The Cluster of Seven

Today while peering up at the nut crop of our young, promising pecan tree I found a cluster of seven nuts on one stem. As the hulls on the pecans were beginning to open, I picked the twig, Leaving all the nuts on the stem as they had grown. I displayed it on the mantle where those who saw it exclaimed at the unusualness of so many nuts on one stem, but to all who saw it, it meant no more than that. To me, it meant much more, it represented the substance of the last story my father ever told me.

My Father was always a proud and efficient farmer. He had, in his declining years, planted a pecan tree in his yard, where he had cultivated it with great care and watched it grow. And now it was a fine, promising, young tree with a bumper crop of pecans ready for harvest.

One day as he was looking with pride at his prize tree, he noticed there were several clusters of six pecans on the limbs. He went proudly over to tell his married son, who also was a farmer--young, ambitious, and rather successful. Father told him of his clusters of six pecans he had found on his tree.

"Fine" said the son, "that is a nice tree, but I have one tree with a cluster of seven on it."

Now Father was very proud of his son and his ability as a farmer, but his countenance drooped just a little at the prospect of his son's tree outdoing his own, but, well, it didn't matter much anyway. Neverthe-less the next few minutes found him at his own tree anxiously gazing up at it's clusters of nuts. There he stood for quite sometime hoping against hope he could find--and then he did find one, yes, there it was, he counted it over, to make sure, but it truly was there--a cluster of seven.

"And now, my girl," he said, as he finished, "I want you to go out and see my cluster of seven." and he told me just where to look for it.

Father passed away before he was permitted to see again his cherished pecan tree, but to me, "a cluster of seven" will always have a definite signif­icance.

by Velda P. Hancock