Come on over. We'll have a cup of coffee, and a game of SKIP JACK!

At home, growing up in Camp Wood, Mom and Dad always had the coffee pot on, and friends and relatives dropped by often to have a cup, set on the porch, puff on cigarettes, discuss the local events, and marvel at the strange things that happened in far off places, like Uvalde and Rocksprings, or even way off down to old Hondo. 


Folks visited a lot back in those days.  I wish we still did the same today, but we seem to have let that fine tradition slip a little.  If you ask me, houses should ALWAYS have a porch, just for that reason. Front or back; makes no difference to me. 

Anyway, after my brother Norvell and I had both gone off to college, and Mom and Dad were faced with that initial "empty nest" syndrome, Mom drug out a marble board game that either Norvell or I had gotten as a Christmas present.  Like many kids with new toys, we played the game a few times, then it went into the windowseat toybox, forgotten.  That fateful evening, Mom talked Si into setting down and trying the game, just for something to do. 

The Fun Game For the Century
(I think they were talking about
the 20th Century)

The game was called "Texas Skip Jack."  I can imagine Si and Vena at the dining room table, with the old flannel blanket spread out and safety-pinned around the table legs, cups of coffee and ash treys handy and maybe even a plate of Mom's sugar cookies, partially obscured by the Camel cigarette smoke, as they sat across from each other, rolling the dice, hopping their marbles, and trying to get all their marbles into home first. 

It wasn't long before either Aunt Reba and Uncle Ken, or Aunt Leona and Uncle Otto came to visit and have coffee, and found Mom and Dad at the Skip Jack table playing, and made the fatal mistake of asking "what are ya'll playing?"

Soon, they were drawn into the game as surely as the most addictive drug.  Skip Jack games became a regular event in the Northcutt home in the evenings as teams tried to hop their marbles around the board, half-sitting on their chairs, rolling the dice shouting "SIIIIIXXXX, BONES" at the top of their voice, and bopping off as many of the enemy's marbles as they could in the process. 

I don't think I ever saw as many upstanding, God-fearing, church-going folks who would look you straight in the eye and call you the most foul name imaginable, especially after you had knocked off one of their marbles who was just about to get into home base.  (Sondra, you know who I'm talking about, and it ain't me!)

The Skip Jack board rarely left the dining room, and it was always handily stored beneath the fancy silverware box that Aunt Paulene had given us.  If  Mom and Dad went visiting, the board went with them, along with the plastic margarine tub full of special marbles and special, lucky dice.  Everyone had their own lucky dice, and woe to anyone who reached into the margine tub and got the wrong one!  As I recall, Aunt Leona and Aunt Reba both had their own special lucky dice that they carried with them in their purses, like a pool hustler carrying their own pearl-inlayed cue in a fancy leather case.  Don't touch my dice!, they would say, but we were always trying to rub some cooties onto their dice to keep them from rolling sixes.

Over the years, marbles became smaller due to the constant friction, dice got chipped and dented (but never ever discarded), and the board began to have grooves and trenches instead of holes from so many marbles being moved around the cardboard surface. 

More Like Grooves than Holes

Over the years, many folks gradually gave up smoking, but never coffee, sugar cookies, or hopping their marbles around the Skip Jack board, gleefully bopping off "evil enemas."  It got so bad, however, that Uncle Otto or Uncle Ken, I forget which, got so nervous that they scratched the blood out of their arms, and finally had to quit.  So now, with one of the uncles sitting in the living room, it was a three-person game.  Which, of course, imposed a fascinatingly whole new layer of strategy into the game.

I still have the old Skip Jack board, as beat up and grooved as ever, and if you drop by for a visit, I'll put on  a pot of coffee, make you some sugar cookies and we'll have a game.  I'll probably use the new, wood Skip Jack board I made to replace and "preserve" the old one, though. 

Be careful, though!  You might get hooked and have to start smoking unfiltered Camel cigarettes!