The Time Capsule | Roy Marshall
How would this state’s fastest corn pickers, the ones sent to represent Iowa in the national finals, do against farmers of 80 years ago?
The question arose during a weekend that was a dandy for anyone with an interest in local history. We watched the state husking competition at Indian Creek Museum on Saturday, made a stop on the art tour, then went to the old tractor show in Red Oak Sunday afternoon.
Corn picking was disrupted a bit by an early-morning shower and a pair of runaway mules, and I had a chance to ask 91-year-old John Becker, a picker in the seniors class, how huskers of his youth would compare with today’s. He wasn’t sure.
Our grandfathers spent weeks each autumn picking corn, giving them an advantage in experience. Today’s pickers, though, have a lot in their favor. They’re bigger, stronger, get better health care and probably don’t make a steady diet of sausage, cornmeal mush and potatoes fried in lard. Huskers now work in fields that yield 150-200 bushel or more. Pickers of the 30s, with mostly open-pollinated, 50-90 bushel corn, had to cover more ground and could not have imagined a field like the one at Indian Creek. Corn today is denser and taller, more uniform, genetically modified and treated with chemicals. Less insect damage results in fewer stalks on the ground. Fields are clean, without the weeds 1930s competitors dealt with. Today the best pickers in the men’s open husk for half an hour, a short race compared to old timers who went for 80 minutes.
By mid-afternoon a pleasant breeze had dried the corn, conditions seemed ideal, and I had a growing doubt that pounds per minute picked in the 1930s could come close. I watched corn fly and felt it unfair to take half hour out of a long race and compare it to someone else’s time in a shorter one, but did so anyway.
Sunday evening I settled in, retrieved Leonard Jacobs’ book of husking records from 1924-1941, and fired up the calculator.
First, though, a thank-you to the staff and volunteers of Indian Creek Museum, to Dave VandenBoom, president of the Iowa State Corn Husking Competition, the pickers and the superb teams of Percherons, Belgians, Shires and mules and all who made Saturday an experience that was an ideal preface to Sunday afternoon’s antique tractor show.
VandenBoom likes the location and the people, thinks this area would make a good location for future pick-offs, and I hope that works out.
In making the comparison between pickers then and now, my calculator produced results so extreme I wanted confirmation. This was provided by Alex, an advanced mathematics seventh grader and my go-to grandson on technical issues. Alex ran the numbers and here they are:
Saturday’s winner in the men’s open picked 339 pounds in 30 minutes, or 11.3 pounds per minute. In 1937 the Olson brothers, Martin and Stanley, finished one-two in the Montgomery County contest. Martin’s record was 2,311 pounds in 80 minutes.
I watched the 11 pounds per minute pace and thought corn was flying. Martin Olson did 29 pounds a minute. The disparity increases when we consider that we’re comparing this year’s state winner on ideal corn to 1937’s county champ working a field with perhaps 1/3 the yield. The Olson brothers were good, but went nowhere at the state level. Iowa’s best during the 1930s was Elmer Carlson of Audubon. In the 1935 nationals, Carlson picked 2,995 pounds, or 37½ pounds every minute.
For me this awareness enriches and gives perspective to today’s contests. I watch the motion—grasping an ear of corn, stripping the husk, snapping it from the stalk and throwing it toward a bangboard—and try to imagine someone doing so at a rate that would amass 37 pounds every 60 seconds. Contemplate that, and that a couple of years later a guy from Illinois beat Carlson’s mark by 5 pounds.
The current event has several classes and is open to kids in various age groups. I hope it returns next fall and wish every parent in the area would take their youngsters for a hands-on history lesson; let them pick corn and learn how their grandpas spent October and November, and gain some slight appreciation of how good they were at what they did.
Roy Marshall is a local historian and columnist for the Red Oak Express. He can be contacted at news@redoakexpress.com.