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Schoolyard Games
Each generation passes through childhood in their own way and with their own traditions and customs. But children are much the same everywhere, the world over. The objective of this paper is to recall some of the customs and traditions existing in my generation at Hanover No. 4, North of Waukon. Hanover No. 4 was a country school with the 8 grades contained in one room. At the time I attended grades 1 through 7, there were probably close to twenty students enrolled. Due to some fluke of nature, the population of the school consisted of almost all boys. A Waters girl, believe her name was Catherine, was the only girl in the school in my later years at No. 4. I believe there were more in the earlier years but the names escape me for the moment. As I recall, we used to have two recesses and a lunch hour break as a part of our school day. We had a number of games that we used to play at recess or at noon. We used to play Prisoners Base, Ante, Ante Over, and in the winter Fox and Goose and King of the Mountain. The one I want to describe now was called Prisoners Base. The game called Prisoners Base may have had Indian origins or gypsy origins and was also called Dare Base and Prison Bars. The first step in establishing the game was for the two biggest studs in the schoolyard to choose up sides. The principal criteria for being selected was foot speed, quickness and a daring attitude. It also helps to be pals with one of the schoolyard studs. The teams would line up along two parallel lines, one team on one line and the other team on the other line. The lines were about 60 to 100 feet apart. Individuals from each team would make a daring excursions from its line or home base which was a "safe" area, over toward the enemies line or base. When a two opposing raiders meet in midfield, the one who left base last is able to "capture" the other. Once captured, the prisoner must remain touching the opponents base until he is touched by a teammate. If more prisoners were taken, the last prisoner must keep one foot on the opponents base while holding hand with the previous prisoner. The prisoners form a line stretching out toward their own base. The more prisoners in the line, the easier it is to rescue the first one captured. Rescue is accomplished by being touched by a non-prisoner teammate. Once touched by a teammate, the prisoner and the rescuing teammate have a free return to home. The strategy was to send a teaser out to midfield and try to get the enemy to go after the teaser. When the enemy send someone after the teaser, you have your speedster leave right after the enemy has and try to catch him before he catches the teaser and before their speedster gets your speedster. Of course, from time to time there are real arguments over who left base last. But I cannot remember these disputes lasting very long; somehow the schoolyard social structure had some long proven method of working out the disagreement and proceeding on with the game. An interesting footnote to this section is that this game was briefly described in Lewis and Clarks Journel as a game played by the Nez Perce indians as reported in Stephen E. Ambrose's book of Lewis and Clark Expedition called the "Undaunted Courage". The description was "an Indian game in which each side tries to make prisoners of those who run out of their base area."
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