The Bang Boards

Ok I went to Marco Island Beach and walked, I sluffed off today, so you get one of my best stories instead of producing something new...But your the winner, you get to meet my great dad.... One other order of business here...My daughter told me today that in order to leave a reply or message that you must type in your name and your email address....She said they wanted far more info but that was all she allowed them to have and it did allow her to make her reply to me....So there you have it....reply away please I need the input here....H H


The Bang Boards

By Happy Hoosier

It is an early October morning in 1943, the sun has just started to rise in the clear eastern sky. Off in the distance an ear of corn is heard hitting the tall bang boards on a wagon drawn by two draft horses, then another, and then a steady almost rhythmic muffled bang,...... bang,...... bang. Soon in a different direction the same sound comes, sometimes at a somewhat slower pace or faster pace. After a while a third farmer starts his long day of hand harvesting his welcomed bounty from a year's work, his corn crop, that will help to sustain his family for the coming winter. If you are close enough, you can also hear the calls that he makes to his horses, who are "loose reined". They move on the farmer's orders forward until he signals them to stop. This allows him to harvest two or three rows of corn, from ten feet to the rear of the wagon forward to almost even with the horses. Then he again orders them to, "Move up.” Then "Whoa", to allow him to again begin pitching the corn from near the rear of the wagon.

Two hours pass. As the farmer nears the end of the field close to his home, a small lad of five years has finished his breakfast. He then is allowed to walk through the garden and climb over the fence to join his father for part of the harvest day. He is lifted up into the wagon, which is now nearly half loaded with shiny golden ears of corn. In the wagon, he sits close to the "pitching side", where he can safely watch the golden ears of corn sail over his head where they strike the tall bang boards on the other side and then fall into the wagon.

He is there because today his father is shucking corn in the field where that spring he and his father had randomly planted pumpkin seeds in "skips", which were areas in the row where the corn had failed to come up. For a small farm boy it was a big deal when those ears all of a sudden would stop coming into the wagon. Then his dad would lift a large yellow pumpkin over the rear tailgate of the wagon, smile and say, "well, here is the first one". The farmer then told his son that he was “in charge" of the pumpkin and added, "keep it on the pitching side of the wagon“, so as not to roll around and be struck with the incoming corn. This process would be repeated maybe five to ten times over the next couple hours until the wagon was loaded with golden corn, pumpkins and a tired lad just watching all that work take place.

The wagon with the farmer now sitting up on the seat surrounded by all the corn he had harvested by hand, now heads his team toward the farm buildings. But this load would stop first at the house and unload the pumpkins and the lad, who would then watch his mother stack the pumpkins outside near her kitchen to be cleaned that day and cut up, cooked and canned in glass jars for the long winter ahead. And some of that pumpkin would go into a couple pies to be enjoyed that evening by a hard working mother, father, older brother and sister and even a hungry lad who had watched all that work turn into the fruits of the land.

FAST FORWARD 12 YEARS AND IT'S 1955

The small lad is now 17 and a Senior in High School. His father Lawrence will be 65 in about a couple months. They have now advanced in corn harvesting to a one row pull type corn picker. Still picks it on the ear and still drops it in a wagon. The big lad now, is allowed to stay home from school for two weeks each fall for the annual corn harvest. Jack, runs the corn picker for his father who is somewhat intimidated by machinery that picks corn about three or four times as fast as he did so by hand. But grateful that he no longer has to do all that hand work. He unloads the wagons into the crib while the son is loading another wagon.

But before all this can take place there are dues to be paid. This one row Woods Brothers corn picker picks the fourth row of corn. That means that 3 rows around the field and a few 3 row strips through the field still have to be harvested by hand.

The senerio would go like this. The man who had won the county corn shucking contest in 1930 and now going on 65 years of age would harvest 2 rows of the three. The 17 year old, young guy planning to enlist in the Marine Corps the next summer would take the singe row. Happy Hoosier would try very hard to be half as good as the Champion Corn Shucker. What a goal, to be half as good as your Dad. He would start to fall behind with his single row of corn harvesting. But then what is this?
He would find maybe 15 stalks of corn with no ears on them. This allowed him to catch up to the old guy doing twice the work. He would try even harder but would again fall behind. And again would find 15 or 20 stalks with the ears already harvested. My father was indeed a Champion of a farmer, and indeed a Champion in many other ways.