It’s back to school time yet again, and every year about now I think back to when I lost my marbles. Well most of them anyway.
I know what you’re thinking: “No surprise Harley, I already knew you were missing a few marbles.”
Be that as it may, this time I’m actually referring to the one very most important phenomenon that going back to school meant to me and my friends: behaving ourselves and getting good grades. Just kidding, of course, and maybe you’ve lost some of your marbles if you believe that.
I’m talking about that once-universal back-to-school obsession called “playing marbles.”
September would arrive and without any kind of overt communication between friends and classmates, all of us would just automatically dig out our personal collections of prize marbles and the games would just materialize — materialize like the kids who suddenly just appeared on the streets and school grounds this week after another summer has somehow slipped away.
You just don’t see kids playing marbles in the fall anymore. I’m not sure why they don’t, but I feel sorry about that. It’s too bad that so many young people these days are missing their marbles.
We used to play marbles to, from and during school and every day in the fall until mothers would have to call us in for supper.
So here, greatly simplified, are some of the reasons marbles were so important to us toffee-nosed little thumb flickers.
• The marble bag. By far the most common (and the best) marble bag was a purple velvet Seagram’s Crown Royal Whiskey pouch. It originally held a bottle of hooch, but it was just the right size, strong and durable and snazzy-looking with “Seagram’s Whiskey” embroidered in gold on the bag, and the thick gold braided tie string at the top. I’m not sure what it says about adults of the 1950s and ’60s but every household seemed to have a Seagram’s Whiskey bag lying around, because darn near every kid had one full of marbles.
• The marbles. Everyone had their favourite marbles. Special deadly ones used only in battle, rare or coveted collectibles that you’d never give up in a million years, and a lot of ‘tradesies’ (common marbles used for trading or giving up after losing a game).
And the types were classic. To name a few: Boulders and Cobs (large and medium type marbles), Kings and Queenies — and the massive King Kongs. There were the fairly rare Onionskin and Aggies (a special solid type of marble) and the deadly Steelies, which were actually steel ball bearings of various sizes that could chip an opponent’s Cob from 10 feet away.
I always liked the Crystals — foggy or clear marbles in an astonishing variety of single colours that you would hold up to the sky and look through. Peewees were, as the name implies, little marbles a half or a third the size of a common marble and we used these mostly for trading, collecting and admiring. They weren’t so great for smashing other people’s marbles in the throes of a big game.
By far the most common marble in anyone’s Seagram’s bag was the Cat’s Eye. Cat’s Eyes were regular sized, clear orbs with a colourful swirl inside, and everyone had dozens of them. They were the worker drones of the marble game, the currency, the cannon fodder. They were common, but they were cool.
• The lingo. Marble culture had a language of its own. If you were playing so that you got to keep the opponent’s marble if you hit it, then you declared “Keepsies” before the game. If you were allowed to substitute your cherished shooter and give the winner a reasonable facsimile, you agreed on “Changies.” And if your enemy didn’t trust you to give up a good marble, he could call out “Picksies,” which meant he could pick the substitute marble from your bag.
In Marble World, every group in every part of every town and city had their own lingo, and what can be better than having your very own language that outsiders like adults and dumb girls couldn’t understand?
The most common game of marbles consisted of flicking your marble ahead by holding your shooter in the crook of your index finger and flipping it (the marble) with your thumb. Your opponent or opponents would then try to flick his shooter to try and hit yours.
If he missed and ended up close to yours on the ground, it was an easy hit for you. And then you got to keep his marble, depending on the aforementioned rules that were called before the first toss. He would then dig out another shooter marble and away we would go again.
We were only late for school when the game got really intense.
It was during one of those heated matches that I had a string of bad shooting, bad luck and bad judgment. I had called “Twosies,” which meant you could take two marbles from your enemy if a hit was scored. Bad move.
I couldn’t hit a thing that fateful morning, and by the time we got to South School, Robert Sibley had won very nearly my entire bag of marbles. And that included my favourite solid blue Cob and two of my prized Crystals. It was a long miserable morning at school, that’s for sure.
But by noon, with steely resolve in my sad heart, an evil-eye and deadly accurate thumb, I took Robert on with full gusto and wild abandon for the walk home. And by the time we were both late getting home for lunch, I had won back my lost marbles and several of Robert’s own favourites to boot.
It was like that with marbles, back and forth, hit and miss. And speaking of missing … I miss my marbles. I think I’ll spend some time digging around in the boxes in the basement this week. I’m sure that purple Seagram’s bag is in my old stuff somewhere, and when I find it, I can’t wait to take a close look at my old marbles, each one with a memory or two, each one like a long lost friend.
So if you see me out on the street with my Seagram’s bag shooting around some Aggies and Cat’s Eyes, it doesn’t mean I’ve lost my marbles, it means I finally found them.
Harley Hay is a local freelance writer, award-winning author, filmmaker and musician. His column appears on Saturdays in the Advocate. His books can be found at Chapters, Coles and Sunworks in Red Deer.