CORN HUSKING

[Stanley]

CORN HUSKING

Paulette sent me a picture about which you had a question or two, whether an odd three-finger glove  was for shucking or shelling corn.    I can’t answer that question, Stanley, but I can tell you that on small farms (or for small jobs, like making animal or chicken feed) there was a machine, run by hand, which could either shell corn (that is, take the kernels off the cob) or grind corn (that is grind the whole corn cob, kernels and all).  
 
I actually used such a machine, when I was a child (up to about aged 15 or so).    It was a brilliant piece of work.   It stood tall and rather unsteadily (a center of gravity problem) on four metal legs.    The machinery was in a box (faded, red-painted wood, in my case), which had a couple of levers (with which you set the grinding wheels to shell or grind, and maybe one or two other settings, like grind fine –for chickens—and grind coarse—for pigs and cattle).   Viewed from the end, it was tall and narrow.   Viewed from the side, it was a rather big rectangle on stilts.     At one end, on the top of the box, was the cowling into which you put the shucked – but not shelled – corn cob.    It then went through the machine, making a hell of a racket as I recall, and the usable end product came out the other end (there was a hook from which you suspended a bucket).     Out of the bottom, if you had set the machine to shell the corn, came the denuded cob.    (Cobs made good firewood, and in the depression my family used corncobs instead of coal, in their furnaces.)   
 
On one  side of the box, and this is what gave it its power, was a rather large iron wheel, with nicely curved spokes (they did things right, the Victorians), and you got this thing going by grabbing it and “throwing” the wheel, and could build up a great deal of speed, power, and noise before putting the corn  in.   Using this machine, two boys aged 10 and 12, let’s say, could produce quite a bit of animal food in quite a short time.   
 
The trouble with this story is that we didn’t use gloves at all.    When in use, the grinder stood in the breezeway of the corn crib, just by a door made of individual wood slats.   You took out one or two slats (three or more was risky—you could set off a corn avalanche and empty the whole damn crib) and extracted the corn cobs.   It the husks were still on (they were in about 50% of the cobs) you took the husk off before putting the cob in the grinder.   Otherwise it went right in.   You had to put the cobs in one at a time or they would jam, which was a hell of a mess to clear up and we had to get my uncle to help then.    Taking the cobs out of the crib would be exciting, because sooner or later you would take out one cob and it would set off a corn-slide in the crib.    You didn’t want to be leaning in to the door when that happened.  
 
They still make similar machines, electricity-driven, but to judge by the pictures they are much less sophisticated (although more powerful), and it’s pretty clear, from the pictures of the modern machines, that they only grind the whole cob, kernels and all.   They do not, as did my uncle’s old grinder, give you the option of shelling the cob.   And I did find a picture of an old corn sheller, see below, but clearly this particular model did NOT offer the option of grinding the whole cob.   That old machine (in the summer, when all the corn was gone and we awaited the new crop, it stood by itself in the machine shed) was a marvel.    But when I was little it did scare me.   The wheel could get going at a fearsome rate, and had so much inertia or mass you could not stop it (not without breaking your wrist, anyway), and when you put the corn in there was an explosion of sound as it did its task.    When shelling, a single cob would go through in about 3 or 4 seconds.   Grinding took a bit longer.   Of course, when shelling, the corn had to be very dry (as it was, for the cribs were efficient driers of corn).  

This sheller-only machine (an antique, by the way) is as close as I could come, but it’s a pale shadow of the fierce monster we used to feed in Grundy County, Iowa.    All the works were enclosed in a red wood box and it stood on iron legs—but the wheel in this picture has a familiar look to it, although the machine I used had the wheel only—no handle.      .   As for the gloves, never saw anything like them before, in my life.   Sorry I can’t help.   
 
Bob
 
Robert M. Bliss
Dean, Pierre Laclede Honors College
 
Thanks for that Bob.  Bob Jacobsen, late of Northfield, told me they were corn husking gloves and were used widely at one time.  Evidently the reason why manufacture of them survived was that until comparatively recent times, they used to have corn-husking competitions at county fairs and shows.  Bob said that even work hardened hands could be torn up by the husks.  Thanks for the wonderful first hand description, it goes straight onto Oneguy.

January 12, 2008