Memories of Walnuts, Persimmons and Wooly Worms
by Ed Crabtree ©2001-2002

In the Ozarks when the leaves of the trees start their annual transition from green to fiery shades of gold and crimson, the internal biological clock that we all have, tolls the hour of the season, with contemplative resolve we then subconsciously set about the activities tradition reserves for action upon at this time of year. Stocking up on wood for the fireplace, or filling up the propane tank, raking leaves, going to fall craft shows, are some of the tasks we set about. Other signs indicative of the arrival of fall is the appearance of bales of straw, bundles of corn stalks, pumpkins and other home grown decorative accessories displayed for sale at local businesses.

Signs of the season also might include the clerks at the supermarket increasing the inventory of prepared popcorn balls and caramel apples just in time for fall parties and celebrations. Things that Mothers lovingly made at home in years gone by, that can now be conveniently purchased by parents whose schedules, by 21st century necessity, do not allow them the time to personally prepare. I have found a certain degree of humor in the irony of the latest addition to those food staples that parents can purchase already prepared instead of buying the ingredients and making fresh each day for the kid’s school lunch bags, the store bought peanut butter and jelly sandwich with crust removed. The thought crosses my mind if forty or fifty years in the Ozarks of the future, will some writer reminisce about the good old days when Mom personally selected the little round prepackaged PB&J sandwiches and transported them home from the supercenter herself in an old-fashioned sport utility vehicle?

I wonder how today’s conveniences will effect the memories of our young? Remember when our parents would take us for a drive through the rural Ozarks, and we would carefully scan the hills and hollers hoping to catch a glimpse of a wild Deer or perhaps a Turkey. Thirty years or more ago such a sighting was indeed a rare and wonderful experience for a young child. Today the Deer are certainly more plentiful so much as to be a nuisance in some areas. But consider the contrast of our memories of watching the fall foliage along the road for signs of wildlife versus children today watching television in the backseat of the family SUV or Minivan and in some cases they are too preoccupied playing some game on the miniature TV, too busy to notice the beauty of a wild Deer grazing or the fiery colors of a Ozarks Fall Revue.

There are so many routine chores, things that we took for granted and just considered a part of late Summer and early Fall. I remember each year my Mother would find an orchard where she could get the best buy on a bushel of apples, take her selection home, peel and prepare the fruit in thin slices. Then she would find some horizontal surface out of doors such as a table or sometimes an old door or sheet of corrugated roofing supported on saw horses which she would cover with a clean sheet and carefully place the apple slices on the sheet to dry in the sun, the apples covered only with a cheese cloth to keep the flies off the fruit. Once the apples were dry she would “put up” the fruit in bags suitable for the freezer, so that we would have a supply of such for pies and fried desserts all winter. Do you think that our writers of the future will recall quality time with their folks when everyone gathered in the kitchen around the Ronco Food Dehydrator and prepared dried fruit? Personally, I remember something so special about the taste of naturally dried fruit and home canned vegitables, something I don’t find in common with commercially prepared items of today, perhaps it is the knowing that the person who spent so many hours peeling apples, or stringing beans for canning, or making home canned pickles, and all the other things she did with so much love and care, has now been gone for nearly twenty years.

The yearly harvest of “black gold” is another chore that brings back memories. While commenting on this very subject today, Ann told me that she had completely forgotten about the days when folks had gravel driveways instead of the concrete or asphalt varieties, and after gathering Walnuts and allowing the hulls to season, they would place the walnuts in the drive way and then repeatedly run the family car over the hulls until they could easily remove the shell from the hull. Obviously this would leave quite a mess in the drive and good Mothers would always admonish us young-uns to be careful and stay out of the mess, as should we get into the left overs from the process of hulling by automobile we would surely soil our shoes and track the oily mess everywhere. A brief explanation for those of you that grew up using store bought nut meats for your holiday goodies, the common Black Walnut Tree produces a nut, packaged by nature inside a hull not quite as large as a tennis ball. When this nut falls from the tree or otherwise harvested in the fall, you must allow the hard green hull to season or change to a soft black color before the hulling process that reveals the wooden shell that contains the delicacy so many of us love in our holiday recipes. When the hull reaches the point that is best for removing the shells, the hull produces a natural dark stain that can be used in crafts or arts as our native American ancestors did. Hulling by hand can be a rather messy process as this stain is very difficult to remove from your hands or anything else it gets on. Almost everyone has their own tried and true method of hulling Walnuts. Finally cracking the hard shells open and removing the nut meats is a tedious task, so if you are lucky enough to have someone in your family that is willing to go to all the trouble to gather a “mess” of walnuts, hull them, crack the shells and remove the nuts, then prepare just for you your favorite holiday food item, you should truly cherish this person.

I am sure that there are many of you readers that have memories of all of the aspects of gathering Walnuts that I have mentioned above, perhaps there are even those of you that gathered Walnuts and took them to the local hulling station, where the nuts were dumped into a mechanical hulling machine and then after weighing you were paid for each hundred pounds of hulled Walnuts. For the city folks that have never experienced this, it takes a tremendous number of Walnuts to make a hundred weight of hulled product. This is back breaking labor and anyone enterprising enough to pick up a several thousand Walnuts just to make a few extra dollars each fall certainly has my respect. So the next time you buy a pack of nutmeats from the store, just remember the folks, your friends and neighbors here in the hills, that worked so hard as harvesting by hand is still the most common method, so that you could enjoy another of the simple but tasty bounties of the Ozarks.

Of course a fall drive through the rural Ozarks produces memories other than Walnuts and the aforementioned subjects. Did you ever watch for woolly worms crossing the road? The old folks always said that the length of the “wool” on a wooly worm was directly proportional to the severity of the upcoming winter. So to many of us the sign of a really wooly worm making his way from one side of the highway to the other is a harbinger of a hard season to come.

Then there is the watching for a ‘simmon tree full of fruit and the accompanying eager anticipation for the first frost that will cause the wild Persimmon as found here in the Ozarks to ripen. Like Black Berries, Walnuts, Sassafras, Ginseng root, and countless other delicacies and items gathered from the hills just to sell for extra money or to put up for use when the snow flies, Persimmons are among my fond childhood memories, and very soon we will get to pick some ‘simmons and try out the recipe below as the weather man is promising a frost in the next few days and we have several trees located that are loaded with fruit.

Perhaps someday a future author will indeed set before some sort of appliance that will be the replacement for the computers we use today, and in that future day he or she wax eloquently about the good old days of the early years of the 21st century. Perhaps that person will recount fond memories of the things that we do today, things that we take for common but hold such wonderment for a child. Perhaps they will hold dear the thoughts of holiday goodies even though made with store bought ingredients, they were made by someone with love.

Persimmon Nut Bread
6 tablespoons butter
1-cup sugar
2 eggs
1-teaspoon baking soda
1-cup persimmon pulp
2 cups flour
1-teaspoon baking powder 1/2-teaspoon salt
1/2-teaspoon cinnamon
1/2-teaspoon nutmeg
1/4-teaspoon cloves
2 teaspoon grated orange rind
1 cup chopped dates
1 cup chopped nuts