All About Pocket Knives

"Land" A game we used to play with pocket knives when I was in grade school around 1948-49. A rectangle was drawn on the ground with a knife then a line drawn across the center making 2 halves side by side. Players chose sides. Player 1 put a foot on his side and threw the knife sticking it in player 2 side. A line was drawn across player 2 land in the direction of the knife blade. Player 2 chose the part of the land he wanted to keep. Player 1 continues until he misses (knife doesn't stick) or he manages to cut player 2 land down so small that his foot would not fit. Player 1 wins. If player 1 misses then it is player 2 turn. There are more rules but this is the basic way the game is played. Has anyone heard of this game or played it??

Welcome to AAPK! Don’t remember that one. We played some other pocket knife games though.

Ken

Welcome to AAPK. Glad to have you aboard. I too have never heard of that game. What part of the country did you live in then? We played a game we called stretch. Face each other. Start with your feet together. Stick your knife and your opponent has to move his foot to touch the stuck knife. Alternate until one of you can't touch his opponents knife with his foot.

The O.P. is a bit older than myself. I was in grade school in the 1950's in Montreal. We played "Stretch" just as Jerry describes.
I wonder if which game you played was based on geography ? Montreal is close to and influenced by the New England States.
kj

We played stretch as well and the the reverse called chicken getting the feet closer together.

The opposite of "Stretch" was "Chicken".

That game started with two players, facing each other with their feet stretched as far apart as possible.

Player 1 throws his knife into the ground between the opponents feet. If it sticks, they have the option of moving either foot in to touch the knife.

Player 2 then does the same with the same results.

If a throw doesn't result in a standing knife, no move is necessary.

Play continues thusly, with the feet of each player getting more and more close together until finally, only inches or less separate them.

The game ends when a player declines to allow his opponent his next throw. He must, however, declare himself "Chicken".

I once put the blade to of a Texas Tickler completely through the sole of Frankie Morello's left shoe. His feet were only about a 1/4" apart at the time.

Charlie Noyes

What happened to Frankie's foot ? Blade pass between the metatarsals and no little artery cut ? Or, did Frankie have to learn to hop after the amputation due to severe infection and few available antibiotics ?
At least Frankie was no chicken.
kj

mousetrap, Welcome aboard! Hope you will share some photos of your knives.

And all these games as best I can remember were played on the school playground. Imagine that.

I went to elementary school in a working class suburb of Montreal in the 1950's. The school yard was beaten down grass and dirt. We playde stretch and British Bulldog in which you had to tackle the other guy down onto the ground. It was a lot fun and i do not recall any injuries at all.
Then in mid 1950's it got paved over and the quality of our play went down somewhat. Still played B.B. but now a tackle was more likely to cause a scrape that needed attention.
kj

Maybe before my time, I was born in 62. Or maybe just where I grew up, I'm an Air Force brat. But I don't ever recall throwing knives at each other.

Roland we called that game 'kill the carrier'. Played with a football and whoever had the ball got tackled. I don't recall any hospital visits.

doglegg wrote:Roland we called that game 'kill the carrier'. Played with a football and whoever had the ball got tackled. I don't recall any hospital visits.

Perhaps the head injuries have affected your memory.

Bastler wrote:

doglegg wrote:Roland we called that game 'kill the carrier'. Played with a football and whoever had the ball got tackled. I don't recall any hospital visits.

Perhaps the head injuries have affected your memory.

Bastler I should be offended but I'm not so maybe there is a positive side to all those 'seeing stars' incidents.

Roland, I guess I wasn't very clear. The knife went through the sole of his shoe outside the confines of the shoe itself, i.e. that thin strip of sole that surrounds the shoe. I just couldn't put the knife into that 1/4" space between the inside edges of the shoe.

Anybody ever play "Hot Tail"?

Lots of players standing in a circle, facing in. One player with a stout leather belt in his hand walks around the outside and eventually drops the belt behind someone and takes off running. That person picks up the belt and chases him, trying to get close enough to heat up his backside with the belt.

The one being chased must go around the circle twice and then jump into the space vacated by the guy with the belt. Once there, he is safe.

Play continues like that until you think of something else to do.

Charlie

I grew up in Birmingham area in the 60s-70s....we were all very bright kids--we would find the largest,freshest pile of dog s... --available gather around it bend over close to it insert black cat firecracker with fuse cut to 1/4th inch.....light it and run...whoever got the most dogsh.. on them lost..then go back to playing full contact kick the can...ANYONE HUNGRY.

You weren't as bright as you thought.

What Birmingham suburb?

Charlie

Never heard of 'Hot Tail'.
None of these games are permitted these days. Children now are much more controlled by 'rules' than we were. I think this has something to do with why so many teenage children now do nothing but 'hang out'. We learned a lot about how to interact with others and about our own abilities and 'weak spots'.
kj

Charlie is right dumba.. kids-we didn't play that game much....we blew up fireant beds most of the time..with cherry bombs---Huffman area...graduated from Huffman high in 1976....

We didn’t play knife games, although a lot of us carried. We did do a lot of fairly murderous ball games, including actual murderball. That involved throwing a ball as hard as you could at a group of kids lined up against a wall and taking them out one by one.
We also played keepaway, which darn near did actually kill me.
Keepaway is basically just trying to take a fair sized red rubber playground ball away from each other using any means possible. Playing it on icy asphalt is a really bad idea. I was wrestling Tony for the ball when my feet went up and the back of my head came down - on the 4X4 18” high fence at the edge of the pavement. I was in hospital for six days with a serious, darn near fatal, concussion.
Of course I was right back out there ASAP!

That does sound like a nasty injury zoo. I cringe thinking of it.
kj

zoogirl wrote:We didn’t play knife games, although a lot of us carried. We did do a lot of fairly murderous ball games, including actual murderball. That involved throwing a ball as hard as you could at a group of kids lined up against a wall and taking them out one by one.

Do you think that's anything like Dodge Ball? We played that in gym class. Two teams, one at each end of the gym, throwing rubber balls at each other approx. the size of a volley ball.

I graduated from Banks in 65. Grew up on 95th Street North.

Both our boys graduated from Huffman in the 90's. Brand new facility there now.

"King of the Mountain" was a rough and tumble game we played, usually initiated by the creation of a large mound of dirt following construction excavation somewhere close by.

BTW Roland, we learned how to play "Hot Tail" by watching the boys at The Alabama Boys Industrial School, which was adjacent to our neighborhood. It was a reform school. The game might well have been a form of corporal punishment, since it was supervised by adult staff members, but we adopted it.

Charlie

jerryd6818 wrote:

zoogirl wrote:We didn’t play knife games, although a lot of us carried. We did do a lot of fairly murderous ball games, including actual murderball. That involved throwing a ball as hard as you could at a group of kids lined up against a wall and taking them out one by one.

Do you think that's anything like Dodge Ball? We played that in gym class. Two teams, one at each end of the gym, throwing rubber balls at each other approx. the size of a volley ball.

It started out as dodgeball but the lunch and recess version was just an excuse to whip a ball as hard as you could at sitting ducks!
Kootenay Joe, yeah it was pretty bad. I had a concussion before that one, so I knew the symptoms. I didn’t actually pass out when I went down, but about fifteen minutes later, I started losing vision. The teacher sent me to the nurse, who tried to send me home, on foot! She finally called my parents and thank God, my dad was home sick. He came and got me. We stopped at the house long enough to call the hospital and I finally did pass out just around the corner from the house. That must have been around 11:30am. I was out until about 7:00pm!
I was twelve at the time and certainly capable of telling the nurse my symptoms and that I knew I had a concussion. Since she wouldn’t take my word for it and would have sent me out on foot, a ten or fifteen minute walk, she got fired. I suspect it wasn’t her first screwup.
Looking back, it’s a wonder any of us survived school! The playground equipment alone was enough to do us in! My son did a face plant off the monkey bars there and got a bloody nose. Straight down onto clay and gravel!

My oldest grandson fell off the jungle gym & broke both arms above the wrist.