Had I joined the Northern Nut
Growers Association, I could have avoided a lot of those mistakes.

There are some things that I found out in practicing law that can very
well apply to nut growing. If you will pardon the reference to personal
experience, I can bring forth to you about four situations. One, a good,
close friend of mine had a vacant lot close to his home. He had been
planting nut trees and papaw trees and persimmon trees for years. On
this vacant lot he had a 25-year-old Busch walnut growing back on the
alley, on the lawn was a beautiful Japanese flowering cherry, and there
were two pecan trees in the yard proper. He sold the lot to a neighbor
whose wife was just crazy about flowers, little dreaming that those
trees would ever be cut down. I don't believe the ink of the recorder
had been cooled or dried before that English walnut was cut down, the
Japanese cherry grubbed out of the front lawn, and one of the pecan
trees was cut. It just about broke the old owner's heart, and all he
could say was, "I am just disappointed in my neighbors." And now there
is a house being erected there, and the pecan tree that was 12 inches in
diameter was cut. That could have been prevented, had this man given
thought to the future.

Another man, named Hagen, who was instrumental in getting me interested
in nut growing, had a nice group of river-bottom shellbark trees growing
in his field. One of these has been propagated and named the Hagen, and
although it isn't a good cracking quality, it's a very large nut.

A pipe line was laid close to that field, and this man had the
fore-*sight to put a clause in this pipe-line right of way which gave
him the protection of collecting adequate damages for the destruction
of the trees. Didn't even need a lawyer, which is something bad for the
law business. It is a suggestion, that when a pipe line, or telephone
company is buying a right of way, it is possible to protect your
interests in valuable trees.

Another instance of protecting nut trees was when the new U. S. Highway
40 was built across Illinois. I had the job of condemning the right of
way and when the engineer and I were out walking over it we noticed a
fine group of hickory nut trees on the hillside. I remarked what a nice
group of trees it was. He said, "Yes, that's going to be a borrow pit up
there." I said, "You mean they are going to destroy those trees?" He
said, "Yes, dirt from this borrow pit will make the fill acros