I want to thank the Board of Directors and all of the committees who have labored so faithfully during the year. Our convention program for this year is evidence that our Program Committee has spent much time in thought, correspondence and work and we all appreciate and give them our hearty thanks.
Since I cannot be with you this year, Dr. MacDaniels has consented to occupy the Chair and the 41st annual meeting will now go forward under his able direction. I am with you in thought.
Sincerely, MILDRED JONES LANGDOC
MR. WEBER: By the way, since I am on the floor and I am on my feet, I will pa.s.s this attendance record. Will you all please sign your names and addresses. It doesn"t bind you to anything.
MR. CORSAN: You might tell the audience--there are some strangers here--who the president is whose address you just read.
MR. WEBER: I read her name, the former Mildred Jones, whose father was the late J. F. Jones who was one of the pioneers in the propagating of nut trees, and was formerly living in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, three miles south of Lancaster on U. S. 222. His daughter continued his work after his death, has since married and is now living out at Erie, Illinois, which is west of Chicago near the Mississippi River. Her name now is Langdoc.
DR. MacDANIELS: Our president brought out two points in which I most heartily concur. One is our search for new varieties and the evaluation of varieties, and the other, the more extensive rating of the varieties we already have. There will be this round-table this evening on evaluation of varieties, of which Dr. Crane will be the chairman.
a.s.sociation Sends Greetings to Dr. Deming
DR. McKAY: I"d like to bring up this matter--I"d like to make this in the form of a motion, that in view of the long and active service of Dr.
W. C. Deming to this organization, I think it would be appropriate for this organization to send him greetings. I would like to make that in the form of a motion.
MR. BERNATH: I second it.
DR. MacDANIELS: Moved and seconded to send Dr. Deming greetings from the meeting. We had hoped that he would be here. He may come yet, unless somebody knows definitely to the contrary. George Slate saw him a while ago and said he hopes to get here.[1]
[1] Dr. Deming was present at the lunch stop on the Wa.s.saic State School grounds during the third day"s tour.--Ed.
MR. WEBER: I have just been informed that Dr. Deming will be 89 years old on September first.
DR. MacDANIELS: That"s something.
How old is Mr. Corsan?
MR. WEBER: The question arises: How old is Mr. Corsan? The gentleman is here, and he will speak for himself.
Talk by the Oldest Member
MR. CORSAN: I don"t know how old I am. I know I was born near Rockport, New York, and my father brought me across the river to Hamilton, Ontario, when I was seven, and according to my aunts and uncles and people who told me, they say I was born June 11, 1857. So here I am kicking around, but I am not blowing how long I will live. I don"t know, but I will try my best.
I have joined the Vegetarian Society many years ago, and I am still hanging onto that idea, and I hope that we have a vegetarian banquet some of these times, because nearly all vegetarian a.s.sociations are very deeply interested in the Northern Nut Growers a.s.sociation. That"s what they all told me at the convention at Lake Geneva last August a year ago. And I just came back from visiting Rodale. I thought I"d see Rodale. He looks a good deal like this gentleman here (indicating Mr.
Bernath), our friend here, about the size and appearance of him. But he is of the greatest ancestry in the world. He is Jewish, and he doesn"t know exactly how to eat, because he has jowls and dewlaps and he is too fat, but he is a very fine man; beautiful, clear, honest eyes, he has, and I hope to have him consider the planting of nut trees on his place.
He has a disgraceful looking place in comparison to mine.
This year my place is just loaded down with nuts, except filberts. Last year I had so many filberts that I have half a ton left over yet. And I want to see people beautify the country. I started off one day with a thought that came to my head. I heard that there were a half a million widows and orphans buried in the Hudson Hill Cemetery. And I thought: Why, those dead people can be working; they can be doing something. Let them feed the roots of the j.a.panese heartnut. And as a try, I sent them 1100 seeds just as a start. And the j.a.panese heartnut, a stranger to this country, isn"t anywhere near any other nut, and it grows true to form, and a lot of the trees are much hardier up on Lake Ontario. It does not grow well on the north of the lake, but south of the lake it grows enormous crops every year, and the nuts come out whole. But there is a better shaped nut without that kind of groove in the center, and it"s the father or the mother--father, probably--of the finest heartnuts in the world, and there is nothing that beats a heartnut for eating.
Every time I sell heartnuts to eat I have ruined myself, because they won"t eat any other nut. So that shows just exactly what the general public thinks of it. Even Italians. There I have a half a ton of filberts. I bring the heartnuts down to Florida, the Fairchild and my hybrid trees and b.u.t.ternuts and j.a.panese heartnuts, and I have a package of almonds and another package of brazil nuts, and I let them taste those. They are woody in comparison to our heartnuts and hybrids. They are not anything, they are just like so much wood in comparison.
Now, I have received from John W. Fowler, Secretary to Albert Williams of the Department of Corrections on 100 Center Street. New York, a beautiful letter accepting those nuts, and I had my housekeeper--I was down in Florida--send them to them early in February, and they are planted. And the breezes going up and down the Hudson are going to wave the two-foot-long leaves of the most beautiful deciduous trees in the world, the j.a.panese heartnut, healthiest, hardiest nut in the world, and these dead people will be feeding them. Just think! five thousand children without a name or number. Now, they have erected a monument just recently, but the real monuments are the living trees. I am going to send them a lot more, because I want to see them working. I might come back and eat some of these nuts myself.
DR. MacDANIELS: Thank you, Mr. Corsan.
(Applause.)
DR. MacDANIELS: Mr. Corsan is certainly well on his way to being a hundred, and I think if eating nuts and other vegetables will do that, more of us ought to pay attention.
I think we voted on that motion. I think it was unanimous that we send this greeting to Dr. Deming in his eighty-ninth year.
(The following telegram was sent to Dr. Deming:
"AT THIS FORTY-FIRST ANNUAL MEETING OF THE NORTHERN NUT GROWERS a.s.sOCIATION IN CONVENTION a.s.sEMBLED AT PLEASANT VALLEY, NEW YORK, THE MEMBERS SEND YOU THEIR LOVE AND ALSO EXTEND THEIR BEST WISHES FOR YOUR CONTINUANCE OF GOOD HEALTH.")
Any other business?
MR. McDANIEL: There is one elective committee that probably will need to be acted on, which is always done at the meeting before, and that"s the nominations committee for next year. That"s elective.
DR. MacDANIELS: The Resolutions Committee. Mr. Allaman, will you take chairmanship for that? And Mr. Porter of Windsor, will you help Mr.
Allaman on the Resolutions Committee?
MR. PORTER: Do I act now, in this meeting?
DR. MacDANIELS: Yes, during the time you are here work out with Mr.
Allaman the resolutions that pertain to this particular meeting.
Anything else? If not, this first session is adjourned. Meet again promptly this afternoon at one o"clock,
(Whereupon, at 10:40 o"clock, a.m., the meeting was recessed, to reconvene at 1:00 o"clock, p.m. of the same day.)
MONDAY AFTERNOON SESSION
DR. MacDANIELS: I will call the meeting to order, the afternoon session.
This afternoon we have the session given over mostly to the Carpathian walnut. The first paper, by Spencer Chase of Norris, Tennessee.
MR. CHASE: First, with the president"s permission, I thought perhaps a short report of the 1949 contest would be in order. As you probably recall, we conducted a Persian walnut contest last year for Northern Nut Growers members only. In this contest we had 31 entries submitted.
The 1949 Persian Walnut Contest with Notes from Persian Walnut Growers
SPENCER B. CHASE, Contest Chairman Tennessee Valley Authority Norris, Tennessee