Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories.
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On cold winter evenings during the 1930s, our family often gathered in our living room where we could sit in front of our fireplace. We spent a lot of time sitting there as we played cards and board games. We also listened to the radio. There were a lot of great radio shows – Lum and Abner, Fibber McGee and Molly, Amos ‘n Andy, Major Bowes, and a lot more.
Every now and then as we sat in front of the fire, one of my sisters would say, “Let’s make some fudge.” I always liked to hear that because my sisters were both really good fudge makers. Sometimes it was chocolate fudge. It also might be maple fudge that they made from maple syrup we bought from my grandmother’s favorite “sugar camp” not far from the Piatt castles in Logan County.
But my favorite was their black walnut fudge. It makes my mouth water just thinking about it. When they made walnut fudge, it was pretty much a “family affair” that started months earlier in September or October. That’s when the nuts fell from the big walnut tree in “Grandma” Liggett’s side yard at the corner of Fifth and Maple Streets, where Dave’s Pharmacy stands today.
My dad would bring home a basket full of the nuts. He separated all the nuts from their husks and let them dry in the sun for a few days. Then he stored them in a tin container in our basement.
My sisters would fetch enough nuts for a batch of fudge. Then my Grandmother Tracy took over. She had a flat piece of sandstone, maybe 12 inches square, that she called her “nutcracker stone.” She held the stone in her lap and cracked the nuts with a hammer. She was really good at that, and she knew just where to strike the shell to give us some really big pieces of the nut inside.
She put the cracked nuts into a bowl on our kitchen table. Then my mother and I, along with my sisters, used nut picks to remove the nuts from their shells. I loved those walnuts, and I ate a lot of them instead of putting them into the bowl for the fudge. So my sisters would plead, “mother, make him stop eating them or we won’t have enough for the fudge.”
My sisters worked together to make the fudge, and I sat in the kitchen with them as they worked. They were both teenagers, and it was fun for me to sit there and listen to them as they talked. A lot of that talk was about boys and funny things that happened at school. I think they liked to talk almost as much as they liked to make fudge. When the fudge was finished, they let it cool, and we all had enough fudge to last for a few days.
I hadn’t eaten fudge in years. Then not long ago, two little neighbor girls, Abby and Emmy, brought us some really good fudge. They had made it themselves with the help of their older sister, Esther. It was chocolate and it was delicious. In fact, it ranked right up there with the black walnut fudge my sisters used to make. That’s just how good it was.
Those wishing to contact Bill Boyd can e-mail him at
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