HISTORICAL COMMENTS BY GEORGE CHEVALLIER 11-26-11

Dangerous Games

This is not the best historical article, but it may bring back a memory or two.

Over the years children have come up with games that were not in the best interest of their health. But kids will be kids and we didn’t have all the electronics that kids have today and had to just come up with something to occupy our young and immature minds.

Since almost every boy carried a pocket knife, a game was played called “mumbly peg”. This was played by two boys who faced each other and threw his knife so as to miss the other boy’s foot. If you hit his shoe (or worse), you lost the game. If neither boy hit his opponent, the one closest to the other’s shoe was the winner. It seems stupid now but we thought it was great fun. Usually, a large crowd would gather to witness the activity.

Another, even more stupid, was the practice of two boys sitting opposite each other at Leo’s Confectionary which is gone now but was located at the apex of Main St., Long Ave., E. William St., Truitt St. and Mt. Hermon Rd.. They would each put their forearm on the table touching each other. A lit cigarette was dropped between them, burning both participants. The first one to pull away was the loser. This was strictly a macho thing and I never had the lack of good sense to try it. It was always sure to draw a sizeable crowd though.

Car games were another popular past time. “Rat Racing” in Pocomoke Forest was always popular. Even though it is not hard to get disoriented in Pocomoke Forest, we always knew there were only two roads bisecting the Eastern Shore – Route 13 and Route 50. Eventually, you had to come out to one of them. I can’t ever remember an accident doing this. Maybe someone would miss a curve and wind up in a field, but the way cars were built back then, nothing was harmed.

Drag racing was really popular in the 1950’s. A race was usually arranged at the Oaks Drive-in and from there a steady stream of cars left to go to the designated stretch of lonely road somewhere out in the country to pair off and “get it on”. The first official track was in Georgetown. They had a track that was all of 1/8th of a mile, about half the distance of other tracks. Delmar opened their track in the late 1960’s. Anyone who paid the entrance fee could be put in a Class and race other cars in the same Class. It was neat to see somebody pushing the gas pedal to the floor on Dad’s prized Oldsmobile or Buick. If Dad’s only knew what Junior was doing to his family vehicle.

When someone my age looks back most of the memories are good ones. We didn’t have drugs to screw up our heads. Only sailors and convicts had tattoos. Modesty was the norm at any social level. Teen pregnancy was almost unheard of although it did happen.

When that did happen, they changed from happy-go-lucky teenagers to parents and started raising a family. It was called responsibility and everybody took it very seriously. No more stupid childhood games entered their lives. They had neither the time nor money for suddenly something so foolish. The world has sure changed and not for the better.