Playing marbles

            As a kid marbles was one of the games I loved to play. In fact my knuckles were always rusty from having my sweaty hands in the dirt so much during the time when it was warm enough to play the game of marbles.

            There were two games that we played. One was to draw a round circle in the dirt and place a large marble in the center of the circle. Standard size marbles were placed at intervals around the circle line. The placement depended on the number of marbles one had to play with. If you had a lot of marbles they were placed closer together. If fewer marbles were available the marbles were not placed as close together. Each person had a “taw.” This taw is a marble that you used to shoot with. Everyone had their favorite taw. Some people would use a steel bearing that was the size of a standard marble. Others would not play with you using their marbles if you were using a steel marble because the steel would sometimes break or chip a glass marble.

                   To start the game you would draw a straight line in the dirt about six feet from the center of the circle. Each person playing stood behind the line and tossed their taw toward the center line. The person whose taw was closest to the center of the circle began to shoot first and the next closest shot and so on down the list of players. The first player then shot his taw from where it laid toward a marble on the circle line and tried to knock it out of the circle. If you succeeded you kept shooting until you failed to knock a marble out of the circle. When you failed, the next person began to shoot and so on. When all the marbles in the circle were knocked out of the circle you shot to knock the large center marble out of the circle. If you agreed before the game began that the one who knocked the large marble out of the circle was to be called the winner then that is how you won the game. If you did not make that the rule then you counted the number of marbles each person knocked out and the one with the most was the winner.

            There are two ways to shoot the taw. The standard way is to pick up the taw then place your hand on the ground where the taw was. Close your fist up like you are going to punch someone then you place the taw in the crook of the pointing finger with the thumb behind the taw and flip the taw with the thumb while your hand remains in contact with the ground. The hand must not move toward the target when you flip your taw. To move your hand toward the target marble is called fudging. Another way I have seen people shoot the taw is to balance the taw between the pointing finger and the third finger using the middle finger as the flipping finger and the thumb to hold the marble in place between the first and third finger. You must still not move your hand toward the target marble. You must still have some part of your hand in contact with the dirt. The favorite way most of these kinds of shots are taken is to put the small finger on the dirt and the rest of the hand is above the dirt. I have shot both ways but was much more accurate using my thumb as the finger to launch my taw.

            The other marble game is a gambling game. For this game you draw a cat’s eye in the dirt. It is about two feet from corner to corner of the cat’s eye. You put a line in the center about a foot long. You line the marbles up on the center evenly spaced. Each person puts the same amount of marbles from his own stash of marbles on the line. They agree as to how many marbles they want to bet. You proceed as in the other game except you keep the marbles you knock out of the cat’s eye. Thus you use marbles to gamble with. Some boys ended up with a lot of marbles playing for keeps. My folks would not let us play for keeps.