STANLEY BROWNING wrote: >Beingst" (?) its approaching Christmas, it would be appropriate for >me to further revive your memories of old times in southern West >Virginia with a few church stories. However, I have decided to let >them wait for awhile so that I could wrap up tales about my school >days. Meanwhile, collect your old church stories and be ready to >join in on that subject later on. > >I look forward to your comments, good or bad. I never know which >stories are allowed to pass through to the mailing list, so let me >know if you receive them. > >We must not forget another important aspect of school life "back >then," and that is what we did on our way to and from school. > >I enjoyed school as a child. That first year was filled with many >marvelous discoveries and learning experiences outside as well as >inside the classroom. My list of friends grew rapidly as I met other >children at or near my age who were attending school at Matheny plus >various people that lived along my route to school. Some of those >people showed acts of kindness to me that I count as even more >valuable to me today than they were then. > >Students usually walked and played together to and from school. >Uncle Al Rollins (not my real uncle) had three boys, Jack, Jim and >“Dare” (Darrell), who frequently joined our group of school children >who regularly traversed Coon Branch from early September until late >May. Dare was my age and he liked to fight. More accurately put, he >liked to fight me. Once we had a huge fight and I got in a lucky >punch that bloodied Dare’s nose. His older brothers joined the fray, >whereupon Denise, who was several years older than I came in on my >side. The dispute fizzled out quickly after that and the incident >was all but forgotten. We all continued to be friends. > >Parents had mysterious ways of finding out things then that could >measure up to any modern CIA communication device. My Mother and >Daddy were ready for me when I got home. Seeking sympathy and thus >avoid punishment, I told them that Dare Rollins attacked me and >bloodied my nose. My flimsy attempt to parry blame might have worked >were it not for my lack of an explanation for the bloodstains on my >back left from Dares profusely bleeding nose when he had me down on >the ground pounding me. > >Aunt Valley Stewart lived in a large two-story house farther down the >“Branch” from us. Aunt Valley always kept a large drawer full of >gingerbread cookies and was generous in distributing them to those of >us who often lingered at her house on our way home from school. > >There was a huge black walnut tree above Aunt Valley’s house and >another below. When the frost came and the walnuts fell, the road >was covered from one side to the other with walnuts. These trees >were significant landmarks and cause for my being late from school on >many occasions. The logging trucks traveling the road helped to >remove the outer, stain- producing hulls from the walnuts, but they >didn’t complete the job. Cleanup was left for the school kids. The >longer the unhulled walnuts lay on the ground, the softer and nastier >they became but the easier it became to remove them. The walnut >stain that we had on our hands would wear off eventually, but it was >ground into our clothes forever. We made a game out of cracking >walnuts with stones and seeing who could extract the biggest portion >of the kernel without breaking it. > >Apple trees grew wild in many locations along the road to our >school. Some were holdovers from earlier orchards and others were >from suckers that had sprung up from ancient trees or seeds in those >same old orchards. We knew every one of those trees and the type and >quality of fruit it yielded. The walk home from school was one huge >feast from one end to the other. > >Pawpaws started to ripen shortly after school began. They were a >delicacy for youngsters of my day. We ate the ripe ones that had >fallen to the ground and picked those that were nearly ripe from the >trees and hid them from the other kids until they finished ripening. >I know the location of only a few Pawpaw trees now; however, they >flourished in southern West Virginia when I lived there. > >Close behind pawpaws in desirability were chinquapins. Those little >miniature chestnut look-alikes grew in only a few select places even >in the thirties. I am told that they have essentially disappeared >from the area. My favorite place on Coon Branch, which was a tightly >held secret, was high on a hill behind Uncle Lon Scott’s house. > >There were lots of wild persimmon trees along our route. Those wild >fruit trees were very interesting; that’s the best thing I can say >about them. Those persimmons bore no resemblance to the fruit by >that name found in our modern supermarkets. Although all the >persimmon trees looked alike, their fruit could be quite different. >Some of the trees were characterized as being males and never >produced any fruit. Persimmons don’t ripen until well after the >first frost or into winter, and even then only youngsters with dead >taste buds could tolerate some varieties. We knew of a few trees >that yielded a small deep orange, wrinkled persimmon that was >delicious, but the somewhat larger varieties were best used for >slingshot ammunition. Never try to eat a persimmon before it is >ripe. Only one is enough to produce a pucker such that your best >friend might misunderstand you, and the feeling that the inside of >your mouth is coated with sheetrock dust persists for several minutes. > >Other wild delicacies that renewed our hunter-gatherer instincts in >season were hazel nuts (“hazenuts”) and hickory nuts. Like the >chinquapins, you had to know where to look for hazenuts, but their >whereabouts were well known to the young boys of my generation. >Beech nuts were delicious, but were too small to justify the effort >required to gather them. The same could be said for many of the >large hickory nuts. It was worthwhile to only gather the nuts from >the shell-bark hickory trees; the larger nuts from other varieties of >hickory were too hard to crack. Besides we wanted to leave something >for the gray squirrels. > >There were several large buckeye trees that were usually loaded with >large attractive nuts. Two nuts were contained in a single outer >shell and we were cautioned by old timers to not eat but one of the >nuts because one of them was poison. I never was brave enough to try >to figure out which was the poison nut and verify if there was any >truth in the advice. > >Blackberries and mulberries were all gone by the time school >started. We were cautioned not to eat the mulberries because they >contained insect eggs; but we ate them anyway. The resulting >sickness was due to gluttony, not insects. > > >------------------------------- >To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message > >Hi Shelby What a good story teller & writer u are......Good memories again...Tbere was a persimmon tree in grandma's {Georgia Workman} cem. at poor branch & right down on side of the road was the hazel-nuts 7 walnut trees.....At that schoolhouse at Lenore back in the 40's was a beechnut tree that i have always though about...I cannot find them up here in Bflo, Ny, but I do have lots of black walnuts in the garage ready to be shucked and eat...I might try to make some choc. candy with some of them and that brings back memories. I usually get them along the road down in Va & Tenn. Denzil woodson > > >