The Nut Eating Devil

Cultural

Background

Storyteller's Cabin

adapted from folklore by
Craig Dominey

Tom McBride missed his Grandpa terribly. Well, he wasn't really his Grandpa. You see, Tom was an orphan growing up in the hard scrabble Tennessee hills during the Depression. At age 12, both his parents drank bad milk from a cow and died. He would've been in a lot of trouble were it not for Benjamin Franklin Farley, an old farmer across the holler who agreed to take Tom in. "Mr. Ben," as the townspeople called him, was getting up in years, and really needed a young man to help out around the farm.

As the years went by, Tom and Mr. Ben grew very close. Mr. Ben told Tom to call him "Grandpa," and Tom always loved him like one. Tom was thankful that he and Grandpa got to share many special moments together before he died - swapping tall tales by a crackling fire, fishing for trout in the cool mountain streams, riding horses across the misty mountain ridges at dawn. But before Tom knew it, a week before his 17th birthday, Grandpa silently and peacefully passed away in his sleep.

One thing that Tom couldn't get over when Grandpa was alive was how much he loved hazel nuts. As long as Tom could remember, Grandpa carried around a pocket full of nuts everywhere he went. At break time, or when he was just fighting boredom, Grandpa would whip out a large hunting knife from a holder on his belt, reach into the frayed pockets of his jacket for a handful of nuts, and start peeling those nuts with a loud CRACK! Tom remembered that the knife had a real fancy handle that glistened in the sun as his Grandpa went to work on the nuts. But most of all, Tom remembered the clock-like CRACK and munch, CRACK and munch of Grandpa eating those hazel nuts. Sometimes, he'd give Tom some, too.

Hunting Knife

In fact, Grandpa loved eating hazel nuts so much that he told Tom that he wanted to be buried with a handful in his suit pocket. This may have been a bizarre request to some folks, but Tom knew that there was no better way to honor his Grandpa's life. As the family sat up with Grandpa's body the night before the funeral, Tom did as he was told, slipping the hunting knife into the coffin and a handful of nuts into Grandpa's suit pocket.

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