Heavy Pecan Year. Everybody Has a Reason.

one tree. one night. the truck was clean at supper.

The pecans are coming down heavy this fall. The parish paper called the crop fair at the start of the month, and with respect, the paper has not parked under my tree. You know it is heavy if you own a truck, because they are in the bed of it, and if you own a roof, because they land on it at four in the morning, one at a time, all night.

I asked the readers why. I got nineteen answers. Here are the main schools of thought.

The weather school: a heavy pecan year means a hard winter. Seven readers, two of them over eighty, one of whom wrote it in a way I could hear.

The squirrel school: the squirrels know something, and the trees are feeding them for it. Three readers. One drew a diagram.

The money school: pecans are up at the buying stations, so everybody is picking up what they used to leave for the squirrels, so it only looks heavy. One reader. Me, honestly. It is always money.

The family school: it is a heavy year because somebody in the family passed, and the tree knows. Four readers, from four different towns, who do not know each other, and who all put it the same way, like it is just a thing you say.

DocFenwick says pecan trees bear heavy one year and light the next, that last year was light, so this year is heavy, and that there is a name for it, and the name is alternate bearing. Doc is right. Doc's own tree is having a light year, which Doc asked me not to mention.

Here is my read. I believe Doc about the trees. I believe the squirrels about the winter. I am not going to argue with four people in four towns about the other thing.

Pick them up before the trucks run them over. Shell them on the porch. Mail some to whoever moved up north and misses it.

I relay. You decide.

In Truth and Terror.
— Beau