A Primary School fad – marbles – ringers, follow-the-leader, castles, 9-holes.
Everywhere – at home, at school – the competition was on.
The champs of Guildford Rd – arguably, the whole of Penrith – Team Percy & Cowan
The collection grew – 100’s, and grew – 1,000’s
Eventually over 20,000.
Luckily Bram’s glass-eye didn’t drop into marble box.*
Notes & Extras
* Don’t know about the glass eye? See Short Memory No. 7 – A Scary Eyeful.
Some advice about playing marbles …
Here’s an excerpt from “How to play Ringers.” Click here (or the image) to go to How to play Marbles for the rest of the rules and rules of other games (mind you some of them have different names.).
The big play … knocking out your opponents “Taw”.
FIG. 7: child No.2 chooses to try for No. 1 child’s shooter and knocks it out of ring, winning all the marbles No.1 has taken and putting No.1 out of that game. Or he could shoot as shown in Fig. 8.
365 Short Memories 
I had forgotten about marbles. When I was a kid, we played Big Ringie and Little Ringie. The most prized marble was a Connie Agate.