It was a curious little thing.
A few strips of weathered gray leather, folded and looped in ways that aren’t immediately sensible, held a thin piece of steel, turned downward at one end into a small, determined hook. It looked a bit dangerous … and at the very least, uncomfortable, whatever it was.
A tool of some sort, for sure. But nothing about it, at least to us, said anything obvious about its purpose. It could be anything! But of course, it’s something very specific; it’s just something that speaks of a life barely imaginable to us today.
Included with this strange object, on a small scrap of paper in neat, all-capital letters, Aunt Nadine wrote, “JOHN E. CARR USED THIS CORN HUSKER’S TOOL WHEN HE WAS YOUNG.”
John Ewing Carr (image on left) was born in 1889, in a world where cornfields required hands – young hands, old hands, every willing hand a farm family could put to work when the crop was ready. At some point in the early years of the twentieth century, John offered his hands, and likely did so many, many times, willing or not.
Suddenly, the strange little object made of leather and steel had quite a lot to say for itself. The tangled leather no longer looked so insensible. The strip of steel and little hook no longer looked so menacing to humans, but something well suited to pick fights with corn husks.
Corn husks are stubborn things. After a season of protecting an ear, they are in no particular mood to surrender it.
John slipped his fingers through the leather loops and strapped the husker against his hand. The leather held the steel strip in place, leaving his hand free to grasp an ear of corn, while the hook remained ready for business.
John caught the hook in the dry husk and pulled. The steel pierced and split through the tough leaves. His fingers loosened husks and swept them downward. Then came the snap of the ear from the stalk and the toss toward the wagon.
Hook. Pull. Snap. Toss. Then the next stalk.
Hook. Pull. Snap. Toss. Down the row he went.
Imagine the likely scene: other Carrs working nearby, maybe a rare joke, maybe an even rarer complaint about aching backs, cold mornings, or hot afternoons; the wagon creaking along the rows; the horses regarding the whole business with little enthusiasm while the workers made earnest calculations about how many rows remained before they could go in for supper.
While the details and the stories have slipped beyond our reach, the husker has not.
Its leather is drier now and its steel is mottled. The little hook that once had an up-close and personal relationship with thousands of corn husks is a bit rusty and has been retired for generations. It now abides among the family history at Ridge Haven.
Aunt Nadine did the crucial task for future generations. She saved the corn husker with a simple note, without which a family heirloom would have likely remained a mysterious chunk of leather and metal.
More than a century later, John is gone. The wagon is gone. The fields John worked are more than likely gone. But if you could slip your own fingers through those worn leather loops, you might discover something rather wonderful about ordinary family things: Sometimes the distance between generations is only the width of a hand.
