Page 703 - WhyAsInY

various GaMes
The weapon of choice was the cap pistol (see page 683). As we played it, the game merely involved something akin to hide-and-seek, which was punctuated by ambushes in which the surprised player would grasp his chest and fall to the ground making the sound that one thought would be made by someone who was actually shot, but more theatrically, or, if nobody conceded that he was surprised, there would be barrages of exploding caps until the red rolls were no more.
Flipping took two forms that I recall. In the first form, one boy would poise the edges of a card between his thumb and his other four fingertips and, using a slight, but quick, pulling motion, cause it to rotate along its long axis and fall to the sidewalk. The second boy would do the same. If the first card landed face-up and the second boy duplicated that feat, he would win the first card. Otherwise, his card would be forfeited. In the other form, cards were placed on the sidewalk leaning against a wall or placed at the vertex of two steps of a stoop. We would alternate taking other cards and, with a flick of the wrist, scaling them toward the target cards in an effort to knock them down. Occasionally, one projectile would become a “leaner,” in which case, the payoffs would increase. Sometimes the object was to get closest to the wall or to create a leaner that was not knocked down.
Flooking. Spaldeens could be made to “flook,” which is to say that, if they were held by the thumb and the backs of the fingernails of the other four fingers of a semi-clenched fist, with the palm facing downward, and forced to rotate when they were spun from the hand via the quick open- ing of the fingers, they would take unpredictably long bounces: left, right, or straight. (If the same hand were to have been held facing upward before the spinning was initiated, the ball could be made to spin back- ward, returning, as if by magic, to the hand of the kid who had flooked it.) Flooking was a technique that could be used when one pitched in stickball (see page 689), assuming that we are talking about one-bounce stickball.
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