Mexborough & Swinton Times, September 30, 1932

Old George and yo-yo

What is Yo-Youth Come Into?

Harmless But Daft

It’s a silly game, isn’t it? What such a futility letting it go time after time and fetching it back again? Iike a cat playing with a mouse. That’s what all George thinks about “Yo-Yo” yet our old friend would not be satisfied until he had “had a go.” He played cricket against the Australians (at the nets at Bramall Lane)’in ’72, bowled out Tommy Horan and two other “stars” from the Antipodes, roughed it at football, swum, wrestled and boxed with the best—in fact, he has had a go at all two-fisted games, but up to the time I gave him the opportunity he had never had a stab at Yo-Yo.

Old George was intrigued. He had seen the kiddies twiddling their Yo-Yo’s in the streets of Low Valley and no doubt had ‘longed to try his ‘prentice hand with the bauble but, like many of us, was afraid to show himself up in public. But having been persuaded to grip the magic string he let the gadget fall with a graceful flick. And, presto!—back it came like a well-bred homer. “Yo-Yo,” chuckled the veteran in his hearty way, “not had for a novice, was it?”

Indeed it was not so bad tor a first attempt. Truth to tell, Old George had pulled off a most spectacular “come-back.” No doubt with a little practice and concentration he would be able to twiddle as nifty a finger over a Yo-Yo as any of the experts. I cannot see Old George suffering from Yo-Yoitis, but I don’t think he would mind if someone put one in his stocking—provided it was well tilled with coughdrops and humbugs, which incidentally he prefers to a pipe.

Old George had seen a picture of his namesake, George Rex, luxuriously twiddling his Yo-Yo way back in 1781, and therefore thought there might be something in it—but then George III could Yo-Yo to his heart’s content, leaving affairs of state to his ministers. Old George in the more pressing affairs of family life has never had anyone to deputise for him except his faithful “Old Dutch.”

George Heppenstall (1854-1932 in play) has had to work for a living. Besides, if he had ventured to pick up a Yo-Yo when he was a lad his father would promptly have given him some logs to chop or sent him into the garden. But our old pal had another go, and another, each time getting better. Finally, he wound up the string carefully (a formality strictly observed in all the best Yo-Yo circles) and put the plaything down.

“Now, George,” I asked, “as a man of the world, what do you think to the Yo-Yo? “What do I think about it,” he repeated, to give himself time to think, “What can I think about it?” Then vehemently he added “To me it is just Daft.” He did not mean to be impolite. I knew what he meant. He would probably have used the same expression had I invited his opinion on the new fads of non-stop roller skating, sitting in a barrel and fasting unto death — just time wasting futilities, silly efforts producing no valuable effect, an insult to people who bellieve that life is re.al, life is earnest. “Nowt in it,” old George added expressively. “Harmless enough, but “Just Daft’.”

But Old George is wise in his day and generation. He sees some useful purpose even in the Yo-Yo. The devil, he reminded me, finds evil things for idle hands to do, and while they are twiddling their Yo-Yo’s they are being kept out of worse mischief. People with empty lives might as well be doing that as anything else. He thinks the Yo-Yo is an ideal plaything for the baby in the cradle, but what grown-up folk see in it beats him.

Old George, who lives at Millmoor Terrace, Low Valley, and is the proud possessor of a tankard which he won as one of our oldest readers, has been to places and seen things in years numbering nearly eighty. He talked of the days when there were no picture houses, no street lamps and no bicycles —when the young people of the villages had to provide amusements out of their own heads and of their own resources. “Before we were old enough for the manly sports of football and cricket, he said, “we enjoyed our duckstone, kick-can, ‘lieve 0, tickling windows, Jack shine a light, bobbies and burglars—and we really enjoyed it. If any girl over eight had any idle time on her hands her mother could always find her some sewing or knitting, and they were better wives for it. These Yo-Yo’s make me laugh. Youngsters don’t know what to do to amuse themselves these days.” “They want Yo-Yo- in’ ” he added, contemptuously.

And how many think like Old George?