By Dale Basinger

For the Salisbury Post

Have children-initiated games gone by the wayside? Have computers, iPhones iPads, and other digital devices caused us to be less sociable?

How far could you hit a bottle cap with a broomstick? Bottle cap baseball was a favorite game with a group of us young boys while growing up in the 1950s in Rockwell. All you needed to play were plenty of bottle caps, which we could pick up at the local grocery stores like Simpson’s or Moose’s. The broomsticks could be sawed off from one of your family’s old brooms, of which there were many.

The game itself consisted of a pitcher who, if skilled, could make the bottle cap rise, sink or curve just by the way he gripped it, much like a regular baseball. A great amount of skill was needed by the batter just to make contact with the cap. When contact was made,  it was predetermined by the distance the cap traveled what was a single, double, triple or home run. The game could be played with just two players or with teams if enough boys were interested, which they usually were. No walks were allowed but strikeouts were frequent.

We don’t play this game anymore. Maybe because most drinks come in aluminum cans or plastic bottles with plastic caps. But I believe the real reason is that young boys and girls would rather stay inside where it is cool and play games on the computer or their new play stations. Bottle cap baseball was meant to be played in the heat of the day, and since we returned to homes without air conditioning, we barely noticed the heat anyway.

Robert Putnam wrote a book, published in 2000, titled “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.” Putnam’s book became popular as he showed how we have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and our democratic structures. According to Putnam, we sign fewer petitions, belong to fewer organizations that meet, know our neighbors less, visit with friends less frequently, and even socialize with our families less often. Bowling alone has even become commonplace.

Besides bottle cap baseball another favorite game of my youth was called mumblety peg. I recall as a seventh- and eighth-grader at Rockwell Elementary School that a group of we boys would play this game behind the auditorium after lunch or before school.

All of us young boys had pocket knives at the time, which was the instrument needed to play this game. There were many mumblety peg variants, but the game we played involved at least two or more players. The idea was to open the blades of the knife and to flip the knife with two fingers onto a wooden board and see it you could get it to stick into the board. Most of our knives had three blades, and the higher scores came as a result of the shorter blades sticking into the wood. The skill involved was to balance the knife just right and toss it to just the right height for best results.

We don’t do this anymore, at least not at school where pocket knives are no longer permitted. Mumblety peg as a game started declining after the second half of the 20th century due to safety concerns. But just like bottle cap baseball, this game brought young people (boys at least) together to make their own rules, learn how to lose graciously and win humbly, and at the same time socialize with friends. We were not doing these activities alone.

Robert Putnam’s book has given us much to think about. In the 1990s, he began to document the evidence of declining attendance at bowling leagues, church services and involvement with civic groups. Included in this decline was the falloff in yearly picnic attendance and family reunions. With some exceptions the decline has continued into this century. A church or civic group that is growing in attendance is the exception rather than the rule in the first 15 years of this century.

Putnam points out in his book how we have become increasingly disconnected from people we are likely to see every day. Putnam warns that our stock of social capital — the very fabric of our connections with each other — has plummeted, impoverishing our lives and communities. He supports his theory with research on how changes in work, family structure, age, suburban life, television, computers, women’s roles and other factors have contributed to this decline.

Why do I write this, and what is the point? I have described two games that we used to play on the playground in elementary school. In both games we children took the initiative to organize, establish rules and conduct the games ourselves. There are plenty of other examples of games children played then, such as marbles, tag, hide-and-seek and ring around the roses. And they were most often initiated by the participants themselves.

Not all activities need be done involving other people. Reading was then and still is a favorite pastime for me, and I prefer for it to be a solitary event. But so many young people today are buried in activities involving their computers and television that I fear they are missing an important part of socialization. And although there are so many activities for youth today, such as church youth groups, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Little League, and summer camps, I would make a distinction between adult-directed activities and children-initiated activities. I believe the children-initiated activities are better. To take it a step further, I believe that the highly organized, adult-led activities for our children for so many years have caused, in part, a decline of our interest in attending anything from bowling leagues to church services.

You may prefer to bowl alone. You may prefer to play computer games alone. You may prefer to watch television alone. But once upon a time, children- directed games like bottle cap baseball and mumblety peg provided socialization and a time of fun for those who participated. Adults were not needed or wanted to do the organizing.

At least in the case of these two games, “We don’t do this anymore.”

 

Dale Basinger is a retired history teacher who lives in Rockwell.