dead box n Philadelphia PA
The game of skelly n; the central box in the layout for this game.
1923 Philadelphia Inquirer (PA) 24 Aug 2/5, The sixteen winners of the semi-finals . . appeared on the field. . . Each was armed with a favorite supply of “pop” bottle tops, milk tops and brightly colored wooden discs, the regulation weapons of the game, which was adopted from a popular street game known as bottle-tops, jinx, Scotch and dead-box. 1950 (1973) Smith Anger 56 sPhiladelphia PA [Black], Theodore liked certain kinds of poetry and certain kinds of novels and certain of his lady teachers in the school. He knew nothing about baseball or football or deadbox. 1975 PA Folklife Spring 20/1 Philadelphia PA, Marbles were still [in the late 1920s and 1930s] a favorite of the boys. . . They also shot bottlecaps; this was known as Deadbox. The object was to shoot the bottlecaps from one consecutive number to another being sure to avoid deadbox (the center). 1995 Philadelphia Daily News (PA) 14 Feb 12/2, Born, raised and still living in South Philadelphia, Corazo calls it Dead Box. . . “They still play it the old way,” he added. . . With a piece of chalk, draw a large square in the middle of the street. . . Inside the square, draw 14 blocks, numbering one to 14. Smack dab in the middle of the square, chalk another box. Inside it, draw a skull and crossbones. This is the dead box. Next, get a bottle cap. Weight it down with melted crayon wax. . . the first one to shoot a bottle cap . . inside each numbered box in sequence, then into the dead box, wins. 1995 Philadelphia Daily News (PA) 13 Mar 29/3, [Letter:] We played deadbox in the 1930s and ’40s when we were kids. . . We had chalk and made the diagram right in the streets. We used soda bottle tops for shooters, or if some kids had money, they would buy regular checkers. For the dead box, we had a skeleton in the middle of the diagram. Whoever landed in the dead box lost.