After a few years of that, I thought we might do something to save the nut trees for the future generations. That's when I first started to plant some nuts. Incidentally, I made a big mistake, by not joining the Northern Nut Growers Association.
Naturally, I wanted the largest pecan I could find. I went to the St. Louis market and bought and planted nice Papershell pecans—very nice pecans, but the trees do not mature their crop. Mr. McDaniel and I tried to top-work them, but that's a big job. 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 across this bottom."
I said, "Why can't we get the dirt somewhere else? Dirt is dirt."
And the engineer said, "Well, that's the plans." We had a little contrariness there, and I had to threaten to drop the case as far as that tract of land was concerned. If you fight long enough and hard enough in such cases you may find some other person who is interested in nut trees. We did; we found an engineer higher up, and that group of hickory trees is now a picnic area. They used a borrow pit somewhere else, and it gives me a great pleasure to drive past that group of hickory trees and see them still standing there. In the fall of the year you'd be surprised at the number of people at that picnic area, and they keep those hickory nuts picked up clean as fast as they fall.
In our county hospital just started they happened to select a piece of ground I own an interest in for a county hospital. On that are some good hickory nut trees. I told them they'd never get the land until they made some arrangements in regard to those nut trees. The engineer that designed that hospital must have had some sense, because they are building a canopy around one of the trees adjacent to that hospital, and have arranged to cut only one scrub oak. The other trees will be mentioned in the deed with restrictive covenants to protect them.
If you sign anything a company gives you, you are liable to have anything cut on your land. Remember the saying that "the big print gives it to you and the fine print takes it away." And it's the fine print you want to watch in all your right of ways or in your condemnation proceedings.