Marbles and Mumble-ti-peg

Recess, when out-of-doors, was also characterized by such activities as playing marbles or mumble-ti-peg for the boys and playing jacks for the girls — although I suppose the latter could just as well be played indoors.

Jacks was not a boys’ game, although I remember playing the game with my sisters.

Playing marbles was an activity that came and went. There would be a spate of involvement, then it would die away for awhile. The marbles consisted of a shooter, which might be an agate, i.e. a stone carved to a spherical share and given a high gloss, or it might be a “glassie” which was the second-class marble. These came in different sizes, colors and design configurations. Then there were the lowly “commies” which were clay spheres with surfaces somewhat irregular. An agate might cost as much as 25 cents at the local drug store, which I seem to recall as the source of marbles locally.

There were two configurations of the game layout. The first was a single ring perhaps 15–18 inches in diameter within which each played placed an agreed-on number of marbles. To begin the game the players would stand some distance away from the ring for the “lagging” which consisted of the players tossing their shooter marbles toward the ring. The player whose marble was closest to the ring got to “shoot” first, with the rest in order of increasing distance from the ring.

The object of the game, was to propel the shooter marble by a hand/finger motion and cause it to hit one of the marbles in the ring. The hand/finger motion is a little hard to describe in words. The marble was held between the thumb above the top knuckle and the forefinger. The marble would be propelled forward by a sudden straightening of the thumb. If a player who was shooting knocked a marble out of the ring, he could continue until he failed to do so, when the next player in order would take his turn.

The game could be played for “keeps” in which the played kept all the marbles he shot out of the ring or I believe there was an alternative in which each player retained his own marbles (though I don’t recall the details of how this was handled, and it was not the usual alternative). More than two players could play, but two was most common and the number of players usually did not exceed three or four.

The other configuration of the game had two rings — a small central ring in which the marbles were placed and a concentric larger ring maybe three or four feet in diameter. There was also a straight line for the “lagging” part of the game.

The player lagging his shooter closest to this line started the next part of the game, with the other players in order. I don’t recall for sure in either configuration from what position the player made his first shot, or his subsequent ones.

In the second configuration I’m fairly sure that the first shot was made from the outer ring, at a position on the ring selected by the player. As in the other alternative, playing for “keeps” was the most common alternative. Glass marbles were the kind mostly used, but I recall one episode in which two of the better and more avid players played a game for keeps with agates. In addition to the school yard, a popular place for play was on a sandy area adjacent to the street along the west side of the city park. This would be the scene of games as boys went home for lunch, or returned before school began.

Mumble-ti-peg was played with a pen knife and the object of the game was to complete a series of maneuvers with the knife, each maneuver being successfully accomplished if the knife blade entered the ground so that the knife was more or less erect, when the knife was flipped in a certain way. I think the criterion if the knife was erect as it entered the ground was if two fingers could be placed superimposed on each other between the end of the knife and the ground.

Which player started first I don’t remember or how many players there usually were. A player completing one maneuver could continue on to the next until he failed to complete one successfully. Then the next player in order would take his turn. The player finishing first had the reward of shaping a small pointed stake which he would drive into the ground with three hits of the knife handle (the knife being held by the end of the blade). The loser then had to pull the stake out of the ground with his teeth.

Needless to say the game was usually played on a grassy area where the soil was reasonably moist so that the knife blade could fairly easily enter and stick in the soil.

I don’t remember this game much from public school — my recollections are mostly from vacation Bible school The name of the game doubtless came from the act of pulling the little stake out of the ground with the teeth.