Reading a Novel While Shucking Corn

As a youngster, I used to love to read books, especially ones about adventure or animals. I was about in the sixth grade when I came across a book titled “Smokey, The Cow Horse.” I could usually read a short novel in one or two days, but I had already read most of the smaller books. This particular book came from a higher shelf of our small library and it was about 500 pages. When I started reading this exciting book, I could hardly put it down, but I had many chores to do each day after school so I could only read at night.

One day, I snuck the book into the corn crib where I had to shuck corn each day. Shucking corn involved sitting down by a pile of ear corn and peeling the husks or shucks off the ear exposing the kernels, which were later shelled off the cob and fed to chickens, hogs, and cattle.

On this day, I shucked corn for half an hour and then read a few pages of my exciting book. Occasionally, my dad would sneak by the corn crib door to check if I was doing my job. I devised an ingenious alarm to warn me of his sneaking up on me. I shelled a handful of corn kernels and tossed them outside of the door. We had lots of pigeons around the barn that they would swoop down on the ground to eat the corn.

Naturally, when Dad came around, they flew off and I knew he was coming! That gave me enough time to hide the book and get back to doing my chores. That was one heck of a way to finish a good book.