One of the highlights of my younger days was playing a good game of “Keepers” marbles. I watched the older boys “knuckle down” at school for several years so had a pretty good idea of local rules and regulations. When you played Keepers, you didn’t just play for fun. You kept all those marbles you won. They went into your very own personal marble sack!
My first sack of marbles was pretty small — perhaps only a dozen or so that my older brothers, Jim and Bob, had given me when I came of age at about eight years old. Older boys had their own playing buddies, so novices at the game had to form their own groups.
My mother could sew up a marble sack pretty quick on her foot operated Singer sewing machine. Just thread a shoelace through the loop at the top, pull the drawstrings and hop on the school bus with your own marble sack feeling like a real grown-up.
About four or five guys were plenty to get a game started. Just scratch a three- or four-foot circle in some well-worn spot in the school yard, and make a smaller 12-inch circle. Then all players plant a half dozen marbles in the small circle. Scratch a “taw” line about five feet behind the big circle, and take turns pitching your big “shooter” to see who got closest to the line and would be first to play. We generally pitched our shooter standing or kneeling behind that taw line. If we knocked a marble out of the small circle, it was a keeper. If your shooter landed outside the inner circle, you could shoot again. If it stayed in the inner circle, it just became one more marble, and the next round you had to shoot with a regular-sized marble.
The idea was to keep your larger shooter marble working because it had more power. What a challenge to win more marbles than your opponents, or at least come out ahead. Once all the marbles were knocked out of the inner circle, the game was over and you could count up all your winnings. The one with the most marbles won the game. Then start again!
Good marble players could amass a fortune in marbles of all colors and designs. “Glassies” were of course more valuable than the cheaper variety that could chip or break. Today, marble collecting remains popular in many parts of the country. Regional and national events are held where marbles are traded and valuable collections are exhibited.
Before writing these marble memories for my grandkids, I curiously checked our library for books on marbles. What a surprise! A 208-page “Marble Collector’s Handbook” displays over 500 color photos of handmade and machine-made marbles. Folks in-the-know would recognize names such as Bennington, Corkscrew, Cat’s Eyes, Bumboozer, Onion Skins and dozens of others.
Back to my boyhood days. I remember my friend, Ivan Young, calling out, “Knuckle down — Skinny Bone tight,” when he wanted a player to keep his knuckles on the ground while shooting. Who knows? Maybe Ivan is still calling “knuckle down” when playing this age-old game with his grandchildren today. Maybe it’s also time that I get this game started again in my family.
Another famous book, “101 Ways to Play Marbles,” relates the interesting history of marbles going back thousands of years. The British Museum in London has a big display on clay, stone and flint marbles dating back to ancient Roman and Egyptian times. This book exhibits 101 ways to play marbles. And I thought there was just one simple game like we played back in my younger days.
History relates that Abraham Lincoln loved to play marbles in his youth, and his favorite game was called Old Bowler. This gives me something to tell my grandkids when I tell them (in jest) about the days when Honest Abe and I were friends and walked to a one-room school together. I tell them about Abe and I studying by candlelight in a log cabin just like the one in our Maytag Park. Now, I can even facetiously brag about sometimes beating Abe at the game of marbles.