It’s Pronounced Puhkhan, Not Pecan!
Even at twelve years old, I knew we didn’t have much. However, like many families in the Mississippi Delta, what we did have was each other. That was enough — enough to hold on to, like a last little thread of hope. We were always worried, though, that the social circumstances that had robbed us of so much of our history would somehow steal us away from each other too.
When the electricity bill didn’t get paid, lights going off, we were in the dark together. When there wasn’t enough to eat, we stretched those food stamps and sliced thin that block of USDA cheese that came in brown cardboard boxes.
At times it was hard just to make ends meet. Near the end of each month, when food got scarce, Mom worked wonders with that block of cheese. She’d make things like cheesy rice, cheesy spaghetti, macaroni and cheese, spam and cheese casserole, cheese toast, and grilled bologna and cheese sandwiches. She made those simple meals taste like gourmet dinners. We shared what little we had as evenly as we could. When we were hungry, we were hungry together.
When things really got bad — when we had to be separated — Mom and Dad reassured us that very soon, we’d all be together again.
Although Dad had only a 6th-grade education, he was one of the smartest, craftiest people I knew.
He once explained to me, “During winter months, there wasn’t much field work. Plantation owners knew we were trapped between a rock and a hard place. Either we lived on their land in exchange for them profiting off our bodies, or we, along with our families, got kicked out in the cold.”
Despite this, Dad always had a hustle. A plan! He seemed to always be one step ahead of the societal bear traps that continually jumped up to bite Black families at the most inopportune moments.
“You see it?” Dad pulled his mint green pickup truck over to the shoulder, slowing to a stop. “Hop out and go get it!”
Pee Wee and I thought it was a game. Each time Dad stopped, we’d take turns hopping out the truck.
He’d drive another mile or so, pull over, and point to a patch of grass about calf-high, and say, “You see it? There it is right there.”
I’d jump out, race over, grab the can and toss it in the truck bed.
Around our house, around the neighbors’ house, along the side of highways, even while out hunting and fishing, Dad picked up sacks and sacks of aluminum cans. Beer cans, soda cans — any type. If it was lying around, Dad picked it up and stuffed it into a black trash bag. At the end of the week, he’d load the bags onto the back of his truck and hit Highway 1 toward Greenville. There, he’d stop at Freedmen’s Salvage Yard and sell the cans for a few cents per pound.
I was always amazed by Dad’s level of dedication and focus. Always, behind that gentle smile, lurked an idea to keep his family afloat. The same can be said about Uncle Bud, which is probably why they were always together. Although Uncle Bud was a year younger, they were like twins. If you saw one, it was a good chance the other was nearby.
Pecan trees — correctly pronounced “puhkhan” — were and are today scattered all over the Mississippi Delta. Some places were literally covered with them. Out in the middle of a field, behind an abandoned barn, or down on a creek bank, you’d find Dad and Uncle Bud out there, bent over, picking up pecans.
“Whenever I saw a puhkhan tree, long as it wasn’t on somebody’s private land, I got out and picked ’em up,” Dad told me. “I reckon me and Bud picked about twenty to forty croker sacks full of puhkhans each week.”
They’d stop and go knock on any country door.
“We see y’all got a lot of puhkhans in your yard. Mind if we pick ’em up?”
For them, it didn’t matter if the homeowner was Black or White. They were on a mission. Pecan season was fall and with winter fast approaching, the two were simply trying to earn money to provide for their families. Black folks generally didn’t mind. Some White folk said, with a slammed door, “No, get off my land.” Others allowed it — there were so many pecans it could be overwhelming.
“Some White folk let us pick up on half,” Dad explained. “Pick up on half meant whatever we picked up, we’d give the homeowner half of ’em. Other folk let us take whatever we wanted. Me and Bud would be out there for hours. We’d clean that whole yard, front and back.”
At week’s end, Dad and Uncle Bud drove south to Vicksburg or north to Greenville and Indianola. “Wherever they was payin’ the most per pound, that’s where we went,” Dad laughed at the recollection. “Big ole croker sacks stuffed full of puhkhans hanged off the side of my truck. Usually, we got around ninety cents a pound. Sometimes, they tried to cheat us, though. They didn’t wanna pay us a fair price.”
Dad and Uncle Bud would drag twenty to forty croker sacks of pecans inside the warehouse to be weighed. Some weighed over a hundred pounds. Sacks and sacks were scattered all over the floor.
According to Dad, “I reckon they thought we couldn’t count. We didn’t get mad, but, we wasn’t fixin’ to just stand there and let ’em cheat us. Each time that guy weighed a sack and called out a weight that was a few pounds too light, he slid it to the side and drug another sack back behind the counter. While he was struggling to get that hundred pound sack up on the scale, me and Bud slid the same sack he’d just weighed back into our pile. He unknowingly weighed it all over again.”
Dad was one of the nicest people I knew; he always tried to treat people with kindness. However, when someone tried to take advantage — assuming that, because he may not have had a formal education, they could pull the wool over his eyes — he’d let them think they were taking him for a ride. All the while, he’d apply a little poetic justice of his own.
What the white pecan man behind the counter didn’t realize was that, although Bud had left school in the ninth grade, he could add in his head fast as a calculator.
Dad concluded, triumphantly, “When we finished with that guy, me and Bud walked outta there with double what we woulda got if he ain’t tried to cheat us. Serves ’em right for tryin’ to take my puhkhans.”
Through those years of driving tractors up and down cotton fields, picking up cans, and selling pecans, Dad played a figurative game of chess. He worked a long-term strategy that I was too young to comprehend. Although he always wore a gentle smile, he truly disliked living under the thumb of plantation owners. Like many Black folks living on Delta plantations, he worried day in, day out that if he got fired he’d have to pack his family up and find a new place.
For years Dad pinched pennies, saving a little bit here and a little bit there.
I hope you enjoyed this post — if you want to connect, you can reach me here via email at ty@typinkins.com or connect with me on social: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Also, you can purchase my book, 23 Miles & Running, on Amazon.
