The work of the farm revolved around the main crop - hybrid seed corn. During spring and summer, planting and irrigating were done. Then came the work of detasseling some rows so they would cross breed with the others. It was done by hand, walking up and down the long plant channels in the heat. In the fall, the corn was harvested and in the winter months cured and dried in the seed warehouses (which my father built, drafting the plans himself). The men took turns sitting up all night  stoking fires and reading Collier's magazine and the Saturday Evening Post.My father taught me to read before I started to school, sitting with me while I puzzled over letters and shapes. School was a two-room building about four miles from our farm. Sometimes my parents drove me and sometimes in nice weather I walked with my cousin, stopping along the way to add other farm children to the group. The school was heated by a pot-bellied stove in winter and the bathroom was a wooden outhouse. |