Simple Amusements, Part Five – Pitching Pennies

Posted on 01/02/2012 by Grumpa Joe

PENNIES

            Once, while walking home down 93rd Street, I passed a group of men standing in front of Woodlawn Gardens.  They were playing a game on the sidewalk.  Naturally, I stopped to watch.  Each of  the men had a handful of pennies.  The sidewalks are five feet wide and have a groove every five feet.  The object of this game is to ‘lag’ or toss a penny to land on a designated line.  A player stands behind one line, usually with the side of his foot just touching the groove.  He holds the penny by its edges to keep it flat. Then, he tosses the penny. The best toss makes the coin fly like a saucer, and land flat.  The penny that lands closest to the line wins the round.  They played the games in sets of five or ten. To end the game, a player had to win three of the five games in the set.  It didn’t take long before all the boys on Avalon, Woodlawn, 93rd Street, Kimbark and all the other streets were playing “lag the penny.”  We even played during recess and lunch.  Just like in marbles, the same cliques of boys played together. It became a challenge for me to break into a game with the big guys in the sport.

Occasionally, we played for ‘keeps.’  In those games the winner got to keep the loser’s penny.

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Simple Amusements, Part Four-Yo-Yo

Posted on 31/01/2012 by Grumpa Joe

This is another way we spent time as kids. Today, if this guy showed up at a school yard, a SWAT Team would appear out of nowhere and take him out..

To see a very interesting demonstration of yo-yo tricks click on this link.

YO-YO MAN

           Recess and the lunch hour at Our Lady of Hungary School was special.  I was in sixth, seventh and eighth grades when the Duncan yo-yo Man visited.  He showed up at the small grocery store across the street from school, on the corner of 93rd and Kimbark.  There, he put on a show using Duncan Yo-Yo’s.  Duncan Yo-Yo’s are different from ordinary yo-yos’.  They are thin, and painted in special metallic colors.  When they spin, they look cool.  The yo-yo man had a model with four diamonds set in each wheel, all in a row.  When this yo-yo spun, it glistened.  The yo-yo man put on a show for us. He did all kinds of tricks with his yo-yo; “Walk the Dog,” “Around the World,” “Creeper,” and “Rock the Baby.”  He made these tricks look so easy that anyone could do them.  He spent one day at our school, then he moved to the next school, and put on the same show.  Meanwhile, we’d all want a Duncan yo-yo to play with.  Some kids would buy a yo-yo on the same day that the yo-yo man came. They used their lunch money. They showed off all the tricks they learned. The wise guys would even do a trick when we were in class. They did it when Sister wasn’t looking. The little family store on the corner, called Yurko’s, sold the yo-yos. Many kids bought them there.

The following week, the  yo-yo man showed up again with a fancier yo-yo. He had some new tricks too.  We learned that the secret of the yo-yo was in the type of string one used.  The strings wore out often from all the tricks. When a string broke, I’d run to Yurko’s to buy a new one. The official Duncan yo-yo string  cost a nickel.  It was a strong fine twine. They made it doubled up and twisted together to form the loop that went around the axle.  On the opposite end, a loop went around the finger.  If the string became twisted too tight, the yo-yo wouldn’t stay down.  It would just ride up and down the string.  To do the tricks, the yo-yo had to spin freely at the end of the string. It isn’t supposed to climb up until you gently jerk the string string.  It takes a while to learn how many twists are necessary to make the tricks happen.

After a couple of visits, by the yo-yo man, every kid in the school had one.  Some of my class mates already graduated to the top of the line model, with diamond studs. Within a few weeks, the yo-yo man disappeared until the following year.

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