I saw some marbles recently and childhood memories came rushing back of endless games of shooting marbles. When I was in grade school at Cutler in Swanzey, shooting marbles was a big deal. I can clearly remember the playground behind the school had so many marble shoots just waiting for the recess bell and the kids to come running out to pick their lane. It was a game both boys and girls would play together outside, often sitting or kneeling on the ground in the dirt. The object was to get as many marbles as you could win from the other kids. To do that, someone would set up a small or large pyramid of marbles and maybe dig some small ditches in the ground or add a small dirt barricade in front of it. Then, each kid would take a turn rolling one of their own marbles at the stack. If you hit it and knocked it over, it was all yours! If you missed, the other kid kept all the marbles that were rolled their way. I don’t think I’ve said the names of those different types of marbles since I was nine years old; puries, cat’s eye, swirls, and boulders.
We all had our own marble bags too. They were made of fabric or vinyl and had drawstring ties to close the bag tight. Growing up in Richmond at the 4-corners, you can imagine there wasn’t a lot of entertainment and we made our own. Mom and dad sold small bags of marbles at the store. We played marbles for hours behind the store in our sand garage. Friends would come over from around the neighborhood and there was no clock or measure of time. Some of the games involved drawing a circle in the sand and then stepping away from it and knuckle shooting your marble into the circle to try and hit another marble to win it into your collection. Other times, you might see a few holes dug in the sand and you’d have to stand behind a line and shoot your marble into the hole from a distance. I can remember as kids we’d say we were either playing for fun or playing for keeps. Sometimes we just said “keepsies”. It meant the winning player keeps all the marbles they won. If we played for fun, or we were just practicing our marble rolling and give the marbles back. Euphoria Eye Glitter
My friend Rick Fadden has vivid memories of marble playing too: “We used to call clear marbles ‘puries’ (pure-Ez) extra-large marbles, Boulders. The hole, we dug by spinning back and forth, or around in a circle with the heal of our shoe, ‘a bunny hole’, where we would shoot marbles from a line to get them in. Or, they would set up a desirable marble, you could win if you could flick your marble into the hole. Another marble game involved digging a trench with your heal then setting up about 4 marble pyramid piles. The kids would shoot marbles to knock the pile over. If they knocked it over, they won the pile assuming there was some type of marble they wanted to add to their collection. Another game was dropsies; 2 people would drop marbles from waist high or higher to hit the other person’s marble. Sometimes it was just the traditional marble trading… I’ll trade you a ‘Green Purie Boulder for 2 Cats-eye Boulders’, or some such deal. There were different size marbles; regular and boulders (large), x-large boulder and extra small marbles (p-wee’z). Marble season was a lot fun!”
My brother Fred had a huge clear glass purie boulder that he used to tease everyone with trying to win. Back then, we all thought it was a real marble and everyone wanted it. He’d build huge barricades in front of it, so it made it nearly impossible to win it over. My brother Fred and I have very similar memories of fourth and fifth grade recess at Cutler in Swanzey in 1968 and 1969; It was like a carnival at recess time that everyone couldn’t wait to get out to! I asked Fred if he happened to still have any of his marbles and he said, ‘Sure, I still have them in my same marble bag!’ He remembers… ‘When we were at Cutler, EVERYBODY played marbles, and everybody had their lane. You set up your marble pyramids and you could make your course as difficult as you wanted by making dirt mounds and ditches with your heel along the lane in front of your marble pyramid. You had to decide how difficult to make it so kids wouldn’t get your marbles, but not too difficult that they wouldn’t stop at your lane and try. Kids would walk down looking at the lanes and deciding which ones they were going to go for. They would stand behind a line and shoot a marble down the lane and try to knock over the pyramid. If you knocked it over, you got all the marbles and if you didn’t, you lost your marbles. I had a huge purie bolder. It was a big round crystal a little bigger than a tennis ball that everyone wanted to try and win from me. It came off a bedpost from Grover LaBelle in Richmond that he gave me. Everyone wanted to try and win that!”
What we didn’t know as kids, but just discovered when Fred brought out his bag of marbles, is that the drawstring fabric bag was our dad’s Army ditty bag. It’s a khaki color and has my dad’s name on it. He gave it to Fred back in the late 1960’s to carry around all his marbles. What a treasure!
Who would have known that there’s a National Marbles Tournament every year in Wildwood, N.J. You can watch a clip of it on YouTube at https://youtu.be/R22PPeyeJJQ and their website is https://www.nationalmarblestournament.org they have championship stats back to 1922. It’s held every June the week after Father’s Day and is for kids seven to fourteen. Every year the Tournament awards 2 champions and 2 sportsmanship winners with college scholarships. From their home page: “The National Marbles Tournament was first held in 1922. The “mibsters”(marble shooters) compete for national honors, college scholarships and numerous prizes and awards. The mibsters will play more than 1,200 games over the four-day tournament. Champions selected from local tournaments held in cities and counties around the United States represent thousands of competitors and will converge on Wildwood for a week of serious marble competition and fun on amusement rides and boardwalk attractions. The national committee operates the tournament which is composed of a group of volunteer men & women from around the country that have a common interest in the game of marbles.”
The origin of marbles is not clearly known. They had been found in tombs in Egypt, and also with native American tribes who found smooth stones in the rivers. Actual production of them began in 1884 in Akron Ohio, which became the marble capital of the 19th century. Sam Dyke created a block of wood with grooves in it to lump clay in and roll until they became round. He had 350 employees that eventually could make enough to fill five train carloads or about one million marbles every day. By 1915 mass production was in full swing with glass marbles invented by MF Christiansen. Montgomery Ward and Sears sold decorated marbles from 1860. At that time, they were low priced but now are very valuable! Collecting Antique or vintage marbles is a fun hobby and a great investment. I read that an auction house in Denver sold a single peacock Lutz onionskin marble for $13,200 and a big 3-inch shooter once sold for $27,730. I wonder what those marbles cost when they bought them?
Ruth Blais Thompson is a lifelong resident of the Monadnock Region, a Realtor for Blais & Assoc. Realtors in Keene and a volunteer CASA. Her pastimes are writing short stories, ancestry research and playing and writing music. She lives in Dublin with her husband and 2 cats and can be reached at rblaisthompson@gmail.com
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