A Lost Heritage

m ^ ra m m w m£3 m§m V A Lost Heritage by J. Marshall Porter S When October comes to our Maryland hills with its glorious coloring, my memories invariably return to my boyhood and our lost heritage, the joy that our generation and the generations before us had from the grand old chestnut trees. All that the youth of today know about chestnuts is of the Chinese variety that can be bought at markets in autumn, or from vendors who sell them from little stands along some highways during the fall, S\jch vendors offer raw, boiled or roasted Chinese chestnuts, or perhaps some of the hybrid, blight resistant nuts that grow on low dwarf trees that a few farmers are growing. The hybrids seem to be resisting the blight that killed all the native chestnut trees in the Appalachians during the twenties. The flavor and texture of the nuts available now is hardly a good substitute for the wild chestnuts that grew in profusion a half century ago...and the quality was only a small part of the pleasure they gave. Gathering the nuts was an 14 autumn joy that was cherished by all who can remember what it was like. Most of the trees that produced chestnuts were large, old and spreading. Thinking back now, I believe that their deformity had likely been caused by some injury such as their tops having been broken out when they were very young trees. Those trees never attained a straight, limbless trunk after that. They began spreading limbs low on their trunks. Many old fruitful trees were from three to six feet in diameter, yet the timber men could not cut one eight foot log from them. Some long, crooked limbs were a foot to eighteen inches where they grew from the trunks. The tree's uselessness as marketable lumber had been their saving grace. In some chestnut groves, six to a dozen or more such bearing giants might be found. Those trees were good seeders. Squirrels and chipmunks loved the nuts, and buried them for future food (Nature's way of propagation), although the red, gray and fox squirrels stored them in their den trees in large quantities. Those scattered, buried nuts sprouted in spring and grew rapidly. Within a half dozen years they would attain a straight, almost limbless trunk six inches thick and a height of thirty feet. I have known of a single old tree in a forest that produced nuts, and there would be a good population of young chestnut trees among oak and other hardwoods over the surrounding five or six acres. Those young trees were not long in getting their tops above the slower growing hardwoods . Chestnut trees were rarely found growing in hollows among fast growing species ofpoplar, and they didn't thrive on the southern slopes of the hills. Those young, straight bodied trees had smooth, chocolate brown bark (or the color of the chestnut shells). The bark didn't fissure, or become rough and netted until the trunks were near eighteen inches in diameter...but from that size and up, they became the envy ofthe lumber industry. Chestnut was a wood of many uses. It was light, durable and strong, though not as strong as oak. Good axemen, (and there were many in those days) loved to see the curved, two inch thick chips fall from under their axe when they began chopping. A cross-cut saw seemed to sing a lilting song as it cut its way swiftly through the logs. Old cross-tie makers could hue more chestnut ties in a day than any other timber, and hue them easier. Chestnut lumber was in constant demand at top prices among builders, furniture manufacturers and cabinet makers, to mention just a few uses. The knotless , usually straight grained boards rarely warped or twisted after being sawed at the mills. It was a favored wood for natural finish for inside door and window casings. Many of the farm houses that were built to replace the original log houses ofthe pioneers and land-clearers were entirely ofchestnut lumber. Some ofthose 15 houses have stood unpainted for nearly a century...