Curbball, Wallball, Everywhere a Ball-Ball

Growing up in a poor working glass White ghetto in Southwest Baltimore during the 60's, there were no trips to places such as Ocean City, Cape May, or any other place for my family and most of the families in the area. If we were lucky, we got to take a trip out to Gwynn Oak Park, an amusement park that was quite popular at the time. However, even though we didn't get to go anywhere during those times, we somehow managed to entertain ourselves without trips or vacations by using our imagination to create silly games that cost nothing but time and a ball or two.

A couple of the games that most of the boys participated in back then were Curbball and Wallball. Curbball was a game that we played in front of our row homes in which one kid would take the ball and try to hit the top pointy part of the high city curbs sending the ball over the other players head onto the sidewalk on the other side of the street, that being a home run. Wallball on the other hand was a game that was played in a narrow alley with buildings on both sides where one player would take and throw the ball at the bottom of one wall trying to use the right Geometric angles to hit the other wall behind him where the opposing player would not be able to catch it as it came off of the second wall. Of course we didn't know anything about Geometry at that time, but we sure knew angles.

There were other games as well that we created to keep us busy during those long hot summer days, and while not all them consisted of playing ball, that inexpensive round object was never far from our hands back then.