In the Walnut Grove

These trees provided shade and many bushels of black walnuts.  The walnut hulls were a mess to remove and the shells hard to crack, but nothing was better than the nuts for adding to fudge.  They were also great in Waldorf salad and anything else calling for nuts.

My father used to white wash the bottoms of those trees, as was the custom.

Two trees in particular that were special were the two outside the kitchen window. They provided shade for our sand box and support for a swing and hammock.

When I was little my mother put my playpen under them for a nap and I took baths in a tub in the shade.

I remember Herbie Hogan cleaning his fish in the shade of those trees.

After Morehead Camp was sold the Williams children wanted something made of that walnut wood.  The folks at the lumber yard got as much usable wood as they could, bypassing the bullets that were lodged in the trees as a result of target practice. We had special boxes made of the wood for ourselves and our children, and I had a couple of small tables built with an insert of marble salvaged from Fountain Square in Cincinnati.

I would never have dreamed that thinking of trees would have evoked so many memories!