More games

The oringinal posting starts here.
We boys played Kush (or cush?) and holes. Girls played at making mud pies and with their dolls. Some dolls were made from straw or dried grass. Boys and girls played at hop-scotch and skipping.

I hope I get this right, kush was played by drawing a small circle 6 to 8 inches diameter, with oche line tangential to the top of the circle. About six to ten feet away another line was drawn. The distance varied according to the skill of the players.
Players took turns to throw a button at the far line, the order in which a player threw his button closest to, or on the line determined the order of play. Buttons are all collected by the first player which are thrown from the line to the circle.
The buttons inside the circle were kept by the thrower. The remaining buttons are then available to the next player to thrwo into the circle and he keeps any that are inside the circle.

The sequnce is repeated until there are no buttons remaining. There are variations on the rules, for example, deciding what to do when a button touches the edge of the circle from the inside.
The elder lads used coins instead of buttons, and sometimes there were fierce arguments over whether a coin was 'in' or not.

Holes was played with marbles, usually glass ones. It was a big advantage to get a steel ball-bearing the size of a marble as its weight would hit glass marbles a fair distance outside the line of play. Steel bearings were hard to come by, as these were only available from the wheels or other parts of the trains. There were smaller ones available from cars too, but the 'train' ones were better.

The game was played by digging three holes about four inches in diameter about six to ten feet apart. A line was drawn six to ten feet away from the first hole. Play started by each player throwing his marble from the first hole to the line, to determine order of play.
The first player then threw or rolled his marble at the first hole, if the marbled settled into the hole, he was allowed to have a throw at the next hole. If his marble didn't enter the hole, play passed to the next player.
The game was won by the first player to go down to the third hole and return back up to enterring his marble into the first hole. There are other rules to the game, such as if an opponent's marble is with a hand's span of your marble, you wer allowed to hit it away with yours. Gosh! I've forgotten the scoring system for the skilled players; all I can recall is that it was 20 points for entering your marble into a hole.

28June, 2009. Adding a game called "Litty" (hope I spelt it correctly)
As I was sitting on a wall waiting for the bus to arrive, I gazed down at the small pebbles under my feet. And to my amusement, I remembered how as children we played Litty.
Have you forgotten or don't know how to play it? Well, you need seven small pebbles, each about the size of a finger-nail.
You start by throwing all seven pebbles on the floor. You now have to make a judgement based on the layout of the pebbles, as to which pebble to throw up about 18 inches off the floor. While the thrown pebble is in orbit, you must pick up another pebble off the floor put it into the palm of your other hand, then catch the descending thrown pebble.
You continue to choose, throw, pick and place in your other hand, then catch. Repeat for each remaining pebble. Should you fail to complete the sequence, play passes to someone else.

After "ones" has been completed you start with throwing one (always one thrown,) pick two and place in your other hand, then catch the thrown, until all the pebbles have been picked up (twos.) I think if you failed at completing twos say, when your turn comes around, you must restart with twos and progress on to threes and so on. The first player to complete sixes is the winner!
Experienced players know how to throw the pebbles in certain 'patterns' to make picking up easier rather than just throwing them anyhow on the floor.
Sadly the game lost favour to "Jacks." Nine five-sided spiky thingies were used instead of pebbles and a small rubber ball was thrown and caught off the rebound on the floor. I don't think Litty or Jacks is played anymore, dexterity is exercised by finger-work on gamepads, keyboards and Wii wands or whatever they're called.