Norma García Pettit

                I am a Baby Boomer. When I was a kid, there were no computers, tablets, cell phones, internet, or even video games. Children today cannot comprehend the fun that we had despite not having these things. We played games like tag, hide and seek, stick ball, jacks, marbles, jump rope, hula hoop, kite-flying, dodge ball, catch, pickup sticks, and board games. We played cops and robbers, house, played with dolls and toy cars, rode our tricycles, scooters and bikes, climbed trees and played in mud puddles. A generation later, my own children enjoyed a lot of these same activities.

                But what did children play in the late 1800s? I had to do some research as well as use my own imagination to come up with games that my characters played in my books. In Luisa, I talked about children playing in the creek while the womenfolk sat on rocks and washed clothes. I also described the orange peel game. This was something that my own mother used to do with us – something that was carried over from her childhood. She would peel an orange carefully so as to have one unbroken coil of peel. She was so adept at this that she usually never cut through the white pith. She would slice the top of the orange almost all the way across to make what we kids called a toilet. Ha ha! We would eat the “toilet lid” and then squeeze the orange and suck the juice out. Meanwhile, Mom would throw the peel down on the floor and ask, “What does it look like?” We would call out a letter that the shape resembled – an “s” or a “c” or an “o”, for example. In Luisa, since they didn’t know how to read or write, the children would think of an animal that the shape resembled, like a snake or a bird.

                Other games that I mentioned in Luisa were playing with a spinning top, jumping over a rope, and hitting a guava with a stick, as in this excerpt below:

The youngest children were all playing in the batey, where Chenta could see them. Juanito was using a stick as a bat and a round guava as a ball. He lobbed the guava and Vicenta and Bonifacia ran squealing after it to see who could get it first. Even little Toño was trying to get into the game, and occasionally got the “ball” if Juanito hit it gently in his direction.

                In Sebastián, some children played a game called Frío y Caliente – Cold and Hot. After they selected who was going to go first, Edgardo said, “We are going to hide this.”  He pulled a small jackknife out of his pocket.

                “Carlitos, go stand over there. Close your eyes and put your fingers in your ears,” he said, indicating that he was to stand near the tree.

                The other three tiptoed around and whispered until they found a good hiding spot for the jackknife, wedged in between two bricks.  They all went to stand by the tree and Guillermito tapped his cousin on the shoulder. Carlitos opened his eyes and began walking around the patio area. The other children called out “frío” when he was far away from the hidden jackknife and “caliente” when he was close. When he got really close, they shouted, “¡Te quemas!” (“You’ll burn!) After he found the jackknife, Carlitos was allowed to choose his successor.

                My newest book, Pilar, is coming out very soon. It is the story of Luisa and Sebastián’s younger sister, and it picks up in 1879, eight years after the end of Sebastián. In one chapter, there is a description of a game that many Puerto Ricans fondly remember playing. Here is an excerpt from Pilar:

                Toño, caught between being a boy and being a man, was instructing the younger children how to make gallitos out of algarroba seeds – carob seeds. These would be used to play a traditional game called pelea de gallitos. Pancho and Tita had picked some low-hanging pods from the algarroba tree, opened them up and had already eaten the pulp and extracted the dark brown seeds. Toño had cautioned the youngsters not to attempt to bore the holes themselves as they could get hurt. He used the sharp tip of his jackknife to carefully begin to make holes into the seeds and then used a stiff metal wire to finish boring the rest of the way through. A string was threaded through the hole of each seed and tied securely; the attached string was a length measured from elbow to fingertip.  These were the gallitos.

                Once each child had his gallito they were ready to play. They had to pair up, as the “fight” was conducted between two players. Each person took turns swinging their seed on the string to hit the other player’s seed while it was on the ground. The goal was to break the opponent’s seed. The winner between each duo of players played with other winners until a grand champion emerged. They could spend hours playing this, and if no one won, the game could be continued the following day or whenever they next got together to play.

                Another fun activity was the flying of kites or chiringas, as they are called in Puerto Rico.  They were homemade, using materials that were on hand. Wavy sticks that grew with the coconuts on palm trees were cut down, made into a cross and tied together securely with string. Brown paper saved from the wrappings of purchases made at the general store was glued to the kite’s frame. The glue – also homemade – was actually beaten egg white with pinches of salt added to it. Scraps of fabric were used to make the tail of the kite. With no electrical wires to worry about, hours of fun could be had flying chiringas until they inevitably got tangled in the branches of a tall mango tree.

                Children that were raised in the country, as were the Torres children of Juan González, Adjuntas, could run along mountain paths, engaging in foot races, and playing tag and hide-and-seek. These are all tried and true children’s activities. The high-pitched squeals of children having fun are the sounds of childhood memories echoing through time.