The "Losing His Marbles" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Looking at a Norman Rockwell painting titled "Losing His Marbles."  It was featured in the September/October 2022 Saturday Evening Post magazine.  Brought back memories as soon as I turned the page and saw the kids shooting marbles.  I did that for years and years when I was a youngster in the mid-1900s.  Although I was born 50 years after Mr. Rockwell, my friends and I still loved to shoot marbles on the pavement in the last block of North Queen Street in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  We all had our own bag of cats eye marbles which we loved to use to shoot marbles as well as race marbles down my front porch at 929 N. Queen Street.  Marbles were a great gift at Christmas as well as for a birthday or any special event in our lives.  The larger, or 3/4" diameter marbles, were known as "shooter" marbles while the 1/2" marbles were placed on the ground so we could shoot them out of a circle that we would usually draw on the cement pavement with a piece of chalk.  

Norman Rockwell's "Losing His Marbles"

When I was a very young boy my dad had to dig up one section of our pavement in front of the house and when he re-did the surface with new cement, he made sure it was really smooth.  Made it easy to shoot marbles on a surface such as that.  Everybody in the neighborhood would gather in front of the house and take turns trying to use their "shooter" to knock as many marbles as they could out of the circle before missing.  Sometimes you would miss on your first try while other times you were lucky and ended up with half a dozen marbles in you pocket before you missed.  The game of marbles isn't played for points, but for the marbles which you would place in your pocket as you shot them out of the circle.  I always had a special way to hold my "shooter" so that I could control it better than others.  Sometimes I would have a good day and win a few dozen new marbles for my collection while other days I would miss on every shot and end up losing a dozen or so marbles.  My Aunt Doris was my favorite Aunt since she would usually buy me marbles for all the holidays as well as my birthday.  Then, when I was old enough for a three-speed bicycle she gave me one of those instead of a bag of marbles.  Just loved her so much!  The game of marbles isn't necessarily played just by boys, since we had a few girls in the neighborhood who also were good at shooting marbles and won many times.  Those who lost most times that they played were known as the guys who lost their marbles.  Recognize that old saying?  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.