Hair Buns to Merkins to Hedge Apples...It Must Be Friday!

When I was a little kid, I attended elementary school at Cedar Heights in Woodward.  It was a brand new school when I started there (yes, I’m old).  One of the rather peculiar things about Cedar Heights was the grove of hedge apple trees along the north end of the school grounds.  That grove of trees is now gone…taken down to make room for parking.  

For you dendrologically (sic) challenged individuals who have never seen a hedge apple tree (aka, horse apple, Osage orange, or monkey ball – maclura pomifera, if you’re a science snob) it bears a “fruit” that grows on the tree.  They tend to be green-yellow in color when they ripen in the fall.  The mature fruit is about the size of a small grapefruit and is hard as a friggin’ rock.  The pulp inside is horribly bitter.  They’re sticky to hold, in fact extensive contact with the things can cause skin irritation.  The skin of the hedge apple resembles the wrinkled scrotum of a 94 year old man (but hopefully a different color). 

So what are they good for?  Back in the 30’s the U.S. Government planted tree rows out across the southern Great Plains in an effort to stop soil erosion during the Dust Bowl.  Many hedge apple trees were planted as a part of those wind breaks. As kids, we used to chuck them at one another.  When you’re under ten, you don’t yet have the arm of a MLB closer so getting out of the way before you got clobbered was pretty easy to do.

Why is Robin droning on about chucking an inedible fruit that resembles a 94 year old scrotum, you ask?  Good question.  Read on my babies, read on…

After a full morning of haggling over the details of our entrepreneurial plunge into the savage cold waters of “Hair Buns for Men” (today’s working name for the product), Cousin Fred and I decided to take a walk through one of the tree belts here on the farm.  The nearest is about ½ mile south of the compound so we set off through the pasture.  I wanted to walk the length of the thing to conduct an informal census of quail residing on the place.  I don’t hunt anymore, but am thrilled to see the quail make a comeback after so many years of low numbers.

As we walked, Cousin Fred was telling me about an article he saw in an edition of the Woodward News that I had lying about.  The article said that the snack/junk food industry rakes in $33 BILLION from snack-happy Americans every year.  That is $103.48 per man, woman, and child in the United States (source:  U.S. Census – blame them).  That number seems kind of low actually.  Particularly if you were to peek into the pantry here at the compound.  Who can resist Fritos Scoops…not me! Hell, I probably spend that much in a month on crap.

But, I digress…

Cousin Fred was telling me that the article went on to say that the consumer trend now leans toward healthy crap…snacks loaded with protein and zero gluten.  He was just beginning to tell me that maybe we should seek out a piece of the U.S. snack market for ourselves rather than producing Hair Buns for Men to sell on Amazon until we finally give it up and turn to eBay to sell our remaining stock as merkins. 

That was just beginning to sink into my brain when we turned into what I refer to as the Grand Aisle of that tree belt.  A wide, open space to walk between four rows of trees that go nearly a half mile. 

Cousin Fred stopped dead in his tracks.  I could tell he was feasting his eyes on hedge apples.  Some still in the trees…some on the ground…some falling from the trees to the ground. 

Cousin Fred ran over to a small pile of the nasty things beneath a tree and fell to his knees.  He raised skyward one in each hand before returning them to the ground and wiping his hands on his jeans trying to get the sticky stuff off.

He turned to me, “Cousin!  This is it.  We’ve hit gold!”

I looked at the two hedge apples he unceremoniously dropped back to earth thinking I must have missed something. 

I pointed out that they were hedge apples, thinking he must have mistaken them for something else.

He looked wounded.  “We must harvest these.  Gather them before they begin to rot on the ground!  This is our fortune!”

I asked what the hell he was talking about.  He told me that people have been gathering hedge apples for years now to use as a natural cure for cancer.  He cited “evidence” of the healing power of hedge apples.  I had to admit, it was the first I was hearing of this.

Cousin Fred went on to explain his idea…which is to thinly slice a cross-section of the fruit, cover it in his Aunt Daisy’s caramel recipe and then sell them under the name, “Buffalo Chips.”

I tried to stop the train…no seriously, I did.  I pointed out that trying to cut hedge apples into thin slices was more work (not to mention knife blades) than any one human could possibly undertake.  But, my attempts at logic were lost on him as he walked away from the grove.  He was calling our friend Lamont in western Arkansas to bring his commercial grade rotary meat slicer to NW Oklahoma. 
“There’s money to be made,” he told Lamont! 

It’s going to be long weekend. 

An editorial note from CCB’s disbarred and disgraced attorney (it’s all we can afford):  Please…I implore you to not take anything in these postings to heart.  The chief blogger is an idiot who dreams up most of this crap while drinking coffee in the morning. Hedge apples chucked at someone can kill them…although hitting them with an aluminum softball bat is fun because they kind of explode.   But if you swing a bat at hedge apples be sure to wear goggles so you don’t get the milky juice they exude in your eyes.  Also, the mention of hedge apples being used to cure cancer was added only after “extensive” research by our moronic chief blogger.  While some evidence exists as to the cancer healing properties of hedge apples it is purely ANECDOTAL at this point.  No one is conducting serious scientific research into this stuff.  CCB does not recommend the consumption of hedge apples for any purpose.  The taste is awful!  Finally, the reference comparing a hair bun on a man with a merkin was merely a metaphor (for what, we’re still trying to figure out).  Oh…and extra finally, if you’re a 94-year-old man, we don’t care what your scrotum looks like.  Zip up your pants for goodness sake and why are you reading this blog anyway?  You’re 94…time is running out.  Do something worthwhile dammit!