans made them by hand from clay, stone, or glass.
“Mass production became possible in 1884, when Sam Dyke of Akron, Ohio, created a wooden block with six grooves, each of which held a lump of clay. An operator would roll a wooden paddle over all the clay balls at once, with a back-and-forth and slightly lateral motion, creating six marbles.”
(Rob Lammle. “A Brief History of Marbles: Including All That Marble Slang.” Mental Floss. November 03, 2015.)
I honestly don't remember playing many traditional “Ringer” games with marbles – drawing a circle and using a “shooter” to knock other people's marbles out of the boundaries. These games did go on. However, we played lots of marbles at lunch recess in a very simple way.
People would set up marbles in a horizontal line (or even one special marble) on the sidewalk, spaced evenly apart, and others would take turns behind a designated line rolling other marbles to hit one of the marbles in the line and be awarded possession of the entire setup.
We played “keepsies.” Rolled marbles that missed their mark were kept by the setup person, and setup wins went into the pocket of the shooter. Some days the entire sidewalk would be full of enticing marble setups: the playground resembled a county fair arcade.
Playing this marble game took little skill and rewards occurred mainly through luck on the slightly bumpy sidewalk, so everyone was enticed to take a chance on winning. Many a grade-school fortune was won and lost as marbles rolled on their adventurous way. And, of course, occasion arguments took place. For example, if a student offering a setup would hide a marble's defect by placing a chipped side to the pavement, a winner was dismayed.
Pocket Knives
In the good old days, three-blade pocket knives – with names like Case. Buck, Barlow, Remington, Gerber, and Schrade – provided boys hours of inexpensive entertainment. When I was growing up as a Baby Boomer, a pocket knife was an essential item for every young man's pocket. It was used to cut about everything from fishing line to string, paper and an occasional finger. A knife was a highly functional tool entrusted to young boys. Probably a good share of young ladies also carried a pocket knife. Back then, no one would ask about such possession.
Whether it was used to slice a freshly picked apple or to cut some twine, a pocket knife was a prized possession to virtually every grade-school boy. The few who didn’t have one wished they did. It was like a billfold – something they had with them at all times. And … Yes, we all took them to school.
Did the teachers worry about all those weapons in the classroom? Only to the extent that they distracted boys from the arithmetic or English grammar on the blackboards. In fact, if a female teacher asked whether anyone had a knife to assist her with some classroom chore, chances were every boy in the class would raise his hand in a fashion far more enthusiastic than their responses to her academic questions.
On the playground? If a boy ever pulled a knife out of his pocket during a fight, the rest of the male student body would have taken the knife away from the aggressor, kicked his ass until he said “uncle,” and maybe … or maybe not … given him back his knife. No, knifes were not used as weapons – that was the rule in my rural school, and everyone, even the orneriest bully on the playground, played by the rules. Things were well understood.
What boys did do on the playground was play a variant version of Mumbley-peg known as “Stretch” or “Splits.”The two players began by facing each other some distance apart with their own heels and toes touching, and taking turns attempting to stick their knives in the ground outward of the other player's feet. If the knife stuck, the other player had to move his foot out to where the knife stuck while keeping the other foot in place, provided the distance between foot and knife is about twelve inches or less. Play continued until one player falls or is unable to make the required stretch.
As I remember playing Stretch, a player could also stick his knife between the opposing player's feet, requiring that player to make one jump in his stretched out position at 180 degrees without falling down. Even if the player jumped successfully, sticking a knife from that backward position was very difficult.
Teachers watched us play this knife game, and we all passed through our schools in harmony. I really believe we students knew the utility of pocket knives and never considered using one to cut another person. The knives were often prized possessions handed down through the family to the next gracious boy. That gift came with stern warning for safe and proper use. And, failing to follow these warnings meant forfeiting the blade and paying a dear price in swift discipline.
“Men have always carried pocket knives. One of the highlights of a visit to the U.S. Capitol is to see where Daniel Webster, and many other Senators – some later Presidents – carved their names or initials in their Senate desks. I guess serving in the U. S. Senate is a lot like attending the 8th grade – lots of idle time.”
-- H. Riley Bock, Trustee and Former President, State Historical Society of Missouri
Of course, in our violent society knives are no longer welcome in schools. In fact, pocket knives are not allowed on airplanes, in the Social Security office, or in any other official state setting. Trust? Reality? Safety? All of these things have played a part in making the ban necessary.
Today is a far cry from the days of old when something as simple as a marble or as dangerous as a knife could inspire games and fun. People who grew up with these objects wonder how things got to be the way they are now. I'm sure studies could enlighten the reader, but the research would still leave Baby Boomers collectively scratching their heads. “Simpler, safer times” would ring out in unison.
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