Straight Town

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Game	Straight Town
Game Family	Baseball Baseball
Location
Regions
Eras	1800s
Invented	No
Tags
Description	19th-century reflections from essays by schoolboys in rural Virginia: [William Ayers Dyer essay:] "I was born May 10, 1880 at Stratton, Dickenson County, Virginia and started to school to Johnson Skeen at the Buffalo School in 1885 when I was 5 years old... The games we played at the Buffalo were straight town, round town, base, bull pen and antnee over." (Bull pen was dodgeball, but played with a baseball. Ouch!) ---------- [Hampton Osborne (b. 1894) essay: "'Round-town' and 'straight-town' were popular games. Round-town had four bases in a circle, as baseball does today. If the batter was caught or crossed-off both ways, he was out. Straight-town had four bases in a row and you used the same rules as round-town."There were three or four base games, but 'Stink-base' was the most popular..." {describes game effectively identical to prisoner's base, which we take to be a form of capture-the-flag)
Sources	Dennis Reedy, ed., School and Community History of Dickenson County, Virginia
Source Image	[[Image:\|left\|thumb]]
Comment	Found by Bill Hicklin, email of February 6, 2016. Edit with form to add a comment
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