Call me squirrelly, but I think I know why I’m drawn to nuts in the fall.

Recently, as I was pouring a big bag of unshelled walnuts and almonds into a long skinny bowl I use as a centerpiece, I thought of how my grandmother always had nuts around –especially during the holidays.

(Boy, could I have some fun with that statement!)

Anyway, it was one of her food trademarks –bowls of unshelled nuts with an assortment of tools for cracking open shells and picking out the pieces. An empty bowl was always nearby to collect the debris.

One of her sisters did the same thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if they went nut-shopping together, making an afternoon of it.

Another relative reminded me that the sisters made popcorn balls at holiday time as well, wrapping them in clear wrap, tying them with curled ribbon and placing them in a big bowl on the dining room table.

I don’t remember the popcorn balls, but I do remember those nuts. It was the adults who gravitated toward them. It took work to crack them open –good for restricting calorie intake, I suppose –but it was fun.

If not a little messy. I still have some of those nut-cracking tools that –like many of my late grandmother’s things –ended up in my hands. I bring them out when someone comes over and eyes my centerpiece, which floats from the kitchen table to the coffee table, depending on circumstances.

The rest of the time, I pretty much use the nuts in the bowl for decoration.

I recall her candy bowls, too, filled with candies suitable for the occasion and the crowd.

And it wasn’t just my grandmother who had candy bowls here and there. The grandmother next door had a candy bowl, too, to which I was no stranger. But it seems to me that the rule of the day was that you just took one.

These bowls were all so pretty. I have several of those as well, including a heart-shaped clear bowl in a pattern called Candlewick.

These days, I love to fill it with an assortment of olives, although it has come in handy for Pepperidge Farm goldfish as well.

We don’t have candy bowls scattered around our house on a regular basis.

Growing up, we never had candy bowls at our house, either, but my mother –now a grandmother –is making up for it.

From time to time she gets the itch to fill up the covered glass candy bowl on her coffee table with Hershey’s Kisses, M&Ms or homemade peanut clusters –always made with dark chocolate.

Continuing the tradition? Perhaps. But if she wants to begin setting out bowls of unshelled nuts, she’s going to need to borrow those nut-cracking tools from me.

Speaking of nuts, the November issue of Martha Stewart Living shows readers how to make a seasonal wreath of them. It involves hot-gluing unshelled walnuts to a wooden wreath form, section by section, and filling in spaces with almonds, hazelnuts and pecans.

It looks quite pretty, especially with a wide ribbon tied at the bottom. But I think I’ll keep our nuts in the centerpiece bowl.

Just in case the relatives stop by and want to take a crack at them.