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 Texas : Features : Columns : N. Ray Maxie :

Chinkapins:
Country Kids Love'em

by N. Ray Maxie
N. Ray Maxie
Does anyone know what a chinkapin is? I’m sure a lot of people don’t know.

The burley little nut actually resembles a small chestnut, and rightly so, it is of the chestnut family. The special little chinkapin is a small bur covered nut about 3/4 to 1˝ inches in diameter. The bur will split open when it is mature. Burs most often grow in clusters on stems and each bur contains one nut. It is a shinny dark brown, soft shell nut and is edible. The chinkapin has a nice sweet flavor when mature in September. The nuts should be promptly harvested since birds and wildlife will beat you to them and soon strip the entire tree.

GardenGuides.com says, a horticulturist once remarked, "the Allegheny chinkapin makes your mouth water but to see it makes your eyes water." I agree with both accounts, since it is a pretty and real tasty little nut. They also say, “the tree is well worthy of cultivation as an ornamental shade tree, even if we discount its rapid growth, productiveness, and delicious little nuts, which will be very acceptable for home use. It may well be our most ignored and undervalued native North American nut tree and can be used to rehabilitate disturbed sites and adapts well to harsh conditions. It can grow to 15 to 20 feet tall as a bush, or 30 to 40 feet as a single trunk tree.”

Throughout the years of my youth growing up in the Ark-La-Tex area of NE Texas, I only knew of one chinkapin tree in my vicinity. And it was a good one! On an oil lease where my dad worked, the tree was a long distance down a private sand road. It was 1/4 mile off the county road between Rambo and McLeod on the Tyson Oil Lease. Going far past the tank battery to the end of the road where the actual oil well was pumping, that rare tree (or bush) grew about 100 feet from the well. (See my other story here, “Riding the Walking Beam”.)

For several years during the 1940's and ‘50's as the weather was changing from hot summer to autumn all over the E Texas pinewoods, on weekends I accompanied my dad on his rounds. When the nuts were right, I gathered chinkapins while dad worked on the oil well. On a good visit dad and I might harvest a quart of nuts off the ground and from the burs popped open on the tree. In doing so, we were very careful of the sticky burs. Plucking a nut from the open bur could result in a painful finger prick if we weren’t very careful.

And the nuts fallen to the ground were there just to be picked up. They lay among many empty burs. For a barefoot kid, burs on the ground presented a much different hazard. I will never forget once carelessly stepping on a bur. It was oh, oh so painful! Long afterwards I wished I hadn’t. It required my dad’s “surgical” removal. From that day forward, I always wore a pair of old shoes, or scooted my bare feet very carefully in the sand to try and avoid the burs. But, once my dad found some old boards to throw under the tree for me to walk on.

Along about the 5th, 6th and 7th grades, some of my buddies and I would frequently carry a pocketful of chinkapins to school to munch on. And believe it or not, after cracking open the soft shell in their mouth and removing the tasty cornel with their teeth, they would spit the dark brown shell out on the floor. Right there in the English classroom!

Oh, the audacity of them! How ill-mannered can you get? That was trashy and inconsiderate! Don’t you think so? I suppose they were just making themselves at home. Occasionally a girl would say, “Ms. Green, Johnny is spitting brown husk on the floor.” The teacher would then require Johnny to clean it up. Me, of course, I used my shirt pocket to contain my empty shells until recess.

Now you know what a chinkapin is. Do you know what a bois d’arc ball is? Have you ever seen a ‘coon tail waving on a car radio aerial? Can you tell me what a “blue moon” really is? Or did you ever drink sassafras tea, or eat poke salad?

This is just a small glimpse of a country kid growing up in NE Texas. An upbringing I’ll always cherish. We were laid back and had fun! Most of the time.


© N. Ray Maxie
"Ramblin' Ray"
August 1, 2009 Column
piddlinacres@consolidated.net

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