Playing for Keeps

I have a glass jar of marbles ......... somewhere.
My neighour has an antique pin ball machine. The only mechanical bit is a spring, the rest works by gravity. She also has all her marbles and visiting youngsters have a great time usuing the spring to fire marbles up the pinboard.

HAZEL......................Good morning kiddo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I too have the glass jar of old marbles hanging around somewhere.................I think everyone does................................I LOVE pinball, but they are hard to find. we used to have an independent video store that had pinball machines & I loved to stop & play................It's Friday, so have a wonderful day..............take it away HAZE....................................

haze, same here. i have a glass jar of marbles . . . . . . somewhere.

But, though i could not tell you where they are at the moment, i do have fond memories of marble games as a kid.

Guess that counts for something.

NOVEMBER is National Peanut Butter Lovers Month .......
 
I think that is just dandy, and am a Card Carrying Member ... Peanut Butter is one of the Major Food Groups all by itself .......
 
There is one Study Group among us, trying to locate the Fellow who first decided to put Peanut Butter, and Dark Chocolate together ... We'd like to take all his Measurements and have a Statue made for the Shrine .......

Marbles and mumblety-peg, individual sports, head-to-head competition -- or simply played alone, for practice or just for fun.  Didn't need a bunch of kids, like baseball or football.  Boys of my cohort always carried a small bag of marbles around in warm weather months, always prepared for an impromptu game. Modern marbles are works of art.  But on a few archaeological digs I've found or seen plain clay marbles that probably gave colonial-era kids as much pleasure as we kids of the 40s and 50s got from our cats' eyes and those big ol' shooters. I didn't save any, but I do have a few recently purchased marbles in a box in a closet upstairs.  Always intended to do a small mixed-media piece, but haven't yet.  One of these days.

I love anitique marbles.  They are beautiful.  I've seen people but them in old mismatched water glasses and make lovely displays.

Hazwl= I wish pinball machines would make a comeback.  I liked playing pinball so much better than playing pac-man or space invaders when I was a kid. 

I have lost my marbles, but you might have guessed that.

The pinball thing I was saying about is a wooden board withe the top cut into an arc. A couple of wooden blocks to keep the top end higher. A wooden moulding all round to prevent marble escape. The board is covered in green baize and has semicircular marble traps made with pins (small nails), each with a number written beneath. The right hand side has a channel where you put the marbles, pull a brass button connected to a spring and the marble would be fired up the chute and rattle around the board and hopefully settle in one of the traps made from pins. Had to keep your score on a bit of paper. A simple game, but it keeps children of all ages amused for ages.

Shove Ha'penny, anyone?  The forerunner of the mechanical pinball machine and a sort of miniature shuffle board, played before darts in the pubs of merry old England. 
 
I lost my marbles today--couldn't remember my password, despite having written it down!

All the boys in my group carried their ball glove on their handlebars of their bike and kept their Zebco in a place where they could snatch it without anyone noticing and carried their marbles in a bag in their pocket next to their Barlow knife so they could find a good place to draw a circle and play a game. The prized cat's eye was like Indiana Jones exotic prized jewel. The chalk was absconded from the school tray at the bottom of the Chalkboard next to the erasers after you de-hexed it because the teacher may have used it for those long "long division" problems that started at the top and went all the way to the bottom of the board and therefore cursed it. ***I'm telling you these topics are all connected in some mystical way. The concept of ownership goes to value. As a kid, your stuff defined you as you defined it. I had a canteen from the army surplus store and I put Kool-Aid in that darn thing and carried it around. It gave the drink a metallic taste but to this day I can think of it and I taste it. There is a fine line between matter and thought. We are taught quantum physics without ever entering a classroom. I try to tell my children that being alert to your senses and observing and connecting is a big part of education. Anyway when I shoot a game of pool on my table it has a sound that mimics the sound of marbles and I remember the first time I played at the local pool hall it was like I had graduated to the big league from marbles but thanks to little triggers like today's topic, we can not forget our roots. They shape us. Sorry to ramble. 

Has anyone seen this funny British skit about the art model who lost his marbles?
http://www.youtube.com/user/Slokie8640?blend=21&ob=5#p/u/2/hlv6hvN2ets

I took the day off today. Apart from visiting a friend in hospital and then rushing to see my son receive an award at assembly, I decided to spoil myself at a spa. I decided to write a review of the place but I seem to have done it twice! Does anyone know how to delete one? Tommy T?? Help?

http://www.petermanseye.com/reviews/881

Good morning all.  My back yard garden was a marble mine for many yeaars after I moved in here.  When it was tilled for the spring I'd walk up and down the rows and pick up not only shards from many years past and previous owners of the house but marbles.  One day I dug up four round clay objects.  Old bullets, I thought.  Further investigation proved them to be Indian marbles, and when you look closely you can see where the clay was roll around in the hand to make them round--or almost round.  Then there were the colonial white marbles the "burped" up in another spot, and eventually 45 glass marbles have been added to make an impressive collection: cats eye, swirls of three different colors, one large blue one, and many others.  I keep them lined up in grooves of a hanging shelf, and they serve to remind me of the number of children that have passed through this one little spot in the Virginia countryside. 

The legendary Santa Fe art dealer, now older than 80, Forrest Fenn writes about marbles in his memoir, "The Thrill of the Chase." As a youngster, he not only played "for keeps," he also made and sold marbles to his pals. He's such a collector that I'm sure he still has them in a large bowl somewhere. He also writes about summers in a one room cabin in West Yellowstone, fishing for supper in Hebgen Lake and flying more than 300 combat missions in Vietnam. But I digress....back to marbles. I keep a bowl of my husband's marbles (from the 50s) on the mantle at our lake house. No wi-fi (deliberate on our part) so the grandchildren enjoy playing marbles, cabin golf, softball and other games/toys from the past. 

Good morning everybody! 
 
Andy!  I'll play marbles with you! 
 
Marbles are beautiful, I am adding to a collection of them that I find around in the house and out in the community, I have put them in a tall clear vase that won't fit into my cabinet.  It holds price of place on a shelf near the window.  I like how the sun shines through the marbles, all those colors!
 
Boys (and girls - right Andy?) discover that they love to play marbles, I have helped to teach them how to play, they concentrate, taking aim and shoot! We also make "racers" out of marbles.  Sort of like the pin ball game Hazel wrote about.  A piece of tin foil to cover the top of the marble twisting the excess to leave a "tail", it looks like a silver polywog.  This polywog can still roll down a chute fast!  Bring it to the top of a peg board and let her go!  The cubbies have hours of fun and get to take their new treasure home to add to their growing collection of cats eyes, shooters and aggies.

Welcome, IreneR.

When I was a youngster it seemed as if I always brought marbies and everyone else brought shooters. It sort of prepared me for trips to Reno or Vegas after i grew up.

IreneR- Love the "playing for keeps" memory. Those were high stakes indeed. Great post and Aloha!

Speaking of marbles, Loved to play SORRY- Love the Carol Burnett skit when they would say "SLIIIIIIIIIDE!" with the flat "I" southern style. ***Must admit when losing (my marbles?) at Chinese Checkers I was known for accidentally bumping the board and depending upon poor memories when restored. Jailable Offense perhaps?

This picture sprang to mind when I started reading about today's topic:

http://www.globalgallery.com/enlarge/60903/

I hope I did that right.

I have memories of my grandmother's marble jar and her describing the game for me. I never really played an actual game but I liked looking at all the shiny balls anyway. Now I think it sounds like fun again but I'm not sure these aging knees would allow the second "shot" at childhood.

My grandmother had a drawer full of toys that we loved...marbles, old tin cars and trucks, chinese checkers...lots of marbles. And, she lived to be 99 years old and kept all her marbles throughout her interesting life. Thanks for sharing with us Grandmother.

IVAN---are you chunky or smooth? Someday I'll bake you one of my peanut butter chocolate (dark of course) pies!

Marbles and peanut butter----two topics guaranteed to make you "remember when."  I suspect most of us, like Ivan, have never and probably will never outgrow peanut butter, though.  Marbles?  It seems like most of us have a pretty jar of them on display....I don't recall ever actually playing marbles, but only admiring them as little orbs of beauty.  The sun would catch them--especially the cobalt blues and ruby reds and emerald greens--and make them dazzle.  And the opaque ones seemed to be like fingerprints or snowflakes --no two alike!  Oh there were similarities in color, but the flow of the marbling would set them each apart.  I loved watching a kid open that drawstring bag and letting them rain right out.  And then the end of the play when the reckoning took place and lots of counting took place as they were once again stowed in those lovely little drawstring bags.  

Gee, ChefDeb, I don't know Ivan's peanut butter preferance but we all know he's "smooth'.
 
My take on peanut butter is it is meant to be eaten off the spoon--smooth.  too many years of morning made - middday eaten PB&J sandwiches.
 
Like the images, Carol.  

Penelope ~  Thank you ! Well, Ivan, chunky or smooth?

When I was a kid and we'd go to my Grandmother's house my uncle, who was 6 years older than I, had a 50 gallon fish tank with angle fish, black moors and every marble he won.
It was a beautiful thing to me.
Loved that fisk tank and to this day I am parsial to black moors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Moor

I have to admit to being a little too young to have played marbles. Not that I wouldn't have played; no one else ever brought it up, I guess. We were more of the bicycle-riding and woods-exploring types.

Although I can't completely condemn the modern types of games children play, there just seems to be more intrinsic value to a game which puts as little between the player and the strategy as possible. Marbles, for instance; chess or checkers, for another.

It seems sometimes as if I am literally fighting off my child's demands for an iPad or laptop with a sword. And yet, she enjoys a game of mancala or Monopoly as much as I do. I don't think the kids have lost touch with what's important; it's society and our ceaseless quest for more growth that has created their thirst for gadgets. I've often wondered how on earth the US can sustain more growth in every fiscal quarter...or even level growth. The only way is for us to consume more and more and more. How many toasters do we need, anyway?

Okay - enough of the wandering rant.

Tommy - I am a Chinese checkers fan from way back. Sometimes I even won!

I was terrible at marbles, mostly because I kept being diverted by their inner beauty. The colors distracted me, and then I'd lose my focus, and there goes your game.

The other marbellous thing my neighbour has is a circular wooden board with marble size indentations cut to the pattern so you can play solitaire. You know, the aim of the game is to leave one marble in the center. It drives me crazy. She keeps the thing on her coffee table and I just can't resist fiddling with it.

I am pleased to say that I still have all my marbles!

Forgot to add that I plan to "knuckle down" to a very nice cold martini soon.....Anyone for Friday Happy Hour?

 Thanks for the nice words, Rusty!             The topic so inspired me I went to my bookshelf in my office and took those marbles out to the kitchen, washed 'em up and found an old goblet to showcase them in and now they're in the living room for all to see.

smilesforever~ I'm knockin' on your door. I'd be very happy to have a happy hour with you. If I bring my marbles, maybe we could be really silly and have a game.

I used to think that OPERATION was used in Medical School Training. I still think that inside those Wall Street Buildings the Monopoly Man lives. Battleship still rocks and Parcheesi (The Americanized spelling of course) is a mystical board. Everyone had a friend who had all the board games. If you used their board then you let them move the Ouija indicator to get their way- Why yes, Jack (Unheard whisper under the breath "You Cheatin' Jackass)- you will drive a Ford Cobra, marry Annette Funicello's little sister and you will be richer than Elvis and summer n France next to Brigette Bardot. Yep...gumballs looked and still look like edible marbles to me.

The 67 post number yesterday has me spiralling down into depression or recession or at least a slow down & seeking out an Opium Den for gratification using Corzine's MF Global's stock certificates to light the pipe. Just kidding, maybe a highball.  

CHEFDEB ... ANDY:   Chunky or Creamy, it doesn't matter, as long as I get my Peanut Butter Fix, two or three times a day .......  Sometimes on Toast, with a little C;over Honey, sometimes a Sandwich, with Tomato Preserves or Peach Preserves, or even Fig Preserves if you puy a little Fresh Lime Juice in it ... (Not that I'm picky) and I usually put Peanut Butter on my Hotcakes, and dress it with a generous drizzle of Clover Honey .......

Happy Friday, my friends of the Eye! My mother's mother had a woven rattan basket full of marbles at her summer cottage on Money Island in the Long Island Sound. On the days when the rain would come to interrupt our outdoor play, we'd take out the marbles and roll them around on her immensely impractical but lovely silk rugs.  I never won, because I was too busy sorting the beautiful marbles into their respective piles.  I'm afraid that when I have children, I'll have to fight to get them to play the 'old' games. Especially since my husband and I are such electronics junkies.  

Tommy Typical or anyone out there....how do i get rid of duplicate entries under the Review section?

rapidgirl - Thanks so for the link to the Saturday Post of Norman Rockwell's version of the kids shooting marbles! That redhaired girl could have been me in 1954 shooting with the boys on our playground in Inverness, Florida! We had the bags of marbles, the recess half hour, and the Fla. sand to draw our rings and base lines in, so played nearly every day when I was in 3rd gr. -5th grade.
 
Today I have a bag of marble hanging on a forged iron hook among the antique tools around my stone fireplace. Memories of fun when kids played outdoors, and had no computers or hand held video games.

Mumbly-peg - Now there was another game we played with a pocket knife. Today, that would be cause for apoplexy or expulsion from school. You'd spin or throw your knife to see who could get nearest the stick in the ground, or the circle drawn in the sand with the circle getting smaller each throw. I don't recall ever getting cut or hurt, so we must have been more careful than today's kids, bc I am pretty sure most 2010 parents would have a fit if a grandparent gave a pocket knife to a 10 yr. old grandchild! Ya' thnk?

Ladies & Gentlemen .......
 
Its time for me to shut down for the Weekend, and prepare to welcome in a Day of Rest...
 
I Wish Each and Every One of You in This Village a Marvelous Weekend !!!  May Your House Be Fill'd With Light and Every Good Thing !!!  I Wish You Friendship, Lotsa Family, Good Food, Good Wine, and Every Thing That Makes You Happy ... With NO Untoward Repurcussions, No Regrets, and No Invoices That You Weren't Expecting ...  Be Safe, Be Well, and Forget About All Problems Until Monday ...
 
 
To The Tribe:   GOOD  SHABBOS !!!
 
"Purity and Justice Before His Throne
Charity and Mercy His Foremost Glory ..."
 
May Our Rest Be Pleasing To Him Who Brought Us Here ...
 
 
Blessings Upon You All .......
 
 
IVAN

Ivan...there you go, I didn't know there is a month dedicated to peanut lovers...I want to be a card carrying member too!

I have some black and white marbles, rescued from an incomplete board game, Abalone. I put them into a flower vase sometimes to add interest. Marbles didn't really feature with the kids I grew up with either, by then, they were more collector's items. Other similar kids' games popular then in Singapore and Malaysia included kuti kuti, little plastic tokens of animals and objects. It was played by trying to flip (kuti kuti is a malay word for flip) your token to top your opponent's which then allowed you to keep his. We also played sago seeds, little bright red seeds from the huge Angsana tree (which were always supposed to be haunted).

On marbles, I remember this story about 3 kids who bartered peas for marbles and many years later, came back to "pay their debt" to the grocer who taught them so much. An exquisite story...

http://www.heartnsouls.com/stories/m/s1245.shtml

May the blessings return double to you, Ivan.  Good Shabbos!!!!

Thanks, Ivan. My Friday nite is all better now. Blessings returned to you and yoourrs.

Spring~ What a great story about the peas and marbles. How do you find these things?

Spring~ I should have known that I'd need Kleenex to read the story you shared. Many thanks!  

Ah Ivan, one more place in which we absolutely agree.....peanut butter; the best...with bananas, with apples, with pretzels, and of course wit chocolate......mmmmmm.
 
Thank you and blessings to you and yours as well.

Only if for one day. I would spend it with Billy, Frankie, John-John (I got to wear he crown of plain old' John just 'cos I lived inthe building first)'and of course, the twins from next door, Mary and Ann.

We would spend the day until as long as we could after the street lights turned on at dusk as we dared...we would hear our parents leaning out the upper-story windows hinting that it would be a good idea if we got our arses home at the top of their lungs....shooting marbles, playing hide-n-seek, 'it'..or tag as it was known in other neighborhoods, and Red rover.

Days like that, we owned our neighborhood. The sidewalks, courtyards, gangways, and especially the alleys, were our domain.

If only for a day.....

Peanut butter and banana is good. Duvet time here .... I hope. Feel figety. Nos da, dear people. x

Spring- I feel your pain. I have a review that I can not edit. The pics are easy but the reviews are written with indelible cyber ink. I just wrote a comment below to explain. I'm just glad I didn't post a review of the Nudist Camp I visited once. The picnic lunch where naked people served and the bending over to retrieve volleyballs taught me a lot about the need for clothing. I felt so safe when I put my JP Duster on...

All the different kinds of marbles....I can't remember their names, but I am sure we had names for the different description....What is an "aggie"? I remember saying that I wanted a certain aggie....Here is a site with different kinds....Also, remember the game of Chinese Checkers with marbles.....trying to get yours across the board without losing some of your men? The Seminole lady who kept me as a child always liked for us to play that game....she kept 5 of us kids under 6 ....Mrs. Cato, the Inverness, Fla. name for patience and kindness. She kept chickens, made her own soap,a nd grew a fine garden of corn, tomatoes, squash, and cucumbers. She could cook a squirrel to be as tender as the nicest chicken....Gone are the days.

The site is here

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=marbles&qs=IM&sk=&pq=marbles&sp=1&sc=8-7&form=QBIR

Peter Lake -- I can relate...your description of playing til dark and all the games of hide and seek, catching fireflies, shooting marbles remind of my childhood in the small Fla. town of Inverness. How innocent we were...How fortunate we were.

Spring - Thank you for the Red Marbles story...How sweet....If only the world could be filled with grocers like that man!! More of Pay it Forward, and less How Can I Con You.....Great story and inspiring for our Village....

Got the book in at the BOBOB earlier this week Quite honestly I wasn't sure where to put it on the sorting tables. You can find it in Collectibles section in case you are wondering.  For the record I'm not sure if I ever really had all my marbles & Quite Honestly I think I am happy about it.   :-) 
    

Peter Lake---playing out after dark....."It".......ahhhh, the memories............every fall we would make a "leaf fort" out of fallen leaves that we'd raked and scooped up by armfuls....caught in the headlights of cars down the street meant we were "o-u-t OUT".  Oh the innocence of youth caught in a few brief years in Port Huron, Michigan.    To this day I swoon when I smell the fall leaves.  No one can capture that fragrance except God and His able assistant, Mother Nature.

No matter what happens there's always a story to tell.

Carol,I am instly transport back in time with the fist whiff of buning leaves. Hat, nd the crunch and shuffle of fallen leaves.

Good stuff.....

Mooseloop, very fortunate indeed...

I can see I better start typing on the desk top instead of my tablet..too many mistakes... Even for me

Carol,the translation of what I posted earlier is.... I am instantly transported back in time by the first whiff of burning leaves. That, and the crunch and shuffling sound of fallen leaves.

Anyroads....meanwhile and far away.....olly, olly, ocean free!

Have a great weekend.

Peter ~ re: your 7:45 pm -- yes, if only...............

We said Olly, olly, oken free.....How weird that we did not even know what it meant, but it had to be said!

That should have been "Olly, olly, oxen free!"

Did I tell you the story of buying marbles in this day a nd time? I went to Kmart for marbles. (Sad to relate, I was going to use them to fire in my trusty slingshot to scare the crows that make so much noise....)...Anyway, I asked for where to find them in Kmart, and was told not int he toys, but rather in the "ammunition."

I went to that register and found a bag of white marbles, all nice and bagged up, then they rang up the $4.57, and asked me to SIGN for them!! All ammunition has to be recorded! Who knew?

Moose, ammunition? Really? I suppose they are intended for "shooting".

Good night, friends on this side of the marble. Good morning to friends far away.

WOw! would they make you sign an 'ammo' form for peas, for a peashooter?

Mooseloop, your are right...it was oxen free...

I don't have a jar of marbles, just a small collection of favorites. They are something I can't resist if I see them in a store....I just have to run my fingers through them and pick out a couple or three....but it's really hard to choose just a few.
 
Bebe, in 1978 there was a movie called Tilt with Brooke Shields, who plays a pinball wizard, shot right here in town at a bar called Mona's Gorilla Lounge.  My husband had a bit part in it as an extra...long hair, playing one of the pinball machines. My mom was an extra too, but she didn't make the final cut.
 
SF, I've seen that art model skit before and it's so funny. I couldn't get it with your link, so here is another link that I hope works.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSHZY_JCV0U