Buckeye Season

It’s Buckeye Season, that time from Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, to the time when all of the leaves have crinkled off the trees and lay pulverized under feet and in the streets. Buckeyes on the trees and underfoot peek slyly out of their husks, begging to be gathered. And so we did gather them, and the gathering became our annual ritual.

“Ohio Buckeyes,” © J. Stephen Conn, CC BY-NC 2.0

The congregation I attended was housed in the Hebrew Institute of Pittsburgh, an edifice built in the 1950s, resembling an L-shaped, two-story junior high school. Classrooms bordered the exterior of each hallway, four long hallways. Only the first floor front hall, parallel to Forbes Avenue, was off limits because that one ran along the length of the auditorium where the prayer services were being held. My friends and I were inattentive at times to the lengthy prayer services that started around 8:30 a.m. and ended short of noon on a regular Shabbos, and even as late as 1:30 to 2:00 p.m. on the holidays themselves. The moment the officiant paused for “the speech,” kids fled the room. We knew some “cranky old man” would come out and shush us if we got too wild, so we fled outdoors or scattered to the other three hallways.

“Buckeyes Ready to Fall,” © Sean Benham, CC BY-ND 2.0

Across Forbes Avenue, and a bit past the corner, a large buckeye tree towered over the curb. Buckeyes are also known as horse chestnuts and are the state tree of Ohio. In September, timed perfectly for the holidays, the buckeyes ripened in their husks and dropped to the ground. The spiky husks could be manipulated with the sides or toes of our shiny holiday shoes to free the captive nuts. My fingers remember the prickles of the sharp pods I couldn’t avoid touching. In the mid-1960s our dresses were still relatively long, knee-length at least. That was enough fabric to fill with a good collection of shiny and slightly sticky buckeyes. Our skirts billowed with a mahogany, nut-brown, and coffee-colored fortune.

Buckeyes entertained us in myriad ways. Buckeye games could be played outdoors.”⁽¹⁾ Flicked like marbles, tossed at targets, and used to provoke other kids, buckeyes were all purpose fun. Once back in the building, the second floor above the forbidden hallway became a dark bowling alley. Those scavenged treasures caromed off the walls and skittered down the terrazzo floors. They rolled on the bathroom tiles. They were launched as missiles and stuffed down the unwary child’s shirt collar. My BFF even ventured into the sanctuary and lined them up on the edge of the platform where the adults led the services! I suppose she felt daring because her father was the President, so in her mind she could not possibly get in trouble.

But kids age and after a few years we no longer rolled buckeyes in the hallways and pelted our adversaries. We were too “mature” for those childish pursuits and we girls found better ways to avoid “the speech”… like flirting with boys. I still visited the buckeye tree, however, and always pocketed a few.

Even as a young adult, I visited the buckeye tree in the fall and selected a few beauties. They warmed in my palm and slid together in a satisfying way. They reminded me of those happy childhood activities, but I stayed in the prayer services, even through the dreaded “speech.” On Rosh Hashanah it is customary to symbolically cast off our sins by going to a body of water, reciting some verses, and sprinkling a few bread morsels into the water in the tashlich ritual. In those years, we collected our buckeyes and rolled them down the steep hill of Darlington Road in a tashlich-style ceremony. Gales of laughter and the sensation of our hearts lifting in frivolity followed the buckeyes down the asphalt. Their abandonment released our mirth and enhanced the holiday season.

Beautiful towering flowers in the spring yield shiny buckeyes in the fall. “Aesculus hippocastanum (Horse-chestnut),” © Plant Image Library, CC BY-SA 2.0

Another year I collected enough buckeyes to make long strings to decorate my home’s sukkah, the temporary outdoor dwelling we use for the eight-day Sukkos/Sukkot festival. Many people decorate their sukkas with fruit, gourds, and beautiful pictures. I took my drill and created an assembly line. Drill, string, push them down the cord, drill more. My sukkah boasted those happy strands of buckeyes for many years.

Even after I moved away from Pittsburgh to areas lacking buckeye trees, my friend remembered me during buckeye season. She mailed me a buckeye care package! I kept a few on my desk for a few years. In a burst of creativity last year, I used them in an art project celebrating nature which I donated to a charity auction. I hope the bidder was amazed and entertained by them as much as I was.

Buckeye season is a state of mind requiring only some buckeyes, or even photos of buckeyes, to evoke the pleasantness. These nuts are poisonous to humans so don’t eat them! But oh! they’ve nourished my soul for years. My BFF and I still play buckeye games and talk buckeye talk. Fifty years have passed since we filled our skirts with the brown treasures. That old tree is gone, but when I go back to Pittsburgh, I know the location of another one to visit. Today we laugh together about rolling buckeyes during prayer services, and it keeps us young and silly. I’m looking forward to celebrating buckeye season for a long time. We’re never too old for fun!

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^{1. Buckeyes in the UK have been used for the game of conkers. “Roald Dahl was a big conker fan.” https://www.projectbritain.com/conkers.html, accessed October 1, 2020. ↩}

Baltimore Burns

…chametz, that is. Thousands of Jews raced to the famed Pimlico Race Track today, the eve of Passover, to burn bread, bagels, cereal, crackers, and pizza, boxes and all. City police wearing fluorescent green vests guided the cars into the parking lot and toward available spaces. City Fire Marshals stood by ready to prevent accidents. They even parked a fire truck for children to explore.

Entire families, young and old carry all sorts of containers laden with leavened products, or chametz, which Jews are forbidden to own or have benefit from during the eight-day festival.

People living in neighbouring houses watch the spectacle. Some people avoided the parking lot and parked on the side streets. Imagine the sight of three white-shirted young men sporting black fedoras emerging from a car. They are carrying garbage bags into the parking lot, joining the throng there. Following them is a young pregnant woman pushing a stroller trailing her husband and a few other children. They nod to and thank the officer guiding them in the crosswalk.

Still, the main event is in the parking lot by the 20-or-so barrels blazing behind safety rails. I feel the mad heat as I toss in a Trader Joe’s bag with my leftover chametz. My bag hits the target and plops into a raging turmoil.

Other people aren’t as neat about it. All sorts of bread products litter the base of the cans. Since care is taken to not burn plastics, people try to pour cereal into the fires but found the heat too hot to keep their hands there. So the cereal, or bread, pouring out of the plastic bags landed on the ground. I saw one enterprising man spear a bagel through its center hole and toss it back into the fire.

Before I leave I pause to say the formulaic nullification of chametz in Aramaic. These words connect me with millions of Jews throughout history who have said this very same declaration. I am here and now in Baltimore, and I am there and then in Babylon. The year is not a circle. Rather, it is a spiral through time. We celebrate our Redemption from slavery in Egypt on this night. And this day we remove our are puffed up egos burning leavened products. Next year in Jerusalem!

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