April was the month of transition from winter to spring when we were young students at Smith School. The snow and winter activities we had enjoyed, were pretty much gone. Dirty patches of snow were making last-ditch stands along the fence lines where big drifts had been.
When we were young, the winter seemed to last forever and we were ready for warm weather. That transitional period when we were restless must have been hard for our teacher. It reminds me of when we let the cows out in the spring after they’d been cooped up in the barn all winter. They ran around, jumped, and head-butted each other. Spring will do that to you if you live in the Midwest.
In spring we didn’t have to spend half the recess dressing and undressing in order to play outside without freezing to death. We were tired of winter and ready to start playing ball, but the ground was still too wet and muddy in many places. Our ball field had low areas that collected puddles of water.
Our schoolyard wasn’t large enough for a regulation ball field so a lot of improvising was done. We sometimes used part of Iverson’s field that adjoined our schoolyard on two sides. It made it a lot tougher when they planted corn instead of hay. The two outhouses along one edge of the yard tended to get in the way of our ball field too. You didn’t want to run into the side of the outhouse while chasing a pop fly. Our ball field may have been lacking in sophistication compared to the ones kids play on today, but I don’t remember ever thinking it was inadequate. It was all we knew and we made it work.
While we waited for the ground to dry out, there were plenty of other games and activities to keep us occupied during recess. There was Annie-over, kick the can, jacks, Simon says, and the great game of “flip stick,” also known by the Norwegian name of “vippe pinne.”
The equipment needed was easy to obtain and cheap. We’d find a couple of sticks about an inch in diameter and make one about two feet long and the other six inches. We scooped out a small slit in the ground using one of the sticks. Then we chose up two sides and were ready to begin. The short stick was placed across the slit in the ground and the tip of the long stick was placed under it. The “batter” then flipped the small stick as far as he could and the people on the other team tried to catch it. That’s where the name of the game, flip stick, comes from.
If someone caught the stick, the batter was out. If not caught, the person closest to where the stick landed threw it back in to see how close to the hole they could come. If it was within one length of the long stick, the batter was out.
Another part of flip stick was the “pinkle.” Don’t ask me why it’s called the pinkle. I have no idea. The art of pinkling was accomplished by balancing the short stick on the long stick and hitting it into the air as many times as you could, before swatting it as hard as you could into the field. Can you imagine having a sharp-pointed stick flying toward your head at 200 miles an hour? Well, it was probably a lot slower than that, but it seemed like a guided missile as it streaked toward your head. That’s when you had a choice. You could show off your bravery and try catching it, or duck and let it hit some poor soul behind you. The batter was out if you caught it, and you were congratulated for your bravery. I think points should have been awarded for having the good sense to get out of the way. All I know is that flip stick would be outlawed on any playground in this day and age. Someone could get hurt and sue the school. In our day if someone got hit it was, “Hey dummy, catch the stick or get out of the way!”
Eventually the ground dried up enough to start playing ball. In small, rural schools like ours, there weren’t enough kids to have two teams with nine players on each team. Not all the kids would play, since our ages could range from six to fourteen. Because of that, the younger kids, and those who didn’t like playing ball, played other games while the older ones played “work-up.” Then you could play with seven or more players since that didn’t require teams. One person was the batter and continued batting until he made an out. Then he went to right field and the catcher became the batter. Everyone else rotated one position. It may sound strange but it worked.
The transitional month of April is a lot like playing flip stick or work-up softball. You had to adjust and make up the rules depending on the weather, the size of your playing field, and who wanted to play. It was a far cry from the adult-organized games that kids play today. Boys and girls all played together, and the older kids helped younger kids. That made it a great learning experience and everyone had fun.
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