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Great Wooded South II: Potato Chip Bag Ball Writer, poet, philosopher, activist and rememberer of childhood activities which ought to be preserved Billy Joe Fudge recalls a sport born of nececessity, which provided hours of fun when he was a boy, but never became an Olympic sport: Potato Chip Ball. -CM This is Great Wooded South II. Click on "Snowbird" to read Great Wooded South II. By Billy Joe Fudge Potato Chip Bag Ball Now I know that many of you have been somewhat culturally deprived because you were not raised in the Great Wooded South. Therefore I want you to know that the singular purpose of this and other Great Wooded South digressions is to educate not to embarrass and to inform not to disconcert. "Necessity is the mother of invention," they say and I believe it. Of course as often the case may be with blanket statements such as this one, many of the nuances of genius that lead up to the final product can be missed. That is why I want to chronicle as many of the details as possible concerning the development and play of Potato Chip Bag Ball. As you might have already guessed Potato Chip Bag Ball is or was played with a potato chip bag or that is with two potato chip bags. The game roughly resembled baseball in that there were four bases. Potato Chip Bag Ball had a first, second, third base and home base. The rules were pretty much the same as baseball, but the paraphernalia was much different. First played by J D Strange and author Potato Chip Bag Ball was first played by the Great Wooded South's most famous ambidextrous athlete, J D Strange and of course me. We played exclusively at Mrs. Wheeler's store and gas station under the covered breezeway on rainy mornings prior to school. Many credible sources claim that a Texas Oil Man was inspired by our rainy day games under the covered breezeway and went back to Houston and built the Astrodome which opened in 1965. It is hard to believe that the cultural center of the Great Wooded South was the inspiration for what was deemed at the time, "the eighth wonder of the world". Anyway some of the particulars were: first base - door jam, second base - cover for the in ground fuel tank, third base - ethyl gas pump and home base - crack in the floor. My bat was my right hand but, you guessed it, J D's bat was either hand. Ball was made with two Gordon's Plain Potato Chip bags The ball was made of two 10 cent Gordon's Plain Potato Chip bags. One bag was crunched and wadded into a ball then inserted inside the other bag. It was then crunched and wadded very tightly around the interior bag. A lot of research went into development of the potato chip bag ball. Several other product bags were tried such as: Hostess Banana Flip bags, Kern's Loaf Bread Bags, and Zero Candy Bar Wrappers. None exhibited the qualities needed to make a superior ball. Additionally, J D and I would crank out a fresh supply of Potato Chip Bag Ball materials each morning. Mrs. Wheeler hoarded Kern's Loaf Bread bags for own use The Kern's Loaf Bread Bags held a lot of promise. Mrs. Wheeler's sandwich trade was sufficient to crank out several empty bags daily. However, Mrs. Wheeler hoarded these bags for her own personal use. She wore a Kern's Loaf Bread Bag over each shoe every morning to keep her shoes and feet dry. Her feet had been frostbitten back in the 30's and she knew better than to get her feet wet with dew. According to her dew was poison to frost-bitten appendages. I have searched the internet for years but have yet to find a paper on this public health hazard. Hopefully, one or more of our local Harvard graduates will take up this weighty matter. Well, much to our dismay Potato Chip Bag Ball just did not catch on at the national level. J D and I had dreams of this sport of local lore becoming an Olympic event but after a couple of years of making early morning gas customers pump gas in the rain, we (Mrs. Wheeler) discontinued the rainy morning sessions. Maybe Banana Flip Bag Ball would have been a catchier name. Yes, we were greatly disappointed but to have had such a huge role in the inspiration of the construction of "the eighth wonder of the world" is sufficient consolation. This story was posted on 2009-03-29 01:30:52
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Have comments or corrections for this story? Use our contact form and let us know. (AD) - Many Reunion organizing efforts are also advertised in our REUNIONS category in our CM Classifeds. These are posted at a very low cost. See RATES & TERMS More articles from topic Local History:
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