30. The Corn ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

In the spring, Robert was privileged to help his father plant corn, as well as soybeans. If the disking were finished, Robert waited beside the Chevrolet pickup until it was time to restock the four-row planter. From a bag, he poured corn—coated pink with captan—into the hoppers, which were covered with neat lids. When a bag was empty, he dropped it behind the planter and placed a heavy clod on the bag to hold it against the wind and not have to go chasing it across the field. He opened bags of fertilizer, which had a lightly acrid scent. Robert thought that, if a rock could rot, it would smell like that. The fertilizer was poured into the receptacles behind the corn hoppers.

Joe would start back through the field. He would pull the string that tripped the arm that dropped with a pleasant metallic sound to one side, so that the small disk at the end of the arm could spin and send up a little cloud of dust while it laid down a groove that would enable Joe to know exactly where the nose of his tractor should go for the return trip through the field.

The warm sky was bright azure. White clouds like cotton balls sailed along. Birds sang in the narrow thickets beside the field. The sunlight was vigorous. To be outdoors and breathing such fresh air was a joy. Spring planting days afforded pure contentment!

Next came the cultivating, which Robert tolerated—especially after he “got on the wrong rows” the first time and eradicated corn for a distance the length of two tractors before he managed to stop. Robert learned to cultivate. He had to! But cultivating corn was an acquired skill, analogous to an acquired taste. He had to be ever vigilant so as not to wipe out corn plants, and such attention to detail interfered with his preference for exercising his imagination while daydreaming.

In the fall—sometimes as late as Thanksgiving—Joe picked corn. On a cool day, wearing his boots—each with four buckles that looked like miniature furnace grates—his blue denim coat, and his warm corduroy cap with ear flaps, he first strode into the field among the cornstalks, pale yellow, tan, and dry. The stalks were spaced a few inches from one another, and the rows were fairly widely spaced—enough for Joe to pass between two rows without having to brush the leaves aside. Selecting an ear, he pulled back the husks to examine the corn. Through experience, he could detect whether the corn might be ready for harvesting. He tried another ear and another, holding between his elbow and his ribs those ears that he had already examined. Later, he broke the ears into thirds and gave the pieces as treats to the cows.

The skies already hinted at the winter to come; it was a pale Turkish hue with cold-looking, vague streaks of cloud lacing them. The daylight seemed strained through thin silk. Joe tramped back to the barn and set down the ears of corn he had collected. He backed a tractor up to his two-row pull-type corn picker parked under the leafless hedge apples. After hitching up, Joe had returned to the seat of his tractor in a jiffy. All that remained was to hitch the tractor and picker to a wagon. Joe was excellent at backing up and often tried to explain the intricacies to Robert, who could not comprehend where the tongue of, say, a corn picker would go while the tractor reversed.

Then Joe went to the field with his tractor, corn picker, and wagon in procession.

With the air just cold enough to turn his cheeks rosy, Joe started into the field. Ears of corn began falling from the elevator of the corn picker into the wagon. Two rows at a time, Joe slowly passed through the field. The corn harvest was underway: the reward for the hard work and the expense of planting and cultivating.

Picking corn was a one-farmer job, so Joe picked corn alone. Robert could not help. Besides, corn picking was considered too dangerous for Robert. Although he could not help, Robert enjoyed coming to the field to watch his father and to chat with him for a few minutes. Robert thought the corn picker resembled a weird rocket with three noses.

As evening drew in, the sky turned yellow with a touch of chartreuse. Near the horizon, orange with traces of rose spread into pink haze above a mauve tree line far away. Indistinct gray masses of cloud hung motionless just above the distant farmhouses and barns.

Joe pulled the last wagon of the day toward the barn, where he would store it temporarily.

For the rest of his life, Robert would cherish the memory of his father picking corn as if Robert were looking at an old snapshot in a picture frame.    

Vehicles I Remember: 1950 Chevrolet

The first car in my memory was a 1950 Chevrolet. It was black. In front of the regular windows on the driver’s side and passenger’s side were triangular windows (wing vents) that could be turned in such a way as to force a blast of wind against the face. That breeze felt so good on a hot day! The windshield was in two halves joined by a thin metal connector moulding. As a child, I always experienced motion sickness, which was far worse if I were in the back seat. Even when I was lucky enough to sit in front, my eyes would focus first on the metal moulding then on the distant view then on the connector again, until I was well on my way toward nausea!

My Mother, My Brother, and the 1950 Chevrolet

My parents drove differently. My father was far-sighted and enjoyed perusing fellow farmers’ fields to his left. Meanwhile, he slowly veered the car to the right until the right wheels were off the road and onto the berm. Miraculously, he never lost control of the vehicle but gradually brought it back onto the pavement, only to repeat the experiment immediately. My mother, meanwhile, played with the throttle. Her small foot, usually wearing a flip-flop in summer, wore out the gas pedal by depressing it and lifting up right away, depressing it and lifting up right away. The car lurched forward and hesitated, lurched forward and hesitated accordingly. To ride with my father at the steering wheel was less nauseating but more frightening.

One day in the good old summertime, I was riding with my mother at the wheel. Down went the gas pedal, up it went, down it went again, back up it came, and so on. I was a youngster still short enough to stand on the front seat. I was near the passenger door and was trying to keep my balance while the car briefly gained speed and momentarily slowed, gained and slowed, gained and slowed. I remember being slightly dizzy. I could smell my mother’s new permanent. (She had to have curls in her straight hair!) We were lurching and hesitating along a gravel road lined by tall corn on our right. We came to an intersection with another gravel road. My mother obeyed the stop sign, but the corn was planted so close to the road that she could not see around it. She entered the intersection only to discover that a road grader had almost entered the intersection from the right. The big machine had been hidden behind the corn. My mother slammed on the brakes, and the road grader just missed the front bumper!

The sudden braking made me lose my balance. My mouth struck the hard metal dashboard. I lost both of my upper baby teeth in the front. My mother yelled, “Why don’t you ever stand close enough to where I can grab you?”

A long time after the incident, when my two permanent teeth came in, they were separated by a gap, or diastema. Whether I liked it or not, the diastema became a trademark. I still have it, although the gap has lessened over the years. Terry–Thomas was a popular British comic film actor in American movies of the 1960s. I always enjoyed his performances because, like me, he had a pronounced diastema.

I am old enough to be mindful that young people today have such perfect teeth! When I was growing up, children lacked such gloriously white, exactly spaced teeth, the result of costly orthodontics. (Incidentally, antibiotics given for ear infections, from which I frequently suffered, turned children’s teeth yellow.) Visiting an orthodontist was just becoming an option for rural kids back then. My parents took me to one in Lafayette, Indiana, but, when they learned how expensive it would be to close the diastema in my front teeth, they asked me if I really wanted to have my incisors properly aligned. I hated dentists. With vast relief, I said that I would just as soon avoid going to the orthodontist. Also relieved, my parents did not have to pay the thousand dollars to close the gap in my teeth.

Whenever I brush my teeth, I recall the dashboard of that 1950 Chevrolet.    

Rustic Prints 3

With this rustic print, we delve deeply into Halloween—or I think we do. The orange sunset and the ghoulish shadows give an immediate impression of the ghostly season. The shocks of corn lean to the right as if they might be capable of motion; if so, they are marching forward to cross the stream and to haunt the two lonely farmhouses in the valley.

Framed Print of Shocks of Corn in a Scene Reminiscent of Halloween

I am not old enough to remember corn planted in checked rows so that a field could be cultivated at right angles without uprooting the young stalks, but I do recall cornstalks that were farther apart in the row and rows that were relatively far apart. When I was young, the corn stood in the field later in the season before it was harvested, and it was not arranged in shocks. I have a distinct recollection of coming home from college for Thanksgiving and finding my father still picking corn. From my vantage point in time, the shocks in this rural print date back a long way. The corn appears to have been planted amid the trees of the hill. I am thinking that the location of the shocks provides evidence of a crop that demanded a great deal of hands-on labor. No big tractor danced around those trees to plant the corn in such a narrow field along a hill above a creek! Accordingly, the scene takes us back a few generations.

The faux wood grain of the paper matting contrasts oddly with the real wood grain of the frame, but the generation when the art was produced may have had an aesthetic that permitted appreciation of the faux and the real side-by-side. To my eye, the dark mat lends mystery to the illustration.

As in the previous print in this series of blogs, the trees have retained their leaves: a fact suggesting that they are oaks. Hints of low-lying fog imply the possibility of frost in the morning to come.

Unlike the previous two prints in these blogs, no congenial smoke curls from a chimney. The artist has avoided any indication of conviviality or familial warmth.

From the oaks, through the marching skeletons of corn, to the dismal gray clouds approaching in the last light of the setting sun, the illustration expresses the Celtic Samhain transplanted in American soil. Am I reading too much into the art, or did the artist deliberately provide for such impressions?    

Good Morning, Springboro! A Barn on a Rainy Day

A short drive in nearly any direction from Springboro takes you into farmland. Fields of wheat, corn, and soybeans stretch between wooded borders and narrow streams. Turning from one road onto another, you glimpse the heartwarming scenery that only the country can supply. Beyond fence corners stand barns tucked amid lush greenery. Horses whinny and gallop playfully. Goldfinches, redwing blackbirds, and indigo buntings are only a few of the vibrant birds flitting among the brambles of the roadside.

A Barn on a Rainy Day Near Springboro, Ohio

Original Watercolor Painting by Robert T. Rhode

The region where Springboro stands was settled long ago—so far back in time that many of the oldest lanes have vanished, replaced by newer highways in slightly different locations. It is common to see a string of homes and outbuildings some distance from today’s road. A rural byway once served them that has since been rerouted or cut off. Now a rather long driveway leads back to them. This tradition of repurposing the landscape has produced the enchantment of discovering isolated barns nowhere near a highway. In the summer, you have to know where to look for them. Half covered in vines and surrounded by brush, they bear testimony to an earlier time when cattle roamed the meadows and a dusty path brought the occasional buggy and news from town.

My original watercolor painting this week features one such barn. It watches over a small field of new corn. The spring and summer have been wet, and the corn was planted late. The stand has been partly drowned out. Showers are soaking the landscape, and the sky is a study of blustery gray clouds. The vista opens from a gap in the trees and thick undergrowth close to where two roads form a T. Look in the right direction at the right instant, or you will miss the view, which roadside thickets and tangled creepers soon shut out.

Within two or three miles along the same road, I could have selected half a dozen scenes as subjects for paintings. For an artist, Springboro’s agricultural surroundings offer unlimited possibilities. Few places in my experience have such happy arrangements of artistic elements. Angles and arcs conspire to please the aesthetically inclined eye. It is as if the Master Painter had been in an especially blithe mood when creating the Springboro corner of the world. Even rainy days in July are hardly sad; rather, they hold forth the promise of harvests to come in only a few months.

If you would like to purchase one of my paintings from this blog series, send me a message through my website at roberttrhode.org or via Facebook.