Corn Cob Fights

My maternal grandfather was a farmer in the creek bottoms south of Malvern. There were all sorts of interesting things on the place. He had an old pick-up that was very different. I do not remember the make or model, but I do remember that the radio was of a sort I have never seen anywhere else, with interesting buttons that were pushed to access the pre-set stations. 

              Granddad Davis raised hogs, and so he raised corn to feed them. There was a corn crib beside the barn that was probably two stories tall. There is no telling how many ears of corn it could hold. We would climb around on the corn and have all sorts of fun sliding down the pile. 

              Attached to the crib was a manual machine to strip the dried kernels of corn off the cobs. The corn cob was inserted in the opening of the machine, and a long handle was turned which twisted the cob against a series of metal teeth that knocked the kernels off the cob and dropped them into a wooden box. Then the cob was ejected out of the other end of the machine into a growing pile of bare corn cobs. 

              Perhaps there is some useful purpose for bare corn cobs. Scientists probably have come up with something by this time. For us boys, they provided handy ammunition for our periodic battles with the cobs. Some of them were epic skirmishes. 

I am here to tell you that a corn cob that is thrown hard at close range can really sting when it hits you on a bare portion of skin. We soon learned that the effectiveness of the cobs was increased by dipping them in water, which increased their weight, and thus their impact. We had some lengthy and spirited battles in the barn lot, and some vivid welts upon various exposed portions of our bodies as a result.  

Did our parents care? Nope. They figured if we were stupid enough to throw cobs at one another we deserved what we got. Evidently, the Consumer Products Safety Commission does not regulate corn cobs.