Richardson: Camping out and green apples and walnuts

Back in the day when I was about 11 or 12 years old, my first cousin and myself wanted to camp out over night at my grandfather’s pond.

By Howard Richardson
My Life Retold

My dad told us that the only way we could camp out was that we would have to find out food because we would not be able to take food from home, except for some cooking oil and cornmeal, a frying pan and salt and pepper. We would have to catch or find things to eat that night and the next morning. So we agreed because we wanted to camp out and prove we would be able to find something to eat.

We decided that we would camp out that Friday night and we would go to the pond after dinner Friday and get set up, and try to catch some fish for supper that night. And after supper we would try to find and gig some frogs so we could have frog legs for breakfast Saturday morning.

We caught about six or eight fish that we fried for supper. After supper we started looking for frogs, I might add here that we did have two flashlights and some extra batteries. We did find and gig eight or 10 frogs that we cleaned and had ready for breakfast Saturday morning.

We got to sleep about midnight and was awake about 6:30 Saturday morning, and got the fire started and got the frying pan and grease hot to cook the frog legs, we put cornmeal on the frog legs and salt and pepper put them in the hot oil and boy did they jump and kick in the pan we finely got them turned over and they started kicking again, we took them out of the pan and then we decided to fix some gravy to go over the frog legs and bread for breakfast.

That is where we really made a mistake we put some cornmeal in the oil in the pan and some water and let cook until it got thick. But when we tried to pour it out it wouldn’t pour, and was burnt to the pan. Let me tell you, you don’t want to try to eat any gravy made with oil and cornmeal, when we tried to eat the frog legs they were not done and we not could eat them either had to throw them away.

So there we where with not a thing to eat for breakfast and had slept much that night. But we did not want to go home and let them know we had failed at camping out.

So we started walking through the woods to see what we could find, we did come upon an apple tree that had some green apples so we picked a few, then a little later we found a walnut tree which we climbed and picked some walnuts which were green. We went back to the pond, peeled the apples and ate one of them let me tell you green apples are not good on an empty stomach they really made us sick, then we tried to roost the green walnuts and then crack them and try to eat they will make your mouth want to turn inside out and you can not wash the taste out of your mouth.

So with that we had to go home and say we were hungry and had failed at camping out. But we did learn some things not to do. Don’t eat green apples on an empty stomach and don’t try to roost green walnuts, and don’t try to make gravy from oil, cornmeal and water.

Richmond County native Howard Richardson is author of “My Life Retold,” available on Amazon.com.