It's Nut Time Again

Fall is giving Mississippi a preview of coming events. Cool mornings and evenings, a welcome relief from the humid temperatures.

Received my first catalog from Sunnyland Farms in Georgia. Again I turn each page hungrily anxious for my first autumn taste of pecans.

We enjoy the ride to nearby Raymond, Mississippi to a retail pecan grove  bursting with ripe nuts. Human pickers and machines gather pecans, sort them and place them in large bins inside the store. Inside the small frame building, the nuts are divided into the types of pecans and displayed. First time I visited I recall how confused I was with the differences in pecans. Wasn't there just a good pecan?  

 Each variety has a distinct taste and chew. Luckily, you can take a sample, crack it, and try it for the kind of taste sensation you prefer. Some of the kinds I recall from my last visit were Stuart, Cape Fear, Desirable, Forkert, and Excel.  Every year a new type appears.  If you can go to a grove in your area, choosing your favorite pecan taste is an education in itself.

Just as most everything else in the food world, Indians ate pecans. The word is Algonquin meaning " hard to crack, needing a stone to open" Maybe those early ones were hard to crack, but today, some, like the paper-shell type, can be cracked in the hand.  I think of the hickory nuts Mother loved. She used a hammer, put the nut on the sidewalk or a large stone, and hit several times. The result was a constant picking out of the meat which didn't want to give up its warm bed. Too much work for the rest of the family who stuck with pecans.

We've always ordered pecans in the shell and had them cracked there at the store. There's such pleasure to sit in front of the television set with a bowl of cracked pecans in your lap, picking off the shell. The act of working for the meat is satisfying. You're not eating them too fast, tasting slowly with delight. Not the same satisfaction as reaching for a handful of  shelled meats sitting ready in its tin.  Try it.

One occasion we sent cousins in Virginia 10 lbs of pecans, cracked. When they received the package they were horrified that the package had been through some melee to have broken the pecans. They almost complained to UPS before they called to verify the condition.

We in the South say pee Kahn', not Pee' kans.   Check the dictionary.

Shoes, Wonderful Shoes

A recent advertisement for a shoe company in town brought back memories. As you can see in the photo the wedge is popular now.  The style is similar to ones I wore in 1954 when I began teaching in a very small community near Oxford, MS.

Newly married, I had moved with R to the student housing, not the best at that time but cheap. I had a job teaching in an unincorporated school district. To offset the few students I was assigned to, the principal asked me tobe the librarian. I had to enroll in two three-hour courses in June to be able to hold such a “responsible” job.

Already I had  two years of experience behind me in the Delta  in small communities, but this one near the University of Mississippi was a pitiful example of how necessary this district needed to incorporate with larger ones. This particular school began in July and released the students in the fall for one month so kids could help with crops.  I wore my coolest clothing, as those days didn’t see air conditioners in school buildings. Topping my outfits were my lightest shoes, straw wedges.  I wore them every day because they were easy to slip on and off.  My job as librarian rarely saw me out of a chair, hence, removal of my shoes when no one was looking.

In the six short weeks I was employed, the local teachers let me know that I was too dressed up. The students had never seen shoes like mine;” citified” was barking loudly around me.  I ignored their remarks, not understanding how anyone thought I was citified. I did speak better English—was that it, really?

Those shoes lasted the rest of the warm fall and the following spring when I was teaching in Jackson, Mississippi, where I transferred . Now, 57 years later this style is popular again. You can bet I’ll have another pair like the ones above, not to celebrate my teaching in the country, but to remember an early time in my life.

I Could Have Had the Best Mentor. . .

Now that I'm retired I have time to reflect on those with whom I've been in contact who could have changed my life had my decision at the time been opposite. I seem to have floated through life making a few bad ones. Here's one example.

Fresh out of college I took a summer job with a suburban newspaper. My goal was to teach a few years and then to enroll in journalism school. My new position was to work with the owner and his wife. Marlene covered the business side and dipped into the social scene with her reporting. When I was hired I reported just about every angle until Sam decided I could write features. I interviewed the kid who won a monkey, the award-winning rose grower, the prim antique collector, the college trekker. Then I began to cover the evening parties with a photographer, getting names of the posed. That was par for the course, I suspected. I had spent four years writing for a community college newspaper, covering every aspect of putting out a papers except printing.

One day an imposing lady wearing a hat whose brim was as wide as an umbrella and as springlike as daffodils entered the doorway. She wanted to see Sam. Later Sam exclaimed she was the owner of two small newspapers. Her name was Mrs. Smith. Uh, yea, Mrs. Smith in disguise I said to myself.

However, she came in often, always sporting a different wide-brimmed hat. I thought by then that she was interested in buying Sam's newspaper. In early August I received a letter from her asking me to join her staff in Lexington, just north of Jackson. That request sent me into the struggle of "Should I or Should I Not?" Already I was preparing to teach in a Delta school. I had learned in college -- YOU DON'T BREAK CONTRACTS. Here was my opportunity to work full time at what I truly loved. I leaned towards staying with my contract, regretfully. By the following year I was ready togive my body a hundred lashes for the mistake.

Little did I know Hazel Brannon Smith and her zeal for values. As a staff member of the Lexington Advertiser, I would have become embroiled in civil rights with Hazel. Her complete bio is found online at www.journal of Mississippi History written by Newman, Mark, “Hazel Brannon Smith and Holmes County, Mississippi, 1936-1964: The Making of a Pulitzer Prize Winner,” Journal of Mississippi History 54 (February 1992), pp. 59-87.

The summer I received the invitation was 1954 and during the following year as I struggled with 150 students Hazel Brannon Smith struggled with the Supreme Court's decision to desegregate public schools. She stood alone while white merchants and citizens boycotted her newspaper.

By 1964, ten years after my invitation to join her staff, Hazel Brannon Smith became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for her editorials expressing her strong opinions. The last edition of the Lexington Advertiser was printed in 1983. She won the Fannie Lou Hamer award in 1993 and died May 1994.

I often think of the exciting and dangerous ride I would have had with Hazel Brannon Smith. Would I have stayed and fought alongside her? Could I have coped with the burning cross in her yard? The anger and meanness of the citizens? I had no strong political opinions but I agreed with many of her beliefs. I would have witnessed zeal and heartbreak and courage in one woman. I would have had the best mentor anyone could have wished for.

Now the Mississippi Legislature has honored Hazel Brannon Smith with Resolution 83 for her courage in the heat of adversity. Look online at the Clarion-Ledger, Jackson, MS, March 31, 2009 for an article by Emily Wagster Pettus reporting the honor and giving some background. I can see Hazel now, standing on a cloud wearing one of her wide-brimmed hats, smiling down on all of us.