The email seemed harmless enough. It was from a person I had communicated with before, a professional woman, an employee of the Lancaster General Hospital. I eagerly opened the email, expecting a question about the elevation of Derrs or the population of Waller or a question relating to what happened to the Fausey family or how many members of the McHenry clan are still alive. She wrote, "At lunch today, I brought up the subject of playing Post Office. I know I work with young people but they all looked at me like I had gone mad, and I realized just how old I am! The only other person at the table that knew what I was talking about was in her 60s. Some instructions on how the game was played might bring back some memories, unless you are like my lunch partners and too "young" to remember!"
Her email made me think of the era when parties for 16-year-olds were chaperoned, spin-the-bottle and "post office" bordered the promiscuous, "hell" and "damn" were reserved for those occasions when a hammer banged down hard on a finger, or a cow stepped on a toe, or a rainstorm came up with 300 bales of hay to bring in.
"Spin the bottle," Mother said, using the term interchangeably with "post office," would "lead adolescents into discovering what comes after." Bobbing for apples and pinning the tail on a black cat and telling ghost stores were more to her liking during the years of worry about her youngest son. I remember she once said something about me and the "Primrose Path!" She talked about things like "group dating" and dating with parents going along as chaperones, and she fully expected that I would conform to her expectations. She once suggested that I bring a girl home for a tuna-noodle casserole! Tiddledy Winks was the speed she wanted for me!
Mother's idea of excitement was to play a game she knew from when she grew up in Nescopeck, a game called "wink" or perhaps "winkem," in which the girls would sit in chairs in a circle with a boy behind each of the girls. A boy without a partner was called the "wink" because his job was to wink at a girl and if she got up to come to him the boy behind her would grab her and set her back down. If the man behind her succeeded in putting his hands on her shoulders before she stood up, she had to remain where she was. If she escaped, he became the "wink."
Mother possibly heard about the Philadelphia ban of July 6, 1907, of all "kissing games in public-school playgrounds." Stringent regulations were enacted "against the old-fashioned plays in which the penalty is a kiss." The action by the board of education and the medical inspectors of the city effectively suppressed kissing among the young--at least during the day. Suddenly kissing, which for generations had been part and parcel of "spin the plate," "going to Jerusalem," "clap in and clap out," "drop the handkerchief" and a score of other games was suddenly listed as "unhygienic and a transmitter of germs." Besides, the authorities argued, the "modern child is made of sterner stuff than the youngster of a generation ago." Boys and girls would rather engage in athletics than kissing, the authorities argued.
Mother had caught me "playing house" once. From then on, I was encouraged to make taffy, throw bean bags, go huckleberrying, play hop-scotch, ride my bike and swim in the dam. Some of the town kids seemed to succeed in a game I would today call "knock-'em-dead-as-a-door-nail," a game I never participated in because I wore glasses. The closest I ever came was when another boy took careful aim at my nose with a baseball. I no longer remember who the boy was, but suspect that he went on to be the most valuable pitcher in the American League.
I was a boy from the country, but my friends were all "kids from town." There was a world of difference. Town kids knew about the game of post office. Country kids knew about the breeding of cows and horses and goats. Town kids would sneak to the farm to learn more about the subject that the country kids thought was second nature. To return the favor, I was finally invited to a party in a garage on McHenry Alley where the game of post office was going to be played. I think that I told mother that I was going to see a movie at the Ritz Theater or that I was going to hang out for awhile at Neil Harrison's hardware store, an activity Father often did on a weekend night but wasn't able to do that particular night.
The girl who hosted the "post office" party did so with the full blessing of her parents. In their eyes, they were keeping their daughter off the street. I didn't explain how the game of spin-the-bottle was played. For the benefit of those readers who are under the age of 30, spin-the-bottle was a game of overt love-making that not all parents frowned on. The kids gathered in a circle, and the boy would spin the bottle. He got to kiss the girl it pointed to.
Different rules applied. Sometimes the rules called for kissing in front of everybody, sometimes the more experienced boys found a decent alcove in which to capture a kiss. There was a time limit put on an embrace so that everyone got some fun and no one got too much fun!
My first kiss was a disaster! The girl at whom the bottle pointed was--heavens--like a sister to me. I couldn't kiss a sister! Why couldn't it have been the blonde in the corner, the one who was starting to "shape up" to be a good-looking woman, or the one that a boy in my class said was wilder than a "tom cat," or the cousin of the girl on Main Street who probably would never return to Benton and therefore I would never have to face again.
I noticed that some of the other boys didn't get a kiss either. They had a steady girlfriend and those girlfriends looked forward to the game of post office, but would have nothing to do with their boyfriends kissing Sexy Sarah from Shickshinny or Hot Hilda from High on the Hill.
Older readers will remember that the game of post office or spin-the-bottle was a lot like the old games of "winkem, "going to Jerusalem," "drop the handkerchief" and "clap in and clap out." Younger readers only need remember that Nintendo will never market any of these games.
Requests for articles on "playing doctor" will not be honored.
Any of you remember the old game of post office?Ruth Cavanaugh elaborated on the games of Post Office and Spin the Bottle, emphasing that the two were different games.
As Ruth describes the game, there was a group in one room and in an adjoining room (or behind a screen) was the Post Office. The Post Master (or Post Mistress) would come into the room with the group and say, "I have a letter for" the person whose name was on the slip of paper. Then that person had to go into the other room and the person who had filled out the slip of paper (his or her name was on the back) would go in the room and would get to kiss the person they had wished for. At least they had privacy, and didn't depend on the spin of a bottle to choose who they wanted to kiss! Both would then come back in the room with the others and the next slip of paper would be drawn.
Ruth noted that this was the New York City version for 7th and 8th graders. By the time the kids got to high school, they were too old for such games and they made up their own rules.
As a postscript, Ruth met her husband one summer night when she was 16 while playing a hide and seek game called Ring-a-Levio. Last ones to be found by whomever was "it" and was declared the winner. Ron, Ruth's future husband, was running to hide and grabbed Ruth's hand and said, "Come with me, no one will find us." He was right. The couple sat in a stairwell to a basement and no one ever came to find them. They talked for more than an hour, Ruth found out all she needed to know about him in that stairwell, and he walked her home, and they were married three years later. The rest, they say, is history.
Dan McGarigle, who grew up in Levittown, New Jersey, remembers a game he played "whenever a group of kids got together." The game went by various names, but everyone knew it as "Bottle Caps."
To play, each had to have a bottle cap, and someone drew twenty-five boxes with a stick of chalk on the street usually from one side of the street to the other.
The overall box was about 35 feet square, almost from sidewalk to sidewalk. The twenty-five boxes were each numbered as shown below.
A typical bottle cap was about 1 inch in diameter and the game area was about 35 feet square in the street.
Each player started by putting his bottle cap into square #1 and then cocking and flipping his index finger onto the bottle cap to slide it across the street into box #2. Each player got one shot and then the next player would shoot. After the last player made his first shot, the first player made his second shot, and so on.
The aim of each shot was for the player to slide his bottle cap into the next numbered box. If a player got his cap into the next numbered box then he got a free shot to start shooting into the next numbered box. If he missed getting his cap into the box then the next player took his turn until each player had taken one more shot. When the last player took his shot then shooting resumed with the first player again.
When a car came down the street, shooting paused until the car passed. If a cap was moved by a dog, cat, car, bus or anything other than its player then the player could retrieve his cap and put it back where it was before the interference but he had to wait for other players to shoot in turn until his turn to shoot.
When a player reached box 25, he was a "killer" and could, in turn, shoot his cap trying to hit the cap of all other players. If he hit another player's cap the other player was immediately eliminated from the game. The last player still shooting won, and all other players lost by virtue of having been hit by a player who reached box 25.
As few as two could play the game but there was no limit to how many players can start a game. Once a game started no other players could be added to the group.
Dan remembered that is was not easy to skip a bottle cap 35 feet across a macadam or blacktop or concrete street. If a player's cap went out of the playing area, he lost a turn and had to shoot back into the playing area from wherever his cap went. If a car squashed a cap the player replaced it in the spot where it was squashed. If a cap was stolen by a non-player, the cap could be replaced to the spot where it was stolen. Arguments between players were not arbitrated by anyone. The kids figured out what to do in each argued case. Dan recalled that "The game could be played on any paved surface but when we grew up the only paved places were the streets."
