Montreal's Jewish neighbourhood of Papineau

Games we played

Audio is ON. For mobile devices, scroll down to click audio. Peter: Give me a run down again fo the games you played. Philip: We played softball, Tippy. Tippy was the piece of broomstick cut off about this length, with a knife cut at each end, a knife into a point. And you took your stick and you hit - either side it wouldn't make any difference, but it would make a difference of where it landed going up. You took your stick back and you hit it. As it was in the air and and the farther you hit it, the better the shot. We had tippies and we had sticks. And Balucan - that's a sponge ball, slightly bigger than a tennis ball. Play in the same way as baseball. You still got people in the field, and you threw it to first base. First you had to be more accurate to hit it, because the ball was smaller. Used the same bat. We liked that game, we played balucan very often. Peter: Did you play it on the street or in the park? Philip: Both. Shirley: Where there a lot of cars around then? Philip: Nothing like.... Peter: Did you play hockey? Philip: A lot. On the street. At night too. We played at night under the light, yeah. Peter: Did you play soccer? Philip: We didn't play soccer. But I know that people played soccer. Peter: Where there such things as hockey cards? Philip: Oh yeah. Are you kidding? Absolutely. Peter: Do you remember what you paid for a pack? Philip: No but...but it was in with, I'm not sure if it was gum or... We used to trade them, we used to buy them. Peter: You don't remember how many cards came in a pack? Shirley: Five. Peter: So you would buy them? Philip: Yeah. Peter: Would you trade them? Gamble them? Philip: Yeah. Peter: Do you remember the games. Philip: No. But I remember trading them, carrying them around in my pockets. Peter: We had three games in Park Ex. Philip: There are a lot of nice things about those days. Lots of them. Peter: Did you listen to hockey on the radio? Philip: Yeah. Peter: Do you remember who the broadcaster was? Philip: I remember Foster Hewitt, the Toronto one. Shirley: Lux Hollywood. I remember Lux soap. Philip: Well, I remember the way they did it. "Lux presents Hollywood!" Peter: Did you guys tune in specially to listen to these? Philip: Yes. I was about to say, if you're 62, then you're practically in the era of me.


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