Fun
and Games Upstairs
The upstairs of 828 was also where we played,
especially on cold or rainy days or in the evenings that weren’t before a
school day. The games we played there were basic 1950’s inside games like
Chutes and Ladders, Monopoly or various card games. We also played with
electric train sets, slot (racing) cars; we built forts out of wooden blocks
and placed it full of little plastic (WWII) army men. Then, of course, we
knocked the forts to pieces with blocks hurled into the air by makeshift catapults.
There were also play things to do that would certainly
be recognized by generations that came
before and after us. We made tents by tying bed sheets to the headboard of the
beds and houses by tying the sheets to just about anything in the room. I don’t
remember what we did in those tents and houses; the attraction was probably
just making a structure of our own and being in that space for a time, knowing
that Mom or Dad wouldn’t come into it.
There were other made-up games. With two double beds in
the big bedroom made for a perfect platform for playing pirates or army or god
knows whatever other games I forgot. There was no shooting of cannons on those
pirate ships. We just played the part where the two ships were side by side and
it was time for the crew to jump or swing to the other ship/bed and slaughter the
other crew. We bigger kids would often catapult the smaller ones onto the other
ship/bed by lying on our backs with our feet on their little butts and launch
them across the divide, only sometimes over-shooting and creating a crying
crises.
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| I was 18 at Christmas time 1965 - check out those Cons!! |
And then there was Slow-Motion Football. We would push
the beds together and play football, or course. (A game inspired by the
introduction of the slow-motion replay introduced by sports broadcasting over
the television networks. As I recall, there was no passing, in fact we didn’t
even use a football. The fun apparently was just in the piling up of our young
bodies at the scrimmage line, recreating the drama we witnessed on TV. We
didn’t even keep score and it wasn’t even a “game” in the traditional sense,
i.e. of one team winning and the other losing. It wasn’t that we were the
precursors of the “Everyone’s a Winner” philosophy. Our competition came out in
Monopoly and Ping-Pong and backyard baseball.
Slow-Motion Football was started by the younger kids,
probably George, Mike and/or Fred (7th, 8th & 9th).
I remember playing with them but not often. I was probably entering into the
“I’m too cool for this” phase. Or maybe I was just too big for them. The trick
to SMF was not crashing forward but rather holding back. If you were moving in
slow motion and realized the other “team” was going to be victorious in the
play, the urge was to speed it up a little to make the tackle or break free of
the opposing tackle. But I don’t ever remember that this caused arguments about
someone moving too fast, cheating. Maybe this was because we weren’t keeping
score, or that the roster of defense or offense was fluid from play to play.
All these games were hard on the beds, especially the
frames. The mattresses were pretty well worn when Mom and Dad got them,
whenever and however that was. They were more like thick hammocks with a
bowl-like shape, which made for intimate sleeping with three in a bed. But
that’s a story for later. The bed frames were the vulnerable part. It was with
dread that we broke them because we knew Dad would be mad; he always was
when he had to fix something. We were
constantly being reminded to not be so rough on the beds and I supposed we
tried. But hey, we were kids.
Most of the games upstairs were played by us boys. I
don’t remember Linda or Nancy playing anything except Monopoly, cards or other
board games, or maybe the slot cars. I do remember playing games with my two
sisters. There was one slightly weird “game” some of us boys played in their
room. That is, of course, for later.
- Bob
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