Erma Zimmerman is a nice lady almost ninety. I first met her in 1971 in a convalescent hospital. She had suffered a stroke while in Central America on a vacation with her husband Phil. She was flown home on a stretcher for treatment in Oceanside, California. She had a dazed expression on her face with severe weakness on one side of her body, and she couldn't walk. As her physical therapist I became very close to her and she trusted me. After she recovered her strength she and her husband became friends with my family. Her husband Popo, her pet name for him, was in his nineties when he died. I dropped by last week to visit her after hearing she had a bad cold. She answered the door wearing bed clothes, but she was getting over the cold. We visited and after a while she told me about a game she played as a child in Illinois.
"Mumble peg is a boys game, but I was a farm girl, and I played it too. You need a sturdy pocket knife that folds up. It should have some weight to it, but it doesn't need to be sharp. When it's open it should be five or six inches long. You start the game holding the tip of the blade between your thumb and index finger and draw your wrist back toward your shoulder and flip the knife down to stick in some soft dirt. It has to stick with the handle up, not slanting too much. You should be able to get two fingers width between the handle and the soil. The game continues using the thumb with a different finger each time. If you miss, it's the other guy's turn."
Mrs. Zimmerman then explained to me more complicated tosses they used to challenge their opponents. "Break the Goose's Neck" is a throw in which the blade is held between the index and middle finger. The throw is made by striking the handle of the knife with the index finger of the other hand. "Upset the Apple Cart" has the knife lying flat in the palm of the hand with the handle of the knife lying between the middle and ring fingers. The knife is released with a forward flip of the wrist. The remaining tosses all used the same method, but off of different parts of the body. For example, the knife would be balanced on the shoulder and then be flipped to the ground with the supporting index finger. Using this same method, the elbow, knee, big toe and even the top of the head would be used in a similar fashion. Mrs. Zimmerman went on to say that even though this was a boys game, she put quite a few boys to shame with cutlery expertise.