The Pensy Pinky was the one used in my neighborhood. Relative cheapness was the attraction. Beautiful when new; filthy very soon afterward. P-Ps also had a certain fragrance… and I’m reminded now about our occasional super-anal focus on acquiring verifiably fresh balls for some of the games (for predictable bounces). P’Ps had a short life.
There was one game you likely didn’t play (unless it escaped our particular neighborhood and spread out from there): We called it ‘Gutter Golf’. As 8th grade parochial school crossing guards, Joe, Ralph, Sal and I came up with it to while away the 15 free minute periods afforded us and bracketing the end of school day outflow. The object was to get a suitably sized pebble onto a street sewer grating without the pebble falling into the sewer. Our feet were the clubs, and we had to accomplish a ‘grate’ with as few attempts as possible, so it required subtly, planning, and luck. It was indescribably addictive, and way too many times distracted us from handling the school traffic. The game usually made us laugh because of the ultra-rare ‘grate-in-ones’ and many screw-ups. Sal was so bad at it that I inferred (by dubbing him “Round Shoes”) that the bottom of his shoes were not flat-bottomed, and therefore prevented him from properly gauging the amount of shoe he put on the pebble. It was all good.
