Porch View

Recently I got a chance to meet up, briefly, with a childhood friend, one I hadn’t seen in decades. It was wonderful to catch up with him again, even if we didn’t have a lot of time to talk. In that short exchange we, as you might imagine, talked about the days of old when we were little kids and he used to come over to my house to play. And, it didn’t take long for him to bring up the porch.

Now, the house we grew up in was big. It had eight rooms, three baths, and a huge basement that was divided into four more rooms. So, yeah, there was plenty of space inside. There was plenty of space outside, too, as the house was on a double lot, meaning it had a huge yard. But, one of the places where we spent a lot of time was small. Very small. The porch.

We called it “the back porch”, but it wasn’t in the back. The patio was in the back. The porch was in the front. But. That didn’t stop us (read: La Soeur and me) from calling it “the back porch” when we were growing up. Yeah. We’d say, “We’re going to play on the back porch.” And then go to the front of the house. And, that right there probably sums up all you need to know about us as kids. But, I digress.

The front porch was both short and narrow. The front door opened into the middle of it (and, yes, we called it the front door and still called the porch on which that door opened the back porch…again, all you need to know). On the right side of that door, as you were exiting the house, there was room for one lawn chair. On the left, where the steps leading down to the sidewalk and the front gate were, you could, if you squeezed them tightly, fit two lawn chairs. And, such was the width of the porch that, even sitting in a lawn chair against the wall of the house, you could put your feet on the front railing. Yeah. Short. And narrow. And the confines, for many years, were made even tighter by a small wooden table we had out there. But, again, the lack of space didn’t stop us using it. A lot.

As kids, we spent a lot of time outside, especially in the summer. Now. Mom was not one of those mothers who forced you outside and wouldn’t let you back in. If we wanted to come in, unless she was involved with some big cleaning project or something, that was fine. Thing was, we didn’t want to come in, because the fun was out there. So, save for the odd bathroom, drink, or meal break, we were out all summer. Unless. It was raining. And, that’s where the porch came in.

If we were out playing ball or doing some other outside activity (or inside activities like games or cards that we often transported outside during summer weather) and the raindrops started to fall, well. We knew we had two choices. Inside or the porch. Because, while we absolutely did not know enough to come in out of the rain, if we attempted to stay out in the rain, Mom, using that very question (“Don’t you two know enough to come in out of the rain????”) would make us come in. But. The porch. That was the compromise.

The rain would start and we’d race for the porch. And, if we were playing ball or doing something we couldn’t do on the porch? Well, in we’d go to get a game or a card deck. Mom: “It’s raining!” Us: “We know. We’re going to play ‘Battling Tops’ on the porch!”

Yeah. Time to digress. “Battling Tops”. We played that a lot. And, if ever there were a game on which a company (Ideal) made, oh, I don’t know, 95 percent profit, it was “Battling Tops”. If you never had the game, here’s what it contained. One hard plastic “arena” (cost? 34 cents). Six tops (cost? 4 cents each) and six decals (cost 6 cents) and six pieces of string (cost 1 cent…for all six pieces). The cardboard box it came in cost more than the entire game.

But, all that simplicity was good. After all, we were little kids, and anything requiring any assembly or reading of rules would need adults, at least the first few times. Not “Battling Tops”. Six tops. Each in two pieces, a long stem and a flat disc you fastened to the stem. Then those six decals. Color coded to go on each of the six tops…giving each of your “Battling Tops” a name. “Tricky Nicky”, “Hurricane Hank”, “Smarty Smitty”, “Super Sam”, “Dizzy Dan” and “Twirling Tim” (seriously). Yeah. We had adults put on the decals. Other than that, well. Pick a top, put it in the arena, wrap the string around it, pull, and watch it battle with the other tops. Even we could figure that out.

And, “Battling Tops” was a great “porch” game. No small pieces to lose. Nothing paper to blow away. And, it was perfect for playing when it was raining, because, when the wind blew some of that rain on the porch (and, with a porch that small, if there was a wind, someone or something was getting wet…sometimes everyone and everything), well all that plastic would dry nicely. And, you could play “Battling Tops” with as few as two players and as many as four. And, four was about all you were getting on the porch, so…

Did I mention there were six tops? But, there were only four areas from which the tops could be launched. Meaning two tops were always left out of the battle. One was almost always “Twirling Tim”. One was never “Tricky Nicky”, my favorite, both because it was green…my second-favorite color after blue…and because it freaking ruled. For some reason, “Tricky Nicky” turned out to be the best top of the bunch and won more often than any of the others. No idea why, but it was and it did. But, I digress.

We played games on the porch while it rained. Games of all sorts. The previously mentioned “Risk” and “Monopoly” were two of those. Of course, both of those had cardboard “boards”, so you needed to shield them from the rain. Both also had cards that needed protected, and “Monopoly” had all that paper money that needed secured. But, believe it or not, the big problem playing those games on the porch in the rain wasn’t any of that, it was the dice. Because, while we’d find ways to make sure the cards and boards didn’t get wet and the paper money didn’t blow away, there were a few of us who would not change their dice rolling methods to adapt to conditions.

Dice rolling, believe it or not, was often a bone of contention in the old neighborhood. And, if you’ve read this space before, you believe it, because there was nothing we wouldn’t argue about, often at length. Some of the guys hated it when you rolled on the board, because, of course, errant dice could knock over the “armies” in “Risk” or the houses and hotels in “Monopoly”, for example. So, most of us rolled off to the side of the board. But, it wasn’t just the “where”, it was also the “how”.

See, we were all watching one another for signs of cheating, as well we should have been, since cheating in the old neighborhood was as rampant as steroids were in baseball post-cancelled World Series. So, you had to, as some of us put it, usually loudly, “actually roll!” No dropping the dice or tossing them so lightly as to have them only roll over once or twice. No, we needed a full roll. And, while that could be tricky in the close confines of the porch, it could be done. Problem was, a few of us, tired of constantly being harangued about “actually rolling!” (or, more likely, just being the little putzes they were), took things to the extreme.

Rather than roll the dice at all, they fired them wildly into the air. Now, while there’d be no doubt that they weren’t trying to cheat with that kind of roll, what would be in doubt would be where the dice would land. And, in those close porch confines, they often ended up either on the small sidewalk that ran in front of the porch between it and the verge of the road, on the verge, or even on the road. And, if they ended up in any of those places, well. That was better than the alternative. Because, while the dice could easily be found there, or if they went off the left side of the porch onto the steps or the sidewalk below it, you didn’t want them flying off the right side. Because beneath that side of the porch was a small area of bushes and shrubs with high grass and weeds between.

Now, the rule was simple in all these cases. If you tossed the dice and they went off the porch, you had to go get them. If it were pouring rain? You’d be wet. If they ended up in one of the thorn bushes on the right side of the porch? You’d be bloody. But, you were getting those dice. And, we were going to stay dry and unbloodied and probably laugh at you while you were doing it.

Another porch game was “Hands Down”, which, while not quite as cheap as “Battling Tops” was certainly a leader in profit margin. A pile of cards and, rather than the “arena” of “Battling Tops”, the “Slam-O-Matic”, Seriously. Actual marketing people sat down and came up with that name for Milton Bradley. (If you’ve never seen the game, the “Slam-O-Matic was a circular piece of plastic with four paddles.) “Hands Down” was actually a card game, but the “Slam-O-Matic” came into play when someone had a pair. They’d shout “Hands Down” (or, if they were one particular member of the gang, say it in a stupid accent) and then everyone would slam their hands down on their paddles. Last person to do so “lost”, meaning the “Hands Down” player got to take a card from the loser’s hand. There was a scoring system, but no one actually cared. I don’t think we ever totaled the scores one time at the end of the game (which came when all the cards save the lone joker had been paired). In fact, I don’t think we ever got to the end of a game without things degenerating into just hammering down on the paddles over and over again. Amazingly, the “Slam-O-Matic” was sturdy enough to withstand that, so, maybe it wasn’t quite as cheaply made as I thought.

But, no matter how cheaply any of those games were made, they couldn’t hold a candle to one other popular porch game, or, actually games. These were nothing more than pieces of paper that came out of Pop Tart boxes. Remember those? If not, they were sports games made to be played with a deck of playing cards. And, when you bought a box of Pop Tarts, you got a game. I had soccer, football, baseball, basketball, and bowling. I’m not sure what others were available, though I’ve heard there was at least one other, hockey. It was football and baseball, though, that got the most play.

Both games were as simple as could be. You had either your field or your diamond in the middle of the big piece of paper. Along the edges were various results determined by your draw of a playing card. Some were just based on the card type, others on both the type and suit. So, for baseball, the visiting team began by drawing a card and comparing it to the results chart. If it was an out, pull the next card. Walk or a hit? Place something, usually a piece of lint or a small rock, on the appropriate base on the diamond and continue. Football worked in a similar fashion, except that the rock or piece of lint (or sometimes a tiny ball of paper) was used to mark the ball after the play. And, football did have a down marker and a set of “chains” you could cut out for use while playing the game.

Like I said, both simple and cheap. But, also plenty effective when you were trapped on the porch in the rain. As long as there were only two of you. More than that, and you needed to bust out a different game. But. Two players? These suckers were fantastic, and, heck, they were also free. They came out when I was about eight years old, and we played with them for several years, to the point where tape needed to be used on the folds, since the paper was coming apart. But, tape or not, we had fun waiting for the rain to end so we could get back to real football or baseball.

Four people. Two people. Even one. The porch was a great place to be in the summer. There weren’t a lot of “one” days. Someone was usually around. But, if not? Well. Grab a lawn chair and get a book…or even one of those Pop Tart games, because you could play those games solitaire, and have some fun while you waited for some of the guys to show up. And, if it were raining? So much the better. I’ve always loved thunderstorms, and the “back” porch was a great place to watch them. Even if it wasn’t in the back.