Softball

           Softball was not an organized sport where I went to school. We played softball during recess at school. The number of players depended on how many people wanted to play on a given day. Two of the better players would flip a coin to see who would chose first and then they would alternate choosing until all persons who wanted to play had been chosen. This meant that sometimes we would have less than nine on each team and sometimes more than nine. Very seldom would there be the normal nine on each team.

            The softball was used, or maybe a better word might be mostly used up. Often times the cover on the ball was missing so the size of the ball varied depending on how much unraveling had taken place. The bats were pretty well used up also and the number was two or three. We had no adult supervision, no umpires and no referees. We called our own game. Sometimes arguments would ensue and mostly peer pressure was what kept things from getting out of hand. We could not play nine innings in the time allotted for recess so whichever team was ahead at the end of recess was declared the winner.   

Running Base & Stink Base

 Two games we played in my school in the Ozarks that I have never seen reference to in any way was Running Base and Stink Base. Any number of people could play the games. Two of the better runners would flip a coin to see who would get first choice in choosing his team. They would then alternate in choosing until all people who wanted to play had been chosen.

            You would take a stick and draw opposing lines in the dirt. The distance between the two opposing lines would depend on what land was available. I would say that the distance was usually about the distance between home base and second base on a baseball diamond. Sometimes we set out of bounds as off the school property and sometimes we set no out of bounds.  The object was to capture all the opposing players. One team would send out a player from its base and when the opposing player would come after him a faster runner would be sent who you would hope would catch the runner from the first team. The player who had touched his home base last was considered poison. If he caught the player he was chasing before someone from the opposing team touched him that person was considered captured and they would continue back to the base of the one who captured him. The captured person would then be a member of the team which had captured him and when one team had captured all the players on the opposing team the game was over.

            Stink Base was different in that on the right of each line drawn in the dirt you would draw a circle attached to the line and each captured player was placed in the circle. If one of his team members could touch his out stretched hand before being captured by the opposing team he was free to go back and actively compete for his team. Each person who has been placed into the circle (Stink Base) had to have one foot inside the circle. He could reach out as far as his arms could stretch as long as he left at least one foot inside the circle. When all people of an opposing team were captured the game was over. 

            I preferred playing Stink Base to Running Base because there was no penalty to Running Base. I believed that some boys would intentionally get caught so they could be with their friends. We mostly played Stink Base. I never did see a game won, but I think it had to do with time restraint. We played during recess at school. We had at most 45 minutes which with the number of players it was not possible to complete a game.   

Clearing new ground –We had 140 acres on our farm in Arkansas. My father purchased our farm over the course of years. The first purchase was when he mustered out of the Army. That was the land on which our house was located and it was 60 acres. The next track the land that he bought was across the road and it was 40 acres. He later bought a track land behind the 40 acres which was 20 acres. Around half of the 60 acre plot was covered in timber. The 40 acre plot had somewhere between five and 10 acres which were timber. The 20 acre plot was all timber.

The first 60 acres had somewhere between 20 to 30 acres that had trees covering it. It was this land that we were cutting down trees and turning the land into agriculture farm land the clearing of trees was done mostly in the winter months. We would cut down the large trees and turn them into wood to burn in the wood heater which we used to heat our home. The smaller limbs and underbrush we piled up to dry out and we would have large bond fires when the wood was dry enough to burn. This was time consuming since we cut the trees down with a cross cut saw. Also it was hard work but most work on a farm is farm work