It was a bad year for persimmons, so The Insider had trouble finding quality seeds with which to look into the future.
Now before we get into the “prophesying” phase of this column, The Insider wants to assure you that no witchcraft is intended. Having been accused of engaging in just such black arts with the annual persimmon seed-opening, The Insider is a little sensitive about this. A fairly fundamental Baptist who thinks the Southern Baptist Convention has gone liberal, The Insider is not a pagan and does not confer with evil spirits.
What The Insider is doing is just carrying on an old Ozarks family tradition of looking at nature to see if there are any signs. The Insider figures the Creator, who he believes is the Lord Jesus Himself, for that is what the first chapter of the New Testament book of John indicates, wrote some things into the creation that mankind can read.
For instance, when The Insider said to a close friend that rural folks have indicated to h im they’ve not seen so many acorns on the ground as seen this fall, that close friend said, “It’s going to be a rough winter.” Friend’s logic is that nature’s God has made arrangements ahead of the cold winter to provide food for deer and other animals. The Insider is no scientist, so that makes good sense.
Also, The Insider’s Mama has always been a watcher of nature’s signs. Rings around the moon mean something to her, and so did persimmon seeds and caterpillar coats; The Insider should have paid more attention to her weather lore, which she learned from her Daddy, The Insider’s grandpa.
So, after that little outburst from The Insider, let’s get on with the weather predicting.
Now, The Insider’s own persimmon tree this summer did a mighty poor job of producing any persimmons that were of sufficient size and fullness to get a good handle on what they might be predicting.
Apparently, the hot, dry summer—evidence of climate change for young people who haven’t lived long enough to experience some of nature’s wild swings over decades—affected the fruit of the persimmon tree. The first fruits that fell off the tall tree were blackened and dry. Seeds inside were paper thin or nonexistent.
Then, it rained a good rain or two, and some late fruit, nice and plump and pink, appeared, and The Insider gathered a small sack. Even those, though, when opened were not good reading material.
A couple of good ole boys The Insider knows, Chester Kojro and Earl Burns, came to the rescue with some nice persimmon seeds that were quite legible.
Now the so-called sorcery you use in reading a persimmon seed is to cut it open lengthwise. The Insider uses a pair of pliers to hold the seed and a utility knife with a brand-new sharp blade to slice it open.
Then you look at the halves of the seed and see what the picture is. Now, the picture, as The Insider understands it, is really what will eventually germinate and grow into a root. Not being a horticultural scientist, The Insider doesn’t know for sure. For him, it is just a picture within the seed.
If the picture is a spoon, that means snow in the winter. If it is a knife, that means cutting, biting cold. If it is a fork, it means a sweet, mild winter.
Most of the time when cutting open seeds, The Insider runs across spoons and knives. Very rarely has he seen a fork. Oh, how wonderful it would be to live in a place with a mild winter and lots of forks in the persimmon seeds; but then, the summers would probably be horrendously hot. The Insider is never happy with the weather.
So, both Chester and his wife, Martha, live somewhere over by Doolittle.
Earl and his wife, Marcia, also live somewhere over by Doolittle.
Well, according to the persimmon seeds, over by Doolittle it is going to be cold and snowy this winter, because each collection of seeds had a mix of knives and spoons. Earl had more knives than spoons, while Chester had more spoons than knives.
Here in town, it isn’t going to be any better. The Insider’s seeds are simply a mess of unreadable seeds mixed with some spoons and knives. One seed is really weird; it kind of looks like an outline of a spoon, but when Melissa Pence, who works at the Focus, saw the seed, she said, “What does a wishbone mean?”
Sure enough, on second look, the picture part actually is in the shape of a wishbone. Maybe that means we’ll all be wishing for warmer, dryer weather; then we’ll think of the heat and drought this summer, and we’ll say, “Boy, howdy, we are never happy with the weather.”
But, overall, it appears, that we are in for a cold, snowy winter. Who would have ever guessed? It was hot and dry in the summer, now it is going to be cold and snowy in the winter! Surely, that is a sign of climate change, young people. We need a carbon tax. Let us get together and tax all cattle that fart. If it weren’t for those cattle, we would have forks in our persimmon seeds, promising mild, sunny weather with occasional rain showers to make the flowers pretty year-round, wouldn’t we, young people?
There is only one picture that is really worrisome and creepy. That is when a seed is simply blank. And there were a lot of them this year that were just absolutely blank. I hope that doesn’t portend a nuclear winter with mushroom clouds instead of cumulus or cirrus clouds.
The way the so-called “leaders” of the world are talking, though, you just never know.
So, spend this winter inside, warmed up, reading the Bible, ‘fessed up, prayed up and ready to go when you’re called.
