Another Day in the Country
The games we played
Contributing writer
Trapped in a car for hours of driving, I remember the first game I learned to play. I was probably 5 years old and we were returning from Lincoln, Neb., to Ramona. It was Christmas break and my father, the collegian, had offered two younger classmates a ride to their relatives in Kansas. We were crammed into the backseat.
These boys sounded as if they were fresh off the boat from Germany — their accents thick and guttural to my ears even though I was used to grandparents who spoke a mixture of English and German gibberish. Stuck in the backseat with a child, the boys offered to teach me a game.
“It’s called sip,” they said grinning.
Sip was actually zzzzip with a “z.” For many years afterward, my parents and I would chuckle, remembering the Herr brothers as we played the game.
“Ssssip,” I would call out laughing.
Zip was a hunting game. The players were on a search for white animals of any kind with higher points to be earned as the animals themselves got bigger — five points for an all-white cat, 10 points for an all-white dog, 15 points for an all-white cow, and 20 points for an all-white horse. You have the idea. We were heading toward 100.
Little did I know as the soon-to-be preacher’s child, that I would end up spending a good portion of my life in a car, traveling from one church engagement to the next. Zip came in handy. Since it was an animal (nature) game, we could play it on Sabbath, as well as during the week.
I also learned the alphabet game, calling out “dibs” on particular words in a sign.
“A in automobile,” I’d call. “B also in automobile!”
When we got as far as “q” I prayed for sight of a Quaker State sign.
“Remember how we hunted for the Burma Shave signs?” my friend Frankie said.
She still remembered one of the jingles: “Wild men pulled their whiskers out. That’s what made them wild no doubt. Use Burma Shave!”
I loved those signs, watched for them incessantly, reveled in their humor; but couldn’t remember a single line other than “Use Burma Shave.”
I thought it would be fun to revive the idea and have some signs like that outside of Ramona; maybe advertising the bed and breakfast. Unfortunately, I lost my enthusiasm.
My kids and I had a contest on cross-country trips to see who could find license plates from all 50 states. We loved rest areas and their eyes were especially keen after a stop, just in case we might re-pass a coveted state plate on a car and add it to their own lengthening list.
“We used to play car tag poker,” Bennie said to me the other day. “It made it harder when they didn’t require a front tag any longer — we’d have to squirm around and read the tag out the rear window.”
The poker hand was the numbers on the tag. It was evidently quite a coup to get a pair of numbers. Bennie tried to give me a quick rundown of the game; but it was lost on me.
“When will I ever get the chance to play?” I asked. “I’m always driving!”
I tell myself to remember these games because some day I may want to teach them to my grandson; but kids these days don’t really play games while looking out the car window. Today’s children have built-in movie screens, iPods to listen to, and telephones with electronic games.
Once again, I’m sad. While looking for animals to claim in the zip game, I certainly saw a lot of Kansas landscape. I saw the seasons change, birds sitting on fencerows, crops waiting to be harvested, blue sky stretching down to the horizon, and glorious sunsets as my eyes strained in the twilight to ascertain if that horse was indeed pure white, on just another day in the country.