Vintage photos of N.J. fun in the good ol' summertime

I confess that I have characterized kids growing up in the age of the smart phone as less creative than their parents; I was wrong.

Please straighten me out.

I was either completely out of the loop as a child, or "duck, duck goose" was just not a game played in South Jersey.

Recently, I watched children play "duck, duck goose" in an airport and I had to ask someone the object and rules of the game. The adult who kindly answered my questions clearly had played before.

I understood the "goose" part, but wasn't really sure about the need for "duck, duck." I was sure, however, that I never played this particular game as a child.

Oh for Pete's sake, I forgot the rules to this game too.Courtesy of shorpy.com 

The point is, though, it was nice to see these children playing a game that apparently was passed from one generation to another.

MORE: Vintage photos around New Jersey

I confess that I have characterized kids growing up in the age of the smart phone as less creative than their parents. Well, I was wrong. Now that it's summertime, I'm noticing kids outside playing the way we did in the '60s and '70s.

They are busy on the beach building sandcastles and jumping in the surf; they ride bikes, boards and scooters and play baseball, volleyball, four square and hopscotch.

Sometimes the names change. My son speaks of a game called "volley cheese" -- volleyball where the ball can bounce once before going back over the net. I told him we played the exact same game as kids, but his generation gets brownie points for creative naming; we called it (I'm so embarrassed) "one bounce."

So, I apologize en masse to all of today's youth for having employed the tired cliche of modern children doing nothing but texting and playing video games.

It's summertime - time for children and adults to have fun outdoors; here's a gallery of vintage photos from around New Jersey of folks doing just that. Make sure captions are enabled to see all the information for each photo.

Greg Hatala may be reached at ghatala@starledger.com. Follow him on Twitter @GregHatala. Find The Star-Ledger on Facebook.