Back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when people said things like pastime, simply passing the time and getting through the day were very important. People needed pastimes that took up huge chunks of their day; otherwise, there was very little to do.
If they didn’t have pastimes, people would go home, sit in uncomfortable chairs in the drawing room, and stare at each other – or worse yet, read.
One of the most popular activities in the late 1800s was spitting. People would waste away the days spitting until they ran out of phlegm. It was something that everyone could do, and they could do it pretty much anywhere, as spitting was allowed in most schools, churches, and stores. People would spit everywhere – off bridges, into puddles, on their shoes, and into their hands before they clapped. They would even use spit to clean their face like a cat.
Another favorite pastime in America back in the late 19th century was train watching. The train-watching craze gripped the nation for several years. People loved the fact that trains were so long. You could easily kill an hour or more by watching one train and all its cars go by. People would line the tracks ten deep whenever a train came through their town. Then they would come back later in the day when that train came back through again. Every day, people could literally kill 2-4 hours watching trains.
Eventually, train watching fizzled out as kids gravitated to the pastime that would pass even more time: baseball. Baseball soon became not only the most popular game played in pajamas, but also America’s greatest pastime. You could kill even more time playing baseball than you could watching trains, as it could take up to half the day – literally six hours – to play one game of baseball.
Kids also played a variation of baseball called stickball. In places like Brooklyn, all kids were required by law to play stickball and then wax poetic about it when they got older, like Billy Crystal and Woody Allen.
But stickball started to fall out of favor in Brooklyn due to the fact that there was only one tree in Brooklyn. The kids tore that one tree apart for sticks until, eventually, the tree was gone. After that, kids started playing baseball with piano legs, since there were a lot of pianos in Brooklyn. However, when the piano legs were torn off, pianos would start falling out of apartment windows and rolling down streets like they did in Laurel and Hardy movies. Ultimately, piano ball was outlawed as several people were crushed by rolling pianos.
Ultimately, baseball and all of its variations fell out of vogue, as Americans of all ages became enthralled by this new invention called TV. People would sit for hours on end and watch virtually anything that Hollywood served up, including Hee Haw, the spin-off Hee Haw Honeys, and a variety show starring the mime duo Shields and Yarnell, featuring, occasionally, the stars from Hee Haw.
TV was the most popular American pastime for decades until Al Gore came along and invented Internet porn. Now, smartphone porn is America’s pastime and will remain as such until virtual reality porn takes over.