Page 8 - Ninety Miles From Nowhere

fourteen. After Mr. Justin’s death when Myrl and I were twelve years old, the Justin Boot factory was moved to Fort Worth, Texas, where it is still flourishing. One of the older Justin girls, Enid, because she felt Nocona should always have a boot company, opened a new factory there and called hers Nocona Boots.
The small settlement of Nocona was located in the midst of the broad timber belt which ran from Missouri across the southeast corner of Oklahoma and into Texas. The trees were so thick that many had to be chopped down to make room for the houses. The trees consisted of many rare and wonderful varieties, so good for a happy childhood — oaks for swings and for climbing, wild pecans, wild persimmons, hackberry, chinaberry and Bois d’Arc, to name just a few. There were more huge oaks than I’ve ever seen anywhere else, tall and broad of girth. My father always put up a swing for us wherever we lived, and in one place the lowest limb of the tree in our front yard was as high as our house. Some of the gnarled oaks were of ancient vintage, full of toe holds for climbing and large holes for hiding the books which I stashed away to read while sitting in a comfortable fork in the tree.
The excursions out of town into the deep woods to pick wild pecans were occasions of joy. There were the tall straight pecan trees with the many wild grape vines climbing over them. We cut off small sections of the dead vines and smoked them. It was so difficult to suck the smoke through them that we would blister our tongues. Someone told us we needed a mustard plaster on the back of our necks to help us draw.
In the late fall we children all looked forward with great anticipation to the first heavy frost. On the first Sunday afternoon following, practically the whole town turned out to walk about two miles down the railroad tracks to the large grove of wild persimmon trees. There we’d feast like a group of noisy magpies, then take sacks of the succulent fruit home with us.
Once we took some guests along on the trip with us — friends who were not familiar with the characteristics of wild persimmons. Instead of selecting the softest squishiest fruit, they chose the hardest, most solid they could find. Imagine their surprise when they experienced the peculiarly astringent quality of green persimmons that causes the mouth to pucker. A man once said that green persimmons could really help you learn to whistle.
In later years I have seen nothing except the domestic variety of persimmon from California, but I always refused them because in flavor they fall far short of the wild variety.
The hackberry trees had small twigs filled with berry-like seeds which we children enjoyed. These were very hard seeds about an eighth of an inch in diameter, covered with a hull the thickness of butcher paper. The only thing we could eat was the hull, and the only way we could enjoy it was to put the whole seed in our mouths and gnaw the skin off the seeds. It had a wonderful nutty flavor — pleasurable, at least to a child’s taste.
The chinaberry trees provided us with no taste treats but with lots of entertainment. First the delicate lavender and purple