Nostalgia Gaming in '79

Back around 1979 during hot summer days that made the lemonade all the more sweeter and the water from the sprinklers all the more cooler, there were no home computers and there were no video game systems.

At least not that my family could afford. 

We did have two TVs. Because that new color one moved the black and white one into my mom's room.

My big brother would be outside washing the Vega and Ma was lamenting what the sun would do to the tomatoes in the back yard this year. It seems every year the sun ruined a bunch, but she never stopped planting more.

After the reruns of Star Trek, there wasn't much else to watch, since we only got 5 channels. And channel 13, which was public television, so we didn't count it.

It would be cold cuts for dinner since no one wanted to cook. Dad wasn't going to stand over the grill in that heat and there's no way Ma was staying in the kitchen.

We didn't have air conditioners in every room or anything. Only two older small ones for the whole house. With two brothers and my parents there, this really wasn't enough. A big sky blue sheet hung across the hallway to keep the cool air confined to the three bedrooms. The living room and kitchen were just left to the heat.

Having just finished reading some Heinlein novel, it would be time to move on to other things.

A trip to the now long gone Waterloo Hobbies during the weekend with some money earned from a good report card netted some new games.

Metagames, microgames, whatever you called them, usually ran around five bucks. For a paper map, some monotone cardboard chits you had to cut apart yourself and an arcane rulebook in black and white which assumed a PhD reading level.

SPI had some nice affordable games in real boxes, too. Classics like The Creature That Ate Sheboygan. I couldn't afford the bigger Avalon Hill games on my own, although my brother got me AH's Starship Troopers for Christmas.

Once, I purchased SPI's Demons, at Toys R Us no less, and through extreme luck got a rule book from DeathMaze accidentally included. Being there was a counter manifest on the back, I was able to make a home copy. As there was no internet to get rule books from and my funds were limited, this was nothing less than a golden treasure. It even turned out to be a better game than Demons anyway.

And there was a distinct smell to old air conditioning that was poorly maintained. Wet. Old. Dusty. But so refreshing.  I would lie on my stomach on my bed in the room I shared and open whatever the latest gaming gem was I had procured. Suspended in that box, bag or pamphlet, there was the scent that hung heavy even over the scent of the air conditioner.  An aroma of fresh print, of cardboard, of musty paper. A smell that I had learned was the herald of great adventures.

Tiny black silhouettes, predating fancy modern printing techniques, on tiny cardboard chits that seemed to shed the weirdest little paper dust. It was like tiny cardboard fuzz that collected in the corners of every box and bag these games inhabited. It was impossible to remove, merely part of the fabric of the hobby.

With a deep breath I knew the rest of the evening would be filled with unheard battle cries. Aliens, monsters, bugs, space marines, barbarians and more. They all had the same smell of musty cardboard in wet air conditioned air.

I would examine each counter in fascination. Looking over the tiny numbers and glyphs, determining strengths and strategies. I'd unfold the map.

Dad worked in welding. Somehow he had come across a piece of plastic, like a thin plexiglass. This thing was a blessing as it held down the paper maps that came with most of the games I could afford from my own pocket.

Heart racing, I would stumble through moves as I read the rules, enjoying each word just as much as I did the Edgar Rice Burroughs novels I had started last weekend.

There, on my bed, protected from the sweltering heat by a broken down air conditioner, I was gaming.

It was pure. I was alone. I would introduce my brothers or buddies to some of the better games, but it didn't matter.

There. The smell of the cardboard and the tiny flimsy chits. That was gaming. Before the PC, before beautiful plastic bits in the games, before anyone knew how to edit rules in any decent manner.

It wasn't the churning old air conditioner that made the nights bearable. It was Ogre. And Chitin:I. Sheboygan. Melee. These things would take me away from the heat to far away places that I was part of. Not just reading like a book. My own tales were building, with plot points spinning on the roll of a die.

Tonight, I will go home and play something with that smell with my family. Something with chits. Maybe they're in color now, but their transportive powers remain. 

Something that will cool me off and take me away.