The Day the Corn Crib Burned

The burning of the corn crib was the great destructive event on the farm. The day before it burned, we had shelled corn and there was a huge pile of corn husks left piled up. I had taken Marold to Iowa State University for the fall quarter. Uncle Carl had gone to Gowrie with several wagon loads of cobs. My sister Vivian was home with our Mother who was recuperating from surgery.

A strong wind from the south started up a fire in an old husk pile that we thought had been burned out. The first worked back against the wind to the recently piled up husks and thus un turn was close to the crib, and it caught fire. Since the crib was far to the north of the building site, Vivian didn’t realize what was happening until the neighbors saw the blaze. So the crib burned along with the elevator and the old gasoline engine.

I returned from Iowa State and Uncle Carl came out from Gowrie to find quite a mess. There were oats in the overhead bins and they were in a great charred pile on the ground in the midst of the debris. I worked with Uncle Carl to try to salvage some of the oats. It was kind of a hopeless task, but as usual, Uncle Carl’s frugalness made the task essential. I think the salvaged oats, with burnt flavor and water soaked from the fire department, were sold to some hog farmer.

Life is full of events that happen without regard to reason. This was one of them. Later, Uncle Carl built two new single cribs on the foundations of the old crib. I think that they were still there at the time the farm was sold.

Uncle Carl was also one of the first to decide that plowing was bit the best tillage practice. He bought a John Deere Van Brunt field cultivator and tried to use it. This was before the days of stalk cutters and straw shredders, so the trash problem made the use of this machine unsatisfactory. But as we well know, present day chisel plows and V-rippers have pretty much replace the plow on the Iowas farm scene. These tillage tools were an outgrowth of the field cultivator.

Ss time went on, the purchase of new machinery waned, and Uncle Carl continued to farm for many more years with patched up machines that he had originally purchased new. One item of interest was the F-20 tractor that he bought in 1936 and had moved into town in 1959–60, had never had the transmission grease changed in it. Not only did he or we not abuse this tractor, but it was made to last. when it was sold at an auction of his possessions when he went to live in a retirement home in Madrid, the F-20 was still in running order except that it did need a new clutch.