Tape 4: The grandchildren, the Seattle trip

Butternut hunting with the grandchildren

5 min

Tap any word below to hear it from there.

Agnes tells how she took the three oldest children of her oldest son John into the woods, found a wild apple tree, and went back the next day with a five-gallon pail and her apron to gather butternuts. They cracked nuts with a stone, sat on boulders, and ate the sweet white meat. Years later the grandchildren still ask, 'Do you remember when we went butternut hunting?'

This story is part of Tape 4. You can hear it there at 16:55, along with everything around it.

What Agnes says

Words in light grey italics were hard to hear, so they may not be exact.

And now I'll say a few stories for the benefit of my grandchildren because they ask me to, when they were small yet, the three oldest ones of my oldest boy, John, they went to the woods with me and we wandered around on different logging roads and stuff.

Then one day we ran across a wild apple tree and had apples on it, and that was quite exciting. Never dreamed we'll see any apples there. And there we've seen, oh, maybe about 20 of them. And the apple tree was maybe 10, 12 foot high, 12, 10 foot high.

And so we enjoyed it. We picked some apples and took them with us home. And then we spied some butternut trees, and they were loaded that year. And so we decided we're going to go butternut hunting. But we had to go home because their mother kept pretty close watch on them.

And when she said, you'd be gone an hour or you'd be gone two hours, she expects us to be back in two hours because she was starting to teach him to do little housework and stuff. I guess the oldest one was maybe 13 and down.

Then one was 11 and a half, and one was 8 and a half or something. And so we didn't want to upset her or get her angry at us. So we always tried to go and be on time.

So we got home, but at the same time, we asked her if it's all right, we could go about her not hunting the next day. She says, okay, we told them how far I would have to go and everything, so she gave us two hours.

And so we took a five -gallon paint pail, and I took an apron on, so if there were so many that I can carry some in the apron home, see? and we started after dinner the second day and we really enjoyed the scene it was so beautiful, sunshiny, you know, for all the time and these butternuts, they were just so, there were bushels of them, and so we've got a certain spot where we've seen young butternots where they were quite large hanging, you know, and it was across a whole 40 or more.

So we shook them and the oldest girl, she climbed like a good trooper up that tree and then we all helped her shake and all there was butternuts all over. So we picked about half a five gallon and left some on the tree yet and then we went down towards the road and we spied another bunch of big ones so we finished filling the pail.

And then we was getting closer to the road where we was going to go home when we spied another one and that had more and bigger ones than we've seen before so they shook some and I we picked them into my apron my I must have three gallons or more in my apron and so we were supposed to see foot and down towards the road and very happy over our loot that we picked you know and then we decided to sit down so we sit down on some stones there's plenty of them there in the front pasture and I said well while we're sitting let's

go and crack some of the nuts that we've got in my apron. So we did. And they found me a boulder about the size of my fist. And the big boulders that we sat on, they were solid enough and everything.

And so we start cracking them. Of course, we got our fingers all green from the juice off the outer covering of the butternuts. But that didn't stop us. We had a certain style. We had a certain style. We hit the butternut right on the edge of it, you know, where the blasts used to be, and it cracked right in half, and then I kept on cracking, and the girls, well, there's all three girls, they start pulling out the white meat and making piles.

We got handkerchiefs out and paper we had in the pocket, so we made four piles, one for me and one for each one of the girls. So then when we had, oh, maybe a cup full or more on each pile, we stopped cracking the nuts.

Then we put the nutmeats in our pockets, and we sat down and we peeled the outer skin. It feels so nice, and the meat was just like snow and delicious. So we ate until we ate up, each one of us, the whole cup full or more.

And then I took up my apron, and with one hand I held the apron, the other hand. And I carry, the 13 -year -old helped me carry the five -gallon. We got home plenty of time, and we had a good fun.

And now, after all these years, they still think of it, and they mentioned it to me. He said, do you remember when we went butternut hunting? And I said, sure, sure.