Remember When...

[Nanna52]

My Jacks were made from the knuckles from the leg of lamb.  Had to wait five weeks for a set, cleaned and painted them.

[Greensleeves]

I was rubbish at jacks, never had that kind of dexterity.  I was really good at marbles though and ended up with a huge sack of them which I'd won.  We used to create complicated marble runs in the hard earth, a bit like a golf course and run marbles tournaments.

[mare]

5 stones/jacks or various names were known as knucklbones in NZ, you could get metal versions with instructions for each challenge or we also used to save the knuckles from joint of meat i.e lamb knuckle.( as Nanna52 said ) My brother had such chunky hands he'd have all five 'bones' on back of his hand all the way through quite often ... I'd challenge him with 5 even stones off the road to make it fairer. We were about even at marbles 


Most of our toys were home constructed or adapted from something else.
Christmas being Summer time in NZ meant stockings were usually filled with bucket and spade, tennis ball, cut out books or colouring books or cheap toys. 

[groom]

Wooden yoyos. I was forever getting the string tangled up.

What about roller skates - not boots, but just the skate bit, with leather straps that went over your foot and across your ankle? The number of times I came off those as my shoe came out of the strap. They had a sliding bits underneath so you could extend them as your feet grew.

[Greensleeves]

And when the leather straps perished, we used string to tie them on; which is how I managed to break my arm.

[nanny jan]

I had skates like that;  spent hours on them ......especially skating up to lamposts, grabbing hold and swinging round. Very little traffic around during the day so we could skate along pavement, down a slope, across the road and up another slope..........don't think children could do that  today but not many had cars and those that did were out at work. SImple pleasures. 

I remember using string GS but I broke my arm falling off a horse.

[Greensleeves]

What about cap guns then?  And those little bomb things which you put caps in and dropped onto the pavement so they exploded?  And did anyone else roll up several caps together and then drive a nail through them.  That made for an interesting explosion.  When you think about it, it's a wonder any of us ever survived intact.

[nanny jan]

Had a cap gun.....part of my cowgirl outfit. No nails though......probably hidden away in the shed.

Chalking on the pavement slabs for hopscotch tended to annoy my mum.....no idea why.

[kiwihalfpint]

Part of my xmas pressies each year were a cup/saucer and bread plate.    By the time I got to my late teens I had a good supply of china.


Cheers
KHP