by Pa Rock
Road Warrior
Rosie and I are back in the Kansas City area this weekend. We had a nice drive up this morning - 375 miles of sunshine, blue skies, and autumn scenery.
The Amish were out in full force, especially around Seymour, Missouri, where we encountered four individual buggies of the hard-working religious agrarians. One buggy was driven by an older woman dressed in black and wearing a dark bonnet who seemed to be in a hurry to get to wherever she was going, and another was under the control of a bearded young man, also dressed in sensible Amish garb. The other two buggies were being driven by married couples with young children on board - and both of those buggies were pulling long, wooden trailers which were loaded down with pumpkins. One also had what appeared to be some blooming home-grown mums that were heading to a fall market.
We pulled into a quick stop just north of Springfield, Missouri, where I noticed a parked pickup truck that was hooked up to a trailer that was full of walnuts, still in their hulls. There are many places in the rural Midwest now where people can take walnuts and have them hulled by a machine - with a buyer standing at the ready to purchase the hulled nuts in bulk. Most small town feed stores have a hulling process in operation this time of year.
When I was young we would gather walnuts in their thick green hulls and spread them out on gravel driveways. As the cars drove over them during the course of the fall and winter, the hulls would gradually be worn and ripped away by the car tires. We cracked the hulled walnuts by placing them on an old anvil and then striking them with a hammer. My sister and I would help our mother pick the "goodies" (nut meat) out of the broken walnut shells. Mom kept the goodies in quart jars, and she would use them to make cookies and candy throughout the rest of the year.
One other bit of walnut trivia: My dad's favorite flavor of ice cream was "Black Walnut," which was made with delicious walnuts like those grown throughout the Ozarks. During the summer we would often make homemade ice cream with a hand-cranked ice cream freezer, but I don't remember ever making any using mom's hand-picked walnut goodies. I do remember making homemade ice cream with fresh peaches and strawberries - and both flavors were delicious!
We also made homemade ice cream in the winter when there was a good snowfall. A very delicious concoction called snow ice cream could be whipped up in a hurry using milk, sugar, vanilla, and, of course, snow. Enjoying that delicacy came to an end around 1960 or so when the government began warning us not to eat snow because of possible radiation from all of the atomic testing that was going on at the time.
One other bit of radiation trivia: Our family drove to California from Missouri twice during the late 1950's and I remember being stopped by military roadblocks in the desert at least twice. Long lines of cars waited in the hot desert sun for what seemed like hours until we were cleared to move along. At one of those stops our car was either first in line or very near the front, and my dad asked one of the young men in uniform manning the roadblock what was going on up ahead. He said that the government was testing a weapon.
Fortunately, I don't remember seeing any mushroom clouds! Things are better today, though we still run the risk running into pumpkins or walnuts as they come bouncing down the highway!
Road Warrior
Rosie and I are back in the Kansas City area this weekend. We had a nice drive up this morning - 375 miles of sunshine, blue skies, and autumn scenery.
The Amish were out in full force, especially around Seymour, Missouri, where we encountered four individual buggies of the hard-working religious agrarians. One buggy was driven by an older woman dressed in black and wearing a dark bonnet who seemed to be in a hurry to get to wherever she was going, and another was under the control of a bearded young man, also dressed in sensible Amish garb. The other two buggies were being driven by married couples with young children on board - and both of those buggies were pulling long, wooden trailers which were loaded down with pumpkins. One also had what appeared to be some blooming home-grown mums that were heading to a fall market.
We pulled into a quick stop just north of Springfield, Missouri, where I noticed a parked pickup truck that was hooked up to a trailer that was full of walnuts, still in their hulls. There are many places in the rural Midwest now where people can take walnuts and have them hulled by a machine - with a buyer standing at the ready to purchase the hulled nuts in bulk. Most small town feed stores have a hulling process in operation this time of year.
When I was young we would gather walnuts in their thick green hulls and spread them out on gravel driveways. As the cars drove over them during the course of the fall and winter, the hulls would gradually be worn and ripped away by the car tires. We cracked the hulled walnuts by placing them on an old anvil and then striking them with a hammer. My sister and I would help our mother pick the "goodies" (nut meat) out of the broken walnut shells. Mom kept the goodies in quart jars, and she would use them to make cookies and candy throughout the rest of the year.
One other bit of walnut trivia: My dad's favorite flavor of ice cream was "Black Walnut," which was made with delicious walnuts like those grown throughout the Ozarks. During the summer we would often make homemade ice cream with a hand-cranked ice cream freezer, but I don't remember ever making any using mom's hand-picked walnut goodies. I do remember making homemade ice cream with fresh peaches and strawberries - and both flavors were delicious!
We also made homemade ice cream in the winter when there was a good snowfall. A very delicious concoction called snow ice cream could be whipped up in a hurry using milk, sugar, vanilla, and, of course, snow. Enjoying that delicacy came to an end around 1960 or so when the government began warning us not to eat snow because of possible radiation from all of the atomic testing that was going on at the time.
One other bit of radiation trivia: Our family drove to California from Missouri twice during the late 1950's and I remember being stopped by military roadblocks in the desert at least twice. Long lines of cars waited in the hot desert sun for what seemed like hours until we were cleared to move along. At one of those stops our car was either first in line or very near the front, and my dad asked one of the young men in uniform manning the roadblock what was going on up ahead. He said that the government was testing a weapon.
Fortunately, I don't remember seeing any mushroom clouds! Things are better today, though we still run the risk running into pumpkins or walnuts as they come bouncing down the highway!
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