Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-10-25

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THE tragedy Of the American chest
nuts is too well known to need re-
telling. It is one of Shakespeare's Sad
stories of the deaths of kings" But
with Autumn's oncoming the Spanish
chestnut appears in the market Some
times hot chestnuts pop and sizzle II
the carts of street vendors. and a sack
Of chestnuts Is jolly purchase in the
chill Autumn dusk.
I prefer to take them home and bake
them In the oven, buried in salt; then
when you hear them popping in their
skins whisk out the savory whole, dig
them from their salt bath and eat them
hot, buttering each one like q tiny
night tea. with popovers, honey, milk
and apples, it makes . delectable
change.
did not, however, intend to run over
into the recipe column. Rather, would
say that whoever eats chestnuts will
think inevitably of the boarded store
Of golden Mediterranean Summers. In
the sugary, golden dumping of a sweet
chestnut is Autumn incarnate, its
wealth and bounty and all the Old
World high living of the harvest sea-
son.
Long ago the Greeks brought them
from the native home Of chestnutS,
which was CircaSSia. From Greece the
chestnut travelled to Sicily, and now,
today, there are trees standing on the
slopes of Aetna-chestnut trees more
than 1000 years old. Some are as great
in girth as the California redwoods and
much greater in spread. If not so tall,
they are quite certainly the most mag
nificent trees in Europe.
A chestnut tree was often part Of q
peasant girls dowry. fine grove Of
them might not be uniting for the
dot of q young duchess. Even today
large parts of Spain, Italy and Greece
Subsist on the misunderstanding flour
and bread, chestnut soup and just plain
chestnut, as Ireland and Germany sub
sist on potatoes or the Middle West
on corn. Think, then, as you butter
your steaming chestnuts, or eat the
chestnut from your stuffed turkey, or
chestnut pudding with whipped cream,
Of the short, hazy, golden, melancholy
AutumnS of the Old World, when the
wind from the Alps has an edge on 1t
and little peasant children with stiff
fleming fingers gather the chestnuts In
the dusk from the frosty grass.
Use Of the Pawpaw.
When the pawpaw looks good enough
to eat. don't eat 1t, If you don't want
your mouth puckered. When it looks,
as my cook used to say, spoiled rot
ten" 1t Is ripe, however unSavory its
bruised brown or black exterior must
seem.
As gypsies are beautiful on the high
way and merely tawdry between walls,
so I love the pawpaw when I pick it in
the woods above Washington, along the
Potomac's steep banks. If get my
hands covered with custard out in the
woods, merely laugh. But If you
bring @ pawpaw home, your family will
deride 1t, and, In truth, it will wear
dingy and pathetic appearance. Def
antly you start out to eat It, Just to
show the others what they are missing.
But ut the table it tastes insipid.. No
spoon, fork or fruit knife Is Of much
use, and indeed there Is no respectable
way to eat pawpaw at home. except in
the bathtub.
So the pawpaw, like its tropical rela-
tives, the cherimoya and the custard-
apple, will never gain wide popularity
not with apples handy and cheap, as
clean to eat and refreshing to taste as
they are. But that. after all, is moth
ing against that strange spray from
tropic lands, the fruit we call the paw
paw. It nourished the red brother,
long ago; he called it assimin, and the
first French explorers named it assimi-
nier. A French botanist concocted a
sort Of hybrid-Latin name, Asimina
triloba, which is quite euphonious and
q handy to know, since scientists in
form US that our pawpaw has no right
to the name, the true pawpaw being the
papaya of the tropics.
One Kind Of Berrying.
Berrying time is over, but there is
kind Of berrying that, II you don't in
sist on too much for your effort. Is
worth the sport Of wood wandering In
the Autumn weather the search for
those brightly colored wild fruits that