O.T...question about the early days...

[Minermojo]

My wife and I were talking about my son and how he didn't want me to give my grandkids tops to play with. I was reminiscing of when I used to play with my friends with our tops. I remember that if a top was inside a circle made in the dirt you would try to hit it where yours would also have to come out of the circle otherwise you would have to leave it there. If someone hit your top and his came out too he had the pleasure of striking your top with the point of his top on yours hoping to break the top in two. The thing is I can't remember how we started the game. Does anyone here ever play with tops and play that particular game? If you did, do you remember how the game was started? Did we pick straws and whomever lost threw his top into the circle or what?

I'm sure there's a bunch of old time Chicanos on this site who played that game.   

Austin sounds like he would have.

[BREVO]

The way we played tops.   All the tops were in the circle and we would take turns picking up our own top and we would try to hit the other tops in the circle.  Each of us would keep taking turns until a top broke or we got tired of playing.  Also, my dad use to cut a large nail and replace the old metal point on the top, it would make it easier to break the others.

[liebestraum]

I didn’t play tops.  I did create a baseball game with dice and kept all the statistics by using my slide rule to do all the calculations.

Yeah, I know this is not the answer you were looking for.  I’m sure you’ll survive.

lieb

[Austintacious]

You’re right Mojo. But sixty years has erased everything I remember about when I was 10.

[Minermojo]

The way we played tops.   All the tops were in the circle and we would take turns picking up our own top and we would try to hit the other tops in the circle.  Each of us would keep taking turns until a top broke or we got tired of playing.  Also, my dad use to cut a large nail and replace the old metal point on the top, it would make it easier to break the others.

Oh, so you're saying that two tops were needed to START the game? You say that everyone would leave a top in the circle and then you would try to take out your own until one was left? Hey Brevo, we need to get together and write a book on the games that we used to play in our youth. I'll bet you it'll sell just with our gente.

Lieb, I'm not surprised but hey it did get you a job as a mathematician. Maybe I should have hung with you just so I could learn algebra and calculus and all those hard subjects. I could have taught you how to throw spit balls. LOL

[kyyote]

Tell them about the game you guys played before the wheel had been invented, called Rocks, mojo!  Where you would throw rocks into a circle and count them.  The first one to get to a number higher than 1 would win!  That game could go on for weeks! 

[Austintacious]

We used to play 3 v 3 baseball on a lower valley sandlot (way before the movie came out) with the irrigation canal as our outfield fence.  Many a time we had to retrieve the ball that went into the water before it made it's way to Ysleta.  When that didn't work out, we'd get our bb guns and shoot the hobos in their butts who were trying to get on the trains on the other side of the canal.  We'd get a chorus of profanity but protected by the canal from any harm. 

[kyyote]

Marbles were thrown in a circle.  Shoot them out of the circle(usually with a large agate or ball bearing for weight) and they were yours.  You kept shooting until you didn't knock one out.  Also a two person marble game just tossing marbles out and going after each other's marbles, with the risk of losing your shooter.  There were 17 or 18 kids on my block and all were generally in the same age range.  We had a school playground behind my house and fields of 3 foot high grassy weeds to the west of us.  Everything thing. 

[Minermojo]

We also had a game called, "el hoyito". We'd make a small hole and we would make a line a few feet away and try to put whatever number of marbles you claimed would go in it. For instance, if you said even, two, four, or six or whatever number of marbles you had in your hand had to go in the hole. Sometimes the marbles barely fit in our little hands. If you said even and the number of marbles that went into the hole was an odd number you would lose all those marbles. Generally it was a matter of chance as it was hard to get an even or odd number to fall in. I had a lot of luck in that game just like I do here and generally get a lot of crying from you guys because I almost always win. Crybabies.