I instantly recognized the shape of the flat wooden item on the auction table, but its current function was far different from what I remembered.
I flipped it over and saw the familiar cowboy on his bucking horse paddling a ball. This was a Fli-Back paddle ball straight from my childhood. I remember trying to bat the ball so that it would hit the center of the paddle in a harmonious connection. Many times the two did not meet graciously – the ball having a mind of its own as it went off in its own direction above the paddle, beneath it or up against my forehead.
Paddle balls had been around long before I picked one up. Kids had been playing with them in some form since the 1920s, but they didn’t become popular until the 1930s when a man named James Emory Gibson started making them in High Point, NC. He was spurred by a paddleball-type toy that his daughter had gotten as a giveaway at an ice cream shop, according to his grandson.
The country was in the midst of a Depression and so was Gibson and his company. He made the first of the paddle balls in a woodshed, loaded them into a car and sold them locally, according to a 1950 newspaper article that included an interview with Gibson. They were sold cheaply, and they were so much fun that they were an instant hit. The company sold millions of Fli-Backs, and eventually expanded into yo-yos, rubber balls and spinning tops, and more.
Steve Langley, the Paddle Ball King who holds two Guinness Book of World Records for his exploits, noted on his website the presence of Fli-Backs in several movies, including the hilarious scene with Mel Brooks and Harvey Korman in “Blazing Saddles.” He showed off a 9-footer two years ago that he’d also like to get into Guinness.
In its new incarnation, the paddle at auction had neither ball nor the rubber string that once attached it. Someone inventive had found a more interesting use for it, and it actually worked. Once a child’s toy, it had now become an object of what was once called “women’s work.” And many of them would have found it handy.
Can you guess what it is? Click on the photo below to see if you guessed right.
