Monday, January 17, 2011

Corn Cobs by Abraham Lincoln

I suppose more than half of the United States population has never heard of corn cobs. The only time they can see one is when roasting ears go on sale at the super market.

Corn cobs were once our nuclear power. Nearly everyone used them instead of wood kindling and some people heated homes with cobs. I know we always used them to start fires in our kitchen cook stove and sometimes mother used them to make a quick, hot, fire in the heating stove in the good living room.

They make an excellent fire starter on a cold, wintry, morning. Like most folks, we had one tin can under the cook stove partly filled with coal oil and a corn cob would be sticking in the can. A corn cob soaked in coal oil (called "kerosene" these days) and set on fire under a pile of coal slack or kindling was like “poof,” the magic dragon; you got a roaring fire in no time.

When I was growing up cobs were free and you could have all the corn cobs you could haul away from any grain elevator. We didn't have a car or truck, so mother would hire Herb Hamel to get a load of corn cobs from the elevator at Arcanum. And that was our fuel for most of the winter. It was clean burning and made a hot fire.

Cobs do burn up fast and to keep a fire going mother dropped in several lumps of coal or pieces of wood. If one lump of coal rolled away from another they would both burn down and the fire would go out. So somebody had to use a stove poker to keep the fuel spaced close together just to keep it burning.

I don't know who bought the coal for the school but some years there was only a few large lumps and the rest of the shed was filled up with corn cobs. Instead of getting a bucket of coal we got a bucket of cobs. You could always tell whose turn it was to get the coal or cobs because the coal shed key would be on your desk when you came back in from recess.

Back then there were many tales told about using different things as a substitute for toilet paper, including corn cobs. I was familiar with using big leaves and rolled-up grass and pages from the catalogs but I was skeptical about corn cobs until I saw them in the pit. I am not saying somebody used them instead of pages from a catalog or newspaper but they were down there.

In those days when somebody acted snooty or stuck up, people would say that they had a corn cob stuck up their a_s. We all smiled at comments like that because they were correct.

I have no idea what corn cobs are used for these days or where they are. It’s disappointing to me because such important things should not be forgotten. What is even worse is that I don't know a single living person on Earth who owns a coal bucket filled with corn cobs. I wish I did. Those were the ‘good old days.’

4 comments:

  1. When burning the corn cobs was there a ordor?

    ReplyDelete
  2. hey there dad...guess I did not realize I could see these articles online! Melinda ;)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Bears to mind a new respect and appreciation to the old adage "Rougher than a cob!"

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Melinda

    Hi Anonymous,
    There was no odor or at least I do not remember any odor. They burned hot and quick so it wasn't like coal.

    ReplyDelete

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