loady n Also sp lodi [See quot 1961] NYC among Black and Hispanic speakers
A bottle cap or similar item prepared for playing the game of skelly n; pl, also loadsies: the game itself.
1961 Daily News (NY NY) 27 Aug 5/2, On 135th St., in Harlem, you’ll see the same chalked diagrams. . . What do they call this game [=skelly]? “Loadies.” “Why loadies?” “We just call it loadies, that’s all,” says one after a moment of confused silence. “It’s called loadies because we take putty off the windows and load up our bottle caps with it,” answers another. 1971 Balagoon Look for Me 93 Harlem NYC [Black], When I was young my mother used to leave me outside while she’d sit on the stoop down the block, and I would play loadies and games like “hot peas and butter” and “kick the can,” funny games like that. No one would let a child do anything that was harmful to himself or harmful to other kids. 1972 Daily News (NY NY) 21 Jan 5/2, The larger boy takes a nubbin of green chalk from his pocket and begins to draw a series of boxes, numbered from 1 to 13, in a rectangular pattern on the asphalt. . . The game, called “tops” by the English-speaking kids and “loady” by the Spanish-speaking ones, is played with chrome casters [appar =glides] taken from kitchen chairs. “You give it weight by filling it with modeling clay or putting it on the radiator and melting crayons into it,” explains the first boy, 10-year-old Alberto Lucena. 1980 Dargan–Zeitlin City Play 81 NYC, Based on a game played with checkers . . , a new game called “skelly” (or “skelsies,” “skully,” “kilsies,” “loadsies,” “caps,” “bottle caps” or “dead man,” depending on the neighborhood) relied on bottle caps . . as playing pieces. 1980 Record (Hackensack NJ) 24 Dec 21/1, What we [=Hispanics] called “lodies” (and white kids called “skelsies”), a game played with anything that slid on pavement in which you pushed your sliding “lodi” into a series of 13 boxes, was the fall game.