"Hey y’all," the call rang out from someone, "Let’s play duck on the rock!
At times the crowd would number nearly twenty players from all over the village, which covered only four or five blocks of low-rent housing for all the cotton mill employees.
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| Duck on the Rock | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| by Sam Crenshaw | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Shortly after the sun hid itself and the stars began to peek out from the early evening sky, the single large bulb underneath the wrinkled tin cover of the street light began to cast a dim glow to the dirt road below.
"Hey y’all," the call rang out from someone, "Let’s play duck on the rock! |
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| Once the shrill call went forth, boys and girls alike from every direction would converge on Houston Street with tin cans in hand. In addition to a can, the person who sounded the call would usually bring a brick, in those days more commonly called a "brick bat." In the 1940s, Duck on the Rock was one of the favorite nighttime games of the children from the cotton mill village. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The game was one of several that we played, but it was my very favorite, at night, under the street light. A brick would be placed directly underneath the lone glow on the otherwise dark street, and the person who would begin the game as "it" would place his tin can on the brick. All the other kids, with cans in hand, would stand behind an imaginary line some twenty to thirty feet away from the "duck" on the rock. Everyone would start throwing their cans in an attempt to knock the "duck" off the rock. If unsuccessful, that person would run down to retrieve his can and try to get past the "it" who was the owner of the "duck" and back safely behind the imaginary line without being caught, a fate that would make the person become the new "it." To knock the duck off with an accurate throw would gain that person a great deal of admiration and a free trip down to retrieve their can and back across the line without being pursued. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Squeals pierced the night as kids threw their cans in an attempt to not only give themselves a free walk back across the line, but also giving everyone else a better chance of escaping the possibility of becoming "it."
At times the crowd would number nearly twenty players from all over the village, which covered only four or five blocks of low-rent housing for all the cotton mill employees. |
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| It was not unusual for us to play under, or near, the old streetlight for a couple of hours after dark. The hot, humid evenings would drive many of the parents outside in an attempt to find some relief from the oppressive heat. That was long before poor people knew anything about air conditioning. They would sometimes sit on the front porch visiting with neighbors, oblivious to the raucous game in the street. Soon enough, it would be time for our parents to call us in to wash our dirty feet before going to bed. It was great fun, and it would go on until the last mother called in the last participant. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Tin cans were tossed aside, five o’clock would come early for mill workers and their kids. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| © 2005 Sam Crenshaw | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| contact Sam at sam@samcrenshaw.com | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||