RolleyHoleMan

Hey all, new here. Some of you have more context about me and marbles so I will keep it short. I digitalize photos for Tennessee State Parks and teach people how to play marbles games such as Rolley Hole at Standing Stone State Park. We have a rich marbles history both in the park and locally. In 1992 we sent a marbles team to the UK to play marbles. Here is a photo of the late Junior Strong and Queen Elizabeth where he is showing her how to hold a marble and shoot. For years my boss thought it was a fake with a cardboard cutout but well, we don’t think so. Judge for yourselves. This one was digitalized from a Kodak 35mm color slide and appears to be a photo of a photo, as I had to crop it and a white background.

Luckily this photo is on my phone.

Here is the live stream that was later uploaded. Now there is a lot of good footage here HOWEVER the last game that determined the champs was cut from the stream. The kid who did the videos originally only posted the last game, then when editing he cut the last game and posted the rest. The last game was described by Bobby Fulcher (the father of this tournament) as the best game he’s seen in his 40 years. It was intense and we all stood there in silence. Every shot was a hit and it was an insane battle. When the last marble was in, one of the winners ran around hootin’ and hollering while CBS news dismounted their camera and they, and the locals all stormed the field.

It can be very confusing but the livestream by Overton events on YouTube isn’t too bad. The ESPN videos I need to post have computer generated graphics and coverage of a game that’s very good. It’s made for the general public so it has some good breakdowns. The major obstacle is I have digitalized thousands of photos and many videos and am struggling to find the best way to get them into the hands of the general public. I have everything from unknown photos of Cordell Hull (father of the UN) to a photo of Junior Strong (local marbles player) showing the queen of England how to hold and shoot a marble. I also have coverage of the 1998 international marbles event here with many many photos of marbles and people enjoying games. It’s nuts and I haven’t found an appropriate platform to get these out in a place where they’re not hidden in some corner of the internet.

Yep those are the shots! There’s some comic strips that ran in the 90s somewhere I have to find. Some should be saved to my laptop. We used to be allowed to make and sell Peanuts shirts with the strips on them and some people do wear them. They used to sell is the rights for a symbolic $1.00, then after Schultz passed they upped the price, then didn’t allow it at all. In Tompkinsville they sell Dumus Walker shirts as well.

Hey all, new here. I see I have some pending messages to get to but while I have access to my laptop I am sending some documents about Rolley Hole marbles. One is an interpretative program, and the others are handouts we give to guests who visit and have no idea what is going on. The Rolley Hole tournament is ongoing and occurs every year at Standing Stone State Park in Hilham, TN, usually in September. We have live music, food, live marble making, glass blowing, etc. There are also some youtube videos up along with some live streams of gameplay. 1873_001.pdf Rolley Hole Rules.pdf Rolley Hole score.pdf

Hey all, originally I joined for some marbles identification which I will get to later. However I’m from Tennessee and will share something with you all (and hopefully get to posting documents if I can get the PDF to my computer, which may be a while). I am from East TN but moved to Middle TN to get my Bachelors in wildlife fisheries science, which then got me into working for Tennessee State Parks as an interpretative park ranger. I am seasonal so I have bounced around to a few parks, but the one I will talk about is Standing Stone State Park. Standing Stone State park is a pretty special place when it comes to many things, but the main topic will be... Marbles! So why is a state park associated with marbles? Standing Stone State park was founded in 1939 and was a project by the WPA, a FDR era New Deal project aimed at giving jobs to the locals, fixing erosion, and giving a recreation spot for the surrounding counties like Jackson, Overton, Putnam, and Clay county. In Overton, Clay, and Warren county (this one is Kentucky), there’s a regional game known to the locals as “Rolley Hole”. Rolley Hole is played on a 25x40’ dirt yard with a fine layer of silt, and 3 holes situated in a straight line in the middle of the yard a good distance apart. Two teams of Two people work their way up and down the yard 3 times getting their marbles into the hole while playing offense and defense. It is often described as crochet with marbles with aspects from many different sports. Players each play with a single hand made stone marble made from flint or agate, which is necessary since we shoot with force that will shatter glass marbles. These marbles are pretty special and are often passed down through generations. Making these marbles has changed over the years with the original processes like a bow drill or even a hole under a waterfall being used to roll the marble round. This is a pretty complicated game but we have some fresh videos on YouTube along with some gameplay that has commentary from players. We have been covered on various news broadcasts such as ESPN, The Heartland Series, PBS, and CBS news, and have a NEW broadcast coming up next September on CBS for our 40th Rolley Hole. At Standing Stone we have a yearly tournament for Rolley Hole started by TN State Park naturalist (now park manager) Bobby Fulcher who put in the Rolley Hole yard here at Standing Stone in 1982. His words are along the lines of the locals loved the game, so he put it a yard for public play. Like putting in a basketball court or tennis court. The yard was renamed and dedicated to Bud Garret, an African American blues musician and marble maker from Free Hill, TN. He passed in 1987 on his marbles yard while playing marbles. Since then Standing Stone has been the host of many marbles related events such as sending a team of marbles players to play in the UK in 1992, in which they won. Later in 1998 they hosted the international marbles event which featured games like British marbles, Cherokee marbles, Ringer marbles, Tennessee Square, Georgia Rolley Hole, and of course Rolley Hole. Anyways that’s a lot to read. I teach people to play Rolley Hole, Georgia Rolley Hole, Ringer, and Schoolyard marbles. If there is interest I am working on a digitalizing project where I have been digitalizing photos and videos and will be posting (on YouTube), many of the previously mentioned marbles videos. All were found on a single beat VHS tape and were not known to exist beyond “Yeah we have some videos somewhere”. All I can say is I’m a bit nuts about marbles despite being no good. fun facts: Standing Stone State Park is the only specific location Charles Shultz mentions besides the thanksgiving episode. It was featured in a few comic strips in the 90s, and then was featured in a TV Movie titled “he’s a bully Charlie Brown”. It is the only Charlie Brown thing I know of where Charlie is good at something and considered not a loser. take special note of the marble trophy in the episode and it will have our name on it, though it will be dated 1939 (long before the tournaments took place here).