William, you do evoke some odd memories from my childhood. Around the home where I was born in Houston Co. - halfway between Wellston (RAFB) and Byron - were a number of large trees. One was the inevitable cedar, a huge, tall scaly thing - too prickly to climb. There was also a black walnut tree and on the ground under the tree was a large slab of stone which we used as a base to crack the walnuts with a hammer. Over the many years of use, that stone had a deep walnut-sized depression worn in its surface. The walnut meat was so tedious to pick out of the shell but, man, were those cakes with walnut flavored icing worth the trouble! And Ice cream in the summer time - peach icecream during peach season; strawberry icecream from our own strawberries; butter pecan from our own pecans, and walnut icecream once in a great while was a rare treat. We had a few chinaberry trees around and one of them had a long heavy straight limb not too high off the ground which made a wonderful "horsie" for an only child who had to find her own entertainment. That limb was "Silver" and I was "The Lone Ranger," 'til finally I had a real horse to ride, a big, beautiful chestnut walking horse named "Major." My grandfather, Henry Frank Rape, made popguns for me from an elderberry branch and I used the chinaberries for bullets. He could also make whistles from the elderberry. And some folks made elderberry wine. But, my favorite tree on our homesite was an old, huge pecan tree. It shaded the smokehouse and the washbench where my mother and our friend Viola washed clothes every Monday. While they boiled the clothes in a big iron pot over a fire made of oak wood and scrubbed them on scrub boards over tin tubs, I climbed the pecan tree which had a perfect limb for gymnastics - skin-the-cat, hanging by my knees over the limb, chin-ups and any other acrobatics I could dream up. On long Sunday afternoons, after church, I took my favorite book of the moment and climbed into that pecan tree and sat in the chair-like crotch of the tree and read for hours, often 'til I was called to supper. At Christmas time my grandfather and I would go to the woods to bring back a holly tree which we would decorate with real candles in little clamp-on holders. We would make popcorn strings, and string them and tinsel ropes around the limbs and put a tinsel angel on top. And every night, Mother would light the candles and we would sit and enjoy their beauty for a few minutes before she blew out the lights and we would scurry off to a cold bed in an unheated bedroom. Life was simple, not always easy, but so very good. Precious are my memories of my childhood. Joyce Rape Harrison