It was a status thing to crack a walnut in such a way to get the kernel out whole.  Great Uncle Hugh used a buggy tap to hold his walnuts, and then he had practiced over the years and knew to use just enough power in a hammer whack to crack the hard, blackish shell.  He had many whole kernels and would save them in quart fruit jars to show visiting relatives and neighbors. Great-Aunt Pansy harvested the kernels from the jars, broke them into pieces for her amazing cakes, pies (we didn’t have pecan pie in those days) and of course, fudge.

I don’t recall that Mom ever got any whole kernels out of her walnuts, but she had some good-sized pieces.  We kids didn’t much care for them raw, but Mom loved them for a snack.  We begged for Dad to make fudge, which he did for Christmas and that was a long wait.  Mom also made pies with walnuts.  Yummy, especially with Big Dip ice cream on top.

Over the years, picking up walnuts to sell to Hammon’s Nut Company became a money-making project for town kids as well as farm kids.   Picking up walnuts became a regular money-making project for school projects.  My 1965 high school class organized walnut-picking excursions for our senior trip from Southwest Missouri to Washington, D.C.  I remember having fun doing that because it was with friends.  Except one time, a friend used someone’s dump truck for hauling the walnuts and sitting on top of that load of walnuts was anything but comfortable as we rode through the hills and curves of Highway Z from down by the Niangua River farm into Conway.

Today it is getting harder for those with walnut trees to find kids to pick up walnuts.  They’d rather have a job at a burger joint in town, inside climate controlled building than do the back-stretching and hand-staining job of picking up walnuts.  Hourly wage is pretty small, if you figure the time, but you don’t pick up walnuts to sell just for money.  It’s tradition.  It’s history.

It is homemade fudge chock full of yummies.

October, 2011

Years before this photo was taken with his first two grandkids, when my sister and I were about the age of her kids in the photo, Dad chilled watermelon in the milk cooler.  This was way before bulk milk tanks.  The milk cooler in those years was a big green box maybe 6 feet square.  It was filled with cold water and big enough to hold 8 or more milk cans.  You can only buy milk cans like that today in antique markets.  The cooler had a thick lid that was surprisingly easy to lift.  The insulation might have been sawdust in the thick-sides and lid.  There was a paddle in the center of the tank that circulated the cold water around the cans that would be picked up by a truck from the dairy processing plant later in the day.  Sometimes my sister would have a contest with me – or visiting city cousins – to see how long we could hold our hands in the cold water.   With daytime temperatures in the 90s or higher, we liked to play in the concrete-walled milk barn.

The best use for the big green tank for me was cooling watermelons.  Dad made quite a production of bringing home the first watermelon of the summer, purchased at the MFA Cooperative store in Conway or Lebanon, MO.  It would be a big Black Diamond melon that he’d tested for ripeness.  He would ease the big watermelon gently into the cold water of the milk cooler after the dairy truck driver had picked up the Jersey milk filled cans.  It took hours and hours to cool the melon enough for him to decide it was time to cut.  Sometimes he let it stay overnight, much to my agony.  I longed for that melon.  Begged for it.  When he finally cut the melon, it was an outside activity.  Dad cut it into rounds, then half-rounds, then quarter-rounds.  I’d be dancing with impatience, waiting for my slice.  Grandpa taught me to add a little salt, then chow down.  Mmmm, we bent over and gnawed the melon to the rind.  Juice dripped down our chins and hands, but we could wash them outside with the faucet and a garden hose.

Yeah, it was worth the wait to have that cold melon on a blistering hot 4th of July Missouri Ozarks 1950-something day.  

note:  The photo to the right was taken in 1941, 10-12 years before the RR1 watermelon story.

print of Ella Ragland oil painting

As a child, Decoration Day evoked mixed emotions.  It was a change of pace, an exciting thing to gather up flowers to go decorate graves.  I knew we’d meet many relatives at the cemeteries, especially Dad’s cousins at the Ragland and Barnes ancestors’ graves.  He loved to visit with family, friends, strangers.  So did Mom, but she was more shy about interactions and we did not go to Hough cemetery – her people – every year.  It was a busy time on the farm, high summer beginning and many “to dos” always waited our return.  It was especially exciting for me as a child, though, when we did take the extra half day to drive to the far eastern section of Laclede County to go “Down Home.”  That was Mom’s reference to Hough chapel and cemetery area.  Her grandfather had donated the land and she had many gregarious cousins that would be there cleaning out weeds, planting jonquils and placing fresh cut peonies and roses on the graves.

Those memories surround me as I take silk flowers to decorate graves, now that I am a senior.  I feel a sense of comfort, of family history, pride, deep connections in ways that words don’t adequately convey.  As I select flowers each year, now that I again live close enough to decorate the ancestors’ graves each year, I think of which flowers would please.  This year, I found some pink roses that remind me of the old time roses that grew at both my grandparents’ farms.  They were small, very thorny (tiny thorns but thousands on each stem) and light pink to dark pink.  I also bought some silk rose buds that remind me of Mom’s favorite Peace rose.  And, I put some dark red and some white rose buds on my grandparents’ graves.  Peaceful.

NOTE:  You can purchase a print or greeting cards with Ella’s Roses image – send email query to EllaRaglandArt@yahoo.com.  Proceeds benefit local Alzheimer’s patients.

Ella's favorite flower - print of her original oil painting

One of the family favorites of Mom’s paintings is her original oil painting of three iris.  I’ve dubbed it “Iris Trio” and have sold many cards and prints.  The original belongs to my sister, and will never leave the family.  It is beautiful in its simplicity – three beautiful images of different hybrid iris that she created for a March birthday.  She was likely anticipating the spring’s blooms and smiling to herself.  The painting and prints make me smile in memory of Mom’s brag book full of iris photographs.

Salute to all as we approach Mother’s Day, and thank you.  ~ Joyce

Delivered more fiddle aprons, aka activity aprons to Lebanon, MO facilities with Alzheimer’s patients.  Received well – smiles and hugs – from activities directors.

Picked up a sample stuffed doggie – prototype for more to deliver to Alzheimer’s patients.

Waiting on word from graduate students in Music Therapy at Drury University in Springfield regarding their proposed study about music therapy and Alzheimer’s patients’ appetites.  I think the research proposal is in the hands and minds of the Institutional Review Board – the IRB – federally required review process.

Newly designed cards are selling well at The Artsy Cafe, Courtyard Antiques, and MacCreed’s gallery.

Happy Spring ~ Joyce

Dad had four hats, each with a specific purpose.  In the summer, he had a good straw hat for town,  church, funerals, weddings, family gatherings and CoOp meetings.  Sam Ragland had a work straw hat to keep the blistering Midwestern sun off his fair Irish-English-Welch skin.   He had red hair – not ginger – red hair and fair, freckled skin.  In summer, his freckles merged into one reddish brown covering his hands, arms, face and neck.

Dad’s work straw hat gave him the typical farmer’s forehead in those days before air-conditioned tractor cabs.  The hat band served as a storage area for kitchen matches, a stubby pencil, the odd bird feather and other necessary items.  He could strike a kitchen match with his thumb nail for his Lucky Strikes, but that’s another story.

Dad’s winter hats were a dark grey felt with a conservative dark blue band.  He also had a cordurory hat with ear flaps for winter wear.  The hat with flaps up, shows in the photo below.

Dad, a natty dresser, kept his good hat meticulously clean and perfectly shaped.  He wore his hats straight on his head and, like all men in those days, tipped his hat to say, “Hello.”

At a certain point in the hat’s wear, Dad rotated it to a work hat and got a new “good” hat – not often – I think maybe twice in my growing up days I recall Dad with a new hat.  The work felt hat brim was oddly shaped.  When putting a milking machine on a stubborn cow, he needed both hands on the machine, especially when trying to attach the teat cups,  so he had to head butt the cow’s flank to remind her to relax.  The hat brim suffered indignities during those moves and the brim never recovered.  The winter hat also had ear flaps, a functional necessity for protection against cold wind, sleet, snow.  He’d take his hats off the minute he stepped inside the house and hung the work hats on deer antlers for storage.   He kept the good hats on a shelf in a closet.

My cousin Mary has her father-in-law’s good hat displayed on a wall in her house, as important a recollection as her wedding picture and kids’ photographs.  I wish I had Dad’s hats – summer, winter, good and work models – to display along with Mom’s oil paintings.  They were as much a part of him as her creativity.   He wore them like his skin and his moods.

Mom was particular about the Christmas tree.  It had to be tall enough to stand on the floor in a coffee can braced with rocks, but not so tall as to brush the ceiling.  It had to have limbs thick enough for her visual approval, so that the long strands of tin foil icicles used for decorating could hang at fairly even spaces.  And it had to be thick enough to hold all the antique Ragland family ornaments along with the modern glass globes Mom treasured, and at least two strands of multi-colored lights.

The tree went up just a few days before Christmas. Our Laclede County, Missouri farm had no pines but myriad cedars.  Nuisance trees – except for Christmas.  Cedar trees dried out quickly, and since the tree went in the front room where the wood stove radiated heat for the house, it got maximum drying effect.  Seems to me the tree began to drop needles the instant it went up, but the floor sweeping chores it caused were done without the usual gripes.

In recollection, it seems that the tree ritual was precipitated by the first package that arrived from the California aunts.  Two of my dad’s three sisters lived in the Los Angeles area –Glendale – and two of his aunts lived in La Jolla and Long Beach.  Aunt Reenie, as we called Dad’s older sister Lorena, sent the most regular packages.  We’d carefully cut the twine (to save) and would rip open the brown paper outer wrapper to find three or four Christmas wrapped packages.  There we’d be stopped dead in our tracks by labels on each present with cheery pictures around curt words, “Do NOT open until Christmas.”  We didn’t dare.  I’m not sure why, but we just knew Aunt Reenie would find out and would be so angry she’d not send anything the next year.  That, or Dad’s adherence to his sister’s wishes.  Or, maybe it gave Mom more leverage on behavior modification.  “You’d better straighten up or you won’t get to open any of those presents on Christmas Eve.  She’d let us open the aunts’ presents – the minor presents – on Christmas Eve, but we had to wait until the next day for Santa gifts.

Christmas Eve became The Major Gift Opening Time at the farm as my sister and I grew out of Santa Claus stage.  Mom and Dad would be up early on Christmas morning tending to business – milking the registered Jerseys that provided our income.  We could have waited until after chore time for presents, but somehow we liked the relaxed time of the evening before.  Mom was probably also tired of our begging to open the minor presents and a was big kid herself with presents.  Besides, daytime on the farm frequently brought new chores, some sort of minor to major emergency and always – until they succumbed to old age – time at Grandma and Grandpa Fisher’s house for lunch and presents.  Thus my stronger memories of opening presents remains Christmas Eve.

One year Mom decided in early spring to start pruning a cedar that would become the most lush, full-limbed and symmetrical Christmas tree, ever.  She took her large farm shears out to the hand-picked tree every three or four weeks that spring and summer.  By early fall, she was pleased with the results and stopped pruning to let the tree settle into its winter mode.  The daily demands of dairy farm life and fall harvest time took over our lives.  The field that housed a hundred small and mid-sized cedars was ignored.  The ground wasn’t fertile enough for cows to pasture there, but in the coldest parts of winter, Dad would let the cows into the field where the cedars provided some shelter from the wind.  He’d deliver hay to them each day so they could continue with milk production.  The cedars had to earn a living other than providing the annual Christmas tree.

Late one cold but sunny December day, a new neighbor stopped by to ask if he could maybe cut a tree for his kids.  These neighbors were a bit rough-looking, poor, ill-kept but clean enough.  Mom, of course, said yes.  She asked if he needed to borrow the ax and something like, “Yes ma’am ifn you don’t mind, I shorly do” confirmed her suspicion.  The neighbor parked his rattle trap rusty blue pickup in our driveway and walked across the road, bunched the barbed wire enough to let him straddle the fence, and walked into the cedar field.

We continued with chores.  Dad or Mom split firewood each day.  My sister and I had to carry it into the house.  She, the older one, carried large chunks and I, the skinny little sister, carried as much kindling as I could manage.  We were inside reading comic books when the neighbor carried his tree and, with a big grin, returned the ax with many thanks to Mom.  I remember the outside scene vaguely, but remember vividly that Mom stormed into the house as he drove out of the yard.  She said something like, “Who’d have thought that ignorant man would spy the best tree in the field.  My tree.  My hand-pruned tree.  I couldn’t tell him no.  That he couldn’t have that tree.  Wouldn’t have been a Christian thing to do.  But doggone if that isn’t aggravating.  He cut my tree!”

My sister and I riveted on Mom’s face.  Would her annoyance carry over to us?  Would we have a tree that year?

Within a day or two, we did get a tree, Mom grumbling under her breath as she searched for something remotely close to looking as nice as her tree.  I don’t know if she chastised herself for not trimming more than one tree, or whether she wished she’d have gone with the neighbor to choose a tree, but I clearly remember her annoyance.  She wore her indignation with every step.  I think that Dad might have grinned, but knew better than to say anything.  It was one of those times on the farm.