From now on, when someone "Googles" "stone the grate" or "can the grate" their search will be productive. You will not get leads to "great stones" or "great beer in cans". You will get this blog and find that "stone or can the grate" is or was a game that kids played before there was Wii, Nintendo, even clue or monopoly. It is a game our great uncle Joe from Detroit taught us when he came to visit our grandmother when we were in grammar school.
Why now? Why talk about this? Well, I started thinking about the game today when my wife and I were having a soda in the screen house. We emptied the can, and for some crazy reason, I proceeded to demonstrate the idea of the game. I placed a soda can on a stone, drew a wide circle, and stood behind the circle to try to knock the can off the stone with a can that I had. I missed with the throw which meant that I had to retrieve my can and get back across the line without being tagged by the person who was it. There were no other participants today, so I had to play all roles, moving back and forth trying to be it and not it at the same time. I was able to cross into the circle, pick up my can, quickly knock the "it" person's can off the grate (large stone), and retreat behind the line before the it person could replace his can on the grate and tag me. If that can had been on the grate, then I could have been tagged while I was getting my can back over the line, so that's why I had to knock it off. I explained all this to my patient wife, and she knew one thing for sure... I was crazy.
It is a simple game that is virtually unknown today, yet it is something that can be played anywhere, especially after emptying a lot of cans at a picnic, and any time of the year.
When Uncle Joe from Detroit (I emphasize that he was from Detroit because we had two other uncles Joe) taught us this game, we used rocks instead of cans. After we had smashed our fingers enough times with the rocks, we ventured across the street to a greasy gas station and picked up a bunch of empty oil cans. These were real tin cans, and they made the game really fun. They were lighter than rocks, less dangerous (except for minor oil fumes), and they made a lot of noise.
We played the game a lot in our backyard one summer. And then the neighbors started complaining, the noise, the happy sounds of us playing and shouting, arguing over whether the line was crossed or the can was on or off the grate. And mom decided to help us out by making bean bags from some old denim trousers, as a substitute for the cans. It eliminated the clanking, but not the fun, and the arguments to solve the problems of the great game where there were no umpires or referees.There were no tremendous skills involved. and so a very level playing field.
Uncle Joe from Detroit was in his 60s when he showed us how to play, so probably he had played this in the late 1800s.
Thinking about these things gets us back to our roots, where we have come from as individuals, as families and as a consumer nation. We are glad for where we have been, and like to pass on some of the fun to future generations. If the power goes off, and there is no Wii, then we can still have some fun. We should not forget the games of our youth.
We should also like to leave the future generations a land where there is clean air, a level playing field, and a decent infrastructure so the lights won't go out. These too are things that we have grown up with and we owe to the future generations.
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