Hickory Quotes

So I am to sit here and feed you information,” Cardan says, leaning against a hickory tree. “And you’re to go charm royalty? That seems entirely backward.” I fix him with a look. “I can be charming. I charmed you, didn’t I?” He rolls his eyes. “Do not expect others to share my depraved tastes.

Courage is fear on its knees.

Go through the world "with the grace of God in your heart, and a good, strong hickory club in your hand.

Hickory dickory dock my daddy’s nuts from shell shock. Humpty dumpty thought he was wise till gas came along and burned out his eyes. A dillar a dollar a ten o clock scholar blow off his legs and then watch him holler. Rockaby baby in the tree top don’t stop a bomb or you’ll probably flop. Now I lay me down to sleep my bombproof cellars good and deep but if I’m killed before I wake remember god its for your sake amen.

Just because he was pretty didn't mean he couldn't be improved by a smack upside the head with a piece of earnest hickory

The soft light of morning falls upon ripening forests of oak and elm, walnut and hickory, and all Nature is thoughtful and calm.

He had never been interested in stories at any age, and had never quite understood the basic concept. He'd never read a work of fiction all the way through. He did remember, as a small boy, being really annoyed at the depiction of Hickory Dickory Dock in a rag book of nursery rhymes because the clock in the drawing was completely wrong for the period.

Yesterday I sat under the hickory tree in the front yard. It's the only place where I find rest and just feel fine. I know fine isn't a lot, but it's rare for me these days. Even when I'm happy, there is something in between me and whatever good news comes my way. It's like eating a butterscotch still sealed in the wrapper.

Hickory dickory dock my daddy’s nuts from shellshock.

Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, I minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished.

We see the world not as it is, but as we are.~Dag Redwing Hickory Bluefield

Life is full of risks. But if you try to build a fence around all your fears, you'll shut out joy too.

I am convinced that we as adults must constantly cling to, affirm, and celebrate with our children those things we love, sunsets, laughter, the taste of a good meal, the warmth of a hickory fire shared by real friends, the joy of discovery and accomplishment, the constant surprises of life.

I have always let you know how much I care, right? You never had to wonder. I'm not a man for words. Daddy showed me that you 'do' for a woman. Remember that time when you damn near had a nervous breakdown because it looked like the hickory-nut tree in the front yard was thinking about dying? Where I'm from, we don't believe in spending money on pets, let alone trees. But I couldn't bear to see you fret, so I hired a tree doctor. See, in my mind, that was a love letter.

What are you doing, Poirot?" "I dissect rucksacks. It is very interesting.

When there's no other name to call, you can call on the Lord. He's the One who is always listening. Even in the darkness.

Hickory clicked something to Dickory in their native tongue; Dickory clicked back. Hickory responded, and Dickory replied, it seemed a bit forcefully. And then, God help me, Hickory actually sighed.

New nursery rhymes for new times. HIckory dickery dock my daddy's nuts from shelshock. Humpty dumpty thought he was wise till gas came along and hurned out his eyes. A dillar a dollar a ten o-clock schollar blow off his legs and then watch him holler...

We can't be sad for her," she murmured. "Only for ourselves at having to say good-bye.

New nursery rhymes for new times. Hickory dickory dock my daddy’s nuts from shellshock. Humpty dumpty thought he was wise till gas came along and burned out his eyes. A diller a dollar a ten o’clock scholar blow off his legs and then watch him holler. Rockabye baby in the treetop don’t stop a bomb or you’ll probably flop. Now I lay me down to sleep my bombproof cellar’s good and deep but if I’m killed before I wake remember god it’s for your sake amen.

But if you ask me what I remember (about 1945), I will say it was the year Franklin D. Roosevelt died and I got one of his flowers. I will tell you that yellow rose give me the courage to do the right thing even if it was hard. I will say it was the time in my life when I learned all of us is fragile as a mimosa blossom. But the miracle of all is, When push comes to shove, we can be just as tough as Hickory. It mostly hurts at first. After a while it starts to feel better.

I congratulate you on having such a unique and beautiful problem.

My eyes were such that literally they Took photographs. Whenever I’d permit, Or, with a silent shiver, order it, Whatever in my field of vision dwelt – An indoor scene, hickory leaves, the svelte Stilettos of a frozen stillicide – Was printed on my eyelids’ nether side Where it would tarry for an hour or two, And while this lasted all I had to do Was close my eyes to reproduce the leaves,

Jack and Jill fell down a hill—so what? Little Bo Peep lost her sheep—how is that my problem? Hickory, dickory, dock, the mouse ran up the clock—call pest control, not me!

Hickory, have you ever lied to me?” I asked. “I do not believe you are aware of me or any Obin ever lying to you,” Hickory said.

Grandmother called my attention to a stout hickory cane, tipped with copper, which hung by a leather thong from her belt. This, she said, was her rattlesnake cane.

Run over to the chopping block and fetch me some of those green hickory chipsâ€

Instead of singing, like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune. As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so I had my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest.

For the first time, I saw a pink glow breaking through the gray wisps that surrounded her, revealing the color of her true personality. Blush pink. I smiled. I should've known. I had known. Emme was nothing but kindhearted at her core.

The parsley sinking into the butter on a hot day,

When God opens a door, you have to take His hand and walk through it. Even when you have doubts.

Is no one incapable of murder?

No one’s stuck anywhere unless they choose to be. The Lord God guides those who are moving forward.

But it is beautiful, my friend,” said Hercule Poirot with admiration. “So clear—so beautifully clear.” “You sound as if you were talking about soup,” grumbled the inspector. “It may be Consommé to you—but to me there’s a good deal of thick Mock Turtle about it still.

The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet. Streaming files of wild ducks began to make their appearance high in the air; the back of the squirrel might be heard from the groves of beech and hickory-nuts, and the pensive whistle of the quail at intervals from the neighboring stubble field. The small birds were taking their farewell banquets. In the fullness of their revelry, they fluttered, chirping and frolicking from bush to bush, and tree to tree, capricious from the very profusion and variety around them. There was the honest cock robin, the favorite game of stripling sportsmen, with its loud querulous note; and the twittering blackbirds flying in sable clouds; and the golden-winged woodpecker with his crimson crest, his broad black gorget, and splendid plumage; and the cedar bird, with its red-tipt wings and yellow-tipt tail and its little monteiro cap of feathers; and the blue jay, that nosy coxcomb, in his gay light blue coat and white underclothes, screaming and chattering, nodding and bobbing and bowing, and pretending to be on good terms with every songster of the grove.

...Hiver bouclé comme un bison, Hiver crispé comme la mousse de crin blanc, Hiver aux puits d'arsenic rouge, aux poches d'huile et de bitume, Hiver au goût de skunk et de carabe fumée de bois de hickory, Hiver aux prismes et aux critaux dans les carrefours de diamant noir, Hiver sans thyrses ni flambeaux, Hiver sans roses ni piscines, Hiver ! Hiver! tes pommes de cèdre de vieux fer! tes fruits de pierre! tes insectes de cuivre !

The sailor man had one "meat leg" and one "hickory leg," and he often said the wooden one was the best of the two.

The air outside was tomato-sweet and hickory-smoked, all at once delicious and strange. It automatically made her touch her tongue to her lips.

Lee was tough as hickory, but the tree was old.

Dark, blowing clouds of snow over the mountain, and a snowy sunlight in the skeletal hickories—how do you like these common miracles!

We proaged on thru the woods that was full of magnolia, pine, cedar, oak, cypress, hickory, and many kinds of trees whose names I do not know. It is hard to know all the trees in Florida.

In the autumn, the entire backyard became a mass of lollipop-yellow leaves, so bright they lit up the night like daylight. Birds nesting in the trees would get confused because they couldn't tell what time of day it was, and they would stay awake for days until they dropped out of the branches with exhaustion.

As he drifted into sleep, Harry’s thoughts were uncluttered, peaceful, ordinary. A hickory is windfirm, he thought. A white ash is strong against sudden shock. The sap of a Norway spruce binds a wound. He slept.

When they turned off, it was still early in the pink and green fields. The fumes of morning, sweet and bitter, sprang up where they walked. The insects ticked softly, their strength in reserve; butterflies chopped the air, going to the east, and the birds flew carelessly and sang by fits. They went down again and soon the smell of the river spread over the woods, cool and secret. Every step they took among the great walls of vines and among the passion-flowers started up a little life, a little flight. 'We’re walking along in the changing-time,' said Doc. 'Any day now the change will come. It’s going to turn from hot to cold, and we can kill the hog that’s ripe and have fresh meat to eat. Come one of these nights and we can wander down here and tree a nice possum. Old Jack Frost will be pinching things up. Old Mr. Winter will be standing in the door. Hickory tree there will be yellow. Sweet-gum red, hickory yellow, dogwood red, sycamore yellow.' He went along rapping the tree trunks with his knuckle. 'Magnolia and live-oak never die. Remember that. Persimmons will all get fit to eat, and the nuts will be dropping like rain all through the woods here. And run, little quail, run, for we’ll be after you too.' They went on and suddenly the woods opened upon light, and they had reached the river. Everyone stopped, but Doc talked on ahead as though nothing had happened. 'Only today,' he said, 'today, in October sun, it’s all gold—sky and tree and water. Everything just before it changes looks to be made of gold.' ("The Wide Net")

My feet crunched over dry hickory leaves. Wood rangers had stapled up Smokey Bear (“Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires!”) signs along the state roads. One cigarette butt flicked out a passing car window and there’d be real hell to pay.

On the mountain the limestone shelves and climbs in ragged escarpments among the clutching roots of hickories, oaks and tulip poplars which even here brace themselves against the precarious declination allotted them by the chance drop of a seed.

If the manifest of ingredients on the bottle had been legible, it would have read something like this: Water, blackstrap molasses, imported habanero peppers, salt, garlic, ginger, tomato puree, axle grease, real hickory smoke, snuff, butts of clove cigarettes, Guinness Stout fermentation dregs, uranium mill tailings, muffler cores, monosodium glutamate, nitrates, nitrites, nitrotes and nitrutes, nutrites, natrotes, powdered pork nose hairs, dynamite, activated charcoal, match-heads, used pipe cleaners, tar, nicotine, single-malt whiskey, smoked beef lymph nodes, autumn leaves, red fuming nitric acid, bituminous coal, fallout, printer's ink, laundry starch, drain cleaner, blue chrysotile asbestos, carrageenan, BHA, BHT, and natural flavorings.

An episode at Congress Hall in January 1798 symbolized the acrimonious mood. Representative Matthew Lyon of Vermont, a die-hard Republican, began to mock the aristocratic sympathies of Roger Griswold, a Federalist from Connecticut. When Griswold then taunted Lyon for alleged cowardice during the Revolution, Lyon spat right in his face. Griswold got a hickory cane and proceeded to thrash Lyon, who retaliated by taking up fire tongs and attacking Griswold. The two members of Congress ended up fighting on the floor like common ruffians.

When the crops were thriving, Squanto took the men to the open forests where the turkey dwelled. He pointed out the nuts, seeds, and insects that the iridescent birds fed upon. He showed them the leaf nests of the squirrels and the hideouts of the skunks and raccoons. Walking silently along bear trails, he took them to the blueberry patches. He told them that deer moved about at sundown and sunrise. He took them inland to valleys where the deer congregated in winter and were easy to harvest. He walked the Pilgrims freely over the land. To Squanto, as to all Native Americans, the land did not belong to the people, people belonged to the land. He took the children into the meadows to pick wild strawberries. He showed them how to dig up the sweet roots of the wild Jerusalem artichoke. In mid-summer he led them to cranberry bogs and gooseberry patches. Together they gathered chestnuts, hickory nuts, walnuts, and hazelnuts in September. He paddled the boys into the harbor in his dugout canoe to set lobster pots made of reeds and sinew. While they waited to lift their pots, he taught them the creatures of the tidal pools.

It was some time before he could put Alfred, Georgia, Sixo, Schoolteacher, Halle, his brothers, Sethe, Mister, the taste of iron, the sight of butter, the smell of hickory, notebook paper, one by one, into the tobacco tin lodged in his chest. By the time he got to 124 nothing in this world could pry it open.

He could feel that heat flaying him, but he could also feel a chill on his chest, his stomach, the palms of his hands. There was something familiar about all of it all. He smelled something like hickory, like boxwood, a comfortable sadness, an out-of-reach happiness. That was the world he lived in with Ronan Lynch. The world he had built with Ronan Lynch. A world of limitless emotions and limited power. A world of tilting green hillsides, purple mountains, agonizing crushes, euphoric grudges, gasoline nights, adventuring days, gravestones and ditches, kisses and orange juice, rain on skin, sun in eyes, easy pain, hard-won wonder.

I’ve learned that sometimes I have to give up my right to know and simply believe that God’s knowing is enough. Not that I don’t want to question. Ach, I surely do. But in the three years since Benuel’s death, I’ve learned that peace comes with that kind of givin’ up . . . and, not to boast, but my faith has grown because of it, too.

Rather than the thick, unbroken, monumental snarl of trees imagined by Thoreau, the great eastern forest was an ecological kaleidoscope of garden plots, blackberry rambles, pine barrens, and spacious groves of chestnut, hickory, and oak. The first Europeans in Ohio found woodlands that resembled English parks—they could drive carriages through the trees.

You're smart to leave the past behind you. Otherwise, if you keep looking over your shoulder at it, you might miss what's right ahead of you.

Is nobody incapable of murder?” “I have often wondered.” said Hercule Poirot.

Of course I could give you advice, Jean, though I don’t know why anyone ever wants advice. They never take it.

I respect and love God a lot, but I sure don’t have much use for preachers. They seem bent on making God out to be hard and unfriendly, but He ain’t that way at all.

then reached over with his left hand and lifted Andy’s gun from its

Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, I minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished. Instead of singing like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune. As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had I my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest. My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that "for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing day." This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.

He made me a story, and now I am going to make a story out of someone else. 'So I am to sit here and feed you information,' Cardan says, leaning against a hickory tree. 'And you're to go charm royalty? That seems entirely backward.' I fix him a look. 'I can be charming. I charmed you, didn't I?' He rolls his eyes. 'Do not expect others to share my depraved tastes.

Luna moths have no mouths or stomachs. They do not eat, and only live about one week. Where to Find It As soon as the female comes out of the cocoon in April or June, she searches for a tree with leaves her offspring can eat. Many different trees could be food for her caterpillars. So you may find her on walnut, hickory, oak, birch, alder, sweet gum or persimmon trees.

Conversation, my friend. Conversation and again conversation! All the murderers I have ever come across enjoyed talking. In my opinion the strong silent man seldom commits a crime—and if he does it is simple, violent, and perfectly obvious. But our clever subtle murderer—he is so pleased with himself that sooner or later he says something unfortunate and trips himself up.

It's like any time a white friend suggests Korean barbecue. Or when I see a Food Network special where some tattooed white dude with a nineteenth-century-looking beard-and-mustache combo introduces viewers to this kimchi al pastor bánh mì monstrosity he peddles from a food truck that sends out location tweets. It's like when white people tell me how much they love kimchee and bull-go-ghee, and the words just roll off their tongues as if there exists nothing irreconcilable between the two languages. It's like, don't touch my shit. It's difficult to articulate because I know it's not rational. But as a bilingual immigrant from Korea, as someone who code-switches between Korean and English daily while running errands or going to the supermarket, not to mention the second-nature combination of the languages that I'll speak with my parents and siblings, switching on and switching off these at times unfeasibly different sounds, dialects, grammatical structures? It's fucking irritating. I don't want to be stingy about who gets to enjoy all these fermented wonders -- I'm glad the stigma around our stinky wares is dissolving away. But when my husband brings me a plate of food he made out of guesswork with a list of ingredients I've curated over the years of my burgeoning adulthood with the implicit help of my mother, my grandmother, and my grandmother's mother who taught me the patience of peeling dozens of garlic cloves in a sitting with bare hands, it puts me in snap-me-pff-a-hickory-switch mode.

Poirot closed his eyes. What he perceived mentally was a kaleidoscope, no more, no less. Pieces of cut-up scarves and rucksacks, cookery books, lipsticks, bath salts; names and thumbnail sketches of odd students. Nowhere was there cohesion or form. Unrelated incidents and people whirled round in space. But Poirot knew quite well that somehow and somewhere there must be a pattern . . . The question was where to start.. . . .

My wife says Ambersons don’t make lettuce salad the way other people do; they don’t chop it up with sugar and vinegar at all. They pour olive oil on it with their vinegar, and they have it separate—not along with the rest of the meal. And they eat these olives, too: green things they are, something like a hard plum, but a friend of mine told me they tasted a good deal like a bad hickory-nut. My wife says she’s going to buy some; you got to eat nine and then you get to like ‘em, she says.

Different woods excel at different things, depending on their personalities. Windsor chair makers use a variety of woods: hickory for spindles because of its strength; ash for the hooped back because of its bendability; basswood for the contoured seat because of its availability in thick, wide planks; and maple for the legs because its fine grain is easy to work with on the lathe. You can flip-flop the roles of these woods, but a true craftsman understands the strengths and weaknesses of his woods and uses them wisely. He

Some people consider moss a nuisance, but I find it to be utterly beautiful in its simplicity. Moss symbolizes a charitable nature and a mother's love, and every time I see it, it makes me remember my mama. She's the one who taught me---and Bee---all about the language of flowers.

The road leading off campus was lined with hickory trees, their leaves so bright yellow they shone like fire, as if the road were lined with giant torches. Claire rested her head back as Tyler drove, his hand on your knee. Houses in town were decorated in full Halloween regalia, some more elaborate than others. Jack-o-lanterns flickered on porches, and red and yellow leaves swirled. This wasn't her favorite time of year, but it certainly was gorgeous. Autumn felt like the whole world was browned and roasted until it was so tender it was about to fall away from the bone.

As the last passengers boarded the aircraft, the constant slamming of the overhead bins started to hurt Hero's ears. The infant began to cry, and everyone in the cabin glared in Jack and Goldilocks's direction. "Everyone is looking at us like we've personally offended them," Jack remarked. "It's because you brought a baby on a plane," Bree said. "They're worried he's going to cry the whole way to New York." Goldilocks was not going to put up with this. She passed Hero to Jack and stood in the aisle where all the passengers could see her. "Now, wait just one Hickory Dickory second," she called out. "I don't care if you have to listen to my baby cry! Eight days ago I experienced the worst pain humanly possible by pushing him out of my body! It's something all mothers must endure for the survival of our species! It's natural, it's brave, it's beautiful, and I will NOT be disrespected for it! Now, I suggest you all wipe those foul looks off your faces or YOU"LL be the ones crying all the way to New York!" "I'd listen to my wife if I were you," Jack added. "She's on caffeine." All the passengers quickly diverted their gazes elsewhere. Bree tried to start a round of applause for Goldilocks, but no one joined her.

I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, I minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished. Instead of singing like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune. As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had I my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest. My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that "for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing day." This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.

October 17th Sunday [Dresden] I am by the fire with not another light but it … It is now after 5. All was dark excep the fire. I lay by it and listened to the wind and thought of the times at home in the country when I lay by the fire with some hickory nuts until like the slave who Again he is king by the banks of the niger Again he can hear the wild roar of the tiger Again I was lying by the roaring fire (with the cold October wind shrieking outside) in the cheerful lighted room and I turned around half expecting to see it all again and stern reality forced itself upon me and I thought of the time that would come never, never, never.

Water, blackstrap molasses, imported habanero peppers, salt, garlic, ginger, tomato puree, axle grease, real hickory smoke, snuff, butts of clove cigarettes, Guinness Stout fermentation dregs, uranium mill tailings, muffler cores, monosodium glutamate, nitrates, nitrites, nitrotes and nitrutes, nutrites, natrotes, powdered pork nose hairs, dynamite, activated charcoal, match-heads, used pipe cleaners, tar, nicotine, single-malt whiskey, smoked beef lymph nodes, autumn leaves, red fuming nitric acid, bituminous coal, fallout, printer's ink, laundry starch, drain cleaner, blue chrysotile asbestos, carrageenan, BHA, BHT, and natural flavorings.

One day, when my axe had come off and I had cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving it with a stone, and had placed the whole to soak in a pond-hole in order to swell the wood, I saw a striped snake run into the water, and he lay on the bottom, apparently without inconvenience, as long as I stayed there, or more than a quarter of an hour; perhaps because he had not yet fairly come out of the torpid state. It appeared to me that for a like reason men remain in their present low and primitive condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life.

I was talking about you, my little dandelion." I faked shock. "A dandelion? Are you comparing me to a weed?" "Ah-ah," she chastised. "Don't you know the saying about how some see a weed, while others see a wildflower? Dandelions are wildflowers, and they're the picture of survival, resilience, determination. Just like my Emme.

The little trees, the sapling sugar maples and the baby red oaks squatting close to the ground, were the first to turn, as if green were a feat of strength, and the smallest weaken first. Early in October, the Virginia creeper had suddenly drenched in alizarin crimson the tumbled boulder wall at the back of her property, where the bog began; the drooping parallel daggers of the sumac then showed a red suffused with orange. Like the slow sound of a great gong, yellow overspread the woods, from the tan of beech and ash to the hickory’s spotty gold and the Hat butter color of the mitten-shaped leaves of the sassafras, mitten that can have a thumb or two or none.

I did not read books that first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, I often did better than this. there were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sand around or flitted noiselessly through the house.. I grew in these seasons like corn in the night…they were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance.

But sometimes-especially in the hands of people with a tendency towards dogmatic, ideological thinking-this sentiment becomes a kind of hickory stick to crack across the knuckle of anyone who does not want, for whatever reason, to copy faithfully all the models presented-which today, of course, are western models. If that is what it means, then I can’t agree. Without being, as I have said, a seeker after some ‘third way’, I am opposed to blind imitation, especially if it becomes an ideology….We will never turn Czechoslovakia into a Federal Republic of Germany, or a France, or a Sweden, or a United States of America, and I don’t see the slightest reason why we should try.

For me, the library had been my Narnia, a magical place that took me away to another land, where I learned more than I had ever hoped. Librarians instinctively took me under their wings, protecting me as much as they could from the evils inherent in my mother's way of life. Books had become my refuge, my only friends, family, my escape from my everyday reality.

LIGHT PALE AS MILK guided the old man’s steps over the field to the creek and then to the mountain, stepping into the black wall of pineshadows and climbing up the lower slopes out into the hardwoods, bearded hickories trailing grapevines, oaks and crooked waterless cottonwoods, a quarter mile from the creek now, past the white chopped butt of a bee tree lately felled, past the little hooked Indian tree and passing silent and catlike up the mountain in the darkness under latticed leaves scudding against the sky in some small wind. Light saw him through the thick summer ivy and over windfalls and limestone. Past the sink where on a high bluff among trilobites and fishbones, shells of ossified crustaceans from an ancient sea, a great stone tusk jutted.

And at the risk of sounding like Andy Rooney on Sixty Minutes, have you ever wondered why we say fiddle-faddle and not faddle- fiddle? Why is it ping-pong and pitter-patter rather than pong-ping and patter-pitter? Why dribs and drabs, rather than vice versa? Why can't a kitchen be span and spic? Whence riff-raff, mish-mash, flim-flam, chit-chat, tit for tat, knick-knack, zig-zag, sing-song, ding-dong, King Kong, criss-cross, shilly-shally, see-saw, hee-haw, flip-flop, hippity-hop, tick-tock, tic-tac-toe, eeny-meeny-miney-moe, bric-a-brac, clickety-clack, hickory-dickory-dock, kit and kaboodle, and bibbity-bobbity-boo? The answer is that the vowels for which the tongue is high and in the front always come before the vowels for which the tongue is low and in the back.

Nova Berry looked like a hickory switch- tall, thin and knobby. She could trace her family line back hundreds of years in the Appalachian Mountains. These days people treated what she did as a novelty, but there was a time when the Berry women were known far and wider their natural remedies.Slippery elm for digestive problems. Red clover for skin conditions. Pot marigold for certain monthly female ailments. Nova had been forced to spice things up a bit now that there were things like Maalox and Midol on the market, so easily acquired. So she made it known that her cure for heartburn also mended a broken heart, and her cure for cramps also made you more fertile, or less, if that's what you wanted. Half the time it really worked, because if it was one thing generations of Berry women knew, it was that confidence was the primary ingredient in every potion.

For all the noise and heat generated by the 1840 campaign, its most lasting legacy may have been one of the shortest words in the English language. In the spring of 1839, the phrase “OK” began to circulate in Boston as shorthand for “oll korrect,” a slangy way of saying “all right.” Early in 1840, Van Buren’s supporters began to use the trendy expression as a way to identify their candidate, whom they labored to present as “Old Kinderhook,” perhaps in imitation of Jackson’s Old Hickory. Van Buren even wrote “OK” next to his signature. It spread like wildfire, and to this day it is a universal symbol of something elemental in the American character—informality, optimism, efficiency, call it what you will. It is spoken seven times a day by the average citizen, two billion utterances overall. And, of course it goes well beyond our borders; if there is a single sound America has contributed to the esperanto of global communication, this is it.

Peonies are a gift from the heavens above. I mean, just look at this flower, so big and round. The ruffled petals that look like they belong on a ball gown? Absolute perfection. That scent? It always reminds me of rose and jasmine. I sell these stems at the Sweetplace, but there's no better place for them than in a wedding bouquet, since peonies represent a happy marriage and a happy life. Mix them with some good stock in a bouquet, and well, you're kicking married life off right.

You really are sort of a basic person, aren’t you, except for that blue stratospheric veneer of crust you wrap yourself around. I was going to ask you, with your usual never-ending broadside complaints of lack and wearisome bushwa ‘nonsensical’ humdrum excuses, just exactly what kind of person are you? You must have had it easy growing up. Now, as per your habit, tonight when you hit the hay, percle on this: There are 7even basic types of people—: 1. People who make things happen. 2. People who talk about making things happen. 3. People who start to make things happen but never finish. 4. People who watch things happen. 5. People who wonder what just happened. 6. People who don’t have the faintest idea that anything happened. 7. People who need a stout “clue-by-four” of hickory smacked up alongside their head to make them happen. — As for an eighth— —Which one are you? Puzȥle it out. . . . -- Thomas Kannon, Instructor to Brickley. The Lady and the Samurai

Something marvelous is happening underground, something we’re just learning how to see. Mats of mycorrhizal cabling link trees into gigantic, smart communities spread across hundreds of acres. Together, they form vast trading networks of goods, services, and information. . . .  There are no individuals in a forest, no separable events. The bird and the branch it sits on are a joint thing. A third or more of the food a big tree makes may go to feed other organisms. Even different kinds of trees form partnerships. Cut down a birch, and a nearby Douglas-fir may suffer. . . .  In the great forests of the East, oaks and hickories synchronize their nut production to baffle the animals that feed on them. Word goes out, and the trees of a given species—whether they stand in sun or shade, wet or dry—bear heavily or not at all, together, as a community. . . .  Forests mend and shape themselves through subterranean synapses. And in shaping themselves, they shape, too, the tens of thousands of other, linked creatures that form it from within. Maybe it’s useful to think of forests as enormous spreading, branching, underground super-trees.

There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a reverie, amid the pines and hickories and sumacs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window or the noise of some traveler’s wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance ... For the most part, I minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished ... This was sheer idleness to my fellow townsmen, no doubt, but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting.

Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection. I love to have mine before my window, and the more chips the better to remind me of my pleasing work. I had an old axe which nobody claimed, with which by spells in winter days, on the sunny side of the house, I played about the stumps which I had got out of my bean-field. As my driver prophesied when I was plowing, they warmed me twice—once while I was splitting them, and again when they were on the fire, so that no fuel could give out more heat. As for the axe, I was advised to get the village blacksmith to “jump” it; but I jumped him, and, putting a hickory helve from the woods into it, made it do. If it was dull, it was at least hung true. A few pieces of fat pine were a great treasure. It is interesting to remember how much of this food for fire is still concealed in the bowels of the earth. In previous years I had often gone prospecting over some bare hillside, where a pitch pine wood had formerly stood, and got out the fat pine roots. They are almost indestructible. Stumps thirty or forty years old, at least, will still be sound at the core, though the sapwood has all become vegetable mould, as appears by the scales of the thick bark forming a ring level with the earth four or five inches distant from the heart. With axe and shovel you explore this mine, and follow the marrowy store, yellow as beef tallow, or as if you had struck on a vein of gold, deep into the earth.

There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller’s wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, I minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished. Instead of singing like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune. As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had I my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest. My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that “for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing day.” This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting.

Isn't there something in Genesis about not looking back? A stupid glance over my shoulder showed her expression relaxing, glad I wasn't taking anything that couldn't be replaced and glad I didn't destroy anything that couldn't be repaired. "Do you care for me, Georgia?" I asked her. "Tell me you don't and I'm out of your life forever." She stood in the driveway with her arms wrapped around herself like she was freezing. "Andre is on his way." "I didn't ask you about no Andre." "He'll be here in a minute." My head hurt, but I pressed her. "It's a yes-or-no question." "Can we talk when Andre gets back? We can-" "Stop talking about him. I want to know if you love me." "Andre…" She said his name one time too many. For what happened next, she would have to take some of the blame. I asked her a simple question and she refused to give me a simple answer. I turned from her and made a sharp left turn, pounding across the yard, feeling the dry grass crunch under my shoes. Six long strides put me at the base of the massive tree. I touched the rough bark, an instant of reflection, to give Old Hickey the benefit of the doubt. But in reality, a hickory tree was a useless hunk of wood. Tall, and that's all. To break the shell of a hickory nut, you needed a hammer and an act of Congress, and even then you needed a screwdriver to get at the meat, which was about as tasty as a clod of limestone. Nobody would ever mourn a hickory tree except Celestial, and maybe Andre. When I was a boy, so little I couldn't manage much more than a George Washington hatcher, Big Roy taught me how to take down a tree. Bend your knees, swing hard and low, follow up with a straight chop. Celestial was crying like the baby we never had, yelping and mewing with every swing. Believe me when I say that I didn't slow my pace, even though my shoulders burned and my arms strained and quivered. With every blow, wedges of fresh wood flew from the wounded trunk peppering my face with hot bites. "Speak up, Georgia," I shouted, hacking at the thick grey bark, experiencing pleasure and power with each stroke. "I asked you if you loved me.

Because this is Upper Canada, after all, and 'caning' sounds more English than 'having ass whipped to death with hickory stick.

In reminiscing about the area between Augusta and Wilkes County in Georgia one writer remarked: The grand groves of oak and hickory had not been felled save in occasional spots. The annual fires of the Indian had kept down all undergrowth, and the demands of the stock-raiser had still called for those annual burnings; so that grass and flowers and flowering shrubs covered the surface of the earth with a vesture equal to that of a regal park.

A jerk stuck in a wheelchair, is still a jerk.

Mrs. Crane walked down past the stone wall to the brook that ran behind her house at number 6. She stood there for a few minutes looking into the water where she saw the reflection of her face and a tall tree behind her. In the reflection of the branches she thought she saw unfamiliar movement — figures spinning, swaying. She turned quickly to look up into the tree. The figures were gone. “If an invasion really is coming,” she thought, “it may already be here.” She went into her house and fell asleep in an upstairs bedroom. She dreamed that she floated in a warm current on the Sulu Sea, and that her hair flowed out behind her along the water, shining in the Pacific sun.

Some wood choices you can use for smoking grain include alder, apple, beech, hickory, maple, pear, pecan, and oak; each variety brings its own qualities to the fire. Alder, for example, gives malt a sweet, delicate woodiness, and pecan is more pungent, intense, and spicy. Don’t forget that you can use spicy mesquite chips or peat for that sharp creosote character found in some Scotch whiskies.

But can get salt from hickory wood.

Hackworth took a bite of his sandwich, correctly anticipating that the meat would be gristly and that he would have plenty of time to think about his situation while his molars subdued it. He did have plenty of time, as it turned out; but as frequently happened to him in these situations, he could not bring his mind to bear on the subject at hand. All he could think about was the taste of the sauce. If the manifest of ingredients on the bottle had been legible, it would have read something like this: Water, blackstrap molasses, imported habanero peppers, salt, garlic, ginger, tomato puree, axle grease, real hickory smoke, snuff, butts of clove cigarettes, Guinness Stout fermentation dregs, uranium mill tailings, muffler cores, monosodium glutamate, nitrates, nitrites, nitrotes and nitrutes, nutrites, natrotes, powdered pork nose hairs, dynamite, activated charcoal, match-heads, used pipe cleaners, tar, nicotine, singlemalt whiskey, smoked beef lymph nodes, autumn leaves, red fuming nitric acid, bituminous coal, fallout, printer's ink, laundry starch, drain deaner, blue chrysotile asbestos, carrageenan, BHA, BHT, and natural flavorings.

Opal Raines stood on a cliff high above the surf that beat into the rocks on Cape Point at the southmost tip of the African continent. In front of her was the Indian Ocean and the islands of the Far East; to her right the Southern Ocean, Antarctica, and the icy bottom of the earth; at her back the Atlantic and the Americas; and on her left the vast plains of Africa where she had sometimes lived, and where she had been worshiped by wild lions. She read again the notification that had come today from Switzerland: Dear Ms. Raines. This is to notify you that the sum of ten million dollars (US) was transferred today into your account at Credit Suisse by Stella Clair Rose. Opal tore the notice into small pieces, and watched them fly from her hand, blown by the African breeze out across the ocean water. Her laugh followed the pieces as they floated away, drifting out wherever the wind would take them, toward Indonesia, the Banda Sea, Papua New Guinea, the great expanse of the Pacific — all her world, the world of the statistical outlier merging time past, and time not yet come, with this moment. All as unpredictable as shadows, as ghosts. Sometime later, that laugh, floating on an eastbound wind, would reach the California coast and come to rest where it did once before — on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles where Heron White’s body landed after he crashed through a twelfth-floor window at the end of a hallway outside a dentist’s office one rainy day at noon.

What do grown-up people know about the things boys are afraid of? Oh, hickory switches and such like, they know that. But what about what goes on in their minds when they have to come home alone at night through the lonesome places? What do they know about lonesome places where no light from the street-corner ever comes? What do they know about a place and time when a boy is very small and very alone, and the night is as big as the town, and the darkness is the whole world? When grown-ups are big, old people who cannot understand anything, no matter how plain? A boy looks up and out, but he can't look very far when the trees bend down over and press close, when the sheds rear up along one side and the trees on the other, when the darkness lies like a cloud along the sidewalk and the arc-lights are far, far away. No wonder then that Things grow in that dark place near the grain elevator. No wonder a boy runs like the wind until his heartbeats sound like a drum and push up to suffocate him.

It's like any time a white friend suggests Korean barbecue. Or when I see a Food Network special where some tattooed white dude with a nineteenth-century-looking beard-and-mustache combo introduces viewers to this kimchi al pastor bánh mì monstrosity he peddles from a food truck that sends out location tweets. It's like when white people tell me how much they love kimchee and bull-go-ghee, and the words just roll off their tongues as if there exists nothing irreconcilable between the two languages. It's like, don't touch my shit. It's difficult to articulate because I know it's not rational. But as a bilingual immigrant from Korea, as someone who code-switches between Korean and English daily while running errands or going to the supermarket, not to mention the second-nature combination of the languages that I'll speak with my parents and siblings, switching on and switching off these at times unfeasibly different sounds, dialects, grammatical structures? It's fucking irritating. I don't want to be stingy about who gets to enjoy all these fermented wonders -- I'm glad the stigma around our stinky wares is dissolving away. But when my husband brings me a plate of food he made out of guesswork with a list of ingredients I've curated over the years of my burgeoning adulthood with the implicit help of my mother, my grandmother, and my grandmother's mother who taught me the patience of peeling dozens of garlic cloves in a sitting with bare hands, it puts me in snap-me-off-a-hickory-switch mode.

The period of John Adams’s presidency declined into a time of political savagery with few parallels in American history, a season of paranoia in which the two parties surrendered all trust in each other. Like other Federalists infected with war fever, Hamilton increasingly mistook dissent for treason and engaged in hyperbole. In one newspaper piece, he blasted the Jeffersonians as “more Frenchmen than Americans” and declared that to slake their ambition and thirst for revenge they stood ready “to immolate the independence and welfare of their country at the shrine of France.” 1 Republicans behaved no better, interpreting policies they disliked as the treacherous deeds of men in league with England and bent on bringing back George III. The indiscriminate use of pejorative labels—“Jacobins” for Republicans, “Anglomen” for Federalists—reflected the rancorously unfair emotions. During this melancholy time, the founding fathers appeared as all-too-fallible mortals. An episode at Congress Hall in January 1798 symbolized the acrimonious mood. Representative Matthew Lyon of Vermont, a die-hard Republican, began to mock the aristocratic sympathies of Roger Griswold, a Federalist from Connecticut. When Griswold then taunted Lyon for alleged cowardice during the Revolution, Lyon spat right in his face. Griswold got a hickory cane and proceeded to thrash Lyon, who retaliated by taking up fire tongs and attacking Griswold. The two members of Congress ended up fighting on the floor like common ruffians. “Party animosities have raised a wall of separation between those who differ in political sentiments,” Jefferson wrote sadly to Angelica Church.