[AT] OT I'm getting older are you? (Really OT)

[drupert at seanet.com]

....
> We still harvested ear corn fairly late. I just saw a new ear corn
> crib going up last week.
...>
> --
> Have you hugged your horses today?
>
> Francis Robinson
> aka "farmer"
> Central Indiana USA
> robinson46176 at gmail.com
>
The above two sentances in Farmers' response of a couple of days ago have
reminded me of a question/curiosity that I've had for some time so, if I
ever expect to get some answers, I better ask it.  Question:  How do you
first remember corn being sold?

We left the farm in Southern Illinois in 1954.  At that time, of course,
everyone was still harvesting corn with Pickers.  The corn that was wanted
for feed or for later sale was stored in a Crib.  The corn that was sold
went to the Elevator on the cob.  The Elevator had a big sheller that
could handle Wagon/Truck loads as fast as they could be driven in, lifted,
dumped, driven out and the cycle repeated.  I don't recall ever seeing a
sheller on, or going to, a farm except for the small hand cranked jobs
used for making chicken feed.

Now fast forward forty years.  In the early nineties I was making frequent
trips back to the Midwest.  Across the Northern parts of Illinois and
Indiana I started noticing that many of the old Cribs were still standing
but that they were much taller than those in Southern Illinois and they
had a huge Cupola on top ... what/why were they so different I wondered. 
After pondering this for several years I just happened to strike up a
conversation with a farmer in Northern Indiana, maybe fifteen miles from
the Michigan line.  His farm had one of these "tall Cribs."  He told me
they were far more than the cribs I remembered from the Southern part of
the state and that they were really more like the Elevator I remembered
only on a smaller scale.  His Crib/Elevator was built in the late thirties
from a kit that John Deere sold.  A wagon/truck could be driven down the
center and the mechanism was there to lift the front end and dump the corn
into a "Gutter" that then carried the corn to one side of the Aisle where
an endless vertical roller chain with "Cups" attached carried the corn to
the top (i.e., up in the Cupola) where a Diverter would direct the corn to
the Crib on either side.  This farmer said that when he wanted to sell he
would hire a custom sheller who had a ton and a half truck with a sheller
and International engine on back.  He said he had been farming since after
the War and had always sold his corn shelled.

I know this is just trivia but I am curious anyway as to how corn was sold
- back before we started getting older - to the Elevators in different
parts of the country.  For those of you whose memory does not stretch back
to before Corn Heads/Harvesters came along and got well established I am
sure this is "real" trivia.

Dudley