In spite of the unusual name, this is a fairly straighforward tag game involving jumping over a wide strip of ground.  Since the sidewalk was narrow enough to jump over and readily available, it was most commonly used for that purpose, which gave rise to the alternate name of "Sidewalk Tag".  The person who was ‘it’ was in the "mud gutter".  They traveled up and down the sidewalk and tried to tag others as they jumped back and forth over the mud gutter.  When someone was tagged, they became "it".