NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State
University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5655
January 8, 1998
Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University
©1997 Plains Folk
"The country schools are cherished memories with me"--so writes Marjorie Deibert from Hoxie, Kan. She's been reading recent Plains Folk columns about country school recess games in the Bowman County Pioneer. She and husband Glenn are custom harvesters who work their way to North Dakota each summer. (Wait a minute, I recognize that name--the Deiberts are the ones who advised me to try the Hunter's Table and Tavern in Rhame, N. D., and I've taken many a good meal there since.)
Mrs. Deibert encloses a write-up of her country-school experiences and the games she played, including, in addition to basketball and football, the traditional recess games of prisoner's base and black man. "Girls and boys all joined in," she says.
Judging by the mail I'm getting, plenty of other people in the region have their own cherished memories of country school recess. Margery Fisher of Bowman, for instance, says the kids at her school gave up using the school barn for Anti-I-Over (that's how she spells it), because the gable was too high, and instead threw the ball over the privy!
Fox and Geese, Mrs. Fisher writes, was a favorite winter game. When it was too bitter, though, there were indoor recess games, such as Desk Tag--the It player walks around the room, drops an eraser on someone else's desk, and then races back for the safe base of her own desk. "I'm Thinking of Something" was another indoor amusement, a guessing game. And another guessing game was "Who's There," a favorite game of the pupils where Mrs. Fisher was a teacher. One pupil would go into the book closet and close the door. Another then would rap on the door, prompting the query, "Who's there?" The pupil in the closet had to guess by the voice of the one rapping, who of course was disguising his voice as much as he could.
Mrs. Fisher also recalls the game "Steal Sticks," as does Joanne Heckel of Aberdeen, S. D. "Each side had a circle made with some sticks in it," she writes, "and the other side tried to steal them. We had a guard, of course."
One night this fall a fellow from rural Mandan told me that Steal Sticks caused so much controversy among his school chums that the teacher finally banned the game.
The kids at Ms. Heckel's school liked to make snow forts in winter and play baseball in summer, with this special rule: "If one of the bigger boys hit the ball across the road, he was automatically out."
She also tells of a ball game taught her by her father, who had attended school in a Norwegian neighborhood around Bristol, S. D. So he called the game "Norsky Ball." It was played with a rag ball made of old socks.
Her diagram of the game shows a pitcher tossing toward a batter at home base. Then there are two other bases, a "dead base" and a more distant "base."
The pitcher would toss the rag ball to the batter, who had just one strike to hit it. Then the batter either ran to the dead base, which was the conservative and safe course, or he ran to the base and back, which was a home run. He could be put out by catching a fly ball or by throwing the ball and hitting him with it before he got home.
"It is really a fun game," Ms. Heckel says, " and we usually play it at our family reunions." It only requires a few players, "and anyone can play who can hold a bat and run!"
I sure appreciate the kind remarks about Plains Folk Ms. Heckel includes in her letter. And I always appreciate hearing from people about the grassroots history of this part of the country. Many thanks, folks.
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Source: Tom Isern (701) 231-8339
Editor: Barry Brissman (701) 231-7866