“I declare it’s marked out just like a large chessboard! There ought to be some men moving about somewhere-and so there are!”
-ALICE IN “THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS” BY LEWIS CARROLL
OAK PARK’S BORROWED TIME CLUB, whose members were old enough to consider themselves to be living on borrowed time, saw the Scoville Park checkerboard as a chance to extend the loan a bit more. Instead of sitting around a table getting stiff and sore, the aged checkers aficionados could get some fresh air and stay limber by using hooked sticks to move the wooden discs around the 20-FOOT-SQUARE BOARD. Depending on how they handled jumps, it may have kept them very limber indeed.
Minimum age required to join the Borrowed Time Club at its inception: 70.
Number of men that were needed to move the 6.5-FOOT-SQUARE TILES in the world’s largest Scrabble game, played in 1998 in London’s Wembley Stadium: 2.
Approximate age of the game of checkers: 4,000 YEARS.
Sources: Tribune archives, news reports, American Checker Federation. Corbis photo.
