{"id":1922,"date":"2021-09-21T21:44:51","date_gmt":"2021-09-21T11:44:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onthecoastpublications.com.au\/onthecoastover55\/?p=1922"},"modified":"2023-09-04T22:18:10","modified_gmt":"2023-09-04T12:18:10","slug":"nostalgic-reflection-backyard-games-1970s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onthecoastpublications.com.au\/onthecoastover55\/nostalgic-reflection-backyard-games-1970s\/","title":{"rendered":"Nostalgic Reflection: Backyard Games of the 1970s"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Words by Dorian Mode<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With NSW in lock down, for this travel column, I\u2019ve been reflecting on how we used to entertain ourselves in the backyard the 1970s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yellow Brake Road
<\/strong>If you weren\u2019t rich enough to own a swimming pool in the 1970s, the next best thing was the Slip \u2018N Slide. This was invented accidentally when its inventor saw his son sliding on wet painted concrete at his home in California and thought: \u2018This kid\u2019s gonna break his neck\u2019. So he took a strip of plastic and sewed a tube into the side, forming an \u201cirrigating duct\u201d to which his garden hose could attach. It\u2019s still available for purchase today but was taken off the market for a while in the early 90s. While kids are fairly mailable, your beer-gutted dad, sliding down the \u2018yellow brake road\u2019 holding a can of KB and a damp cigarette bobbing in the corner of his mouth, and sliding faster than a Qantas share portfolio, might indeed break his neck. This is what happened, resulting in numerous lawsuits in the US. My chum Pete says he cracked two ribs on the slide some years ago while playing with his kids. (It now says \u201cnot recommended for adults\u201d and is back on the market.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were Slip \u2018N Slide secrets of course. You needed a big run-up. And you never placed it at the end of a footpath as the slides inertia was unpredictable. Particularly, if you used the secret ingredient: a bottle of mum\u2019s jade green Palmolive detergent. Indeed, there was an ad on telly with Madge, a bottle-blonde manicurist, telling a customer she was soaking her hands in said dishwashing liquid.
\u2018It\u2019s mild on hands while you do dishes,\u2019 says Madge. \u2018It\u2019s green,\u2019 replies the shocked client. \u2018Yes. You\u2019re soaking in it,\u2019 she adds. The customer looks perplexed before peering down at her feet. \u2018And my pedicure? It\u2019s blue.\u2019 \u2018Yep. Harpic Toilet Cleaner. Works wonders on your bunions.\u2019 At this stage, Madge\u2019s
long-suffering boss flags her into his office. \u2018Madge, we are going to have to let you go.\u2019 \u2018What on earth for?\u2019 \u2018Well, first there was the Palmolive incident. Now this new \u201cHarpic Pedicure\u201d of yours. And last week a customer complained that you died her hair with Kiwi Boot Polish.\u2019 \u2018But these are all products we simply have lying around the house!\u2019
Anyway, I digress. The Palmolive turbocharged your sliding experience. But my wife Lydia says she remembers the detergent stinging her eyes as a kid on the slide. Nonetheless, no summer was complete without that grass kill on your front lawn, where the yellow strip was left for a month where it subsequently killed off dad\u2019s lawn. A summer garden tattoo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Token Tennis
<\/strong>I\u2019m putting it out there that McEnroe never made a Wimbledon final by playing totem tennis \u2013 which like Slip \u2018N Slide, you can still purchase today. It was kinda lame. It was simply a tennis ball attached to a cord connected to a vertical pole with a coil on top. Inevitably, the ball would become tangled, and you would be left wildly swinging your racquet in an ever-shrinking arc till you bashed each other. Overseas it was also known by other brand names such as Zim Zam, Tether Tennis, Swingball and in the UK under the patent, Unbelievably Crap Tennis.
Annoyingly, my childhood friend, Jamie McDougal, used to turn up to play Totem Tennis dressed like Bjorn Borg: headband, wrist bands and wearing inaptly named Dunlop Volleys, all freshly painted with that white paint we used to use. Irritatingly, he would grunt with each double-handed strike of the ball. \u201cReally?\u201d I would say. \u201cIt\u2019s Totem Tennis!\u201d
You always drank Tang at game\u2019s end. This was an orange powdered drink that tasted like radiator fluid flavoured with asbestos. No matter how hard you stirred it you never got rid of the powdery texture. But the tennis stars all drank it on the telly. Sure, they did. In the way John Newcombe always walked into a bar after a game of doubles and ordered a schooner of Cinzano.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rush Hour
<\/strong>One of my favourite neighbourhood games was Bull Rush \u2013 also known as British Bulldog\/ Red Rover\/Cocky Laura. It was banned at our school for being too violent. (And this was the 70s. And I went to a famous rugby school.) So we simply played it in the local park. It was all about rugby tackling. However, each time someone was taken out by a Ray Price-style grassing tackle, they, in turn, became one of the predators in what quickly devolved into a Lord of Flies contest of betrayal. Someone who you thought was your best friend, would suddenly target you because you were slow or wore glasses or both. You\u2019d hear them taunt you from the middle of the field. \u2018You take out Mad Malcolm and I\u2019ll cream the Piano Nerd.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twang<\/strong>
The game Lydia used to play with the girls in her street was the mysterious \u2018elastics\u2019. I remember girls playing this game for hours in the neighbourhood. It was played with three or four people (or two and a chair) and a long piece of elastic fabric (it was never rubber) that was tied in a loop and placed around the ankles of the players. The third or fourth player would then jump over different parts of the elastic. With each successful jump, the height of the elastic was raised from the ankles to the knees, and then the waist. Lydia, a dancer, says she was crap at elastics for some reason. Group skipping was equally a terror for her as she\u2019d inexorably wait for the giant rope to garrotte her before a chorus of groans from the cool kids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ashes Wednesday
<\/strong>Of course, this essay on backyard games from the 1970s wouldn\u2019t be complete without mentioning backyard cricket. We all adored this game and played it year round. But I mostly remember it in summer, under azure blue skies with no sunscreen or hats and the grating of cicadas as we\u2019d play long into the twilight. Every Australian knows that \u2018over the fence\u2019 was six-and-out and any catch off the roof was taken one-handed and crowed about for hours. The gentleman\u2019s rule was you were never out the first ball. And it was always hit and run. The wicket was an old metal garbage bin we used to have in the 70s. But like Palmolive, the secret was the \u2018mini bat\u2019. This was a great leveller. A regular bat and a moth eaten tennis ball put the batsman\/person (Lyd played with her family too.) at a distinct advantage. You see, it was impossible to resist the Pavlovian impulse to smash the tennis ball into the \u2018grandstands\u2019 i.e. Mrs Warboys\u2019 Rhododendrons. The mini-bat also made the game slightly less macho, which I always liked. In the way a fat man playing the ukulele will always make you smile. But I recall that perennial irritating fielder on the boundary: my inaptly named Golden Retriever. She would never \u201cretrieve\u201d anything but rather snatch any rogue tennis ball and bolt with it, chased by a chorus of angry children, thongs flapping like maracas. Sometimes she would catch the ball on the full, which meant you were out, and the bowler became the new batsman. I secretly think she knew exactly what she was doing and loved the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In closing
<\/strong>So, you have no excuse not to entertain yourselves in lock down. Why not build your own Slip\u2019N\u2019Slide?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Postscript<\/strong>
Oh, when I was a student at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and living in Surry Hills in the 80s, a game we all played \u2013 thinking we were hip \u2013 was the French game of Boules. This was essentially lawn bowls wrapped in a baguette. I\u2019d be there dressed in black, wearing a beret in the 40-degree summer heat, and smoking a French cigarette, hooting in my schoolboy French \u201cCette cigarette a le go\u00fbt d\u2019une mouette morte\u201d (This cigarette tastes like a dead seagull.) Le Rainbow Warrior \u00e9tait une terrible erreur (The Rainbow Warrior was a terrible mistake.) Les vacances europ\u00e9ennes de Chevy Chase \u00e9taient-elles r\u00e9alis\u00e9es par Cocteau? (Was Chevy Chase\u2019s \u2018European Vacation\u2019 directed by Cocteau?)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Words by Dorian Mode With NSW in lock down, for this travel column, I\u2019ve been reflecting on how we used to entertain ourselves in the backyard the 1970s. Yellow Brake…","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[75,45],"series":[115],"class_list":["post-1922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-article","tag-dorian-mode","series-coffee-with-a-coastie"],"episode_featured_image":"https:\/\/onthecoastpublications.com.au\/onthecoastover55\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2021\/09\/Cricket-1970s-1.jpg","episode_player_image":"https:\/\/onthecoastpublications.com.au\/onthecoastover55\/wp-content\/plugins\/seriously-simple-podcasting\/assets\/images\/no-album-art.png","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"dark","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https:\/\/onthecoastpublications.com.au\/onthecoastover55\/feed\/podcast\/coffee-with-a-coastie","embedCode":"

Nostalgic Reflection: Backyard Games of the 1970s<\/a><\/blockquote>