Anybody here ever play marbles growing up? I think my infatuation with the game got me into pool eventually, the mechanics of the game, the competition, striving to become the best, hustling, the whole thing.
There were basically two games...the traditional game involved a large circle, everyone ante'd up marbles for the pot, spreading them out through the circle, taking turns shooting with the larger shooter marble, knocking others out of the circle (pocketing them as winnings), so long as your shooter knocked something out and yours stayed in, you kept shooting. That was the international game. In Texas, we played "Poison", where you dug a small shallow hole (size of a cereal bowl), everybody put in some marbles (pot) and we lagged from about 20 feet away...the closest got to shoot first. You shot into the hole to become "poisonous", then you got to shoot at the other players' marbles, keeping the ones you hit. Last one in got to keep the pot.
We used to gamble (marbles usually) on proposition shots, such as shooting a marble at another marble the length of the school hallway (200 feet plus)...I used to get the cheese 2 out of 3 times. :thumbup: I was pretty handy at hitting more than one marble with one shot (carom shots), jumping the first marble with extreme draw, hitting one marble and spinning backwards to hit the first one, plotting caroms, etc...all of which gave me an eye for billiards games that would become my life long obsession in a couple of short years later, where me and a couple of buddies would jump the fence at lunch time everyday and sneak into a tavern to play 8 ball on a 100 year old 5 x 10 with clay balls.
I played this game all through Junior High School, winning thousands of marbles (that I kept in a large cotton tow sack). My Dad took them away once as punishment for some transgression...I borrowed some marbles from a "backer" and quickly won about 500 or so marbles over the next couple of months. When my Dad found out (I thought I was in trouble), he said I'd learned an important lesson about starting over when you're down (like starting a business over when yours goes bust), and gave me back the tow sack.
It struck me the other day that so much of the stories you hear about the road sounded very familiar to what we were doing as kids playing marbles...the same hustles, the same competition ladder, the reputations, we even had our own fan base (railbirds) that bet on us, etc. Always wondered how many of those guys ended up playing pool when they grew up! :smile:
There were basically two games...the traditional game involved a large circle, everyone ante'd up marbles for the pot, spreading them out through the circle, taking turns shooting with the larger shooter marble, knocking others out of the circle (pocketing them as winnings), so long as your shooter knocked something out and yours stayed in, you kept shooting. That was the international game. In Texas, we played "Poison", where you dug a small shallow hole (size of a cereal bowl), everybody put in some marbles (pot) and we lagged from about 20 feet away...the closest got to shoot first. You shot into the hole to become "poisonous", then you got to shoot at the other players' marbles, keeping the ones you hit. Last one in got to keep the pot.
We used to gamble (marbles usually) on proposition shots, such as shooting a marble at another marble the length of the school hallway (200 feet plus)...I used to get the cheese 2 out of 3 times. :thumbup: I was pretty handy at hitting more than one marble with one shot (carom shots), jumping the first marble with extreme draw, hitting one marble and spinning backwards to hit the first one, plotting caroms, etc...all of which gave me an eye for billiards games that would become my life long obsession in a couple of short years later, where me and a couple of buddies would jump the fence at lunch time everyday and sneak into a tavern to play 8 ball on a 100 year old 5 x 10 with clay balls.
I played this game all through Junior High School, winning thousands of marbles (that I kept in a large cotton tow sack). My Dad took them away once as punishment for some transgression...I borrowed some marbles from a "backer" and quickly won about 500 or so marbles over the next couple of months. When my Dad found out (I thought I was in trouble), he said I'd learned an important lesson about starting over when you're down (like starting a business over when yours goes bust), and gave me back the tow sack.
It struck me the other day that so much of the stories you hear about the road sounded very familiar to what we were doing as kids playing marbles...the same hustles, the same competition ladder, the reputations, we even had our own fan base (railbirds) that bet on us, etc. Always wondered how many of those guys ended up playing pool when they grew up! :smile:
