Old School: The Deluge

By Carol McEwen,

This has been a banner year for that wet stuff falling from the sky, but the deluge I’m talking about comes from closer to Earth. Let’s talk fall. Besides a short commute time, the main attractions for me when we chose Arlington, back in 1976, were the majestic trees everywhere.  

But my love affair with them began to fade that first September night we slept in our newly-acquired home. I was terrified as those same stately Oaks I had admired bombarded our slate roof with acorns. “Wake up!” I cried, as I urgently jostled my sleeping husband. “There’s someone breaking into the house!”  

The acorns weren’t only noisy, they were dangerous. For the few years I mowed the lawn, I worried about stepping on one and sliding under the mower on our steep front bank. Don’t even get me started on their potential damage to the mower.  

One year I came up with the perfect solution. I bribed my eleven-year-old daughter and her friend who lived across the street: a penny for each collected acorn. BIG MISTAKE. Shown at work above, the girls collected for weeks, filling an old cooler each session and then counting them meticulously. For kids who couldn’t keep track of their allowances, those two kept records like Bob Cratchit with his accounting book.  

At the end of this sorry exercise, I owed each girl $45. The photo shows the smirking duo, flanking the cooler with one of their interim hauls, and holding a sign with their "invoice" of 2606 acorns collected. I can almost see the lurking greed in their beady little eyes. At that rate, I considered hiring myself out to the neighbors for extra income. 

Today, It seems that acorns are coming into their own, or returning to their own. A recent Washington Post article explained that American Indians in this part of our country actually ate the nuts by grinding them into a powder and using it for gruel. More recently, culinary experts are exploring uses of acorns as long as they’re processed by boiling, or ground into powder. I’m thinking of an advertising slogan for the campaign: “Acorns aren’t just for squirrels anymore.” 

Arlington County even offered to buy acorns last fall, to grow oak starts and help re-forest the county. Heck, if I’d known the value of those specimens the girls collected, I’d have hung on to them. I was sitting on a fortune! 

Meanwhile, I still love trees and fall, but from my eighth-floor condo.   

Carol McEwen is a writer for Stroll By The Bay, Mirimar Beach, Florida, and authored the weekly Old School column for the Arlington Sun Gazette/Gazette Leader. She may be reached at: carolwrites4fun@gmail.com.