Retrospect: streets and alleys

Self-tutoring about past people and events: the tutor recalls the game “streets and alleys.”

When I was a kid, I was a member of cub scouts, perhaps for a year or two. Almost everyone was, at that place and time.

One time we went off the base to visit another cub scouts troop “in town.”

On the bus, it might have taken 15 or 20 minutes to reach their parking lot. It was the Maritimes, of course, so not crowded like you might be used to on the west coast: the parking lot was big.

Under streetlights (it was long since dark, but only around 7:30pm) we disembarked from the bus and entered a building which must have been a rec centre. We went down a hall and entered a brightly lit gymnasium which I recall being immense. Along one of its walls we changed from our “outdoor” shoes into our indoor ones (you always did that in winter in the Maritimes when you entered a gym you would play in).

We might have numbered 25 or 30; this troop seemed easily twice our number. Looking back, it may have been several combined. At any rate, they seemed to act as one troop, and were more formal, yet more energetic, than we were. They played games we didn’t.

One game they played – which we witnessed – was “streets and alleys.” We didn’t have the manpower to play it reasonably even if we’d wanted to, but they easily could.

The game worked like this: the non-players would line up in a square grid, arm’s length from each other both front to back and sideways. They would reach out on each side and join hands.

At opposite corners one player was the mouse; the other, the cat. Of course, the cat’s object was to catch the mouse, while the mouse’s was to evade capture.

The cat and mouse could only move parallel with the arms of the people in the grid; they couldn’t cross under the arms.

“Streets” meant the people in the grid would face forward; when “alleys” was called they would let go their neighbours’ hands, turn 90 degrees, and reach out once again, now joining hands with those who had been ahead and behind them.

The effect was that changing from “streets” to “alleys” would change the direction the cat and mouse could go. In one “street” or “alley” they could only reach the next by running around the outside of the grid. At seemingly random times, the caller would announce “streets” or “alleys” at which time the people forming the grid would turn 90 degrees and reform it – then the cat and mouse would have to change direction.

We watched them play a round that took perhaps five minutes. The organization and crispness of the troop in executing it impressed me then, and always has since when I recall it. I might have been around 8, then.

Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.

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