Corn - Mountain Gold

A few years ago I was a proud member of the Future Farmers of America.  The emblem for the FFA is a cross section of an ear of corn because that is the vegetable that is grown in every state in the union.  Today it is an embattled vegetable, yet the history of corn is old and complex and essential to life.

Way back in the Bible times, farming was a little different than it is in the 21st century.  Barley was the main grain crop of the day – remember that the boy in Jesus’ crowd carried 5 small barley loaves and 2 fishes for his lunch; Jesus took those meager provisions and miraculously fed a great crowd.  Yet barley is mentioned in the King James Bible just 37 times compared to 102 mentions of corn.  However, a deeper look at languages finds that in British English, corn refers to most any grain – it’s more of a generic term.

Still, the natives of North and South America were indeed enjoying the hard kernelled grain we know today – or something very similar since there was neither genetically modified nor hybridized.  It was the natives who introduced corn to the earliest explorers and settlers.  The crop spread quickly across Europe and soon became as essential to those communities as it had been to the Americans.

Fast forward a few centuries and we find the Scots-Irish settling in Appalachia.  Their hilly, rock-strewn fields were rich in humus and readily produced corn for the cows, mules and men. 

You see, corn is that unique crop that can foster any domesticated farm animal and equally supports human life.  Now, my research tells me that corn is deficient in niacin which is essential for converting our food into energy.  Perhaps that’s why our people ate cornbread and milk – I doubt they could have even pronounced niacin yet somehow they combined two perfect foods that were readily available to in their mountain home.  I find that amazing.

Today, scientists have gotten ahold of corn and modified it to resist pests, withstand chemicals and yield ever greater harvests.  We find corn in everything from soda pop (both the plastic bottle and the sweet drink), the carpet we walk on and the makeup on our faces (per FarmProgress.com). It’s come a long way from the pone turned out of an iron skillet and crumbled in sweet milk.  I said in the beginning that it’s an embattled vegetable because the long-term effects of the genetic modifications are suspected of causing great harm and corn has crept into so many aspects of our lives that we can scarcely avoid it.  Still, whether it’s heirloom or hybridized, corn is as central to our modern American lives as it was to the earliest American lives.

Who Stold the Corn?

When Grandpa Smith lived up on the Head of Wolf River he said that one of the men in the settlement had raised him a fine crop of corn one year.  He stored it in his crib, waiting till he could raft it down to Nashville and sell it.  But before long somebody stold most of it.  The other people in the settlement begin to have their own corn stold, too.  This was very uncommon, since everbody knowed everbody else, and nobody locked anything up.  Fact is, to lock your door or your corn crib was just the same as saying that you didn’t trust your neighbors.

This stealing went on till might night spring.  Then one day Milt Parsons was having a log rolling.  Ever man in the whole settlement was there, and ever time the men’d stop to get a drink or to rest awhile that’s all they’d talk about, the corn stealing that was going on.  Nobody could figger out who would do such a thing.

Old man Titterow didn’t get about too much, but he had come out that day.  Not that he could do any work, but he just wanted to see his neighbors and do a little visiting.  Now when he heard what was going on, he told Milt that he could catch the thief if he wanted him to.  Milt was might pleased at that and said that he’d sure be plumb much obliged if he would. 

Old man Titterow went to the house before anybody else did for dinner.  So when everbody was done eating, Milt told the men that if they’d all go down to the barn, he had something to show them.

Well, when they all got down to the barn, old man Titterow was standing by Miz. Parsons’ big old black was kettle.  He said that he’d been hearing about all the trouble everbody had been having, and that he knowed just how to catch the thief.

He said that he’d put Milt’s old rooster under the wash kettle, and that everbody was to go up and rub his right hand on the bottom of the kettle, and when the guilty man rubbed, the rooster would crow so they’d know who it was.  Everbody agreed, so old man Titterow was the first one to go up and rub his hand on the kettle.  Not a single word was spoke as all the men walked up one at a time and rubbed their hand around and around on the bottom of the kettle.  Then as ever man rubbed, he walked over and stood in line by the old man.  The rooster never crowed a single time.  Then after the last man had rubbed, the old man stepped out of the line and told everbody to hold out his right hand, pan down.  Then he started at one end of the line and took ever man’s hand and turned it up to look at the pan.  Everbody’s hand was as black as the pot bottom till he got to Silas Pardue.

When he saw that Silas’ hand wasn’t black, he said, “Here’s your man, Milt.”

Now everbody was mighty surprised at Silas, but they hahd hi dead to rights so he just owned up to it.  He said that he had done it because he wanted to buy him a little piece of land for his own, so he stold the corn, made it up in likker and sold it ‘way over in Kaintuck where nobody knowed him.

Since everbody in the whole settlement was there, everboyd come the the agreement with Milt that if Silas would just pick up his family and move off, nobody would ever even mention the corn stealing again. 

So it wasn’t but a little spell till Silas come back from a trip to his people over around Jimtown and said that he was moving over there.  Nobody but the men who was at Milt’s barn that day ever knowed a thing about what went on, and just as sudden as it had started, the corn stealing stopped.  Everbody breated easy again, for it sure was a bad feeling when you had to lock up your corn crib against  your neighbors.