One of the lost arts I mastered in my misspent youth was playing migs, also called marbles.
I am saddened to see kids today using their thumbs for pitiful things like texting and hitchhiking on I-5.
Playing migs not only builds your thumb muscles. It helps you get your pants grimy at the knees and your knuckles full of sand. If you drop an aggie or two in Mom's lard can overnight, then forget to dig them out, you will get no milk on your oatmeal when she finds them.
But by overnight the lard will work its magic. It will magically penetrate the agate and erase those tiny fractures. Unless your prized marble ends up in a biscuit, which could irritate your Dad.
The first rule of marbles was to find some real estate. This is really important, but with all the organized games they play today, kids will have to pick out a corner behind the portables where they can play.
If they get bored shooting migs, they can make another circle in the dirt, divide it in half, then fling an open-pocketknife (genuine Barlows are best) at their opponents' real estate. Draw a big circle in the dirt with a line down the middle. You and your friend each own half. Object? To own it all.
If your knife sticks in your friends land you get to keep the chunk. If it doesn't, you lose a turn. These days, you'd also be sent to juvenile hall for packing a weapon, so your kids may want to stick with marbles.
But geez, that old pocketknife made my brother Russell rich. He owned a big chunk of imaginary Multnomah County.
Yes. there were risks involved. Our oldest brother Albert came home in pain and bloody underwear one day when a grumpy 7th grader stabbed him in the butt.
If marbles and mumbledy-peg or real estate are out, kids can still go barefoot. That's another lost art, with all the jogging shoes and sandals kids wear lately. And I admit that my Mom hated seeing a bunch of boys with dirty feet when we went up to bed, so we all had to take a bath on Saturday night.
Hot water came from a kettle heated on the coal stove and then poured into a copper washtub. My little sister got first dibs because she was the cleanest.
After Russ and I had our turns, Mom tossed the water out in the sink.
