Off The Steps

Written by J.D.

55 years old

South Hills, PA

(Dormont: a small borough outside of Pittsburgh, PA)

(Vodelly: a street within the borough)

Vodelly was a vivacious street to grow up on in the 1970s. In its hay day there were over 50 kids of all ages who lived there. The street was almost perfectly level, and since very few people owned cars, it allowed us to play outdoors without worrying about getting hit.

Most people will remember playing the game “Kick the Can” and “Whiffle Ball” growing up, but we played other games. We didn’t know it at the time, but we played unique games like “Draw a Circle on the Old Man’s Back,” “Release”, “Off the Steps,” and “Cigs”.

To play Draw a Circle on the Old Man’s Back took at least 4 kids. One person leaned against a pole with eyes covered. The other players drew a face on the kid’s back and the person had to figure out who put on the last mark. The drawers sang this song:

“Draw a circle on the old man’s back,

put a dot there, 

put a dot here, 

put a dot THERE!”

Release was a bigger group effort, and we needed someone’s front steps to be our “jail.” It was a form of hide and seek with the steps being the jail was where the kids who were found by the other team had to go and sit. If all of your team members were caught, it would be the other team’s turn to hide. If one of your teammates ran to the jail without being seen and touched any part of the steps, he or she would yell “RELEASE,” and everyone would be free to go and hide again.

Off the Steps was where we threw a tennis ball at the point of a step and then followed the rules of baseball as the ball left the steps. For example, if the ball went over the person’s head and could not be caught, that was a homerun.

Cigs was played between two telephone poles with a kid who was “it” in the center. All players had to run from telephone pole to telephone poll without being tagged. Whoever was tagged last or not at all was the winner.

From time to time, we would leave Vodelly and go into the city of Pittsburgh to go fishing on the Monongahela River. Our form of transportation was the trolley system that is still in full swing to this day. We would grab our fishing gear and bait, a can of corn, and hop on the trolley. We would get off at the B&O train station, which has since been knocked down and was near Grant Street. 

On one occasion, we got as far as the B&O train station, and we realized that we had forgotten our bait. We had to just turn around and hop back on the trolley back to Vodelly. Every once and a while, we would venture inside the station to use the vending machines to get a bag of chips and a pop. From the station, we would have to cross a four-lane highway, Parkway East, to get to the river and then find our footpath to our fishing spot.

The fishing spot and our fishing protocols were handed down to us by our older brothers. Some of the rules we had to follow were that if you caught a catfish, you had to throw it up and over a concrete wall onto the Parkway. Who knew if it hit a car, got run over, or caused an accident? Another rule was if you caught a carp, you had to punt it back into the river. Looking back, how inhumane.

Okay folks, enough reminiscing; anyone up for a game of “Off the Steps?”