While there was a lot of joy during the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, there was also a lot of dismay. There was an activity that my family participated in for seven years that had Loyd and me feel like pulling our hair. It would have been a lot better than what we wound up having to pull.
There was a retired teacher in Artesia that my parents knew. She lived close to Hermosa school. She had three pecan trees in her backyard and every fall, she needed to have all the pecans picked up off the ground. I'm guessing that she used to have kids, but they grew up and moved away, never to return to help with the pecan crop. Somehow, my parents volunteered the whole family to go pick up all those pecans. I have no idea how we got roped into it. I guess it had something to do with us getting half the pecans to use for holiday recipies. This meant that Loyd and I did not get paid any money for something we never wanted to be a part of in the first place.
The pecans started hitting the ground in October, In November, we began picking them up. It wasn't so bad the first couple of days. However, because there were three trees, it took more than just one weekend to pick them up. We would have to go for a couple of hours after school a couple of days a week. It would be the middle of December and we would still be picking up pecans.
One problem with the pecans we picked early in November is that they would still have their hulls on. The hulls were these soft, moist coverings. After awhile, they would dry up and fall off the pecan. But since we started picking up pecans early, we had to remove the soft hulls, which were still moist and contained sap. If this sap got on your hands, they would be stained for three weeks. There was no way you could avoid getting the sap on your hands (unless you were wearing gloves, for which we were never given the option.)
For the first couple of years, we would take the pecans to Granddad Ogolon, who would shell them. Then, I guess he got too old to do that (or got fed up) and we had to start doing it ourselves. So, on the days that we weren't picking them up, we had to remove the shells. We had this metal device powered by rubber bands that would crack the pecans open. Then, we would have to dig the little shell pieces out of the cracks with a pick. Yes, we had to do them one at a time.
During the two weeks before Christmas, Mom would make all her Christmas candy using the pecans. It was during this brief period of time during the year that we got to have sugar in the house. A lot of the candy was really good because they contained chocolate. However, one year, Mom started "barbequing" some of the the pecans. She would put this seasoning on them and stick them in the oven. This made the whole house STINK for THREE DAYS. I thought she learned her lesson the first year, but she kept making the barbeque pecans and never figured out how to do it without producing that odor.
If I remember correctly, 1979 was the last year we had to pick up pecans. I think the woman died and the pecan trees got cut down. I don't know if it was the new homeowners or her children who made that decision, but it was apparent someone thought those pecans were more work than they were worth.
To this day, I avoid pecans as much as I can, especially around Christmastime. I will not even eat pecan pie.
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