Last fall, while on a hike in the Brim Hollow, I picked up a bucket-full of green walnuts. My first thought was to dump them on my concrete driveway and run over them with the car for a few days. That’s the way we de-hulled them back in my boyhood days, but we had gravel driveways back then.
Eventually, I poured them in a grocery sack, stored them in my garage and forgot about them. My original plan was to let them dry out, shell them and bake some chocolate chip cookies with real, Brim Hollow walnuts in them. “Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men.”
A few weeks back, I picked up another sack full of green walnuts. I decided to de-hull these with a claw hammer and my pocketknife.
I had finished my work on the first two when I remembered from my youth how green walnuts will stain your hands. As I opted for a pair of leather gloves, I noticed the thumb and forefinger on my right hand were already walnut stained.
When I finished de-hulling the big sack of green walnuts, I was surprised to see how my volume of walnuts had decreased. That reminded me of the time my brothers and I decided to sell some walnuts. It takes a ton of de-hulled walnuts to fill a 100-pound sack. I think we sold them for five dollars per hundred.
After I finished the job, I wondered how long it would be before the walnuts were dried well enough to eat. That’s when I thought about last year’s walnuts.
Well, I found them still in the sack and dried to perfection. I’ve spent about an hour each evening over the past few days shelling walnuts. I’ll have my walnut chocolate chip cookies for the holidays this year.
I still, however, have a walnut stained thumb and forefinger from the second sack of walnuts.
The stain on my hand is an amber color almost identical to the stain left by tobacco sap. My left hand used to bear the same color stain after spiking tobacco for a few days.
Tobacco gum stain is very different. It is darker, but much easier to wash off your hands. Of course, tobacco gum stain, or build-up, from topping, suckering, or cutting tobacco is different from tobacco gum acquired from stripping tobacco. The latter is drier and easier to scrape off.
The thought of tobacco gum takes me back to this time of year in days gone by.
October and November found my father, Frank McCall, in a tobacco barn almost every day, except Sunday. His approach was much like the lesson from AESOP’s “The Tortoise and the Hare.” “Slow and steady wins the race.” He was relentless. If tobacco was “in order” he was in the tobacco barn . . . no diversions, no days off.
In my mind’s eyes, I can still see him standing before a make-shift table stripping tobacco. I recall with special fondness the days when tobacco was tied in “hands.” My father took great pride in handling each step of the process, down to the tying of each hand.
I also recall his pleasure in chewing tobacco. There was a time when many people “rolled their own” cigarettes. My father “chewed his own.” I’ve seen him countless times, as he walked through a tobacco barn, reach up and pull off the tip-end of a tobacco leaf from a stalk hanging overhead. He would examine the leaf, blow the dust off, roll it up, and slip it inside his jaw. Best I recall, he never used a spit cup.
I stand amazed at how the simplest thing can spark a memory . . . like green walnuts or tobacco gum.
I think I’m going to pick up some more walnuts before the squirrels get them. I like wearing stains on my hands.
Copyright 2025 by Jack McCall
