The Pocket Knife
From 7-1-14
WARNING--today's story is X-rated! Do not let young people read or attempt to duplicate ! You could also be arrested if you try to sneak any of these items discussed into a school, airport, courthouse, etc. I (Coach B), grew up in a mill village when money was scarce, & we had to improvise to develop games, especially during long, hot days of summer vacation. I have always loved games & competing. We would play all the regular games & made up our own games. We used a rolled-up sock or half rubber ball & a broomstick. Every now & then, while chasing a foul ball, some innovative kid would "accidently" cover the ball with grass & the next day he would luckily find the real ball--then we had a real game with discarded broken bats. We had bullfrog-hunting contests and shared the fried legs in a friend's barn. If no other guys were looking, we took a piece of glass & played hopscotch.
On Valentine's Day we loved to "throw" homemade valentines--(my wife still hasn't figured this one out!). A valentine was placed on the porch & a rock was thrown onto the porch to let the person know that it was there. If you didn't care for the wise guy, you gave him a cartoon valentine & threw a "boulder" on the porch, & then you ran like heck! Now, if you happen to notice a man in the dark with a shotgun, you would say "excuse me! Wrong house!" & run up the street! I loved to compete to see who could climb highest in the tree, or who could climb the farthest out on the limb. Some skinny kid always seemed to win. Sometimes when the limb broke, if you didn't ride the limb down correctly, it would take a cast & a little time to heal it.
But my favorite game was baseball, with my favorite knife. (No baseball -loving boy would be caught without his special knife, in case a game broke out!). My favorite place to play was on one of the team benches at the ball field. You would straddle the bench & the other person sat 3 or 4 feet away from you. If you look at the picture above, you place the long blade on the bench, put your thumb on top of the knife, with the opposite forefinger underneath the end of the knife, & flip the knife with the forefinger. The placement in the picture is a single. If the knife sticks on the long blade, it's a double. If both blades touch, it's a triple. If the little blade sticks by itself, it's a homerun, & if the knife lands on it's back, it is a walk. If the knife fails to hit any of these, or falls off the bench, it is an out. Regular baseball rules were enforced. For a single, we would say,"ding", for a double, "ding, ding", just like announcer Ernie Harwell, of the Atlanta Crackers. We got so efficient that the pitchers didn't have a chance, so we would play on a very hard surface on a 2" wide board or on the hard red clay ground. We almost always had a pocket-knife handy. Come to think about it, i don't ever remember some gal whipping out a knife and saying, "Let's play baseball!" I had planned to explain how we played "mumbly-peg" or "root-the-peg" with an icepick. Do any of you remember this game when all of us needed the pick to use when the block of ice was delivered by the "ice-truck" on a hot summer day? Also, do any of you remember the "ice cream man" coming around ringing his bell with the little cart full of goodies for only 5 cents each?
