The grounds of school provided many options of play for our lunch breaks. Now that we’d left the Kindergarten stream the Kindergarten playgrounds were closed to us, but this still left the majority of the school grounds to recklessly explore.
Several ovals were the scene for many pick-up games of soccer and rugby while we also spent time in the cricket nets and at a tennis hitting wall - a half tennis court with a large brick wall at one end with a horizontal paint line drawn across it at net height.
However, this was not so much a location for tennis as it was for vicious games of branding, tennis balls hurled as far and fast as we could propel them to thud painfully into young flesh, leaving bruises and lasting vendettas.
On the way to the tennis shed we’d pass by a large patch of dirt underneath the school flagpole and next to the main car park which was always a milling throng of bodies - the marble patch.
In our early years my recollection was that this area was treated with somewhat casual indifference until one of the regular trips “down south”, to South Africa, saw me emerging from one of their monstrous generic Hypermarkets clutching a large bag of 100 marbles, suitably equipped to enter this arena of dreams.
Soon casual indifference changed to burning obsession - a first introduction to the rough and tumble of a market economy that was to become a way of life.
When we first started frequenting the marble patch (in my recollection it must have been during Grade 4) our country was still under sanctions and therefore marbles were indeed rare commodities. They were not available for sale in Zimbabwe Rhodesia so fresh supplies were hard to come by. This lent a special edge to our endeavour as every marble lost was one closer to oblivion until the next trip to South Africa’s land of plenty.
We walked into a burgeoning marketplace with its own language, rules and codes of honour. Ours was not the marble within a ring approach that seemed to be the norm in the English literature we read, and in most of the countries where I’ve traveled (not that I have spent much time researching the marble habits of the world).
Somewhat in keeping with the national spirit, our approach to marbles was far more direct.
Each standard marble was considered one “unit” and each unit meant a step out from the target. Thus if you set up one marble, you would take one step out and drag a line in the dirt with your foot to denote the shooting line.
If you set up three marbles , three steps were taken, five steps for five marbles and so on. There was an intimate knowledge on how a combination of marbles would need to be set up. I presume that this had been worked out over many years in a method to provide fairness to those setting up their marbles and those shooting for the prize.
For instance a “fiver” stack of marbles had three across the back row, two and then one so the shooter was faced with an inverse pyramid. It meant there was something to aim at and depth of throw (accuracy being harder as distance increased) would be rewarded with a larger target.
Five marbles in a horizontal line would be easy pickings for the shooters while a vertical line would be snubbed by shooters. Similarly, there was a careful balance in attracting people to your particular pile. It was not good policy to take giant steps out from the target as people would be daunted at the distance and go elsewhere. Too close and it became too easy.
There was a careful balance that needed to be struck between attracting customers and making a “profit”.
Equally as important in the whole process was the marketing of one’s goods. At Henry Low the marble patch was a large patch of square dirt, bordered on two sides by waist high brick walls. People offering marbles for shooting would set up shop all along these walls and step out into the square.
By the time the marble patch was rocking and rolling there’d be up to fifty people offering a target for shots so calling out one’s goods became an essential part of the process. From an early age I’d been fingered as having the “voice of a preacher” and “one that would raise the dead” so this served me well in the maelstrom of the marble patch market place.
If a person had put up four marbles (a base of three topped by one) they would shout out “Roll up a fourer” at the top of their voice to attract the shooters circling around in the dust haze like a pack of bloodthirsty sharks.
This would raise a massive din that would be loudly punctuated by frenzied yells of “PACE!” the calling signal of a flushed shooter whose marble had collided with its target.
Sometimes a situation would arise (particularly with the larger groupings of marbles) where there were multiple shooters and the cries of “PACE!” would come from 3 or 4 excited children who would all careen into the disrupted bundle of marbles, pushing and clawing at each other and scrabbling through the dirt to grab as many of the hoard that they could. Sometimes fists would fly.
The marble patch was a very competitive fray and there were a group of boys that would circle the arena like a patch of piranhas, seeking the edge on each other, competing for the biggest bag and the rarest marbles to establish the current king of the block. However, when it came to the marble Queen I have to give special mention to Kerry Macdonald who had an eye as sure as the boys and would scrap and fight for top dog status with us.
One day she managed to “pace” fair and square one of the rarest marbles in the school, much to the mortification of my good mate Brendon Hitchcock who had put it up at a high number of steps, confident no one would bag it while collecting all the failed marbles.
Such was the blow to his pride I watched as he waited until Kerry’s bag was unattended and the marble expropriated. Never one to be backward in coming forward I blew the whistle and a melee ensued and witnesses called to determine the marbles rightful owner. Kerry prevailed - perhaps she still has the marble?
Marbles in this marketplace style catered to a wide range of characters. There were the defensive specialists - children that would only set up marbles for shooters in the hopes of gathering several more marbles than were in their offering before it was knocked over.
Then there were the aggressive offensive specialists. The children that always took to the shooting line and backed their eye and ability to knock over the castle with their first or second shot and therefore make a profit.
There were two major ways to shoot a marble. The standard way employed by most was to bend at the waist and to swing the right arm from between the legs, with the position of the arm and its straightness in delivery relied on to project the marble towards its target.
However, there was also the overhand style, called “dobbing“, where the marble would be held up to ones eye for aim and hurled towards the target with a downward motion. This method required a clear eye and was more often employed on smaller targets. Generally there was a “no dobbing” cry employed on targets of three marbles or less.
I fell into the group that mixed it up depending on mood and current marble numbers in their bag. Each of us must have harassed our mothers to make us our prized marble bags - material bags with a large mouth opening at the top which was closed with a drawstring.
Depending on one’s fortunes, the marble bag could be bulging or hanging limply with a few marbles jangling around in the bottom. It was a pretty obvious way to assess each other’s progress.
If I was getting low on marbles I would switch into defensive mode, setting up piles in an attempt to stock up my numbers.
I have a distinct memory of one day being down to my last marble. In desperation I set up a “oner” a very rare occurrence because children could hang over the line and virtually shoot at it from over the top.
I can only presume that the novelty value of this “oner” attracted the ensuing crowd and some very rash shooting that saw around ten marbles ping against the back wall before my prize was claimed. Some judicious shooting followed this windfall and my bag was restored to some decent size. One’s afternoon would generally depend very much on the day’s fortune in the marble patch.
The standard marble was the shooters staple - we always shot with these marbles. However, their was an entire language and value code that went with the various targets we could shoot at. A marble deemed as rarer was worth additional steps. This was enticing for the people setting up as people were shooting at a smaller target from further back, but there was also far more on the line. Some of these “special” marbles were special indeed.
There were the supersized marbles called “blundies”. Generally a blundy was taken out to three steps, though the larger size of the marble was quite an enticing shot.
In the size of the standard marbles and the blundies were what were called “goens” (pronounced with a short “ooh“ sound, similar to could or should). These were purely metallic and were ball bearings.
Our proximity to the railway workshops meant that many of the children had fathers that worked there and these “goens” were sourced from the railway workshops, presumably yet another expression of the Rhodesian urge for sanction busting.
A standard goen had the same nominal value of the marble and a blundie goen was nominally
worth three steps. However, they were a fairly unattractive commodity and it was rare that people would shoot for them at those rates. Similarly it was frowned upon to use a goen for shooting. No one really wanted too many (if any) of them and occasionally their additional weight would chip the glass marbles.
The next marble up the tree was the “smokie”, a white marble that had its patterns on the outside. A single smokie was deemed to be the same value as three standard marbles and thus each smokie in a pile attracted three steps. Though rare, there were also blundie smokies, quite a mouthful to call out and their “value” being indeterminate. Technically they were 3x3 for 9 steps but noone was brave enough to have a crack at a single blundie sized marble from so far away, so the rare occasion they were put up for hitting the steps would range somewhere
between six to nine.
Though rated as a similar value to the smokie in terms of steps I used to place a far higher personal value on the clearie. This was a clear glass marble without blemish and I think I appreciated its pure aesthetic lines. It was a rare day that I’d shoot for a smokie from three steps but a clearie was irresistible bait.
Then there were the rare coloured clearies, pure glass marble with a coloured tinge to them. Their value was indeterminate and very much dictated by their beauty and if people were game to shoot for them. A coloured clearie would normally start at five steps but this could blow out if it was particularly rare or beautiful. However, it was a brave person that would put these up for action - normally they were stowed in the bottom of our bags and bought out for class admiration when we were lining up to return to class.
When it was a “slow” day at marbles there were other shenanigans for us to get up to. One day Brendon asked me to stand back to back with him to see which of us was taller. As soon as we did so he reached behind him and whipped down my school shorts to around my ankles, much to my mortification.
Once my dignity was restored I decided this was an excellent trick and cajoled Robert Goldie into the same position with me to determine the taller. But as I grabbed his shorts I also managed to take hold of his underpants (under rods as we called them) and bought down the whole castle.
Robert was exceedingly angry at this trick, though thankfully he’d been facing the school oval at the time (rather than the mob in the marble patch) so his modesty was largely retained.
The marble craze continued when I transferred schools to Whitestone Primary. Initially we were assigned a rectangular patch of dirt close to the bike sheds that was reminiscent of our Henry Low arena. However, several acts of vandalism on the bikes wore patience thin and the din of people yelling out their wares soon became too much for the boarding mistresses who were nearby serving morning tea to the Boarders.
My foghorn voice was particularly unpopular and there was one old dragon who was always beseeching me to move to the other side of the dirt square, as far as possible from her. I repaid her in gold coin in Grade Seven when I was handed the part of a dragon in the school play and could careen through the middle of the audience yelling and growling at the top of my voice.
Poor old lady, she was lucky to still be alive after this effort. ---->
Eventually it was decided that our marble play must be moved and we were shifted to a little grove of trees and granite blocks close to the school Dining Room. This area lacked the clean lines of the rectangular square but it introduced an extra dimension of difficulty and skill because there were a number of large rocks in play from which we could bounce marbles off and onto the targets.
It also meant we were directly outside of the windows of the feared Grade Three teacher Mrs McIntosh (wife of a future Springbok coach). She would keep a beady eye on us and if trouble was brewing would step outside her classroom brandishing her feared “tackie”, a flexible and cheap Bata running shoe that stung like a hornet, beady eyes fixed with intent on arguing children.
Despite the ever-present threat of Mrs McIntosh passions would still run high. There was another time one of my classmates (Fuji Flop) became particularly animated in a dispute and told his antagonist to “piss off” just as our sadist Headmaster, Mr Harris, hove into view. That little indiscretion cost him three cuts (and Harris would quite literally make us bleed).
Passion, skill and street cunning. It took it all to survive the playground marble patch.
A very special thanks to my eldest son, 8 year old Joseph, who willingly allowed me to raid his own precious marble bag for the photos above.
Equally as important in the whole process was the marketing of one’s goods. At Henry Low the marble patch was a large patch of square dirt, bordered on two sides by waist high brick walls. People offering marbles for shooting would set up shop all along these walls and step out into the square.
By the time the marble patch was rocking and rolling there’d be up to fifty people offering a target for shots so calling out one’s goods became an essential part of the process. From an early age I’d been fingered as having the “voice of a preacher” and “one that would raise the dead” so this served me well in the maelstrom of the marble patch market place.
If a person had put up four marbles (a base of three topped by one) they would shout out “Roll up a fourer” at the top of their voice to attract the shooters circling around in the dust haze like a pack of bloodthirsty sharks.
This would raise a massive din that would be loudly punctuated by frenzied yells of “PACE!” the calling signal of a flushed shooter whose marble had collided with its target.
Sometimes a situation would arise (particularly with the larger groupings of marbles) where there were multiple shooters and the cries of “PACE!” would come from 3 or 4 excited children who would all careen into the disrupted bundle of marbles, pushing and clawing at each other and scrabbling through the dirt to grab as many of the hoard that they could. Sometimes fists would fly.
The marble patch was a very competitive fray and there were a group of boys that would circle the arena like a patch of piranhas, seeking the edge on each other, competing for the biggest bag and the rarest marbles to establish the current king of the block. However, when it came to the marble Queen I have to give special mention to Kerry Macdonald who had an eye as sure as the boys and would scrap and fight for top dog status with us.
One day she managed to “pace” fair and square one of the rarest marbles in the school, much to the mortification of my good mate Brendon Hitchcock who had put it up at a high number of steps, confident no one would bag it while collecting all the failed marbles.
Such was the blow to his pride I watched as he waited until Kerry’s bag was unattended and the marble expropriated. Never one to be backward in coming forward I blew the whistle and a melee ensued and witnesses called to determine the marbles rightful owner. Kerry prevailed - perhaps she still has the marble?
Marbles in this marketplace style catered to a wide range of characters. There were the defensive specialists - children that would only set up marbles for shooters in the hopes of gathering several more marbles than were in their offering before it was knocked over.
Then there were the aggressive offensive specialists. The children that always took to the shooting line and backed their eye and ability to knock over the castle with their first or second shot and therefore make a profit.
There were two major ways to shoot a marble. The standard way employed by most was to bend at the waist and to swing the right arm from between the legs, with the position of the arm and its straightness in delivery relied on to project the marble towards its target.
However, there was also the overhand style, called “dobbing“, where the marble would be held up to ones eye for aim and hurled towards the target with a downward motion. This method required a clear eye and was more often employed on smaller targets. Generally there was a “no dobbing” cry employed on targets of three marbles or less.
I fell into the group that mixed it up depending on mood and current marble numbers in their bag. Each of us must have harassed our mothers to make us our prized marble bags - material bags with a large mouth opening at the top which was closed with a drawstring.
Depending on one’s fortunes, the marble bag could be bulging or hanging limply with a few marbles jangling around in the bottom. It was a pretty obvious way to assess each other’s progress.
If I was getting low on marbles I would switch into defensive mode, setting up piles in an attempt to stock up my numbers.
I have a distinct memory of one day being down to my last marble. In desperation I set up a “oner” a very rare occurrence because children could hang over the line and virtually shoot at it from over the top.
I can only presume that the novelty value of this “oner” attracted the ensuing crowd and some very rash shooting that saw around ten marbles ping against the back wall before my prize was claimed. Some judicious shooting followed this windfall and my bag was restored to some decent size. One’s afternoon would generally depend very much on the day’s fortune in the marble patch.
The standard marble was the shooters staple - we always shot with these marbles. However, their was an entire language and value code that went with the various targets we could shoot at. A marble deemed as rarer was worth additional steps. This was enticing for the people setting up as people were shooting at a smaller target from further back, but there was also far more on the line. Some of these “special” marbles were special indeed.
There were the supersized marbles called “blundies”. Generally a blundy was taken out to three steps, though the larger size of the marble was quite an enticing shot.
In the size of the standard marbles and the blundies were what were called “goens” (pronounced with a short “ooh“ sound, similar to could or should). These were purely metallic and were ball bearings.
Our proximity to the railway workshops meant that many of the children had fathers that worked there and these “goens” were sourced from the railway workshops, presumably yet another expression of the Rhodesian urge for sanction busting.
A standard goen had the same nominal value of the marble and a blundie goen was nominally 
worth three steps. However, they were a fairly unattractive commodity and it was rare that people would shoot for them at those rates. Similarly it was frowned upon to use a goen for shooting. No one really wanted too many (if any) of them and occasionally their additional weight would chip the glass marbles.
The next marble up the tree was the “smokie”, a white marble that had its patterns on the outside. A single smokie was deemed to be the same value as three standard marbles and thus each smokie in a pile attracted three steps. Though rare, there were also blundie smokies, quite a mouthful to call out and their “value” being indeterminate. Technically they were 3x3 for 9 steps but noone was brave enough to have a crack at a single blundie sized marble from so far away, so the rare occasion they were put up for hitting the steps would range somewhere
between six to nine.
Though rated as a similar value to the smokie in terms of steps I used to place a far higher personal value on the clearie. This was a clear glass marble without blemish and I think I appreciated its pure aesthetic lines. It was a rare day that I’d shoot for a smokie from three steps but a clearie was irresistible bait.
Then there were the rare coloured clearies, pure glass marble with a coloured tinge to them. Their value was indeterminate and very much dictated by their beauty and if people were game to shoot for them. A coloured clearie would normally start at five steps but this could blow out if it was particularly rare or beautiful. However, it was a brave person that would put these up for action - normally they were stowed in the bottom of our bags and bought out for class admiration when we were lining up to return to class.
When it was a “slow” day at marbles there were other shenanigans for us to get up to. One day Brendon asked me to stand back to back with him to see which of us was taller. As soon as we did so he reached behind him and whipped down my school shorts to around my ankles, much to my mortification.
Once my dignity was restored I decided this was an excellent trick and cajoled Robert Goldie into the same position with me to determine the taller. But as I grabbed his shorts I also managed to take hold of his underpants (under rods as we called them) and bought down the whole castle.
Robert was exceedingly angry at this trick, though thankfully he’d been facing the school oval at the time (rather than the mob in the marble patch) so his modesty was largely retained.
The marble craze continued when I transferred schools to Whitestone Primary. Initially we were assigned a rectangular patch of dirt close to the bike sheds that was reminiscent of our Henry Low arena. However, several acts of vandalism on the bikes wore patience thin and the din of people yelling out their wares soon became too much for the boarding mistresses who were nearby serving morning tea to the Boarders.
My foghorn voice was particularly unpopular and there was one old dragon who was always beseeching me to move to the other side of the dirt square, as far as possible from her. I repaid her in gold coin in Grade Seven when I was handed the part of a dragon in the school play and could careen through the middle of the audience yelling and growling at the top of my voice. 
Poor old lady, she was lucky to still be alive after this effort. ---->
Eventually it was decided that our marble play must be moved and we were shifted to a little grove of trees and granite blocks close to the school Dining Room. This area lacked the clean lines of the rectangular square but it introduced an extra dimension of difficulty and skill because there were a number of large rocks in play from which we could bounce marbles off and onto the targets.
It also meant we were directly outside of the windows of the feared Grade Three teacher Mrs McIntosh (wife of a future Springbok coach). She would keep a beady eye on us and if trouble was brewing would step outside her classroom brandishing her feared “tackie”, a flexible and cheap Bata running shoe that stung like a hornet, beady eyes fixed with intent on arguing children.
Despite the ever-present threat of Mrs McIntosh passions would still run high. There was another time one of my classmates (Fuji Flop) became particularly animated in a dispute and told his antagonist to “piss off” just as our sadist Headmaster, Mr Harris, hove into view. That little indiscretion cost him three cuts (and Harris would quite literally make us bleed).
Passion, skill and street cunning. It took it all to survive the playground marble patch.
A very special thanks to my eldest son, 8 year old Joseph, who willingly allowed me to raid his own precious marble bag for the photos above.
