Many people in the South have never heard
of black walnuts. As a rule, though, when you mention that some of the most expensive pieces of furniture as well as gun stocks
are made of walnut, it rings a bell. But, not the nuts.
There were lots of walnut trees in our
big woods. We used to spend a good deal of time gathering walnuts. After the first frost, my brothers would climb the trees
and shake or stomp the limbs until all the walnuts had fallen. The ground looked like it was covered with little green baseballs.
Then they were tossed into several piles to be put in burlap bags.
Lloyd would bring Barney, our favorite
horse, back into the woods. Barney would patiently stand there while the boys loaded bags of walnuts onto his back. The boys
would sort of “scrooch” the bags around until they had molded to all the ridges of his back, then they’d
all head for the house. Barney seemed to step almost gingerly to keep the bags from falling off. What a good horse!
Back at the house, the bags were emptied
as soon as possible. For some reason, close proximity with other walnuts will cause the husks to turn black and maggots will
often infest them. When we kept them separated, it almost never happened.
We spent many a long winter evening cracking
walnuts. To get the husk off, sometimes we’d put the walnut on a hard surface and hit it, not too hard, with a hammer.
Other times we’d step on it. That’ll work if you’re heavy enough.
Either way, the husk would separate and we’d pick the nut out and throw it into a basket. Picking the walnut out of
the husk with your bare hands gets the juice on you and turns your hands very dark brown. You could always tell which of the
kids in school had walnut trees at home.
My brothers were very resourceful. They
found yet another way to crack the walnuts. Dad had this real nice corn sheller with a wooden frame and cover. Even the legs
were wooden. Two big, rough iron wheels inside turned in opposite directions. The big hand-operated crank on the outside activated
the gears that turned the wheels. The ear of corn went in one side and directly into the space between the wheels. The shelled
corn dropped through the bottom into a bucket, and the wheels forced the cob on out the other end. Presto! Chicken feed…and
dry corn cobs to start the fire in the kitchen range. When Dad wasn’t home, my brothers would use the corn sheller to
husk walnuts. It worked like a charm.
Well, Dad was also very resourceful.
There was an absolutely enormous walnut tree that stood right along the road by the driveway in our front yard. It had to
have been well over a hundred feet tall. Not only did its luxuriant foliage provide shade for most of the front yard, it produced
many bushels of walnuts. The boys had noticed that any walnuts that fell in the road or in the driveway from this tree were
husked by the cars running over them. All they had to do was pick them up. Dad noticed too. So, he had the boys help him dig
a trench with a slight incline—a little more than the width of a car wheel. He had Lloyd jack up one of the back wheels
of the Model T so that the front wheel fit right down in the trench, at the bottom of the incline. Then they filled the trench
with walnuts. Dad cranked the car and let it idle. That one wheel turned even though the car wasn’t in gear. We watched
the walnuts roll down the incline and under the wheel. I can not accurately convey the excitement we all felt when the wheel
spit them—husk and nut separated—out the back side. It worked! So, Lloyd just kept feeding the walnuts into the
trough up at the top of the incline. Down they would fall and out they would spit. All Charles and Wayne had to do was to
pick up the walnuts and put them in a basket.
The next step was the drying process.
Where would we dry all of those walnuts? We had a very long chicken house, with a corrugated, galvanized tin roof. It sloped
only toward the rear. Across the lowest part of the roof, the boys put a 2x4 which served as a stopper. Then they filled up
the grooves with the walnuts. The walnuts remained on the roof until the sun had completely dried them. When it rained, it
would clean them and then just drain right off, down the roof. After the nuts were dried, they were bagged and stored in the
basement until Sister Mary would put some in her most desired fudge, or mom would mix some in her homemade vanilla ice cream.
The people in the South don’t know
what they’ve missed.
