My daughter, Heidi, snatches up another handful of marbles emptying the last pocket and adding to her pile, “I won!” I lose another round of Mankala. She and I have played this game for hours at a time, a game she learned in elementary school years ago. And incorrectly, I might add. I correct her by reading the rules (her “rules” seemed rather slanted to the starter of the game) and then I begin to win a game here and there. And that’s how it should be: television off, family gathered together to play games. Like families used to, before the onslaught of television and other electronic distractions.

That’s the way Pete Damone and his partner, Don Pfeiffer, see it. Bringing families together to play games. To interact, the way families did generations ago.

To that end, Pete and Don have recreated a number of games from their youth: Chinese Checkers, Danish Solitaire, Tic-Tac-Toe, Nine-Man Morris (okay, so this one is from Shakespeare’s youth), as well as a about 15 others. Made of local Vermont hardwoods (walnut and cherry), and crafted by Vermonters, these games and their company, Break Away Enterprises, Inc., have won the Vermont Seal of Approval, a signal honor. The company is a member of the Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility. Pete and Don believe in micro economics, using recycled cartons and even some of the games are made with the leftovers from bigger ones. This July marked their second anniversary. Two years of marketing these heirloom-quality memories.

When the business first started, the two partners looked first to suppliers in the Mad River Valley where they live. If they couldn’t find a supplier that close, they looked to Lincoln, Northfield and Richmond. Occasionally, they must travel farther afield; their cartons come from Bennington. Their printing and advertising is done in the Valley by Adworks.

This year, for a lark, Pete, his wife, Dottie, and Don are selling the games at the Waitsfield Farmer’s Market on Saturday mornings. “Test-marketing,” is how Pete describes it, “We get good feedback on what works, what people want.”

The boards attract a crowd as parents, remembering their family gatherings, buy the games for their kids. One young girl conned her father into purchasing a large chess set with the vow that she would trounce him. “Yeah, right,” he laughed as he handed over the check while she picked out the hand-crafted chessmen.

Museums are selling a fair amount of one particularly nasty puzzle: Mental Aerobics. Using a collection of different geometric shapes (parallelograms, trapezoids, rectangles, triangle, squares), the challenger has to recreate silhouetted shapes shown in a booklet using all of the pieces. It isn’t that easy. There are only about 100 different little tricky shapes to try, as they get increasingly harder the deeper into the book you venture. The Chinese used this puzzle to sort out the “leaders” from the “followers” among their children. The “leaders” will start and finish the puzzle, sticking with it until it’s done. And perhaps, start another. The “followers” tend to give up or try something else. It never fails. Don loves to watch people try the game. He beams when someone succeeds, he shakes his head when a “follower” quits and walks away.

“Thinking keeps you alive,” both Don and Pete will tell you. “People who challenge their minds stay young.”

Pete Damone is a tall, friendly, handsome man, with a wide perfect-tooth grin, who admits to hovering around the big 6-0 mark. When he isn’t planning new games with Don, he spends his time in his immaculate barn (you can eat off the floor, if you’re a little crazy) caring for his four horses or hanging around the backyard with Dottie and their five dogs. He is not above getting down and dirty, doing hard work himself.

Pete stays young, not only playing his games (I dare you to challenge him to a game of Nine-Man Morris) and thinking up new, fiendishly devious ones, but by playing polo as well.

Polo? Why not? Which is what he said when he was living on Long Island and happened to catch a game. Reckoning he could do that, he built a small stable and got a horse. The next weekend, he built another stall to his stable and added another horse. And again, for the next three weekends, he added yet another stable and horse. Passers-by thought that was a tad strange, all this growing stable business, “Gee, wasn’t there only one (two, three...) stable(s) last week?” Pete grins when he tells the story. “Yeah, and I taught myself to play polo, too.”

Tiring of New York’s hustle where he worked as a salesman for Universal Gym, he and Dottie moved to Stowe and bought a house. Pete joined the Stowe Polo Team. Yet, every time his team played against the Sugarbush Polo Team, headquartered in the Mad River Valley, he found he enjoyed their company immensely. The Sugarbush team is made up of players from a variety of professions: a hair specialist, retired Vermont Council on the Arts president, plumber, a lawyer (female); in words, an eclectic bunch of polo addicts — like himself. They practice three nights a week in the Valley, playing scrimmage and practice games with each other. The team sponsors and competes in four tournaments in Quechee and Stowe. The money raised in Quechee goes to the Mary Hitchcock Hospital in New Hampshire. He liked the casual friendships, the combination of men and women playing his adopted sport.

Which offered the question: So why not move to the Valley?

Three years in Stowe had convinced the Damones that they were still in a “New York-like” atmosphere. They decided to house-hunt. They settled on building a home on a hill in East Warren, overlooking the small airport and very close to the many polo fields scattered around the Mad River Valley. Of course, as luck would have it, Pete’s job disappeared just as their new house was close to completion. They told the builder they were moving in now! They couldn’t wait for the job to be done. The house was more or less finished anyway.

Not one to stand still, Pete went to work for a company organizing golf tours to Europe. While cross-country skiing one afternoon, Dottie met Don Pfeiffer. During their conversation Don told Dottie that he was out of work and looking for a job. Dottie suggested that Don talk to Pete. Briefly, Don worked for Pete with the golf tours but that wasn’t working too well for either of them.

Don remembered the games he used to play as a child and thought they might make a grand way to make some money. So did Pete. Break Away Enterprises was born. They started with Mental Aerobics.

The second game was the Odds Game. If you like to take a chance on numbers and dice, this one’s for you. An improvement of the original design, with higher sides to keep the dice inside, a better liner, and — a better, livelier game. A roll of the dice, and using the numeric result, move the little slides to cover the numbers — one through nine. The first person to cover all nine numbers with an even roll of the dice wins. Free gambling. When I work on their computer to help them out, Pete and I play usually manage quite a few rounds of the Odds Game while we’re discussing more mundane computer topics. It’s an unconscious act, grab the game and start heaving dice.

Those two games did so well, they added more. Their first orders were for 36 Mental Aerobics games in September 1993. When they added Tic-Tac-Toe, they sold 3,600 units!

Break Away is marketing from 15 to 20 games at any one time. Many of the games were suggestions from purchasers. Many from history. “People love the association with history,” Pete said. Mankala, known by many other names, originally came from China as Count and Capture is the world’s oldest game. But the common perception is that it came from Africa. Mankala, under various different names, is used as a learning tool in schools and played throughout the world.

Nine-Man Morris was mentioned in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but predates the Bard himself. King Henry played it (Pete hasn’t elaborated on which of the eight Henrys he means). “Many people don’t want to accept the challenge of Nine-Man-Morris,” says Pete, somewhat frustrated, because he generally wins and wants more competition. Basically, it’s a three-tier game that starts out in round one very similar to tic-tac-toe. Round two moves on to headier ground, with the blocking of your opponents pegs. Round three is the killer round — you take the other guy’s pegs until the board is yours. However, I did beat him on our first game. Although, he allows that he let me win. (Right.)

Many games have been donated to local nursing homes. Typically, when Don brings in one of their huge Chinese Checkers boards with the “smokestack pegs” (suitable for less-than-agile-hands to manipulate) the residents gather, delighted, for a tournament of their old favorite. It happens again and again. The television is ignored, the game becomes the center of activity. As six people can play at once, this starts conversations in a once silent room.

The Marriott nursing facilities use the games because the pegs are colorful, highly visible, chunky, and easy to handle. Playing games is a great way to develop dexterity and skills, have fun and at the same time keeping minds active.

Planning a long ride with kids? The pegged games are great take-alongs. Parts don’t get lost. It gives children something interesting and different to do, leaving adults to concentrate on driving.

Pete and Don are always looking for more games to produce. “Send me a drawing, write me about it, we’ll make it.” Pete said. He isn’t kidding. Pete is the “design guy.” Don, the marketing guru. Their latest effort is cribbage. “That game is making a comeback.”

Because a fair number of people wish to play alone, or live alone, they have added a few versions of Solitaire: Danish, French and variations on several English games. More nasty little brain teasers.

Pete laughs as he relates, “We had a call from a woman in Nebraska who received French Solitaire as a gift. She had played in constantly and couldn’t win. She called to see if the game was winnable. I told her it definitely was, you can end the game by getting the last marble into the middle hole. She said she’d continue to try.” Of course, Pete has won that one many times — with the marble in the correct hole. The closest I have come, is the marble in a hole next to the middle one. Not bad.

The games originally were sold only in Vermont. Soon, they were marketing and selling them all over New England. Now, they are sold all over the country. Which goes to show you, you can start again.

If you really have a desire to stretch your mind, to challenge yourself, or just wile away some serious time, try one of their games. Challenge a friend to join you. Ask several friends to join you. Remember the bridge games? How about Chinese Checkers tournaments? Remember conversation? Try doing that while the television is going. Maybe you’ll start something “new.”