#6 Games You Played

This is easy . . . Sunday evenings was game night in our home.  We would sit around the kitchen table and play a single game.  This could be Parchisi or Aggravation! or Life or Careers or Monopoly or Go Fish, Old Maid, Uno, Touring, Flinch.  We took turns each week on choosing a game.  There was one night we actually taped our playing (totally by accident) and when we returned the cassette player to my grandfather, he had a blast listening to us.  I think after that he wore his hearing aids around us.

I used to play Scrabble with my mom.  Dad would have us play Solitaire.  I remember using the Book of Hoyle to learn how to play various solitaire games (either single or double deck).

I also played Chinese checkers, Operation!, poker, checkers, Yahtzee, and Let’s Drive.  Oh, and there was Battleship.

My brother & I played a lot with Legos, Tinker Toys, and Lincoln Logs.  Paper Airplanes was another thing – we created an airport on the top of our dresser.  In the summer, we would ride our bicycles up & down the driveway and road, pretending we were going to work, store or home (playing house).  In the winter, we would use boxes and my dolls and set up “school”.

I can remember one time visiting some friends of my Dad up Lincoln Creek and they played “Mr Potato Head” with real potatoes.

At school, there was 4-Square, hopscotch, King of the Mountain, Red Rover, Red Light Green Light, Simon Says and Allie Allie All Come Free.  King of the Mountain was played around a concrete septic mound.  There was a person who was the “king” and they were on the mound.  Others tried to run over the mound or knock the “king” off.  The same mound was used as a Witches Pot.  One side was a door and the other end was the Pot.  I don’t remember all the details.  Allie All Come free – this was a multiplayer game using a ball and the maintenance shed.  People were on each side of the shed.  We would throw the ball over the roof and if it was caught by the other team, they ran around and tried to tag people.  This reminds me of another game we played – Tag and Hide-n-Seek.

Road Trips – there were a couple of games we played as a family to keep us kids quiet on the long drives to and from Seattle or Albany, Oregon.  Slug Bug:  If you saw a Volkswagen Beetle, you called out slug bug and the color.  Red was 5 pts, all others were 1.  If the car wasn’t a VW, you lost the points.  The one with the most points when we got to our destination, won.  Car Dealerships were excluded.  Another game was the Alphabet Game.  You would read road signs and call out the letter and word.  Nobody else you use that sign after the first person.  This was real rough for the letter Q or Z as there were only a couple of signs that had those letters.  This game was one of the clues that I was having troubles seeing distances.  We also had a game that had two trays and several cards – one was road bingo.  Another was the States & Capitols.  This was a game we used to help me memorize the State Capitols for 5^th grade.  Then there was a time we tried to see how many different states we could find on license plates.

Mom & Dad played Pinochle once a month with another couple and they also played Cribbage.

My most favorite time was in the winter when Dad would run his model railroad (HO scale).  My brother & I got to play too.  There was the yard where the trains were made up, the mainline, then the logging camp.

I had a jump rope, Chinese jump rope, slinky, yo-yo.  I had a hula hoop and there was another “skipping” thing I had.  It went over the ankle, had a string with a ball at the end and you would twirl and jump over the rope.  I also played with my Barbie dolls.  I too did Cat’s Cradle & Spirograph. 

My favorite past-time was reading.