SO MANY memories ride into our consciousness on the backs of taste and smell. If I take a swig of a full-sugared Coke that has sat out on the counter a little too long, the dull syrup tang takes me back to Ball State University circa 1989 and the cases of hyper-caffeinated Jolt Cola that got me through college all-nighters. The faintest whiff of powdery White Shoulders perfume reminds me of my mom. In the same way, black walnuts—the sweet, earthy flavor of the nuts and the sharp, citrusy smell of the trees—remind me of the landscape of my childhood backyard.
One massive black walnut tree dominated my play area. Its branches draped over the metal swing set with the legs that rocked like a drunken robot if you swung too high. Its droppings turned everything in its shadow into an ankle-cracking minefield of slippery rot. It was too massive to climb and too gnarled to colonize with treehouses or tire swings. But I loved that cantankerous old tree. It got me hooked on black walnuts, sure, but it’s also the main character in of one of my favorite childhood flashbacks.
Every fall, my dad would bring an ancient burlap bag out of the garage for our family’s annual walnut-gathering adventure. In hindsight, he likely wanted all the gooey walnut husks picked up and (using the classic Tom Sawyer versus the White Fence strategy) knew his littlest kid would provide the free labor if he made it seem fun.
I made it my mission to fill that crusty burlap bag with the devil’s Easter eggs as their decomposing skins stained my hands a deep and stubborn henna brown. A lifelong completist, I would fill the sack to its brim until I could barely drag it back into the garage, where it would languish on the cool concrete floor long enough for the walnuts’ outer layer to give way. Then, my siblings and I would grab our weapons of choice—a hammer, a brick, or a big rock—and get to smashing.
It was an inexact science.
Sometimes I’d crack right through the nut and ruin the meat winding through its delicate cavities. Sometimes I’d get a dried-out dud. Sometimes the shells became shrapnel that ricocheted off the garage walls.
We never seemed to come away from a walnut-cracking session with more than a saucer of nuts. That’s probably because we ate them as fast as we shucked them, plucking the buttery meat out of the shell like dainty Hoosier escargot. It tasted like a weird blend of ripe bananas, grass, and toolbox, somehow managing to register as both fresh and musky. And I’ll never forget it. Sometimes, when I’m going to town on a scoop of black walnut ice cream or biting into a thick slice of banana-walnut bread, I am transported back to my old tannin-stained garage floor—and the memory makes it taste even sweeter.
