Now, a great many of the people in the same neighborhood did not save their walnuts. These walnuts were gathered from everybody's trees without any objection on the part of anyone. But it was a means of those people getting ahead with their savings from their other farming operations, and this wintertime work that they could put in, why, that kind of thrift is the kind that gets people ahead who want to get ahead and have vision.
I might say a few words about pecans in Tennessee. We have throughout the state quite a few scattered native pecans that are used, especially in all except the more western sections of the state. As a whole they are for home use. Now, in the extreme western section of the state we have a certain amount of seedling pecans, mostly, that produce a considerable income to a limited number of people. In the 1945 census something over 4,000 farms reported some income from pecans--this was mostly in the western section of the state--the value of which was something over $32,000, which at the present time would be a considerable under-valuation.
This tree is found, I might say, throughout the state. I recall a few years ago coming off of the Cumberland Plateau down in Warren County into the cove there around Viola and seeing a beautiful grove of pecans along a stream. I hadn't been through that country before, but I had known a family that lived there, and I stopped at a house to see just what those pecans meant. And there was an old lady on the porch who owned the property, and I asked her some questions about it, and she told me how they got there and knew when they were not there. She had been raised on that place but she said, "I want to show you something." So I went with her around the side yard into the back yard, and she had a couple of pecan trees there that were loaded with pecans until the limbs were hanging over just like pear tree limbs, heavily loaded pear tree limbs. I said, "My, what a crop of pecans you have here. That's really wonderful." Those were the budded pecans, the type that is grown farther south of us. She said, "Just wait a minute, now. I don't know whether I have any pecans or not." I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "If the frost is two weeks later than usual we will have a wonderful pecan crop, if we have a late frost. If we have an early frost we don't have any pecans."