Dear Pyle cousins, With the holiday season here I was thinking that it would be enjoyable if we share any traditions or favorite memory of the holiday season that we have. It seemed that we always had pecans, walnuts and other nuts mainly during the holidays. Walnuts were one favorite, but I didn't like them to eat as much as pecans. I liked to play with the shells. Sometimes I would paint them different colors or put faces on them. When I was a child my parents would drive a few miles to an area where there were many pecan trees. We would pick from some of the thousands of pecans that had fallen to the ground and were hidden in the leaves. The day we did this was usually very brisk but sunshiny with a beautiful blue sky. After we had filled a bag of carefully selected nuts we would go home and start to shell them for mother to use in her baking and candy making. Naturally, I would eat some of them as soon as I would get them shelled, they were so good! Mama would bake wonderful pecan pies and other goodies using pecans throughout the holiday season. I loved pecans so much that Santa would put some in my stocking along with oranges and other fruits. It is with sadness many years later that I drive past that same area which long ago became a strip shopping center, popular for a while, now fallen into disrepair and vacant. Now we buy our pecans at the grocery store but they never seem to be as good as the ones we used to get from the trees many years ago. Sara