I can honestly say that I had a great early childhood from as far back as I can recall. The 1950s were obviously a simple time in our nation when most mothers were home with their kids and children were pretty much free to roam their local neighborhoods without fear of sexual predators or other hazards. Not that hazards weren’t there, we just didn’t recognize them as such. Parents today seem fearful of anything out of the ordinary that might impact their children. Growing up on North Main Street in Slippery Rock was a blast. My best female friend was Linda Mayhew who lived right across the street. Just up or down the block were Pauletta Locke, Debbie Duncan, Candy Hines, and Sharon Dunkle. Further out the road were the Cooper twin (Sharon and Karen). My best male friends were Barry Rose and Dan Birnley. Others were Kirk Jancse, Roger Markham, Don McConnell, and Danny Corso. When I was very young I played with my brother and sister and their friends but as I grew their interests outgrew the neighborhood. I can recall in the summer that we would all leave our homes after breakfast and flow around the neighborhood playing various games until our mothers called us in for lunch. Then it was back out until suppertime. When it rained we would play on someone’s porch or in a basement.
I recall on one such occasion Linda Mayhew and I were at Candy Hines’ house when we heard that there was a tornado warning (still not sure if there actually was one or not). The three of us took shelter in a walk-in hall closet, only to find that the door had locked behind us. We were trapped like rats! I, being the ever ingenious one, solved the problem by utilizing a canister vacuum cleaner as a battering ram. It was a wooden two-panel door and I took the bottom panel out cleanly. Candy’s mother was non-plussed when she returned home.
Below are listed some of the games we used to play as a group.
Cheap Monkey Grease Man – This was the earliest (and most famous) of made-up childhood games that I remember. It got its name from mechanics and service station attendants of the day who were known as “grease monkeys”. I suppose I am to blame for the adulteration of the title into Cheap Monkey Grease Man. (Like one time I said that I had been, “sleeping with my ear trunks open.” Sayings like that live in infamy in our family.) The game was played on the sidewalks between our house and the one next door. It was pretty simple – you chose a mode of transportation and rode it around the sidewalk, stopping occasionally to get service from the (you guessed it) Cheap Monkey Grease Man (CMGM for short). Normally my brother, Johnny, would play the part of the CMGM. In exchange for some Monopoly money he would feign some sort of needed service and send you on your way. His service station was normally one of the front porches on either house. In between service we would pass the time chatting with other “drivers” we encountered on the sidewalks, much like we saw our parents do as they ran errands in Slippery Rock. We had three modes of transportation to choose from in my early days (5-10 years old). My father had ingeniously fabricated a “kiddy car” (sort of a 3-wheeled push tricycle) and a wagon from odd bits of wood and metal rods and wheels from the radio-controlled target airplanes he had flown in the service. My older sister, Barb, had a blue 24” girl’s bike as well. As you can guess I was normally relegated to the kiddy car. Eventually Johnny got what we called in those days an “English” bike. It had thin tires, a three-speed shifter, and was totally different from the fat-tired “American” bikes. I inherited this bike when he began to drive, which meant I never had a bike of my own until after I was married. It is hard to imagine that such a made-up game could occupy children for hours at a time but it did.
Release – This was a glorified game of tag. The person that was “it” would hide their eyes and count to 100 while all the others hid. (Normally boundaries were set regarding how far away you could hide.) Then the person who was it would look for the hiders. When he found someone he would return them to a home base. There they would remain until a brave hider (not yet found) would sneak in to touch home base and yell, “release.” Then the game would begin over again.
School – This was an unbelievably simple game played on the steps of Linda Mayhew’s front porch. There must have been about ten steps from bottom to top. We started on the bottom step and the one who played “teacher” would hold a stone in one hand behind their back. When presented with the two clenched fists the “student” would pick one. If they picked correctly they would advance to the next step (grade), if not, they stayed on that step until the next round.
Orphans – Like Cheap Monkey Grease Man this was a very simple game invented by my sister. We would pretend that we were orphans and were out in the world on our own (homeless as it were). In the field behind our house, where the timothy grass grew tall, we would stomp down areas where we could crouch or lay down and hide from the rest of the world. Sometime we would make “rooms” that adjoined each other or pathways in the weeds between the grass “houses”. Obviously these were days before TV or formal indoor games.
Army – Playing army didn’t require much more than imagination, although it helped a lot if you at least had a toy gun. (In a pinch we just pointed our fingers at each other.) Birnleys had a number of army “supplies” that we utilized - toy machine guns, helmets, German luger pistols, and toy grenades. If you didn’t happen to have a grenade an apple would suffice. Perhaps the most challenging part of playing army was the ability to make just the right sound with your mouth when depressing the trigger or lobbing the grenade. A single shot or explosion was not difficult but a machine gun burst required much more sophistication. It was a good thing that none of our parents could afford braces or that could have put the kibosh on the army game. Our games were normally team games (or nationalities). For instance, we younger kids might play the American Army and our older brothers might be the Germans (Krauts or Gerries as we used to call them). Sometimes the opposition might be Japanese (Japs or Nips). We really never knew much about the Korean War so we did not have “Gooks”. A great home base was the crawl space under Birnley’s house. It had a 4’X4’ hole on each side that allowed for easy ingress and egress as well as moderate protection from incoming grenades (or apples).
Softball – Softball was played in a vacant lot next to Sharon Dunkle’s house or on the college tennis courts. There were always two captains that chose sides but I really can’t recall how the captains were chosen. I suppose the biggest or best just sort of appointed themselves and the remainder never challenged them. Players were chosen by the captains based on a strange mixture of talent and popularity. Even if you weren’t very good but were a good friend of the captain you had a good chance of being selected somewhere before last. Nobody wanted to be chosen last but somebody had to be. I recall one time that Willis Kennedy hit a “homerun” from the college tennis courts right through a window in the greenhouse atop the science building. We all stared in silent shock until the sound of breaking glass prompted the courts to clear in a matter of seconds.
Football – I remember one year in the mid-50s for Christmas my brother and I got tan and red leather football helmets, shoulder pads, and a football. We thought we had died and gone to Heaven. In later years after we got a TV I recall vividly how we would watch the pro football games and then at half time we would pester my uncle who lived next door to go out in the back yard to play football with us. He would be the quarterback and my brother and I would take turns going out for passes.
I recall on one such occasion Linda Mayhew and I were at Candy Hines’ house when we heard that there was a tornado warning (still not sure if there actually was one or not). The three of us took shelter in a walk-in hall closet, only to find that the door had locked behind us. We were trapped like rats! I, being the ever ingenious one, solved the problem by utilizing a canister vacuum cleaner as a battering ram. It was a wooden two-panel door and I took the bottom panel out cleanly. Candy’s mother was non-plussed when she returned home.
Below are listed some of the games we used to play as a group.
Cheap Monkey Grease Man – This was the earliest (and most famous) of made-up childhood games that I remember. It got its name from mechanics and service station attendants of the day who were known as “grease monkeys”. I suppose I am to blame for the adulteration of the title into Cheap Monkey Grease Man. (Like one time I said that I had been, “sleeping with my ear trunks open.” Sayings like that live in infamy in our family.) The game was played on the sidewalks between our house and the one next door. It was pretty simple – you chose a mode of transportation and rode it around the sidewalk, stopping occasionally to get service from the (you guessed it) Cheap Monkey Grease Man (CMGM for short). Normally my brother, Johnny, would play the part of the CMGM. In exchange for some Monopoly money he would feign some sort of needed service and send you on your way. His service station was normally one of the front porches on either house. In between service we would pass the time chatting with other “drivers” we encountered on the sidewalks, much like we saw our parents do as they ran errands in Slippery Rock. We had three modes of transportation to choose from in my early days (5-10 years old). My father had ingeniously fabricated a “kiddy car” (sort of a 3-wheeled push tricycle) and a wagon from odd bits of wood and metal rods and wheels from the radio-controlled target airplanes he had flown in the service. My older sister, Barb, had a blue 24” girl’s bike as well. As you can guess I was normally relegated to the kiddy car. Eventually Johnny got what we called in those days an “English” bike. It had thin tires, a three-speed shifter, and was totally different from the fat-tired “American” bikes. I inherited this bike when he began to drive, which meant I never had a bike of my own until after I was married. It is hard to imagine that such a made-up game could occupy children for hours at a time but it did.
Release – This was a glorified game of tag. The person that was “it” would hide their eyes and count to 100 while all the others hid. (Normally boundaries were set regarding how far away you could hide.) Then the person who was it would look for the hiders. When he found someone he would return them to a home base. There they would remain until a brave hider (not yet found) would sneak in to touch home base and yell, “release.” Then the game would begin over again.
School – This was an unbelievably simple game played on the steps of Linda Mayhew’s front porch. There must have been about ten steps from bottom to top. We started on the bottom step and the one who played “teacher” would hold a stone in one hand behind their back. When presented with the two clenched fists the “student” would pick one. If they picked correctly they would advance to the next step (grade), if not, they stayed on that step until the next round.
Orphans – Like Cheap Monkey Grease Man this was a very simple game invented by my sister. We would pretend that we were orphans and were out in the world on our own (homeless as it were). In the field behind our house, where the timothy grass grew tall, we would stomp down areas where we could crouch or lay down and hide from the rest of the world. Sometime we would make “rooms” that adjoined each other or pathways in the weeds between the grass “houses”. Obviously these were days before TV or formal indoor games.
Army – Playing army didn’t require much more than imagination, although it helped a lot if you at least had a toy gun. (In a pinch we just pointed our fingers at each other.) Birnleys had a number of army “supplies” that we utilized - toy machine guns, helmets, German luger pistols, and toy grenades. If you didn’t happen to have a grenade an apple would suffice. Perhaps the most challenging part of playing army was the ability to make just the right sound with your mouth when depressing the trigger or lobbing the grenade. A single shot or explosion was not difficult but a machine gun burst required much more sophistication. It was a good thing that none of our parents could afford braces or that could have put the kibosh on the army game. Our games were normally team games (or nationalities). For instance, we younger kids might play the American Army and our older brothers might be the Germans (Krauts or Gerries as we used to call them). Sometimes the opposition might be Japanese (Japs or Nips). We really never knew much about the Korean War so we did not have “Gooks”. A great home base was the crawl space under Birnley’s house. It had a 4’X4’ hole on each side that allowed for easy ingress and egress as well as moderate protection from incoming grenades (or apples).
Softball – Softball was played in a vacant lot next to Sharon Dunkle’s house or on the college tennis courts. There were always two captains that chose sides but I really can’t recall how the captains were chosen. I suppose the biggest or best just sort of appointed themselves and the remainder never challenged them. Players were chosen by the captains based on a strange mixture of talent and popularity. Even if you weren’t very good but were a good friend of the captain you had a good chance of being selected somewhere before last. Nobody wanted to be chosen last but somebody had to be. I recall one time that Willis Kennedy hit a “homerun” from the college tennis courts right through a window in the greenhouse atop the science building. We all stared in silent shock until the sound of breaking glass prompted the courts to clear in a matter of seconds.
Football – I remember one year in the mid-50s for Christmas my brother and I got tan and red leather football helmets, shoulder pads, and a football. We thought we had died and gone to Heaven. In later years after we got a TV I recall vividly how we would watch the pro football games and then at half time we would pester my uncle who lived next door to go out in the back yard to play football with us. He would be the quarterback and my brother and I would take turns going out for passes.
Winter Activities - In those years before global warming put an end to all of Pennsylvania's snow (tongue firmly in cheek) we always enjoyed spending the day sledding, building snowmen, or having snowball battles behind our snow forts. Dr. Vincent owned a piece of land across Kiester Road from where the middle school stands today. They used to flood a flat portion of it in the winter for ice skating. We had just enough cash to but some cheap hockey sticks but we had to be real careful not to lose the puck. There was even a small shack on the property where you could get warm or change your skates. We also used to build a fire to warm ourselves between games.
Board Games – When the weather didn’t support outdoor play we might get out Monopoly, Risk, Clue, or some other board game and settle in for marathon sessions. These sometimes lasted for days (especially Risk).
Kissing Games – I guess most elementary age kids have a fascination with the opposite sex, especially when it comes to kissing. We were no different. Before we were old enough to kiss at dances or the movies we “cut our teeth” (no braces pun intended) with kissing games. Our favorite game was spin the bottle although I can recall a few variations (if no bottle was handy). Sometimes the kissing was done right there “in front of God and everybody” as the saying goes. However, there were other times when the lucky couple got to lock lips in the privacy of a closet, the basement, or a nearby car. Parties (especially birthday parties) were favorite times for such games although you never knew when an impromptu game might break out when we got bored with softball.
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