I love pecans, so much so that every year in August I order a five-pound bag from a company in Albany, GA. I’ve been doing it for at least 15 years or more. I haven’t found pecans for sale at auction, but I did snag a nice Art Deco style nutcracker (not the Ballet) and bowl once.
I grew up with pecans and have eaten them all my life. Lots of them. We had huge pecan trees in our front and back yards that shaded us from the sun in the summer and provided nibbling food for empty stomachs. They bore nuts of two sizes: One was long and slender – we kids called them slides – and the other was small, round and hard as a rock.
As kids, we called them “pe-cans” and my family in Georgia still does, but I now call them “pe-kahns.”
The pecans I order from Sunnyland Farms in Albany also come in two types, and the meat is much easier to retrieve from the shells. My favorite is the Schley, which looks a lot like slides. I order the pecans in August, get them in October and crack open a handful at a time throughout the winter. Sometimes a 5-pound bag can last me the entire winter, other times I have to reorder at least once.
I love them eating them with peppermint candy.
Pecans for me are a truly Southern treat (they were first found in Texas, home of the largest pecan sculpture, 1,000 pounds) – just like the Nu-Way hotdogs I get each time I return to Macon to visit my family. I’m sure each of you have a nostalgic food that you must have from back home. For Philadelphians living elsewhere, it’s a cheesesteak.
My family has always accommodated my pecan obsession. Unharvested pecans fall directly from their hulls (or husks) on the trees and onto the ground. My mother and aunt would pick up pecans from under trees near their homes or my uncle’s home, bag them and have them waiting for me at Christmastime.
I love road trips, so some years ago, I dragged my niece to some pecan orchard about two or three hours outside Macon to find fresh nuts. We drove down a lonely highway, our lone car bounded on both sides of the road by pecan trees spaciously planted in neat rows. We ended up at a country store that sold pecans in mesh bags. I bought a few and shipped them to myself.
I have yet to try out that nice big nutcracker and bowl I got at auction. I’m still using the utilitarian one I use to crack crabs, with the two metal handles with grips. I keep my pecans in the refrigerator – they last longer that way – so there’s not much need for the fancy bowl.
But it is lovely, though. I’ve not seen another one like it at auction. But there is one I see quite often that I find so very disrespectful of women. It is metal, usually brass, in the shape of a woman’s nude lower body. The nut is placed in her crotch and cracked open with her legs. (Interestingly, I’ve never seen one of a man.) In fact, a female-inspired cracker came up for auction a week or so ago. I can’t remember how much it sold for, but the ones I found on Ebay sold for $10 to $60.
The website of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University in Michigan mentioned a similar nutcracker with the full body of a topless black woman, circa 1930s. The nut is placed under her skirt, in her crotch and crushed. The ultimate insult, because unlike the others with no upper body, this one is not anonymous.
The Leavenworth Nutcracker Museum in Washington has a collection of 5,000 nutcrackers from 40 countries going back 2000 years. It also offered suggestions on collecting them. Also take a look at this collection of nutcrackers from a 2007 auction in Pennsylvania.
