Marbles

When Ronnie Eischerman moved away he gave me his marbles. Ronnie was at least 10 years older than me and lived in our neighborhood. Ronnie was always very kind to me and when his family moved to Omaha he left me his marbles and a few other things including some iron toys that I still have. I still have most of the marbles, too.

Ronnie had a large collection of clay marbles and older glass marbles. He also had quite a few of the newer glass, cat’s eye, marbles that were popular at the time. The older clay and glass marbles were considered antiques in 1960. My mother said I shouldn’t play with those so I didn’t, although I did show them off on more than one occasion.

Mom made me a bag for my playing marbles out of part of a leg from an old pair of jeans. It was as big around as a baseball and about 10 inches long. Packed full of marbles it was a load to carry around. It wasn’t uncommon to see a 5th or 6th grade boy proudly walking around with a bag of marbles strapped to his belt. The size of the bag reflected the prowess of the boy at playing marbles…a harbinger of things to come with adolescence. My bag was too big to carry that way.

With the playing marbles that I had and those that Ronnie gave me I was well stocked and ready for battle. The basic game we played was a one-on-one shoot out. It was always determined what marble or marbles we would be playing for before the game. Each player would throw a marble out on the ground and then they would take turns taking shots at each other. When a player hit the other player’s marble he was the winner and collected his spoils and moved on to another game. In reflection, it was clearly gambling and that’s why it was discontinued later on.

There were a lot of variations to the game. The traditional marbles was played with several marbles in a circle drawn in the dirt. If you knocked another players marble out of the circle he was out of the game. If, on the other hand, you missed and went out yourself you were out of the game. Several kids played at one time and the last one in was the winner. It took some precise shooting to be the winner in this game. We mostly played the one-on-one shoot out.

There was a terminology surrounding marbles. There were “hits” and “nicks”. A “hit” was a solid strike that moved the other marble some distance. A “nick” was a ricochet and was sometimes not counted. A player would often shout, “No nicks’ at the beginning of the game meaning those didn’t count. One player would also shout “keepsies” making it clear the game was for keeps. The other choice was “funzies”. Nobody played for fun.

There were boulders, steelies, clackers, and the cat’s eyes I mentioned earlier. A boulder was any marble larger than the regular marbles. Boulders were often used a shooters and could be as big as a ping-pong ball. I do recall some that were as big as golf balls. A direct hit from a boulder could shatter a cat’s eye. The steelie was a steel ball bearing and came in all sizes. They were highly prized by the players. A clacker was a variation of the boulder and got its name from the sound it made when it hit another marble. The cat’s eye was the standard marble you would buy in the store. It was glass, came in regular and boulder sizes, and, of course, resembled a cat’s eye in some remote way. There were solid color marbles, too, but they were not as common.

The basic shooting technique was the thumb shot. The marble was placed in the curled index finger and propelled forward with a flick of the thumb. To do it properly, the player should do it with his knuckles on the ground. A version of thumb shot was to swing your arm and the flick the marble at the same time. It sometimes turned into and underhand shot without the thumb.

There were two other common shots…the bomber and the spatsie. The bomber was simply standing directly over the opponent’s marble and holding the marble next to your eye and then dropping it on the other marble. It was often fatal but if you missed your marble was usually left perilously close to your opponent. The spatsie was an overhand shot much like throwing darts.

So, in the spring you might see pairs of boys setting the stakes or playing marbles before and after school and almost any other opportunity they might have. You would hear “Keepsies! No bombers or nicks!” and the game would begin. Occasionally, you heard the clack of a hit and the moans of someone who just lost their favorite marble.

I out grew playing marbles by junior high but have kept my marbles to this day. Sometime in my teenage years an overzealous Saunder’s parent decided it was gambling and marbles kind of disappeared from the playground. She was convinced we would all grow up to be gamblers.

Keepsies!