Feeling Nostalgic? Reminiscing about Backyard Games from 1970s

WORDS BY DORIAN MODE

As the weather heats up this summer, I’ve been reflecting on the nostalgia of how we used to entertain ourselves in the backyard in the 1970s.

YELLOW BRICK ROAD

If you weren’t rich enough to own a swimming pool in the 1970s, the next best thing was the Slip ‘N Slide. This was invented accidentally when its inventor saw his son sliding on wet painted concrete at his home in California and thought: ‘This kid’s gonna break his neck’. So he took a strip of plastic and sewed a tube into the side, forming an “irrigating duct” to which his garden hose could attach. It’s 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 ‘yellow brake road’ holding a can of KB and a damp cigarette bobbing in the corner of his mouth, going 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 “not recommended for adults” and is back on the market.)

There were Slip ‘N 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’s 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.

‘It’s mild on hands while you do dishes,’ says Madge. ‘It’s green,’ replies the shocked client. ‘Yes. You’re soaking in it,’ she adds. The customer looks perplexed before peering down at her feet. ‘And my pedicure? It’s blue.’ ‘Yep. Harpic Toilet Cleaner. Works wonders on your bunions.’ At this stage, Madge’s long–suffering boss flags her into his office. ‘Madge, we are going to have to let you go.’ ‘What on earth for?’ ‘Well, first there was the Palmolive incident. Now this new “Harpic Pedicure” of yours. And last week a customer complained that you died her hair with Kiwi Boot Polish.’ ‘But these are all products we simply have lying around the house'.

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’s lawn. A summer garden tattoo.

RUSH HOUR

One of my favourite neighbourhood games was Bull Rush – 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 the 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’d hear them taunt you from the middle of the field. ‘You take out Mad Malcolm and I’ll cream the Piano Nerd.’

Twang

The game Lydia used to play with the girls in her street was the mysterious ‘elastics’. 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’d inexorably wait for the giant rope to garrotte her before a chorus of groans from the cool kids.

ASHES WEDNESDAY

Of course, this essay on backyard games from the 1970s wouldn’t 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’d play long into the twilight. Every Australian knows that ‘over the fence’ was six–and–out and any catch off the roof was taken one–handed and crowed about for hours. The gentleman’s 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 ‘mini bat’. 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 ‘grandstands’ i.e. Mrs Warboys’ 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 “retrieve” 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.

Show the kids some good old fashioned fun this summer and build your own Slip’N’Slide?

Postscript

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 – thinking we were hip – was the French game of Boules. This was essentially lawn bowls wrapped in a baguette. I’d be there dressed in black, wearing a beret in the 40–degree summer heat, and smoking a French cigarette, hooting in my schoolboy French “Cette cigarette a le goût d’une mouette morte” (This cigarette tastes like a dead seagull.) Le Rainbow Warrior était une terrible erreur (The Rainbow Warrior was a terrible mistake.) Les vacances européennes de Chevy Chase étaient–elles réalisées par Cocteau? (Was Chevy Chase’s ‘European Vacation’ directed by Cocteau?)