good pleasure to teach school with him. We
attended College together. At college we roomed together. We attended
conventions together and were close personal friends. I think I was in
position to know him and know him well. The other boy was R. L. McCoy.
We too, were close personal friends. We too, taught school in the same
territory and contemporary with T. P. Littlepage. Prior to any
organization of the N.N.G.A. I went with these two boys (men by that
time) on trips of investigation and inspection of certain nut trees
about which they had heard and which they wanted to examine.

If the trees examined met the proper standards, they wanted to use them
in propagation. If not they would pass them up.

Another boy somewhat younger than myself and the two above mentioned
boys, joined most heartily into the nut discussions and investigations
and explorations of promising clues. With them he helped to run down
clues when they would hear of a promising prospect. The jungles were
never too dense, the distance too far, the road too muddy or rough, for
those three characters to run down in those horse and buggy days, any
prospect in which they were interested. This boy also became a member of
your most valued organization. I have a special interest in this boy. I
was, especially closely associated with him and his family. He went to
school to me. My signature appears on his Common School Diploma. Their
home was my home whenever I sought to make it so. I was free to come and
go. I came a lot. Ford Wilkinson, the third character, and I have been
close friends ever since.

Another one of your fine members became a good friend of mine. He came
into our county and planted a farm to nut trees and nut production. It
is now the largest nut orchard in the county. I am informed that at that
time it was the largest nut farm of hardy northern varieties in the
world. I got acquainted with him early and became endeared to him. It
was none other than the late Harry Weber.

When it became known that you were to meet here in 1935, it was a
natural sequence that Ford Wilkinson, knowing that I would gladly help
in any way I could and knowing I was his genuine friend saw fit to place
me on the Citizen's Committee. If he had not, I positively would have
climbed aboard anyway. You couldn't have driven me out with a peeled
hickory club. I was just going to be in on it whether or no.

Whether I performed well in 1935 or whether he couldn't find any