Shinny

Shinny is a game somewhat related, I guess, to field hockey.  I know nothing about field hockey except it seems to be played by girls at prestigious high schools and colleges.

Shinny is (was) not played by girls and was just a crude imitation of field hockey, very crude the way I played it.

My father described the game to me when I was in the fourth grade, 1933.  He and his friends played shinny as kids on Kelly's Island where he grew up in the late 1800's.  They used their hockey (ice) sticks and a rag ball, kind of summer training for the winter sport of ice hockey on Lake Erie.  The idea of a new game for me and my friends in central Ohio seemed like fun.

I introduced this game of shinny to my buddies (no girls allowed).  Sex discrimination was not a problem in those days.  Such discrimination was held as a correct and honorable code of ethics.

This game turned out to be injury prone the way we played it.  We managed to have great fun through two seasons before a teacher decided that it was too dangerous.  We were about to ready for softball anyway.

The equipment we gathered for this game was simple and very inexpensive.  Sticks were just sticks and the puck started out as a tin can.  We either attempted to make a facsimile of a hockey club or found a club or stick that would work.  My old buddy had one ha called the sheep-foot (it kind of looked like one).  Mine was crafted from an old buggy top bow ( a natural curve you know) another kid called his the "switch".  Mate it our of a hickory sprout.  He would fan the ground attempting to hit the can, three licks to my one.  Another boy had the "club" which it was.  The puck or ball (whatever) originated as a bean can (small size) and after 2 recesses it became a fairly round metal projectile capable of blood letting which it frequently let.  Cracked shins and knuckles and various metal cuts kept this game exclusively ours alone.  It seemed great sport to us.

Shinny.  A name I suppose, meaning shins were vulnerable.

I suspect others thought it not worth the damage to skin and limb.  A well hit call made a nice buzz over our heads, although it was no longer a can but was a small ball of tin and you had better duck or you wished you had.

We made our game rules to be few and simple not really knowing much about the real structure of shinny for that matter, ice hockey.

We soon learned how the game got its name.  The one rule that seemed most appropriate was that as you drove toward the goal line, flailing away at the can, you were supposed to stay on the left side of the can.  If anyone, striking at the can on the wrong side he was screamed at the "shinny on your own side" and you were allowed to thrash his legs unmercifully, although it was supposed to be accidental of course.  Shins took a beating.

My old buddy, John Steele McCeary was the proud owner of the "sheep foot."  Leo Hurley favored the "Club."  Bernard Maytz fancied the "switch." Others I have lost the names but we all named and bragged up our own clubs.

And so the game of shinny blossomed and faded at the Huntsville

Ohio Elementary school 1933-1934 never heard from again.

Shinny was mentioned in a short story by author Finley Peter Dunne in a book titled American Wit and Humor which I recently read.  So it did have a past and my father revived its existence during his boyhood days.  I revived it.  Briefly.