When I was a small boy growing up in Beaver City, Nebraska during the late 1940's one of the games we played was 'Marbles'.
There were several variations to the game. One was
putting some marbles inside a circle drawn in the dirt and then using your
'shooter' to try to hit them. If
you hit one, then it was taken outside of the circle and you continued to shoot
until the circle was empty. Another was calling 'lagging' in which you tried to
shoot your marble closest to a line drawn in the dirt.
These games could be played for
fun or for 'keeps' where marbles were won by hitting them in the circle game or
being closest to the line in the 'lagging' game.
Marbles were relatively cheap to
buy by the bag full. 'Aggies' or
marbles made from agate stone were especially prized and most often used as
shooters. There were two sizes of marbles with the smaller ones being most
common. One variation of the game let you use the larger size as the shooter.
And of course, being small boy capitalists, trading marbles back and forth was undertaken with a set of rules to be followed about the values of different types of marbles. As I remember clear marbles were worth about three of the cloudy or colored ones.