Last week I was in the heart of Alabama, down at my Momma-Moody’s in Red Level. I don’t think they even have a red light in Red Level — but they’ve got pecan orchards. Pecan trees on every road, limbs heavy, nuts already starting to fall. Here in L.A. — Lower Alabama — we call them pah-cahns, not pee-cans.

Front of my grandmother’s house in Lower Alabama

Walking from Momma-Moody’s to Me-Maw’s house, I felt a long-forgotten lump roll beneath my foot — a thick green-husked pecan. It’s still a little early for the great raining-down of pecans, but that single nut brought a flood of memories.

Back of my grandmother’s house

When my brothers and I were kids, our job in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving and Christmas wasn’t wrapping gifts or stringing lights. It was gathering pecans.

Every spring, Granny had her own ritual. She’d drive a rusty iron nail into the trunks of the trees around her house — my grandparents’ place and any neighbor’s tree she could get to. “It feeds them iron,” she’d say with a nod, “makes the pecans sweeter, the harvest heavier.” We didn’t question it. We just believed. And come fall, when the pecans dropped in fat clusters, it seemed she was right.

By late October, the nuts and leaves left the trees bare, naked against winter winds. The chill of first frost meant we crunched through dried leaves, hunting buried pecans with our toes and fingers. I remember when someone first brought home the spiraled wire basket on the end of a broomstick — the kind that picked up pecans without bending over. It felt like magic.

We’d make the rounds — to both of our grandparents’ houses, to the family property in Spring Hill. And if we were lucky enough to ride up to Glenwood, Alabama, where our great-grandmother lived on nearly 1,200 acres, it was a gold mine for my brothers and me.

While we collected, Mammie, Momma, and Granny worked the nutcrackers. Two of them sat permanently mounted at the end of the kitchen counter, clicking and snapping without pause. The garbage bins overflowed with cracked shells until they spilled onto the floor. The women cracked, handed off the pecans, and we kids went to work — picking out the little sour threads that clung stubbornly to the meat. Of course, plenty went straight from hand to mouth.

Freshly shelled pecans ready for recipes, roasting, or selling

Grandmother Redmond and Great-Grandmother Copeland — pecan trees in the background

The major portion of shelling always happened the weekend before Thanksgiving. While we kids picked and sorted, Mammie would slide a baking pan full of fresh pecans into the oven for a slow roast. The kitchen filled with laughter and love, with oven-warmth wrapping around us like a blanket. And always, always, the aroma of roasting pecans. That smell baked itself into my memory as much as the nuts baked in the pan.

When the baking was done and the snacking slowed, whatever was left belonged to us kids. We’d bag the nuts, divide them evenly, and get them ready for Thames Pecan or one of the other buyers. That was our ritual every year. And the money we earned wasn’t just money — it was Christmas. Our gifts, our giving, our independence all shelled out of those brown and green husks.

Even now, as I sit here typing these words, the scent rises again — rich, warm, and sweet — and I am back in that kitchen, surrounded by family, shells crunching underfoot, the taste of Christmas taking shape.