Butch Recalls Pickin’ Corn in the ’50s and ’60s

   Like many of you fellow baby boomers who grew up on a farm in the 1950s and ’60s, I enjoyed helping my Dad when it was time to harvest corn. Unlike today, the harvest didn’t begin until after the first frost, and after the leaves on the trees had turned yellow, red, orange, and brown. The ears of corn had to be naturally dried out, as no one used gas dryers in those days. On our 160 acre farm, we usually had 80-100 acres of corn … the remainder in wheat, oats, soybeans, alfalfa or pasture.

   We owned three tractors…a Farmall H, a Farmall M, and a smaller Ford 8N. Dad had a pull behind corn picker at first, but later on purchased a tractor mounted two-row picker. The corn picker stripped the ears of corn from the stalks, removed the husks and threw the ears into a wooden wagon that was hitched to the back of the tractor. If the stalks jammed up, they had to be removed by hand … a dangerous proposition for sure, as a few farmers had lost fingers or a hand that got caught in the grinding gears, if they had left the picker running. When the wagon was full, we pulled it to the corn crib, where the front wheels were stationed onto a lift run by a small gas engine. This lift raised the front of the wagon so the ear corn would drop out the rear of the wagon onto an elevator, which was connected by a PTO to the Ford tractor. In the early ’60s, Dad used steel gravity flow wagons. The elevator carried the corn to an opening in the top of the crib. Dad always warned me to stay clear of the PTO shaft, as he knew of someone whose clothes got tangled in one of those and was whirled to their death.

   We only had one metal “wire mesh” corn crib, which was quite small by today’s standards. The ear corn was naturally air-dried. The remainder of the corn was stored in a slatted wooden crib in one of our barns. One of my jobs, when the cribs were nearly full, was to walk (or ride) up the elevator and climb into the crib. When Dad started up the elevator, I had to kick the ears of corn around as they fell into the top of the crib, to help fill the crib to its limit. This was fun, but it made me somewhat anxious, as the amount of space for me to move around became smaller and smaller.

   When we ran out of crib space, we loaded up our 1951 Dodge truck and hauled the corn to the Farmer’s Feed and Grain elevator owned by Harry Yount. I rode on top of the load in the back of the truck all the way to town. Allen and George Yount, sons of the owner, stood by as Dad pulled inside the main building. The front of the truck was raised, and the corn fell out the back into “the dump hole,” and an auger carried it elsewhere. When I was very young, I accidentally fell into that hole while the auger was on. Fortunately, Allen Yount, saw me and hit the “stop switch,” or I would have been a “goner!” The ear corn was shelled and stored in large bins, or it was ground into feed for our hogs and chickens. When I was 15 years old, Dad let me take loads of corn to the elevator by myself even though I had no driver’s license. Quite a few boys were allowed to drive back then without a license, and no one really questioned it. After I returned one afternoon and had unloaded chicken feed, I heard screaming when I drove the truck away from the chicken house. My brother had been in front of the truck, and I had driven over him! Luckily, he was between the front wheels and only received a few scrapes.

   After all the corn had been picked, I drove our truck back to the fields to pick up any ears of corn that had not made it into the wagon…and take this corn to the elevator to sell…and keep the money for myself! One year, I drove the truck to a field near Bowers. The field had caught fire, and the owner let my brother and me pick up the burnt corn from the ground…to sell and keep the proceeds for ourselves. Because the corn had been burned, the elevator did not pay full price, but we made enough that we thought we were rich!

   When corn had to be taken to the elevator to be ground into feed, my brother and I loaded the truck by hand with scoop shovels. One afternoon we ran into a nest of rats, which took off in every direction. I tried to kill them with my shovel, but my brother took off running. He hated rats…about the same as I hated bats! One time my Grandpa Dale had a rat run up his pants leg. The rat made it to about mid-thigh, at which time Grandpa squeezed it to death through his pant leg, leaving a large spot of blood on his overalls. If that had been me, I think I would have freaked out!

   Picking corn often took several weeks, depending on the weather. I can certainly remember Dad picking corn with snow on the ground. Today’s farmers use giant combine harvestors that shell the corn, which is hauled to large bins to be dried out with LP gas heaters, or taken by semi trucks to large elevators or terminals. But I bet they don’t have as much fun as I did when I helped Dad in the 1950s!

John “Butch” Dale is a retired teacher and County Sheriff. He has also been the librarian at Darlington the past 36 years, and is a well-known artist and author of local history.