We stayed at that rented house for a good three years. Eventually of course the train set lost all of the luster associated with it’s being new. Like all new things, the train set eventually got old.
If you really think about it there really is not much a train set can do. The locomotive had an authentic whistle, I guess the dynamic duo handling the engine’s speed also took care of the whistle. Come to think of it there may have been a small push button on the transformer that made the locomotive whistle. Train sets are really boring anyway, they just keep going around the same set of tracks over and over again. Who really cares if some cool helicopter ever launched or not. Flipping baseball cards in the school yard was so much more fun.
Of course the teacher always made us put away our baseball cards along with our coats. I can not remember if it was kindergarten or first grade but I do remember the kid’s name and even his face to this very day. I generally was a peace loving child, I kept fairly quiet, and rarely got involved in schoolyard skirmishes. Yet this day was different! The day was a usual day of first grade (part of the benefit of writing is that it refreshes one’s memory), with one major change.
I had a good day at the early morning flipping session before school. The early morning flipping session was quite a site to see at Battle Hill Elementary School in Union NJ. The various lawns of the school was dotted with clusters of typically between four to seven boys. The girls were no where to be found amongst the baseball card flipping circles. They were somewhere on the periphery playing with their jacks, jump rope, or some kind of sing song hand clapping games that included lyrics about doctors, lawyers, indian chiefs. It really was not correct to be liking girls at this point anyway, so lets get back to the real excitement, the baseball card flipping.
Everytime I talk to people about baseball card flipping, someone would always explain something about flipping a baseball card up into the air, and depending on how the card landed, that determined who would win that particular card. That may have been one way to flip cards, and I do remember seeing this method used, but that was not the true, adrenalin rush producing high stakes, baseball card flipping that I am talking about here.
The baseball card flipping seen at Battle Hill, was more like a craps table in Atlantic City or Las Vegas, than any kind of school yard game that I ever participated in. {note to editor, there is some kind of rule about never ending a sentence with a preposition, can you help me out a little here?} The baseball card flipping that we expeienced at the school yard followed any possible combination of the following rules: Some one turns over one of their baseball cards on the ground, the other guy then lays his card on top of the other card. If the color which (a carachteristic of the teams color matches, then the guy who threw flipped the card would win. Typically a pile might get to a maximum of say between 7 to 12 cards before someone would win. I can not remember who flipped first, but it was based on who won the previous pot, or on who challenged the kid to flip. That was the equivalent to the $5 dollar table, it had the energy level of the roulette wheel.
But that kind of game was simply not fun or exciting enough for the big winners of the day, who typically walked around with stacks of baseball cards, that required rubber bands if you wanted to casually hold them in one hand. These boys had higher stakes that were generated according to the folowing rules:
Double or triple pots. In this derivation you had to not match the colors not just once, but twice or even as much as three times. Then the was the ultimate high roller game, for those who really wanted to win, and win big, and were not afraid to lose. This derivation was called shades. Once again the typical high roller shade player was not just satisfied with single pots. The shades players were almost always playing double or triple pots. Then the stakes were really high. A shades triple pot round got to be really big, and the enrgy level increased as well. When kids who were down on their luck (if they were not down on their luck they would be out there flipping like everyone else) saw such games taking place they sometimes offer “luck” to the guy they thought might have have a better chance of winning the pot. They gave luck according to the following procedure. They would gently circle their hands over the top one of the players’ head (I can not recall if they would ever actually touch the players head, or just cirle above, alternatively they may have been rubbing the players back). The one thing I am quite certain of was the incantation that went along with this procedure was the luck giver would chant “wish I had a watermelon, wish I had a watermelon” no less then three times in a row, or until the luck getter got lucky and won the pot. Upon winning the luck getter would create some kind of tithe of his winnings and give over a few cards to the previously downtrodden luck giver.
At any rate, I must have had a great morning on the flipping fields, because my stack was really bigger than it had ever been. The rule that Mrs. Rubin enforced was that our baseball cards were to be placed on a shelf above our coats. Kevin, must have gotten to the coats before I did, and he was clearly reaching for my stack of baseball cards! I saw him grabbing for my stack from across the classroom. I remember it as if it was in slow motion because my objective was so crystal clear. I had to get to Kevin and use what ever methods were at my disposal to prevent him from getting my baseball cards firmly into his hands.
I do not recall if there was any actual blood shed ie bloody nose, but lets just say that I must have prevailed (I was one of the tallest kids in my class). I recall the approximate size of that stack and it really was more than a handfull, and I did get to bring that stack of baseball cards home. Additionally, I do not recall getting into any particular kind of trouble. After all a boy had the absolute right to his own baseball cards back in those days. Perhaps the teacher might temporarily place them in her desk until the end of the day, if someone were to push the envelope on the rule of when he was permitted to play with baseball cards on school grounds, but the cards were always returned to their rightful owner at the end of the day.
Stephen C. Sanders, August 19, 2008
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