- Walnuts, Reminiscences of Robert Hodge – Story 9 of 10,
This is the ninth in a series of stories that Robert Hodge wrote in the 1980s about his childhood experiences growing up in Lawrence.
“The black walnut tree, Juglans nigra, is much admired for its dark beautiful grained wood. Almost everyone knows that when an object is “solid walnut” it is indeed to be treasured.
“Of the Deciduous Trees (those that lose their leaves in winter) the walnut is one of the first to signal the advent of fall. It is also one of the last to show new growth in the spring. When the leaves do appear in the spring, the walnut can be easily identified by the characteristic aroma which exudes from them when they are crushed in the hand. Along with the leaf appearance occur the flowers. As summer comes on, the green-hulled walnut develops and enlarges and in late summer, as the leaves fall, so do the fruits. The seed meat of the hardshelled nut has excellent flavor when eaten “as is.” Pineapple upside down cake, homemade chocolate fudge, or store-bought ice cream simply can’t be beaten for flavor when laden with the meat of the black walnut.
“When I was young, we had no automobile (more commonly just called a car, but in some areas of our country at this time the term “car” referred to a railroad passenger train), my mother would arrange with some more affluent friend to share a walnut collecting trip. There were a number of walnut groves over the country side— Brown’s Grove, Bismark Grove, Grover’s farm—and she usually knew where to go to find the one having the largest walnuts. Several cardboard boxes or gunny sacks would be filled on an outing while much visiting was done.
“At home, the walnuts would be spread over the ground at one end of the coal shed to “dry.” This was a misnomer for what they really did was turn from hard dry green to soft mushy dark brown. The mushy hull would then be removed by putting the walnut on a brick or block of wood, whacking it a time or two with a hammer, and removing the hull with gloved hands. The walnut stain would soak through the gloves and stain the fingers the color of walnut stain which had to wear off in its own sweet time.
“The hulled walnuts were again spread out for a day or two to dry, then put in a box on the back porch, or in the garage, or in the cellar until wanted. When the walnut meats were desired, the brick and hammer were brought out and this time one or more hard whacks would crack the wooden hull into three or four pieces. A good-sized nail was used to pick the walnut meats from the hull, trying vary hard to not drop any of the similar looking hull into the meats—these fragments could crack teeth!
“Many an evening, or Sunday afternoon, was spent picking out walnuts until a cupful, or a pint, or a quart was collected for oatmeal cookies, or fudge or whatever.
“Now, I will note that the walnuts were not always collected from the groves with the owner’s knowledge, and on at least one occasion, this was a source of disappointment. That particular time, several sacks of prime fruit had been gathered from a grove by my mother and at least two other women. The car owner went to get the car and just as they were ready to load it up, there appeared out of nowhere the owner of the land. He insisted they “git!” They were forced to leave the collected walnuts right where they were. My mother swore that old man had been hiding, just waiting for them to clean up the grove for him, appearing only when the task was completed. There was some discussion about “going back” later and getting the sacked walnuts, but they did not go back.
“By the time I was about ten or eleven, I had taken over the task of walnut gathering as a “helpful contribution” to family life. My grandfather had a pony, although I was never trusted enough to manage him, so it did me no good. He also had made a cart for the pony, and that I could handle as well as the pony could, and I was trusted to use it. When I went to gather walnuts in the large and historic Bismark Grove (an area developed by the Union Pacific Railroad and had quite an interesting history) located about five country blocks (each of these are the equivalent of two city blocks) from our house, I borrowed the pony cart. It would hold about four gunny sacks full of walnuts and still allow me to manipulate it across the railroad tracks and get home. The walnuts were shared with my grandmother who shared her fudge with me. The year I was thirteen, I picked out a pint of walnut meat for each of the grown female relatives I felt deserving of a Christmas present. There were later some comments about “chipped teeth,” but also appreciative “thank yous.”
“Thinking back about those times, I remember, too when I was about nine, that a cousin had given my sister a playhouse ice box. It was constructed of heavy metal and the doors fit rather tightly. I had a magnifying glass that, by focusing the sun’s rays, could set cotton batting on fire (it did not blaze, but glowed red and smoked a lot). We had in our yard an old cast-off overstuffed chair from which I could obtain all the batting I desired.
“Now the recipe for something good is to take a tablespoon of fresh meats and place them into the small compartment of a toy ice box. Using a magnifying glass, set fire to a good hunk of cotton stuffing. Once it is glowing and smoking put it in with the walnut meats and close the door real tight and wait as long as your appetite will allow. In the middle of the afternoon of a day’s hard play, those smoked walnuts will really “hit the spot.”
That cotton batting, when poked into a corncob pipe and lit can be smoked, too, but with some choking and eye-watering. Dried corn silk tastes better!
“The walnut trees at Bismark Grove, at Brown’s Grove, at Grover’s farm— they are now all gone. The price of the wood and the demand for the land have surpassed the sensory pleasures of taste; the nearness of the supermarket, the availability of cash have reduced the need for self-provision. The black walnut of my youth is now only history—or maybe it was truly just a product of my youth and is not gone at all.”
