Who can forget the sound of the first ear of corn dropping onto the floor of the double-box wagon, early in the morning? Or the sound of the horses pulling the wagon going "crunch, crunch" on one of the "gleaners" somebody (I wonder who) had missed? ( I personally have witnesses that can swear it was most likely not me who had did it!")

And I can reveal, at this late date, my own brother told me that I had threw an ear over the wagon, and " was too lazy to go get it", and that's just the way he said it, too.

How about the little box on the side of the wagon where we kept a fruit jar of hot tea? And that same box is where Pa put all of the outstandingly well -filled-out ears of corn that would be used for seed the next year. And then in the following winter, we would shell all of those ears by hand. While Pa would shake a sieve back and forth, us kids would handle the technical aspect of the job whereby we would pour those shelled kernel into the sieve. The small kernels dropped through. Those little guys would be fed to the hogs, and the big ones went for seed the next spring.

Unfortunately ( I say unfortunately for me) Pa liked to plant white corn. That white corn broke hard, I think I was 16 years old before I quit using my knee to break the ear from the shank. I felt like telling my dad, " Hey, Pa, why don't we plant all yellow dent this year, instead of you know what" but just as sure as heck, every other year, we would have the privilege of picking one field of white.

Otherwise it was pretty honest work.