Frisbees were flying all over the Chapel Hill campus. I remembered those days when I read the alumni association had invented a way for students to bring back an old recreation: Put a real plate on the floor and toss a paper plate…not your old frisbee…as close as you can.
In those remembered frisbee days, students invented a golf game that called for you to land your frisbee on selected campus landmarks. Sometimes the pates of students headed to class, library, or the student union for coffee became unintended targets.
Tom, a senior student who grew up in Oklahoma, and this teaching assistant Texan had learned a different, more controllable toss game during our youth called ‘washers.’ A game played in the oilfields. You tossed metal plumbing rings—number six washers, often used when connecting pipes. Your targets were small holes dug nearby the rig or in the supply yard.
You may be thinking, sounds like a modern approach where you toss corn bags into holes drilled in a wooden box. Or may remind you of Horseshoes–a game we oilfield trash fear may be revived as we employ more horses to protect the atmosphere from gas-burning vehicles.
Tom and I didn’t start a craze. Some passing students did ask, “What ARE you doing?” We made our point that frisbees weren’t the only game in Chapel Hill,
And no alumni magazine, don’t intend to toss a number-six metal ‘washer’ at the plates my mother left for the family.
