If my wife, her hound and I were to lose it all right now, we still could get a square meal. As the Wappo or the Suskol tribes used to do, we could gather acorns for fresh acorn meal.

For the last month the neighbor’s oaks have been on a bombing run, sending cascades of acorns down on my car. As I read on the couch late one night, the windows open to cool the room after a hot day, all was quiet on our street. An occasional car swooshed by, music from the stereo trailing behind it, then quiet descended again — except for the clangs of acorns bouncing off the hood of the sedan. The bigger bangs prompted my wife’s hound to lift her houndy ears in elevated, yellow-stage alert.

Legend has it that an early drop of acorns means a cold winter, or maybe a rainy one. Other legends say acorns are good luck charms or that— when nailed to a tree — they guard against toothache.

Last week, the Boston Globe reported a bumper crop of acorns is descending on farmers and park walkers in that region. Writer David Abel described Nina Axelrod, 79, of suburban Newton, “Hoofing it for open sky while she held a book of poems over her head. ‘It’s like it’s raining acorns,’ said Axelrod.”

As for acorn recipes, William Redhawk, a Lakota Sioux who has written about and collected stories (and recipes) from various Native American cultures, reports that the tan oak offers the most flavorful of the California acorns. The black oak acorn is perhaps the quickest and easiest to cook — take note, Rachael Ray — because it requires less leaching to get the tannins out. Live oak is a loser. Not much meat, too much work and, most dreaded in this valley of premium flavor profiles and aromatics, no character.

Several sources note that oaks produce uneven acorn crops from year to year, weather conditions aside. So, are we in for a cold winter in west Napa? More rain in the triangle between the Notch, Harvest Middle School and the premium outlets?

I figured the neighbors would be experts on this. The same oak trees pummeling my car have bombed the house next door for decades. I asked Marlene what it means when the acorns fall early and forcefully. She considered the question closely, factoring in the blue jay, squirrels and her own years of living under the beautiful oaks on the property line.

She shrugged and said it means the acorns are falling early this year.

So much for old wives’ tales.