The story is out of Donnellyville, Australia. Just an aside, I thought we got macadamias from Hawaii, not Australia. But the thrust of the piece is how difficult it can be to get the delicacy off the tree when they don't fall on their own. And when the tree is especially tall, that means there are even more nuts left on the tree.
Consider the following description of what a team of four workers has resorted to for about a week: use of homemade nut-knocking sticks to hit the macadamias out of 1,500 trees.
A description and a sketch of the improvised nut-knocking stick is in the story. The stick has produced a fair amount of success.
Years and years ago when I lived in Flushing, there was the sight of an Asian man throwing what looked like an 18" length of 2x4 up at a tree, trying to knock fruit down. It turns out quite mistakenly years ago, female Ginkgo trees were planted along with male Ginko trees along the 149th Place stretch that adjoined the LIRR's Murray Hill Station property.
As a kid growing up in the 50s and 60s no one cared one iota about eating the fruit that fell to the ground that contained the Ginkgo nut. The shells got crushed, the nuts were splattered on the sidewalk and street, and stunk to high heaven. They made a mess. The lousy smell is what people cared about
Well, when the neighborhood started going Asian, there were those new arrivals who thought they landed in heaven. Fresh Ginkgo nuts, if only they could get them off the trees before they were squashed. Thus, one enterprising, and not very successful guy who was flinging a piece of 2x4 up into the trees trying to get some unspoiled fruit.
I have to say I didn't stick around too long to see how the guy made out. I didn't see the 2x4 land on him, and I didn't want it to land on me, so I gave the guy a wide berth. I also didn't notice if he had attained a supply of what for him was going to be a delicacy, had for the right price, free.
This whole memory sequence was touched off by the A-Hed piece and one well-put set of words: a nut-knocker.
One wonders if there is a market for a self-defense weapon that might be sold to women who want to thwart the advances of offensive males. A nut-knocker carried in a purse that can quickly be extended and aimed appropriately.
It would certainly come in handy for women to ward off purse snatchers and snatch snatchers, like the snatch snatcher that Garp's mother has to deal with in a movie theater. Not all women are nurses and have a scalpel handy, like she did.
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
The guys with the sticks? Do they count like RBIs? As to trees bearing fruit I heard of a tree bearing bright red berries favored by the local birds who gorged on them and then began staggering around and it seemed that not a tern was left unstoned.
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