OLD CORN CRIBS

The other day we came across this old old corn crib tucked away in the weeds.   The corn crib, back in the 1940s and 1950s, was a crucial part of farming.  It's where farmers stored the harvest of ear corn.  These granaries were made of wooden slats with spaces for ventilation to keep the corn dry.  I remember daddy tying the pant legs of his overalls with twine to keep the rats from crawling up his legs when he worked in the corn crib. 

Yup, these buildings are now like relics from a time gone by.  The little farm girl within me holds a nostalgia for the way our lives used to be.  Daddy didn't farm our 120-acre farm to get rich.  He worked the farm so he could provide for us.  Being raised that frugal way after the Great Depression gave me an eagle's eye glimpse into the world of poverty, hard work and sweat.  My memories, naturally, don't include the worries and concerns that daddy had cuz I wasn't aware of them.  Never do I remember him complaining about anything.  

Today we drive by thousand-acre corn fields, crawling with computerized tractors.  Totally a different world than the small John Deere putt-putt that daddy used.  I know now why he didn't allow me to drive a tractor.....because I was the cherished property of my daddy.  

When the boyfriend and I drive the back roads, my eyes are always on the lookout for these remnants of the past.  My highly-refined imagination can easily see this corn crib being filled by a farmer wearing bib overalls throwing ears of corn inside.  This was before the elevator that carried corn into the crib.  

One of my jobs on the farm was shelling corn with an old corn sheller that looked kinda like the one here on the left.  Daddy would fill a bushel basket with ears of corn, and I'd shell it for him.   The sheller had a hand crank, that I remember.

I always said I would never marry a farmer, cuz I didn't want to work that hard.  Mom would tell me to wait and see about that.  She knew the business of the heart and its powers of persuasion.  Thankfully, I got my way and became a town girl.

Life was so different then.  Our family of four went to church every Sunday.  After church we went to grampa and gramma's house (about 10 miles away) for noon dinner.  Our going there was, in my little girl's mind, an extension of the liturgy of mass.  Gramma went all out with her homemade baking, and her food tasted better than anything ever.  She cooked on a wood stove, and her kitchen table was covered with a colored print oil cloth.  All these decades later, and I can close my eyes and be right there in her kitchen.