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Show (Chatter Box Dear Suzy, The west hills have been the main attraction in these parts at the present time. Sunday 837 people peo-ple were gathered there for the purpose of beating the squirrels to the pinenuts strewed about the ground. Every means of transportation transpor-tation and methods of gathering in the "time-wasters" were used. I caught 18 pounds in my apron as someone accidentally bumped a tree under which I was standing. The people were so thick out there that it was impossible to turn around in the canyon and come home to a clean bath. 21 persons were treated in Delta for lacerated fingers that had been stepped on when they were reaching reach-ing for nuts on the1 ground. And if the pine gum soaked off with turpentine, tur-pentine, coal oil and alcohol was laid end to end it would make a mighty sticky mess. Besides the pine nuts up North Canyon, Don Moody has a gold mine there well stocked with nuggets nug-gets and dust. It is reported that people were kicking 5 pound nuggets nug-gets to one side to get at the nuts, which proves the frenzy by which they were taking in the sport. Don also has a pile of rocks at the bottom of the steep pitch there. When he goes out to the mine he loads them in to give his truck more traction to get up the hill. When he comes down each time he unloads the truck and leaves the rocks there for another trip. The rocks had been worn smooth from the many haulings up and down, and Don estimates that he has carried these rocks 13,879 miles up and down the short hill. He got quite attached to these rocks and now that the pinenut hunt is on someone loaded load-ed in his rocks to make it up the hill and forgot to unload them on the return trip. Now Don has to haul out some more rocks so he can get up the hill. Baby tenders out there are unnecessary. un-necessary. All a mother has to do to a small tot to keep him happy is give him a nice gooey pine cone. The child spends the rest of the day pulling it from one hand to another. If he looses interest in I the cone and puts his hands down to the ground he is stuck there until soaked off with coal oil. It has been a boon to mothers as there is no chance of getting lost, but of course, does have a few draw backs. The kids must be cleaned up some time and it takes quite a little while getting the pine gum out of hair, eyelashes, off elbows and clothes. But mother says it is worth it just to have a day of freedom from their charges. One does get a rather perverted view of food after a pinenut hunt, because no matter what spices are used in cooking all food tastes of pine trees. Too, a person can't gather pinenuts without eating some and the gum and small bits sticks to one's teeth so that one goes about thinking he is in the tall timber all the time smelling and tasting the pines. The season will soon end, though, and then we can all get back to something else that will take up our time and keep us content. It the Indians are right we are in for a heavy winter, as they say a big pinenut crop means a long hard winter,. After last winter we can take it and are accustomed to it now, so the Indian prophecy holds no dread for us. Reed Crafts is feeling bad that he missed shooting pooch that stole his fishing rod last year,. He still has the same plate licker and just lately it got into close proximity prox-imity to a skunk and now the Crafts homestead smells rather strong. They plan on going pinenut pine-nut hunting to get away from the rancho and when they come back, if the odor isn't gone, they won't be able to smell it until comes next March anyway. So pine and gum does do good in someplaces. We are still in the heat wave that has plagued us all fall. It has made the seed growers happy as they are looking forward to third crop seed. Some of them are starting to feel bad, though,, because now that their crops are all in, and threshed, they have time' on their hands and are looking look-ing forward to filling it with some thing. If the heat wave doesn't stop soon they are going to find themselves them-selves hunting ducks with parasols and cool thermos bottles. Too, the heat wave has kept leaves on the trees and they look forward to a hard deer hunt with the animals all hid up. i But, of course, they can't have everything. A bumper crop, time on their hands, and perfect weather wea-ther for hunting. There has to be a fly in the ointment some where. |