Calf Rope

My two brothers and I liked to tie each other up and see how to get out. I think it came from watching those serials and cowboy movies on Saturdays (price: 10 cents). We would bring sandwiches and watch a double-header, staggering out into the bright light of a Saturday afternoon, minds filled with rescue and adventure.

Our favorite tie-up method was "hog-tieing." The two would get the one flat on his stomach (voluntarily or involuntarily depending on the mood of the moment), loop the rope around his pulled-back neck, and tie the other ends to his lifted-up ankles. Hands were tied behind the back with a short rope.

In those days, yes kids, even before television and way before fritter and twitter, we always had a supply of rope and sticks and rubber inner tubes of tires and string and tongues cut out of old shoes and rubber bands and homemade glue and so on, the simple materials of life from which so much could be fashioned: sling shots, kites, bow and arrows, cudgels, poison sticks (remind me to tell you about poison sticks).

We would sit and watch the tied-one struggle until he either got out or said the shameful words of surrender: "calf rope." We got better at both tying and freeing ourselves, ever-escalating arts. Ah, the simple pleasures of a Georgia boyhood!