Coda

It's much more fun when

you're playing for keeps

When I was a kid of a certain age, we didn't measure wealth by money, or social status by family lineage - we measured both by marbles.

In our small town, there were no private schools and very few home-schoolers. Everyone from every segment of society - from ranch kids, to roughnecks' kids, to oil barons' kids - went to the same public schools. It was a great equalizer, and the educators went out of their way to make sure no kid stood out because of fashion or money. Boys and girls wore uniforms - black pants or skirts, white tops - we were all required to eat the same brown bag lunches, and the most cash we were allowed to have on our persons at any time was the 15 cents we spent each day for milk.

But in spite of the best efforts of the adults, we kids developed a social and economic caste system based not on looks, family bank accounts or athletic ability. It was based on the number of marbles we carried in a long athletic sock hanging from our belts. Rich kids had bags of marbles that hung almost to their knees. The poor among us didn't even need the cheap little marble bags they sold at the five and dime. Those kids carried their entire fortune in their watch pockets.

To understand our marble culture, you have to understand the nomenclature of the currency. Marbles came in various sizes. Minis were small marbles, generally used by girls and sometimes boys who wanted to demonstrate particular virtuosity.

Then there were realies, standard-sized marbles with dime-sized diameters. Thumpers (also called shooters) were a little bigger than realies. Boulders were twice the size of realies, about the size of a peach pit.

The value of the marbles was determined by their color. Solids were single-colored marbles, cheap and plentiful. Cat's-eyes were clear marbles with a brightly colored plastic flake embedded in the middle that gave them their name. Agates, the gold standard of marbles (called aggies), came in a rainbow of subtle colors with overlaying colored patterns that made them look like beautiful, semi-precious stones. An especially nice agate could be traded for 10 minis, five solid or cat's-eye realies, or two standard boulders (not an agate boulder, of course, those were nearly priceless).

Famous aggies, our version of the Hope Diamond, were never used in competition for fear of chipping, but might be used occasionally to pay off a serious debt or obligation.

The weapons of mass destruction were called steelies. These were simply ball bearings cadged from some dad's tool box or machine shop. Hit a boulder with a good sized steelie, and you'd smash it in two. That's why, when you played steelies, you either played against someone else with a steelie, or - if you were the guy with the steelie - tried not to make a direct hit on your opponent's marble. You'd throw the steelie and try to hit close enough to the marble so the shock wave would move the target, which was the goal. Move an opponent's marble, and you won the game.

And we always played keepsies. Like the knights of old, spoils of the contest belonged to the winner. Starting out, the chivalrous code of the culture demanded that only a small number of marbles - a maximum of about 50 - could actually be purchased. That was a player's starting cache, and the only honorable way to grow that cache was to win someone else's marbles in fair competition.

The course of the marbles competition was fairly straightforward. The two-out-of-three loser in a game of rock, scissors, paper lobbed his marble out about 8 to 10 feet. The winner then got the first shot. If he or she hit the opponent's marble enough to move it (nicks, called nickers, didn't count), the game was over. If he or she missed, the second player got a shot, and so on until the end.

Rules of competition were determined in advance. The players might agree on a knucks-down game, for example, in which each shot must be taken with the shooter's knuckles on the ground and the marble propelled by a flick of the thumb. If bombs were agreed, then players could throw the marbles at their targets.

Gradually, over the course of a season, the fame of the best shooters would grow, as would the size of the treasure in their marble socks. These shooters were our heroes, our version of Ajax, our Hercules, our Diana. And as with the most famous gunslingers of the old West, every kid in school was eager for a shot at taking down a legend.

We were seldom successful, and by the end of the school year, the masters of the game carried socks so packed with marbles they looked like war clubs. The rest of us, down to our last aggie and prohibited by code from buying more, could simply look on in awe and envy, could only listen to the sweet clicking of the marbles as the champions strolled the playground.

For all its pain and frustration, however, the marble culture taught us many important life lessons. How to honor a code. How to build a fortune, how to preserve one. The dangers of reckless gambling. The importance of living by agreed-upon rules. How to be gracious winners, and losers. The thrill of doing something well.

It was a culture I remember fondly, from simpler times. It was a culture I thought had gone away. I can't remember the last time I saw some kids shooting marbles, and you don't even see them in stores often anymore.

That's why I was so happy to learn recently that from June 19-22, the 83rd National Marbles Tournament will be taking place right here in New Jersey at Wildwood. During the tournament the "mibsters" (marble shooters) will play almost 1,000 games and compete for $5,000 in scholarships, prizes and of course the national crown.

Contestants will be winners from local tournaments held in towns and cities all across America (I didn't even know these existed) playing a game called Ringer, in which 13 marbles are placed in the form of an X within a 10-foot circle, with players alternating shots. The winner is the first player to shoot seven marbles out of the ring.

No word on whether they'll be playing keepsies - but you can bet it'll be strictly knuckles-down.

Gregory Bean is executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers. You can reach him at gbean@gmnews.com.