Thump… thump… thump… thump, “You suck! Watch this!” …thump …thump …thump …thump, “Ha! Seven! That’s twenty-one, loser! Game over!” music blares while groans and insults fly. Laughter and the steady hum of conversation fill the air, as night falls. Beer flows, offering relief from the summer heat; a golf cart arrives bringing spotlights to fend off the darkness and another game begins.
In many campgrounds, a typical Saturday night involves a game known by different names – cornhole, sack toss, dummy boards, or doghouse, but in central Illinois it’s simply bags.
Only bad weather stops gameplay. Terry Lee Lacy, a Jacksonville local and campground bags champion, described his experience playing the game, “It’s about the people, you have some assholes, but we do our own little thing …play bags, drink have a good time.”
Something that is quite prevalent, at least at a campground in Jacksonville, IL, is the trash talk. Good-natured ribbing is just part of the game. Adding another layer of skill, players trade barbs as they try knocking opposing teams off their game.
Sandy Martin, another full-time RVer and avid bags player, added “…it’s all part of the game. You talk shit to each other, but everyone knows you really love them. We’re all just family here.”
Reminiscent of horseshoes and just as popular, game play involves tossing a small fabric filled bean bag towards a raised board with a hole cut into the center. The goal being to get the bag into the hole. Four players, two to a team, take turns tossing four bean bags each, at a board until one team scores twenty-one, thus winning the game.
Both horseshoes and bags are similar to an ancient game, quoits. A ring toss type game, quoits is described in Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica and is considered the inspiration behind a game depicted in a Greek myth involving the lovers, Apollo and Hyacinth.
The modern game bags, however, originated in 1883 with a filing submitted to the United States Patent office. It describes an indoor game called Parlor Quoits. The patent details the dimensions of a game board and includes rules describing a game that has players tossing bags filled with beans at a square hole cut into a raised wooden board.
An early 1970’s magazine article printed in Popular Mechanics described a game called “bean-bag bullseye”, like bags it had a comparable system of scoring. It differed, however, in the dimensions of the board and actual game play.
The gameplay of bags that is used today was developed in Illinois and spread to northern Indiana through the 1970’s and into the 1980’s. Cornhole is basically the same game, but developed independently in Cincinnati, OH. Bags and cornhole were both inspired by the Popular Mechanics article.
In bags, points are calculated from the number of bags that land on the board or go through the hole. Each bag on the board is one point while a bag in the hole is three. Cancellation scoring is used, where at the end of a round, the difference in points between the teams is awarded to the winner of the round.
While essentially the same, the primary difference lies in the way the game is scored. In cornhole the winner has to score twenty-one points, if a team scores higher than twenty-one, they lose a certain number of points, and the game continues until one team receives exactly twenty-one points.
There are three professional organizations centered around the game of bags. The American Cornhole Association (ACA) primarily sells cornhole related equipment, while also providing game instruction and tournaments.
The other two organizations are the American Cornhole Organization (ACO) and the American Cornhole League (ACL). The ACO acts as a governing body, while the ACL promotes the game by helping groups manage their leagues, sponsoring special events and developing player talent.
Bags is extremely easy to learn and play, is a great low-impact workout, and people of all ages and abilities can play. Tossing the bags just right is akin to Tai Chi. Moving your body in a way that you manage to get each bag into the hole or on the board works muscles throughout the body.
There are always multiple games of bags going on at Crazy Horse Campground. In the summer, RVers with seasonal sites have games set up every weekend (and even on the occasional weekday) throughout the season.
Crazy Horse Campground is located in central Illinois and is open from April through the end of October. They offer weekend and seasonal sites to campers. The campground also sponsors the occasional tournament during the season for their guests.
Don’t be shy, come on out for a game!
THE CAMPER 