Evil Corn
An Original Short Story by Susan Rektorik Henley
(C) Copyright 2001
Corn has been grown on the farms of the Texas Czechs since they came to Texas. Corn has been a cash crop and a feed for livestock. Dried corn stores about as well as anything can in Texas given the humidity and abundance of insects. Then, as now, care had to be taken in how corn is feed to livestock as uncracked and/or too much corn can lead to farm animals developing bloat and/or foundering. Overall, the merits of corn exceeded the problems.
Once the ears fully develop, the corn plants end their life cycle and die. A field of corn will slowly change from a vibrant, green sea into a brittle and brown stick forest. Months pass while the moisture is sapped from the ears still enclosed in the shucks. The heat of the sun sears and hardens the kernels until they seem to be golden enamel beads.
It was on the blazing hot days of late summer that we would harvest corn. Harvesting was usually done in the morning when it was cooler; however, there was often less of a breeze in the morning making even standing in the sun uncomfortable. Sweat would run down ones face and back. Your clothing would stick to you. By the time I came along we used a small tractor to pull the wagon but the work was done as it always had been. Each recruit (believe me you NEVER volunteer for this work), was assigned a number of rows to harvest. The number varied on the yield. If it were a great year, a person would have trouble handling even two rows. Other years, one would grab many ears which contained only dried silk, cob, and a few small kernels. On these drought years, one would work four or five rows. Everyone started on one end and worked forward snapping off the ears and putting them in the wagon. From time to time, the wagon would be taken to the crib and emptied. Water tasted soo wonderful when you finally got a chance to slug it down.
At the time of harvesting, the stalks were brittle and with a "popping" of the wrist, one could remove the dried ears quickly. With the snapping off of the ear came an assault of chafe, dust, and field debris which collected on you. It accumulated in the crease of one's elbows and on one's neck. It itched and it burned. It also made one's eyes water. It was also not unusual to accidentally grab a yellowjacket wasp along with an ear of corn. Sometimes they would be in a position to sting, sometimes not. One learned to run like heck when one saw a wasp nest behind the ear which one was pulling.
Down here on the flat coastal prairie, one can see for miles and miles. I recall watching clouds build and darken in the distance as we harvested corn. One would hear the rumble of thunder and see the lightening dance across the sky. Sometimes one could see the rain falling over a half mile away. Kids would hope (even pray) for the rain to come...anything to get away from the agony of pulling the ears. But, if a good shower did come, the relief was short lived. Dried corn which has been rained on is more difficult to snap off the stalks; and then, instead of dust on the ears, one had mud. Some years we shucked the corn in the field. Others the corn was placed in the crib with the shucks on.
Even with the end of the harvest, future agony would be dealt by the corn. It was my chore to shuck and shell the corn on a weekly basis. When shucking the corn one again gets dirty and itchy. Also, the shucks can deliver cuts as vicious as deep paper cuts.
Years before, corn shellers were operated by a hand crank. Many of you probably recall seeing (or using) shellers mounted on boards on barns or corn cribs on family farms. They were metal devices fairly round in design with an intake tube, and a knobby disk inside. When the hand crank was turned, the disk would turn and the corn forced through the devise in a manner so that the interior knobs forced the kernels off the cob. The separated kernels would slide out down a shoot and the empty cob would be ejected. By the time I had to process corn, our old sheller had been modified so that it was run by an electric motor and belt system. It certainly was faster but one had to take care not to get one's hands caught when a ear would jam the sheller and one had to reach inside to remove it.
My work was done when there were many five-gallon buckets full of golden kernels. There would be a heap of shucks and another of empty cobs too. When the cousins got together there were corn cob wars. Believe me, quite a skin burn can be made by a strongly thrown cob. One also had to be careful not to stand on a pile of cobs because if one hit a bigger cousin with a hard thrown cob, you had to be able to run fast. Not that I know from personal experience or anything, but trying to get one's footing while standing on a pile of cobs is not easy...especially when a big and angry cousin is quickly approaching. One only has to be soundly thrashed once to learn that lesson!
Weevils here in Texas claim a lot of corn. There were times (right before the next year's harvest) when most all of the stored corn would be consumed by weevils. I would shuck ear after ear and find them light, empty, and riddled with weevil holes. A flour-like meals on the corn crib floor and the scurrying weevils were all that was left. ( Even deadly chemicals which could kill a person would not get all the weevils.) My Dad tells me that the presence of so many weevils changed the way the early Texas Czechs stored much of their feed.
Susan Rektořík Henley
Kdo chce s vlky byti, musí s vlky vyti!
"If you run with the wolves, you must howl with the wolves!"
Remember who your people are, keep and tell their stories.
Rekindle and keep the fires of the culture alive!