*WARNING* I just read that Conkers or “Hourse Chestnuts/Buckeye’s” are highly poisonous and can kill you if eatten. DO NOT EAT. I do remember tasting one when I was a a kid, that might explain a lot.

Autum is here and the leaves are starting to fall. This is the time of year for all young boys in Ireland to play a game called “Conkers”. The school I went to had four conker trees that grew along the back of it, these were huge tree’s, and every year they would produce conkers. What is a conker? It is a beautiful brown smooth shiney nut about as big as a golf ball. The are very hard like a chestnut. The game conkers is played like this. You take a conker and drill a hole in it, then take a shoe lace and tie a knot in one end. Run the other end through the hole in the conker until it sits nicley at the other end with the knot. Now you would find another person with the same setup and one person would hold their conker out so it hung from their hand. The other person would swing their conker into it and you would go back and forth until on broke, if yours broke, you have been conkered. Some kids would try and be smart and have conkers froozen from the year before, but these were easy to spot, because the conker would no longer have the nice brown shine a new conker has. There was always a great big hunt each morning before class started for a great big conker that may have fallen from one of the trees the night before. When one was found it was the talk of the school. I have not seen a conker tree here in the USA. This past time was was great and there were a lot of good times, and a lot of heart breaks when a boy would have his conker smashed to smithereens by another boy. Espically when that conker had been king of the hill, and its reign was over. It was sometimes a boys 1st life lesson in defeat. If I had to pick a “thing” that reminded me of Autum in Ireland more then anything it would be the conkers, they are wrapped in a very spikey casing, but once you crack open the shell the prize that is inside was, well….beautiful. Much like people in the world. It’s what is inside that matters, and usually most people are just conkers. (hahaa, get it? I’m so whitty) Anyway Google tells me they are Horse Chestnuts. Does anyone know if we have them here in the USA? To me they will always be conkers. I sure wish I had one.