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By Ilze Zvirgzdins
Imagine girls and boys across the United States scratching circles in the dirt in the backyard or at the playground, flipping small, round pieces of glass with their bent thumbs, honing dexterity and their socialization skills, and ignoring their Nintendos and computer games. Talk about your cheap thrills.
It's a world Marvin "the Marble Man" George would like to see. Maybe, according to the 51-year-old window technician at the Postal Store in Clarksburg, WV, if everybody spent more time playing marbles, the world would be a better place.
You can be a believer, too. George will
convince you in a low-key, soft-spoken manner that belies the
fact that with his piercing blue eyes and not-combed-quite-right
red hair, he looks a lot like a middle-aged Dennis the Menace.
George is on a mission to bring truth, justice and the American way of playing marbles to kids whose lives are too caught up in high-tech amusements or competitive team sports to give much thought to the simple pleasures of knuckling down and tossing a shooter into a pack of mibs and watching them scatter. (Translation: With at least one knuckle on the ground, use the thumb to flip a large marble into a group of smaller marbles inside a three-foot circle. The person who knocks the most marbles out wins. A mib is another term for marble and anyone who shoots a mib is a mibster.)
"I just decided it was going to be a lost thing if we don't get kids playing marbles," says the marble-playing father of a son and daughter who also play marbles. Although he says most people over 40 can remember playing marbles as a kid, relatively few under that age do. "What we're doing is creating marble memories."
George is executive director of the West Virginia Marble Shooters Association, a non-profit group in his native state which organizes tournaments - the next big one is in May - and provides opportunities for children to play marbles. That includes providing the marbles. George single-handedly bags a ton of marbles a year. That's 10,000 bags of marbles. That's 25 marbles to a bag. That's a lot of marbles. (You do the math.)
George keeps the marbles in a shed in back of his house. "I've got bagged marbles, loose marbles and boxed marbles." His wife thinks he spends too much time with marbles.
The marbles, made in the USA at four factories in West Virginia, are sold at elementary schools in the state where teachers have made marble-playing part of the curriculum. Marbles are most popular with fourth- and fifth-graders.
"You looking for a black eye?" he asks the children when he visits schools. "The best black eye's a marble." A black eye marble is black and white. There also are snake eyes, eagle eyes, hawkeyes, buckeyes, crystals, swirls and rubies, to name a few.
Then there are Popeyes. "It's a black and blue marble. I tell the kids that Popeye wasn't really a sailor man. I ask them if they ever wonder why he goes around with one eye closed. Actually, it was a glass eye. He was a marble shooter and he lost his glass eye."
George grins like he knows the secrets of the universe and he isn't telling. He will, however, talk to anyone who wants to help keep alive the joy of marbles. Just call him "Marbleous Marvin." (Write him at the West Virginia Marble Shooters, PO Box 4002, Clarksburg, WV, 26302-4002.
Ilze Zvirgzdins, formerly a writer for the Cable News Network and United Press International, is a freelance writer
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