Toasted Nuts and Grandpa's Remembered Rhymes

I remember Grandpa Williams sitting down in the basement at the old workbench. He would sit all afternoon cracking the nuts we had gathered in the fall. He used an old metal shoe last that Daddy used to resole our shoes to crack the nuts, and then he picked out the nut meats, as I recall. It would take hours. Then, in the evening after supper, Mom would toast the nut meats in a tin pie pan with salt and butter. We’d all sit around the kitchen table and enjoy them while Grandpa would tell limericks. He could recite them from memory—one after another—all evening long. I regret not understanding the importance of this. It would have been so wonderful if even one of us could carry on this old family tradition. They were like a story in rhyme, and were very long but very entertaining; some sad, some funny, some were just a tale of life. It was good; better than we even know.