Children’s sports common in the Alton, Illinois area were unknown in many parts of the country. Games invented there spread to other parts of the country. The game players or their parents constructed the required equipment in the basement workshop or used off the shelf household items like dried peas. Children played Box Hockey, Corkball, Rubber Guns, and Trenches as frequently as the familiar sports such as baseball, basketball, and football.
Games you never heard of
Box Hockey was a popular sport in Roxana, Illinois in the late 40s. The Box Hockey Wikipedia article covers the history, rules, and equipment. Sears manufactured this game. Eastern cities held tournaments. However, the game was unknown in large areas of the US. The field of play is the inside of a wooden box, approximately the size of a ping pong table, that was open on the top and bottom. The box laid on the ground. The article, linked above, describes the dimensions and geometry.
There were at least two slightly different versions that varied in size and number of compartments. Each player had a wooden hockey stick, about 2 feet in length, and tried to hit a ball through the holes in the compartment dividers, into the opponent’s court, and through the hole at the end of the opponent’s court to score a point. Box Hockey is alive and well. Lots of injuries to fingers, hands, and sometimes heads resulted from the wooden hockey sticks.
Home made games that became real
Corkball was invented in St Louis about 1900. Three players made up a side. The pitcher, the catcher, and the batter performed all the action. The game does not have base runners or physical bases and there are no fielders. Players track the status of base runners, created by balls hit in fair territory mentally or on scratch paper. Balls hit in fair territory advance runners already on base, or score runs if there was a runner on third base. This page has an overview of rules.
Leagues operated, as of 2010 in, the St Louis area. Players define the details for the field dimensions, that determine whether a batted ball is in fair or foul territory. Dimensions vary depending on indoors or outdoors play and the set up for a home run line. The ball is smaller than a baseball and the bat is slightly larger than a broom handle. The ball is very active and behaves much like a softball for sharp breaking curves but the velocity is much greater since it is a small fraction of the size of a softball.
This game was popular with most of the children and adults who played baseball. The rules were somewhat flexible for our game on the school grounds or vacant lots. This page, St Louis Corkball on YouTube, has information on recent activity and other evolutions of the game.
Home made games enhanced fishing skills
Fly casting practice was a common activity for both children and adults but primarily by adults. This game improves fishing skills by increasing the accuracy of casting a fishing lure to a target. Wooden rings of various sizes simulated casting a lure from a river bank or the middle of a stream. The equipment used was your won rod and reel. Casting practice occurred at the gymnasium at the Roxana, Illinois Community Building. I did not do any fly casting so this was just an interruption to the schedule for basketball.
Roxana was near the Illinois, Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. Many fisherman wanted to develop their fly casting skills. The breadth and depth of the fisherman culture cannot be over emphasized. Fish stories were part of the folk lore and the social network. My father, uncles, and cousins were fisherman. One of my cousins, Clifford Dye, had a farm on a creek. He could go fishing in the afternoons or after milking the cows in the evening.
Vacant lots became battle grounds
View of Roxana Illinois downtown 1952. Supplies for
making clothes and groceries.
Photo edit by Rodger 2007.
There was a game that I would call trenches or maybe forts is a better description. The vacant lots were sometimes honeycombed with trenches and tunnels dug by the children in the neighborhood. The purpose was the creation of a stage for various types of war games. A large vacant lot is visible in the center of the picture across the alley. The trenches ware several feet long, usually connected to another trench to form a network, and sometimes terminating in a small room. The depth was several feet and some sections were completely underground. The obvious risk from cave-ins did not seem to be a concern for either the children or their parents. I can not recollect any discussions of the risks.
Home made props enhanced the war games action
A mix of middle class family budgets and the absence of toy manufacturing during the war motivated the basement workshop production of toys. Woodworking shops were common in basements and garages. Table saws and jig saws manufactured furniture and fixed broken household items. They also make toy guns out of wood. A toy we called a rubber gun would fire rubber bands made from tire inner tubes. The rubber bands made from tires were significantly more powerful. This article describes the history and operation of a Rubber Gun.
Epilogue for an era of sports: faded into obscurity
The children’s activities described above were incubated on streets and vacant lots in an era before TV. This culture of outdoor play with neighbors is rapidly disappearing from memory. Future generations will not know that children used to interact outdoors playing games that were invented for them.