Earning our own money from Christmas
It was our first year living in the Ozarks of Missouri. Money was tight and we wondered how we were going to have Christmas. Our parents had always helped us get something for our siblings and grandparents, but this year that wasn’t going to happen.
We asked dad how we were going to have gifts to give. He said maybe mom could help us make things or if we wanted to work for the money the MFA feed store was buying walnuts. He said we could go out to the walnut parch and pick up the ones that had fallen and he would take them to town to sell. He said we could divide the money between us and use that to get gifts for the family.
We thought that was a great idea and asked if we could use the tractor and wagon on Saturday to go to the patch. On our farm was a stand of walnut trees that someone in the past had cultivated. There were several acres of trees that mom called her living emergency account. If there wasn’t enough money to meet an emergency repair of something on the farm dad would harvest a tree or two and sell the logs at the mill. We would always replace the cut log with a sapling that mom started in her garden.
On Saturday after chores, we hooked up the wagon to the tractor. We packed a snack and a jug of water and headed to the walnut patch. We worked all morning picking up walnuts and had the wagon about half full. We stopped to eat and rest abet when my brother said we should pull the wagon up under the tree then shake the limbs and the nuts would fall into the wagon. It was a good idea in theory but the nuts would fall on the edge of the wagon and bounce out or miss the wagon altogether.
Dad came by ever so often to check on us. He came by as we were shaking the tree limb and the walnuts flying all over. He got to laughing so hard he had to set down on a stump. It was not what he had said we could do but he was impressed with our ingenuity. We said picking up walnuts was hard work and were trying to save time. After a while, the little kids got tired and just wanted to set down instead of working.
Dad brought some feed sacks out and said it would be easier to take the nuts to town in sacks than loose. We had the little ones filling the sacks while we bigger kids picked up and carried the nuts to the wagon. Around 2 o’clock dad said it was time to come to the house. We finished sacking what we had gathered and had several sacks full.
When we got back to the house and rested for a while dad said we could get more money if we hulled the nuts. That the store would pay more for the nuts if they didn’t have to take the hulls off. Of course, we were all for making more money.
We discussed several ways to get the hulls off. We tried to peel the hulls off but that didn’t work too well and the hulls gave off a black stain that wouldn’t come off without a lot of scrubbing. We tried putting them in the driveway and running over them with the tractor. That worked but we still had to separate the nuts from the hulls which meant dealing with the black stain again.
After a while, dad came out of his workshop with an old corn sheller he had hooked up to the motor off a lawnmower. He said we should be able to put the walnuts in the top of the sheller and the nuts should come out where the corn would and the hulls where the cobs come out. The motor was to take the place of the hand crank; it sounded great and would save a lot of time. He set it up by the milk barn facing the driveway. We loaded the hopper with nuts and dad turned it on. It mumbled and rumbled and started shooting the hulled nuts out of the side of the machine into the driveway. It worked wonderfully, except the motor only had one speed, so the nuts flew about 20 feet into the drive. We spent the rest of the afternoon running after nuts. Dad got such a kick out of watching us chase flyaway nuts that he called mom to come to watch and they had a great time laughing at us.
When we got them all hulled, picked up, and sacked again we only had half as many. We added up how much we would get and divided the amount between the four of us, it didn’t come too much. You get a lot more for walnuts nowadays, but back then we got seven dollars for one hundred pounds. We had bagged four bags at seven dollars a bag which gave us each seven dollars. That doesn’t sound like much but to kids under ten, it was a fortune.
The next Saturday we loaded up the bags in the truck and dad took us to town. After we sold the nuts at the MFA Feed Store we went to the department store. It was a type of general store with just about anything a farm family would ever need. I can still remember that store. I loved the smells of fruit and candy and you could test out the cologne in the perfume aisle. The floor was wood and your shoes made a clicking sound when you walked across it.
We needed to get something for all the members of the family with the seven dollars that each of us got from the sales of the nuts. We had seven people to buy for and we had to put seven cents in our offering envelope for church.
That was a lot for a little kid to think about. We walked around the store trying to figure out what to buy. The boys went with dad and we girls went with mom. We picked out handkerchiefs with lace edges for grandma and bandanas for dad and grandpa. While mom took my sister to find something for me, I got some cologne for her and ribbons for my sister to put in her hair. We bought the boys caps for their cap pistols.
We each carried our sack of purchases out to the truck proud of ourselves for working hard to make the money ourselves. When we got home mom helped us wrap the gifts and we put them under the tree.
As we got older and earned money from jobs we had. I watched neighbors’ kids and became the go-to babysitter for the surrounding farms. My brothers worked on hay crews. Presents got bigger and more expensive but we still picked up walnuts and sold them every year to add to what we had to spend.
We were taught how to work for what we wanted and to always give to others. We were also taught to give back to God part of what he gave us. We have instilled that same concept in our own children. That you work hard for what you get, give to others, and return some to God who gave it to us in the first place.
God Bless all my readers and have a Merry Christmas
Leave a Reply