Coin Football

Jim Miner and I played this classic game while waiting for pizzas to be made at the University Shopping Center Pizza shop. It involves three coins, preferably of the same denomination, but that was not necessary. The three coins would be tossed on the table, then one coin would have to be tapped thru the opening the other two coins made. Sometimes the coins all landed together, you then had to forfeit your turn. You had to get the coin into the "goal" created by the other player putting his two index fingers on the edge of the table, approximately 3 inches apart. Many hours waiting for pizza were spent playing this game. I wanted to throw in a word about Walt. Walt was the fellow who waited on Jim and me through those years at University Pizza. Walt went down in history with Jim and I when for a lyrics change in a popular song of the time. Stevie Wonder's "Uptight (Everything is alright)" was on the radio at the time. One of the lines, "The only shirt I own is hangin' on my back" was given the "Walt" treatment by being changed to "She's the only girl I know and she's got hair on her back". Being approximately 13 years old, Jim and I were amused at this lyric change. Walt, without knowing it, became a legend to 2 Fairview Gang members! I was going to write this part of the story, but couldn't remember Walt's name. Jim came through though, helping bring this bit of historical trivia to the surface.

Paper Football

Yes, this is simply the classic football game played with a piece of paper folded into a triangle. "Touchdowns" were scored by an edge of the triangle successfully hanging over the edge of the table without falling off. "Field Goals" were made by "kicking" the upward triangle through "goal posts" made by overlapping index fingers and extending the thumbs upward, forming the goal post.

Floor Baseball

This one was played with sticks flat on the floor as a bat, and a ping-pong ball as the baseball. Don't remember all the rules, just remember playing it a bunch of times.

Backyard Baseball

Explained on Jim's site as well. I add only that we played many hours of this type of ball. "Angie's Raiders" was my team, "Miner's Maurader's" was Jim's team. My ultimate record was something like 0-75. That's right, I NEVER won a single game. Apparently I had fun in spite of never winning. This was the game where if you hit it over the fence, it was a homer, between the second and third fence posts, it was a double, between two other fence posts, it was an out. Jim can fill you in on any other "rules" details.

Ping Pong

Yes, we're talking good old standard ping-pong. In contrast to my 0-75 baseball record, I was neighborhood champion of ping-pong with a record of probably 100-0 before I was finally defeated by David Besley. I still remember that dark afternoon, losing to Dave the first time. It's part of the reason I am the way I am today. Those who fell at my hands: Jim, Harvey, Jerry, Pat, Dave, a number of uncles, my brother and a number of cousins. Ahh, that's the only time I ever ate the "breakfast of champions".

Pool

Yes, we're talking good old standard pool. I was terrible at pool but we always had a great time. The most eventful moment on the pool table came when Pat Markham and I were flipping coins (a small-time form of gambling) and entered the Twilight Zone even if it was just for a few seconds. Pat flipped a quarter and it landed on its edge! This is the truth, Pat and I both saw it and have discussed it since then to assure ourselves of our sanity. Go ahead and try it. See how many times you can flip a coin and have it land on its edge. There was a Twilight Zone episode about this, hence our trip into the Twilight Zone.

The Mad Darters

This came about when we were unbelievably bored, apparently. Amazingly, we took to throwing darts at each other as a game. These were real darts with real live inch-long points. We didn't play this game long. Our insanity was happily only temporary.

H-O-R-S-E

Yes, that good old basketball game. I was, um, terrible. The worst part of playing, however, was when the ball would land in the pond in Jim's back yard. Sometimes the pond would be ..... stagnant. The water would be .... nasty. When the ball landed in it, it was a surgical operation to remove the ball and rinse it off without actually touching the wet surface of the ball. Who knows what micro-organisms abounded on that ball? Since we were the poster boys for maturity, we also had a game, exactly the same as H-O-R-S-E, known as P-U-S-S-Y. I checked with Jim Miner, one of the authorities of the "Fairview Games" and he gave this explanation: "When you reached Y, you were not eliminated yet, you had to get a period, because a pussy always has to have a period". We obviously at least remember how to be immature even if we're not as good at it today as we were then. Thank you for the ruling, Jim.

Basketball Physics

After playing with a ball that was not inflated as much as we would like, one cold day we discovered, after a horrible pond incident, that if we rinsed the ball off with warm water, it would cause the air to expand and we would have a good solid basketball....... at least for a while.

Ping-Pong Floor Tag

My Fairview house had a unique basement floor. It was painted in a weird pattern with three or four different color "blobs" painted on top of a gray base (the gray base wound up looking like grout). We would pick a color and have to stay on that color (sort of like Twister). We would then rapidly fire ping pong balls at each other using badmintion rackets. Boy, was that a blast.

Rocket Cars

We would take "rocket" engines from the rocket kits of the day and mount them on a (preferably metal) model car chassis. It was VERY cool to watch the models absolutely blow down the street.

Cars

We were bad sometimes, not real bad, just you know, bad. Throwing snowballs at cars was a great past-time as was throwing seckel pears at cars. There was a pear tree in the yard at the end of the street that kept us supplied with constant ammunition. Throw, wait and see if they stop, then run like hell if they do!

Crab Apples

We would take skinny tree limbs, plug a crab apple on the end of it, and use it as a "sling" to throw crab apples at each other. It was OK unless Pat, who had a fearfully powerful and accurate arm, was the person you were "playing" with. If he was on the other end, you know you'd wind up getting whacked by a number of crab apples.

Frisbee Toss

Certainly not a "Fairview Gang" original, but we would toss a frisbee and see how many times we could successfully complete the tosses without the frisbee hitting the ground. This game required no brains whatsoever, just a lot of time on your hands. And yes, those were the days when we actually did have a lot of time on our hands.

© copyright 2003 Paul M. D'Angelo