Steal the Bacon

Sunday morning I had the occasion to scamper about 15’ or so. Wanting to readjust a sprinkler’s spray pattern, I hustled in, made the change, and hustled back out of range. In retrospect, given how hot and humid the morning air, not sure why I thought it worth dodging a few drops of water. 

For the sake of accuracy, I did not scurry. One does not scurry at 235 pounds. A scampering it was, short-ish strides, no time for long ones. 

The mini-dash made me think back to playing hours and hours of Steal the Bacon. In the hierarchy of playground battles, Steal the Bacon was topped only by fierce 2-square and 4-square contests that might last an entire recess period.

That scene stirred the memory of the hot sand sticking to our sweaty skin when we would dive for a ball. These struggles, by the way, took place in St. Petersburg, FL in early 60s. Ambitiously we would draw the roughly 8’x8’ boxes that made the generally sedate children’s game an athletic battle royale. 

Steal the Bacon, however, kept us on our feet mostly. A shell, a can, a soda bottle, a baseball, something to place on the ground between the competitors. We would move in cautiously—sometimes feinting a grab of the target to get our opponent to make a premature stab—the basic rules to steal the bacon and retreat to our safe line. Or get tagged. Simple, but nuanced. Guile, quickness, a sure hand, all to be advantaged. 

Snatch the bacon, scamper home. 

The heat of that sand in my mind dredged up trips to the beach as a child. I hated wearing the little rubber flip flops, and so I would hotfoot it from the car across the sun-fried parking lots onto the searing white powdery sand—quick steps, fast fast fast, down finally to the wet sand and into the water. 

I’m telling you, you had to move out or lose the skin on the bottom of your feet.

Which—and this makes me laugh—brought to mind my one record-setting athletic moment. In junior high p.e., various basic track and field events would be timed or measured, the records to be maintained for all to see for all time.

Well, maybe not for all time.

But for some years I held the record for the shuttle run, a short dash to grab an eraser, return to the mark, back to grab another, and then home to run through the line like the end of any footrace. 

I don’t remember the distance, but all those hundreds of games of Steal the Bacon, all those painful runs to the Gulf, those were the underpinnings of my sporting glory. Perhaps, if the Eton playing fields produced victory at Waterloo, then surely the hot Florida sand my path to victory. 

And by way of the last vestiges of muscle memory, my dry run Sunday morning. Laurel crown not included.