Shelley, Among NYC’s many claims to fame is its ability to murder the English language. Erik Kowal’s very good discussion under the posting
sliding pond suggests that it might come from the mispronunciation of the Dutch ‘bann’ (track). I just checked a few sources and
The Facts on File Dictionary of American Regionalisms agrees that is a possibility (however with 'bann' spelled 'baan'):
SLIDING POND: A ‘sliding pond’ (possibly from the Dutch ‘baan,’ track) is a metal slide in a New York playground, the term used nowhere else. [[let me add that they should have said New York City and environs, which would include areas of northern New Jersey, Long Island, etc. There are people in ‘upstate’ New York who are just as ignorant of the phrase ‘sliding pond’ as anyone in west Texas.]]
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The ability of New York City (and environs) folks to mangle even fairly modern English, to say nothing of the old Dutch, brings to mind the beloved New York City
SPALDEEN. The ‘spaldeen’ was a hollow pink rubber ball (about the size of, or slightly smaller than, a tennis ball), which I believe, was peculiar to NYC – I say this, because when I moved to Rochester, which is in western New York State, for a time in the early 1960s and tried to buy one, no one had ever heard of it, and I have never heard of this ball being used anywhere else (although it may have been). But why this popular NYC ball would have been marketed only in NYC, if that was in fact the case, is beyond me.
And now for the punch line:
SPALDEEN was the New York City mispronunciation of the pink ball made by the
Spalding sporting goods company starting sometime in the 1940s or 50s. And if we couldn’t even get the pronunciation correct for a modern product named for a well-known sporting goods comapny whose name appeared in print right on the ball, then I ask you, how could we be expected not to pronounce the Dutch ‘baan’ of the ‘sliding baan’ as POND?? {<:)
The
SPALDEEN was ubiquitous in the NYC of my youth. It was used in more street games than I can probably remember, but I will attempt to name a few:
STICKBALL: baseball played with a broomstick handle
SEWERBALL: stickball played on a city street using the sewer manhole cover in the street as home plate. The game would be suspended every time a car went by, but in the 1940s and 50s that wasn’t all that often on the side streets of my neighborhood in Flatbush, Brooklyn.
STOOPBALL: The spaldeen is thrown into the inside corner of the steps of a stoop (the outdoor entryway to an apartment house which included the steps and platform entrance) and rebounds up in the air to be caught on a/the fly by several players positioned from a little behind the stoop, into the street, and onto the sidewalk across the street. Whoever caught the ball got the privilege of advancing to the stoop (game temporarily suspended whenever a car went by).
PUNCHBALL: Was baseball played without a pitcher with the hitter just tossing the spaldeen in the air and punching it with a clenched fist. This was the standard game often played during recess in elementary school.
HANDBALL: Played against a building wall or on single-wall courts erected in anything worthy of the name ‘playground’ in NYC. Old men (anyone over 18) sometimes played with the real black handball and gloves used in traditional four-walled indoor courts, but us kids never did and your hand would be swollen pretty good after playing for awhile.
CHINESE HANDBALL (also sometimes referred to as ‘ace-king-queen’): Played against a wall with each player assigned to a box defined by the cracks that separated the squares on the sidewalk. But instead of the ball having to hit the wall first as in regular handball, it had to hit the ground first and then the wall (this reversal was probably the source of what is most likely a derogatory sense of the adjective Chinese). The ‘ace’ position was the left-most box and there could also be a jack, tens, etc. positions depending on the number of players and the length of the wall. When you missed the ball you lost your box and moved to the far right and those to the right of you advanced one position to the left.
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Other street games that come to mind, but not played with a ‘spaldeen,’ that were extremely popular in the NYC of my youth were:
CHESTNUTS: Chestnut trees actually grew in Brooklyn when I was a kid. A chestnut with a hole in it was suspended on a string by one player. The second player swung their chestnut on a string in an effort to collide with and break the other player’s suspended chestnut. The players alternated off between suspending and swinging until one chestnut was broken. The winner then could add one kill plus the number of kills the loser had to the title of their chestnut. Thus, if the loser was a 5-killer and the winner had been a 2-killer, the winner could dub his chestnut an 8-killer (this was done on the honor system because from day to day, no one really knew how many chestnuts other players had killed). I subsequently learned that this game originated in England and was there called CONKERS (listed in the OED) and had originally been played with snail shells but was later played there with
horse chestnuts and yes, ‘horse chestnut trees grew in Brooklyn’– Hmm. That would make a nice title of a book.
MARBLES was very popular and was played by drawing a circle in the soil, etc. – and yes, there was actually bare soil in Brooklyn at one time.
RINGOLEAVIO was a team game somewhat akin to tag, which sometimes lasted for hours with kids chasing each other through backyards, over fences, into the basements of apartment houses, etc.
SKULLY was played with soda bottle caps (and, of course, we didn’t call soda, ‘pop’) on a chalk playing board drawn on the concrete sidewalk or in the street – you’d basically be trying to knock other folk’s bottle caps off the board. Incidentally, bottle caps were also attached as decorations to hats we made out of discarded fedoras whose brims had been cut off and the turned up edge cut in a sawtooth, jack-o-lantern teeth look – a beany surrounded by a serrated rim – and we loved them.
JUMPROPE was an art form which could get complicated with multiple ropes and fancy skipping and was something beautiful to behold (and also to listen to with their accompanying songs) – but strictly for girls.
JACKS and, as I recall,
HOPSCOTCH were also mostly played by girls.
Well, I’ve strayed quite a ways from ‘nosy body’ and ‘sliding pond' – but one thing just seemed to lead to another as I took the proverbial stroll down memory lane.
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Ken G – May 13, 2005
