Grandpa's Stories #3

Another installment of the memoir of Ivan Butterfield, told in his own words.

Dad and Mother were great competitors when working at the art of farming. They were known for their corn husking abilities and to watch them shuck corn was a real show. It was not unusual for each of them to shuck one hundred and twenty-five bushels of corn in a day’s time. If there was a winner in their little friendly competitions, it was usually Mother. They always got their teams ready early and were in the field at sunup. They would have bang boards piled high and away they went. Bang boards were generally twelve inch boards the length of the wagon bed, stacked edge-wise one on top of the other with up and down cleats to support them. The higher the bang boards, the less they had to watch where they were throwing in order to get the ears of corn in the wagon. I remember seeing them start at the end of a row, put me in the front corner of one of the wagons, ask each other if they were ready. Possibly one of them would make a small bet of one kind or another and then one of them would yell, “Let’s Go!” From then on there was never a moment that there was not an ear of corn in the air until the wagons were full. If there was a shuck showing on any ear of corn, someone was sure to get a ribbing, such as “No wonder you got so much, you didn’t shuck it, you just snapped it!” Dad and Mother were very much in demand at harvest time and picked corn for many of the neighbors.


There was quite a crop of rats at about this time and the neighbors would get together and have what I would call rat kills. They would bring cars and tractors to the appointed farm, back them up to the barns, corn cribs, etc. and put a hose from the exhaust pipe to the rat runs under whichever building and then stand back with clubs and boards to kill the rats when the exhaust fumes drove them out into the open. The neighbors would go from one farm to another in this fashion and where they killed the most rats, that farmer had to feed everyone an oyster stew or ice cream or something of that nature.  At some farms I have seen large piles of dead rats at the end of a kill. In those days the neighbors were always getting together to solve their various problems, whether it was gathering crops for someone who was sick, putting in the crops for some unfortunate friend, building a house or barn, or anything else they could do to help their friends and neighbors.

I remember Dad and Mother telling me about getting me a new pair of shoes, of which I was very proud. I was told to put the shoes back in the shoebox and to go to bed. That night Dad caught a young opossum and took my shoes out of the box and put the opossum in. When I got up the next morning and went to see my new shoes, they said I ran into the kitchen screaming that a opossum had eaten my shoes!

Dad also told me about the time he had a sow about to farrow and just before bedtime he asked me if I hadn’t better go down to the barn and see if the sow had lain down. According to Dad I drawled, “If she ain’t got sense enough to lay down, let her stand up.”

We were thrashing at our house and many neighbors were at our place assisting in the harvest. Among them was my dad’s younger brother, Glen. Uncle Glen had a Ford touring car that he had just recently purchased and wanted it in out of the sun. Dad told him he could put it in the driveway of the barn. The barn was on a rather high knoll and you had to go up quite a hill to get into the driveway. At the bottom of the hill was a large, wooden fence. As usual, I was showing off for the other kids who were there and I decided to show them I knew how to drive my uncle’s car. I got into the car and released the handbrake and it started to roll. I think my sister, Mary, was among those who tried to hold it from rolling but to no avail. It rolled out of the barn, down the hill and somehow turned just enough that it didn’t hit the fence. Did I ever get my bottom tanned!!