Carolina Piedmont Country

9. Games and Recreations

C H A P T E R 9 Games and Recreations As in every other culture, residents of the Carolina Piedmont have taken time off from cotton farming, mill work, and the other common drudgeries of their lives to enjoy various types of games and recreations. Someof these are played by children, others by adults. Some are viewed as spectator events. At times these recreations involve forms common to Americanculture in general; at other times they represent folk games or activities relatively unknown outside the region. Like other categories of Upstate folklife , games and recreations reflect values common to the region. Shaped in part by the passage of time and by the interweaving of traditions, these formal and informal activities constitute another segment of Piedmont folklife. Children's Activities B O T H G E N D E R S As John Morland reported, preschool-aged children often played together . Like other Americans, Kent youngsters played tag, hide-and-seek, froggie in the millpond, drop the handkerchief, London Bridge, and ain't no bears out tonight. Informants recalled several others; some well-known from American culture, others apparently less widespread. For example, David Hawkins added hide the thimble and spin the bottle—"just simple things, games that you had to invent yourself." Everett Baker offered a form of tag called ring-a-lee-bo, in which a person tried to capture all the other players and imprison them in a circle; they could all be freed by someone running through the circle and shouting, "Ring-a-lee-bo!" 125 126 Carolina Piedmont Country Both boys and girls also played house. Like today, observations of children playing at adult roles provide clues to children's interpretations of adult behavior. In the racially segregated Piedmont, though, children's playing house might combine not only genders but also races, particularly in social situations where whites and blacks grew up together. As Velma Childers recalled, this provided some interesting imaginary households: "Now when we would play in the playhouse, my sister would be the momma. And [name], who waswhite, would be the daddy. Now,we wasn't doing any 'family things,' like that, we just—we would do more whipping the children than anything else!" As Linda Baker fondly noted, both rural and mill village children in generations past seemed to have much more freedom to enjoy each other's company. As she explained: "Now, my mother's parents worked different shifts,. . . and so when my grandmother wasat work in the daytime, my grandfather was supposed to be at home with the children. But he was asleep because he worked the other shift. So they would slip off and do stuff that they weren't supposed to be doing because he was asleep and not watching them." In such situations, the social bonds between neighbors became essential, for nonworking mothers or older siblings would often safeguard "unsupervised" children. While these games and recreations were shared by blacks and whites, a few sources have suggested that some forms of recreation may have been known only to African Americans, which created subsequent confusion in integrated play groups. Velma Childers, who had taught in the segregated black schools for decades, assisted in the desegregated system after her retirement . During one organized play session, she noticed that her white colleague introduced games unfamiliar to the black children. She responded , "Now, if you want to get some action out of our children, you play some little game like fruit basket." To play, she would ask each child what type of fruit they wouldwant to be, and they wouldwhisper their selection in her ear (one boy wanted to be "red-eye gravy"). In the center of a circle of the children sitting in chairs would be the person who was "it." When the leader would say, "Apple and orange switch," the two children with those designations would jump up and try to switch seats before the person who was"it" could take one of their places. Alice Gassoway described another children's game not mentioned by white informants. She called it "bluebird, bluebird, in my window." To play "we'd ring up, and one would stand on the outside For the bluebird , she'd go there and tap her on the back and say, 'bluebird, bluebird in my window [repeat two more times]/Oh, Johnny, I'm tired.' Then she'd say, 'Take her, take her, patty on the shoulder [repeat two more times]/Oh, Johnny, I'm tired.' And...