Book Excerpt from *Cream of the Crop* -- "She'll Be Comin' Round
the Cornfield"
"She'll Be Coming 'Round the Cornfield"
from *Cream of the Crop* (trade paperback; 188 pages; Sept.
2005; ISBN 1591138205; http://ruralroute2.com)
A week ago the sky had clouded over and it had rained hard
throughout one entire night. Dad had stopped picking corn for a
couple of days to let the cornfield dry out. When he started
picking corn again, instead of warm and sunny as it had been
only a week ago, the weather had turned cold and sunny. Very
cold. So cold it was enough to make a person glad her mother had
insisted she put on a stocking cap and mittens. And a winter
coat. And winter boots. Even though the ground was bare and
there was no snow anywhere.
My friends from school were also wearing stocking caps and
mittens and winter coats and boots. We were lined up along the
back of the corn wagon like those big stuffed animals in the
booths at the county fair that you could win if you threw a ball
and knocked down enough pins. The air was as clear and sparkling
as the water in the spring running next to the driveway, and the
sun glinted like the gold tooth that flashed in the smile of the
man who worked at the feed mill in town. Yellow cobs of corn
came out of the corn picker chute above the wagon and fell at
our feet: thud--thud--thud-thud--thud-thud-thud-thud. I turned
toward the girl sitting next to me, and we both grinned. My
throat was already a little sore from yelling above the sound of
the tractor and the corn picker, but we were sitting close
together, so we could hear each other fairly well, at that.
"Hey! I know! Let's sing!" suggested one of the other girls.
"Yeah!"
"Let's sing!"
We looked back and forth at each other as more yellow cobs of
corn fell into the wagon--thud--thud--thud-thud--thud.
"But," one of my friends said, "what should we sing?"
Here in the wagon, with the bitter-cold wind behind us, the sun
felt warm on my face. During the summer, the wagon was used for
loading hay, but when fall arrived, Dad had attached the
two-foot-high sides he used to keep the corn from spilling onto
the ground. The wagon was painted red and so were the side
pieces. The color reminded me of the Macintosh apples we had
bought on a Sunday afternoon trip to an orchard not long ago.
I pulled my stocking cap down over my ears a little more as I
considered what songs we could sing. I liked the one about "when
Johnny comes marchin' home again," and then there was the one
about the Camptown races and there was always Twinkle Twinkle
Little Star...
"I know," said one of the girls. "Let's sing She'll Be Comin'
Round the Mountain."
Just the other day we had sung She'll Be Comin' Round the
Mountain in music class. Our music teacher at school pushed a
piano from room to room, and when she came to our room each
week, we often learned a new song.
"But--we're not going around any mountains!" another girl said.
Which was true enough. The cornfield--although not completely
flat because it had a few small hills that Dad said were
'rolling' and that Mom called 'knolls'--was still one of the
flattest fields on the farm. Dad had finished picking corn on
our other place, a second farm my parents owned a mile away, and
had now started picking corn in the field behind the big wooded
hill we called the Bluff.
"How about..." one girl began, "She'll Be Comin' Round the...
...CORNFIELD!" shouted another girl. "But what about the six
white horses?" I asked.
"Well, let's see...instead of six white horses, we can sing
'she'll be drivin'..."
Just then, Dad started to make another turn at the end of the
cornfield.
"She'll be drivin'...THE RED TRACTOR!" we all shouted at the
same time.
"What about the next part, though, about going out to greet
her?" someone asked.
We all fell silent.
"I know," I said, "instead of singing about going out to greet
her, we can sing, 'we'll all ride on the wagon when she comes.'"
"Yeah, let's do that!" someone said.
"But what about 'killing the red rooster?' Do we have to kill
the red rooster?" asked another girl.
One verse of the song talked about 'killing the big, red rooster
when she comes.' Mention of the word 'red' made me think of red
apples.
"We can sing, 'we'll bob for red apples when she comes,'" I
said.
"It might work out better" another girl said, "if we sing
'we'll bob for bright red apples when she comes.'"
We waited until Dad finished making the turn and corncobs were
once again falling at our feet.
"Are you ready?" I asked. "Okay, let's start now--"
"She'll be comin' round the cornfield when she comes.
"She'll be comin' round the cornfield when she comes.
"She'll be comin' round the cornfield, she'll be comin' round
the cornfield, she'll be comin' round the cornfield when she
comes."
By the time we reached the last 'when she comes' I could hardly
sing anymore. Every time I drew a breath to sing, a giggle
bubbled up into my throat. My friends appeared to be having the
same problem.
A while later, after the last giggle was gone, we were able to
breathe again.
"She'll be drivin' the red tractor when she comes," one of my
friends sang out.
We all joined in.
"She'll be drivin' the red tractor when she comes.
"She'll be drivin' the red tractor, she'll be drivin' the red
tractor, she'll be drivin' the red tractor when she comes.
"Ohhhh, we'll all ride on the wagon when she comes. We'll all
ride on the wagon when she comes. We will all ride on the wagon,
we will all ride on the wagon, oh we'll all ride on the wagon
when she comes.
"We will bob for bright red apples when she comes. We will bob
for bright red apples when she comes. We will bob for bright red
apples, we will bob for bright red apples, we will bob for
bright red apples when she comes."
Once more, we had to wait for the giggles to go away. Then we
started in again with--
"She'll be comin' round the cornfield when she comes.
"She'll be comin' round the cornfield when she comes.
"She'll be comin' round the cornfield, she'll be comin' round
the cornfield, she'll be comin' round the cornfield when she
comes."
For the past few minutes, I had noticed Dad glancing back at us
with a tight-lipped expression. I often saw Dad press his lips
together like that, usually when something happened that made
him want laugh out loud, but he knew if he did, Mom would be
upset. "Don't encourage her, Roy," Mom would say if she caught
him smiling at me. Even though my mother was not out in the
cornfield with us, I figured Dad had gotten so much practice at
not smiling, he had decided maybe he'd better not smile.
After a few more times of singing "She'll Be Comin' Round the
Cornfield," the wagon was full--or as full as the wagon could
get. A mound of corn in the middle sloped down to the
two-foot-high red sides but only reached part of the way toward
the back of the wagon where we were sitting.
At the end of the cornfield, Dad stopped the tractor, climbed
down and walked past the corn picker. He paused at the front of
the wagon and reached for an ear of corn, held the cob to his
nose, and then, using both hands, snapped it in two. The corncob
broke--snick.
Dad nodded and tossed the two halves back onto the mound.
"Sounds like you're having a good time," he said.
My father had pulled down the earflaps of his cap and had
turned up the collar of his blue denim chore jacket. His face
was red from the cold wind, and his blue eyes looked as blue as
the sky.
"Can we ride on the wagon some more?" asked one girl.
"We have to take the load up to the corncrib and unload it,"
Dad said, "but after that, you can ride around on the next load,
if you want to."
"Yayyyyy!!" I said.
"Thanks Mr. Ralph!" said one of the girls.
"I never knew picking corn was so much fun!" another girl said.
All along I had hoped that a Halloween party with my friends
from school was going to be fun. I had never had a Halloween
party before. A couple of weeks ago, I had asked if I could have
one, although at first, my mother was not enthusiastic about the
idea. Later on, after my big sister, Loretta, offered to drive
my friends home on Saturday afternoon, Mom gave her permission
for a party.
So, yesterday--the Friday before Halloween--four of my friends
got on the bus with me after school. In the evening we bobbed
for Macintosh apples in Mom's old, round, dented aluminum
dishpan, played several games of Bingo and Old Maid, ate popcorn
balls Loretta had helped me make Thursday night--and laughed
until we almost made ourselves sick.
A couple of times, Mom told us not to laugh so much. "If you
keep laughing like that, the next thing you know, you'll be
crying," she said.
From the time I was a very little girl, Mom had told me not to
laugh too much because it would be make me cry. So far, it
hadn't happened, but that didn't stop Mom from telling me it
would.
After a while, my big sister had intervened on our behalf.
That's what my mother said when my sister, or my brother, or Dad
thought maybe Mom should try not to be quite so strict--she said
they were 'intervening on my behalf.'
"Mother," I had overheard Loretta say last night, "they're
girls. And that's what they're going to do at a Halloween party
is laugh."
My mother had sighed, and with a 'Heaven help me' look on her
face had said, "Well, yes, I suppose you're right."
Today, after we had eaten breakfast--pancakes Dad had made when
he came into the house after doing the morning milking, because
pancakes were his specialty--we spent the rest of the morning
playing with the calves and the cats, riding my pony, Dusty
(with my big sister standing by to supervise to make sure no one
got hurt, which was Mom's idea), and climbing the willow trees
across the road from our driveway.
Climbing the willow trees seemed just dangerous enough to be
fun. The willow trees grew at the edge of the marsh along the
road, and if we weren't careful and fell out of the tree, we
would land in the shallow pools of water standing among the
bunches of brownish-yellow marsh grass.
When we grew tired of climbing the willow trees, dinner was
nearly ready, and we discovered that Mom had made hamburgers and
macaroni and cheese. After we had finished eating and had
stacked our plates by the kitchen sink, one of the girls asked
what we were going to do next.
And that's when I discovered the awful truth.
I had run out of ideas.
And we still had the rest of the afternoon before my sister was
planning to take everyone home. Dad was getting ready to go
outside again and had finished zipping up his chore jacket and
putting on his chore cap. With his hand on the doorknob, he had
turned to us and said that if we wanted to, we could ride on the
wagon while he picked corn.
For two whole loads, we rode up and down the cornfield behind
the corn picker in the bright sunshine and the cold wind.
Lucky for us my father didn't mind listening to so many
performances of "She'll Comin' Round the Cornfield."
Or maybe he did--because that was both the first and the last
time I ever rode behind the corn picker, by myself or with
friends.
**************************** LeAnn R. Ralph is the author of the
books "Cream of the Crop (More True Stories from Wisconsin
Farm)" (trade paperback, Sept. 2005); "Christmas in Dairyland
(True Stories from a Wisconsin Farm" (trade paperback 2003);
"Give Me a Home Where the Dairy Cows Roam" (trade paperback
2004); "Preserve Your Family History (A Step-by-Step Guide for
Interviewing Family Members and Writing Oral Histories" (e-book
2004). You are invited to read sample chapters, order books and
sign up for the free newsletter, Rural Route 2 News --
http://ruralroute2.com
************
Book Review: Twenty short but immensely entertaining stories,
December 3, 2005 Reviewer: Midwest Book Review; James A. Cox,
Editor-in-Chief (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviewsCream Of
The Crop: More True Stories Form A Wisconsin Farm is the third
anthology of biographical and anecdotal stories by LeAnn Ralph
about growing up on a Wisconsin dairy farm. In the 1960s there
were more than 60,000 dairy farms in Wisconsin, in May of 2004
the Wisconsin Agricultural Statistics Service recorded the
number of surviving dairy farms in the state at 15,591. The
number has dropped even lower since then. That dairy farming
reality is what helps to give LeAnn's deftly told stories their
nostalgia for a rural lifestyle that is not-so-slowly
disappearing in the Badger state. There are twenty short but
immensely entertaining stories in this simply superb anthology.
They range from "What's in a Name", to "She'll Be Comin' Round
the Cornfield", to "Gertrude and Heathcliff", to the title story
"cream Of The Crop". LeAnn continues to write with a remarkable
knack for making people and events come alive in the reader's
imagination. Also very highly recommended are LeAnn's two
earlier anthologies about life on the family farm in Wisconsin:
Give Me A Home Where The Dairy Cows Roam (1591135923, $13.95)
and Christmas In Dairyland: True Stories From A Wisconsin Farm
(1591133661, $13.95). ******************