who
had the best shagbark in the country.

Some distance from where I am is a two-acre grove, a wonderful grove of
our larger nuts. Some places it is called kingnut and some places they
call it under the name of this big one in the show room, shellbark.
Anyhow, there were two acres there and real moist meadows, and every
once in a while the frost would kill those nuts, and the next year they
would have a wonderful crop. So the climate determines whether we have
an annual crop or an intermittent crop on these trees.

Then I always liked to mess around with hobbies with nature. I became
interested, got to wondering who did have the best of the best. Then I
began to go out and visit all of these farms and ask them for a certain
number of the best, and I began to send them around to Mr. Reed and Mr.
Zarger and other people to take their word on it. And, of course, I have
located some that cracked very well. But every once in a while somebody
tells me they have got a better one yet, and the other day I ran across
a fellow a hundred miles away--he happened to hear about me, and I have
a neighbor who knows him--who has a black walnut that looks like a
Persian walnut. So you see, I have a trip of a hundred miles to make to
see what he's got. I wrote to him just before I left. I wrote to him to
send me at least 20 of those nuts, and just as soon as this fellow sends
me the nuts I would come up and see him and later on would try to get
some grafting wood and send down to Mr. Zarger of the TVA group.

My job is not to keep them to myself but to put out the best. So we have
those different nuts, and now it is time to consolidate the best in what
we have and get them in the hands of the nut growers groups and those
who will put them out and really make use of them. But first we want to
see these best trees all over the country. Some of them are not as good
for timber as the others, but I like to incorporate the timber with the
nut production.

We talked about the black walnut earlier today. The speaker was not
saying much about flavor. That's one thing we want to do in all of our
nut work, get as good a flavor as we can. So why not get the best and go
putting it out to give it to everybody. Why keep anything within
ourselves? That's the main thing we can do.

A brother was talking a while ago about this nut job, a community nut
job. Now, two years ago--I will have to use my dad, who is 82 years old,
as a little reference--my da