Amanuensis Monday ~ The Stories That Should Be Told, Part 11

The following transcription is from a series of recordings my father made in the early 1990s:

Back in the early 1930s we used to play a game called, Go Sheepy Go.  I loved to play that game.  I was a little too young to play the game but I'd go along with the older kids.  When I got big enough to really play the game, they had quit playing it.

In my memory that was just a wonderful game.  They'd pick sides and have two groups.  One leader would take his group off and hide them somewhere here in the Village.  He'd come back and tell the other group and their leader to come go with him and try to find them.  While the one group was hiding, their leader would be walking around with the other group who were hunting.

The leader of the hiding group would have made up signals between him and his group.  They used names of chickens...Rhode Island Red, Brown Leghorn, and Plymouth Rock. 

Rhode Island Red

Plymouth Rock might mean the other group was getting close.  Rhode Island Red might mean the other group was moving farther away.

Right at the last minute, just before the hunting group found the hiding group, the leader of the hiding group would yell, "Go Sheepy Go!, Go Sheepy Go!" 

The hiding group would all come out of their hiding places and run.  The hunting group would try to catch them.  Oh, that was a great game!

Funny how things like that will stay with you all through your life.  I can just hear those calls going out across the Village.  Rhode Island Red!  Brown Leghorn!

Some of the kids I grew up with who were about my age were Ouida and Juanita Seal.  They were the daughters of Alvin and Olga Knight Seal.  Their younger sisters, Patsy Ann and Carolyn were younger than me.  I can remember when Patsy Ann was born.

There was Evelyn Ogden, Dorothy "Bit" McNair, Dorothy Mae Benge, John Fairbanks, and Vernon Whitlock who was Jessie's son.  Walter "Mickum" and J. E. Juneau, Cleo Foster who was the daughter of Melvin and Isabel Enright Foster, and Billie Sue Knight who was the daughter of Rufus and Willie Evans Knight.

Some of the children here in the Village who were a few years older than me were Virginia Ogden, Jeannette Saltzman, Kitty McNair, Winnie Wynn, Barbara Jane Peck, Evelyn and Mildred Benge, Russell Fairbanks and Carey Fairbanks, Richard Smith, Howard Smith, Fred Chambless, Little T. J. Peniston and Marvin Nolen.

The children who were several years older than me were Nita Steele, Lorelle Seal, Eloise Yancey, Lewis Chambless, Little Emmett Chisum, Louis and Johnnie Bourke, and Leroy Benge.

When there would be a birthday party, all these different aged children would be together.  Some were several years older and younger than my age group but we were a small village so when there was a birthday party, everyone was there.  There would be kids anywhere from six years old to twelve years old.

Note:  Parts 1-10 of 'The Stories That Should Be Told' can be found in the Tags List on the right-hand side of the blog.