SPRING - AND MARBLES

SPRING - AND MARBLES
With spring in that my first year of high school, came a new activity at school--playing marbles. Robert, of course, had played marbles in his previous three years at high school, and was really skilled at the game. For me it was totally new. All the boys played at every opportunity. We ate our lunches on the run, in order to claim a good plot of ground in the school yard on which to play. Our only trouble was our Mom--not that she played marbles, but she ruled that we must not play for keeps! (Playing for keeps means that when you shot a marble out of the ring, you got to keep that marble. The only exception was that you couldn't claim your opponent's shooter.) Mom thought that was gambling, and we never could persuade her that it was a game of skill. Nearly all the boys would only play for keeps. There were a few other boys who would play without playing for keeps, so we still had fun. But the really "big league" players were not willing to play with us.
Actually, we played two different marbles games. One involved marking a ring in the dirt, each player putting a certain number of marbles in the ring. Then we took turns shooting until all had been knocked out of the ring. When it was your turn to shoot, you could keep shooting until you failed to get a marble out of the ring. We became pretty good at both long and close-up shots, and learned how to make our shooter glance off our target in such a way as to stop near the next "victim." It really was a game of skill. Sometimes if one got off to a good start, you could clear the ring without missing. Then you had a pocketful of marbles to use the next time you played.
The other marbles game was called "lagging," I think. One player would put down a marble on the sidewalk, as a target. Then the opponent would try to roll a marble from about six or eight feet away to strike the target marble. If he hit it, it became his, and he got to "lag" at another marble. The players changed places when one missed the target marble. Naturally, we used our poorest, chipped marbles to set up as targets, though we protested vigorously when our opponent did the same thing. The sidewalks around the school would be filled with these "bowling" games during the lunch hour,and sometimes before and after school. I'm not certain, but I suspect that the term "he has lost his marbles" originated from the experience of frustrated marbles players who had just lost their last marble, and did something senseless. I now confess that at times Robert and I did not obey our mother, and we, too, sometimes played for keeps. Although I lost a good many marbles while learning to play those games, I never lost ALL my marbles--at least I don't think so!
My brother Robert was graduated from high school that spring, the head of his class! Jean had another two years to go. Our little sister, Mary, was doing well, I think in the fourth grade. Dad ended his rural school teaching that spring, and began work for the Works Progress Administration, as a researcher and writer of Montana history. Mom took care of us all. Though that first year of high school was soon over, and summer was upon us, I shall always look back to the pleasures of that year. As I grew older, many things came into my life to cause worry and anxiety. That first year of high school was most pleasant because I was so free of any troubles. The next three years were not always like that!